Posted on 07/07/2015 3:17:08 AM PDT by dennisw
One could say that it was the South which benefited from apportionment since 60% of their slave population, which had no need for representation in Washington since they were property and not citizens, was counted when deciding congressional representation.
In the year prior to the war the South exported over three million bales of cotton to overseas customers.
Combining our statistics would create a very large per centage of current citizens who have ancestors who have nothing to do with slavery.
Add the group of Africans who were responsible for the gathering up and selling their rival tribe members to the list of slave owners ( This include BHO ancestors)
It is curious how the victors’ historians have so discounted the South’s claims of economic inequity, where they prefer to discuss the misery and oppression of slavery over an economic system that consists of decades of numbers and data that take so much to evaluate in the context of north/south attitudes and which have been altered over the years.
Besides relying solely on the Wiki assessment, one might read John C. Calhoun’s thoughts on tariffs as well as the works of Clyde Wilson on tariffs and secession.
Lastly, I’m not trying to justify anything. What happened, happened and no one involved in it (or before it) is alive. The remaining thoughts, documents, writings and hand-me-downs are all that is left.
The only thing I question is the suggestion that those 2/3 of people across the south who did not own slaves actually avidly supported the system.
Sorry, that's simply not true. Here's a chart of cotton exports from 1815 to 1860. See Figure 2. In 1860 exports were around $200M, which was a LOT of money at the time.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/
People often get confused and think there were restrictions or tariffs on exports. There weren't, these being specifically prohibited by the Constitution.
The agreement that ended new slaves being brought in was embedded in the Constitution, with such a law prohibited for 20 years. It was passed, with both northern and southern support, as soon as the Constitution permitted, in 1807.
BTW, many southerners had financial interest in such a law, as prohibiting new imports tended to increase the value of slave already here. Northerly slave states, particularly VA, benefitted greatly.
Why should property be counted at all for purposes of representation?
One could say that. If one does, one should be prepared to explain what benefit they got from having fewer Representatives in Congress. While not considered "property", the Northern states had substantial numbers of un-naturalized immigrants that were not citizens, but still counted fully as residents in the census.
How about because they were people?
Well now you see the two arguments. If they are people, how is that squared with “all men are created equal?”
If all men are created equal, how can one man be the property of another?
From one perspective, counting slaves leads to over-representation, from the other to under-representation. Which is how they came to compromise on 3/5. Admittedly a rather odd number.
Does it matter what the percentage was, we were still considered less than human. They once said that we were born with tails! Different restrooms, three of our votes equaled one white man’s vote, separate water fountains, back of the bus and etc and this was until the 60’s!
No, they were not property. They were free people with rights and interests that needed protection. So they did gain benefit from their representatives in Congress. Slaves did not.
The courts saw it differently...Dred Scott comes to mind.
Au contraire. Surely you've heard of "King Cotton"? The combined wealth of the antebellum south, and some of the wealthiest men in America was concentrated by a couple dozen plantation owners. They sold lots of cotton.
Interestingly, at the advent of the war the south sought to maximize their profits by jamming up the textile markets through a cotton embargo. It was expected that Great Britain, their largest customer, would realize the threat to their industries and business and cozy up.
Instead what happened was tons of rotting cotton on the wharfs and GB finding alternative sources for cotton from Egypt and elsewhere.
Strangely, the Bible does not repudiate slavery. Heck, the left may be going after that next. Uh....... never mind.
You are quite right about the Bible, sadly. Throughout slavery is just accepted as a fact of life, neither good nor evil in itself.
However, I do think the notion that it’s evil grew out of biblical concepts. After all, if we’re all equally children of God how can some of us own others as chattel?
Western Civ, based on the Bible and classical civilization, was the first civilization in history to reject the idea of slavery and develop notions of inherent human rights. Never crossed the mind of any other civilization.
In addition, smaller landholders who did not own slaves could rent them from the large slave owners for shorter durations of time, like to get a crop harvested.
Slavery was also central to the Industrial Revolution. It made possible cheap raw materials, mostly cotton, in abundance to run the huge textile mills in England and later other countries.
Tabaco and especially sugar were in huge demand in Europe. Slavery supplied Europe with cheap tobacco and sugar (from central and south America) where slavery was even more rampant than in N America. Later on it was rubber from slaves in Asia and South America.
Slavery was part of a huge globalized economy that could not run without cheap labor. Many people benefitted, not just slave owners. Some people became super rich off of importing cotton (and sugar and tobacco) into Europe and in processing cotton into textiles on a scale previously not possible. Consumers benefitted from less expensive clothing, sugar (which at one time only kings and queens could afford) and tobacco which was becoming a fad similar to our current desire for smart phones made cheaply in Asia. The only way common people could have access to these items was if the labor to produce them was cheap which brought the price way down so mass consumption could make people money.
However, it is also true that only a small percentage of slaves where were transported went to what are today States in the USA. The vast majority went to Central and South America and the Caribbean. They did not fare as well there because of climate and disease, plus they were more routinely worked to death and then replaced with fresh slaves Africa.
There were also many Native slaves in Central and South America ... a practice that happened in the USA in the early years before black slavery ... but soon ended mostly because of disease decimating the number of people available to be made slaves. If the Natives had not died out so quickly it is doubtful so many blacks would have been imported ... but slavery would still have existed. So, history is not kind to Europeans looking back. Natives sold each other into slavery so history, if looked at coldly and pragmatically, is not kind to them either.
True. But the point is, not counting them fully was a political calculation designed to marginalize the Southern states. Government policies developed in Congress tended to work to the advantage of the industrialized Northern states, encouraging manufacturing and more industrialization. The Southern states became simply a source of raw material to feed the machines. The North agreed to keep the agricultural economy of the Southern states that was designed around and dependent on slave labor as long as they needed to commodities it was producing.
That is not true. Cheap cotton made the Industrial Revolution possible. And slavery was central to that chain as the raw material had to be cheap and abundant to make the scale of the Industrial Revolution possible. It also made cotton fabric cheap and abundant for mass consumption all over the world, including in Africa were it was very popular.
So, in a sense everyone who has benefitted from the Industrial Revolution benefitted from slavery.
Dred Scott wasn't about apportionment.
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