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BHM (Black History Month) (2) Fun Facts – Virtue’s Thunder
2/4/2012 1:29 pm |
1. Why would Southern whites that did not own slaves support the slave holding system & the Confederacy? 2. What caused the American Civil War/War of Rebellion? +++ The majority of southerners did not own slaves, so why do some say the Civil War was fought chiefly over slavery as opposed to state’s rights? ++++ Inlaid disputes... Fun Facts [from the horse's mouth] inside Breathe Deeply~ Peace imgs: civilwarlibrarian;ofsavage fury PS Kansas at hated Missouri tonight on ESP N at 9 ET. Go Jayhawks!!! Doc_Sonar I advocate Simplicity, Patience & Compassion...and...More than Ever - "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." ~G Keillor |
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 2/4/2012 1:41 pm |
FunFacts 1. Here are some basics: Small farmers sometimes depended on larger growers to gin and market their cotton in return for a tiny percentage of the output; such relationships helped create a community of economic interest. A farmer might not own slaves, but his shared involvement in cotton cultivation produced a commitment to the staple in common with the wealthy planter. A.K.A. a sense of "we" cotton growers, which bound white southerners together. Small farmers could often rent slaves from larger planters in the non-peak harvest and planting seasons. Small farmers, on the whole, produced more varied products such as: corn, sweet potatoes, hogs, dairy, etc. They were able to find larger plantations to be occasional markets for their surplus. Larger planters could hire small farmers for specific chores. The small farmer often depended on the plantation and larger planters simply for economic interests, creating a cooperative spirit. During this period, thirty to fifty percent of southern white people are landless and have little hope to improve their poor living condition. Most southern whites worked small farms and only about 25 percent of white families owned slaves, most with fewer than five. Among the poor, most of them were either farmers or indentured servants. The presence of large numbers of African Americans generated deep-seated fears among whites, which in some parts of the south found themselves in the minority. Consequently, southern whites were dedicated to white supremacy and to maintaining a racial hierarchy supported by harsh slave codes. As northern abolitionist attacks mounted during the 1830s, southern apologists constructed a pro-slavery argument that claimed the institution was a "positive good" compared to the tyranny of the northern capitalist "wage slavery." Black slavery helped whites bridge differences in class, wealth, education, and culture. Racial solidarity made slave masters and non-slaveholders oppose black freedom and equality. All white classes and professions promoted white supremacy – they all had a stake in the system, not just planters and legislators. +++ 2. The Civil War was fought for - as some would say today - over the rights of States and not over slavery (because most whites did not owned slaves). Their view holds that one set of States (the Confederacy) used their Sovereign power to secede from the then existing union and establish their own governmental confederacy. The question was, did these States have the power to secede? President Lincoln and the federal government of the North took the position that they didn’t and obviously those States seceding (as well as factions within the non seceding States) believed that they did. I would immediately ask the state’s right to secede - for what? For self-determination. Self-determination to what end? To maintain slavery as an instruction and the underlying desire to maintain white supremacy among a people that were enslaved - and as southerners reckoned - rightfully vengeful. The South was ruled by a slave owner aristocracy contrary to the promise of the Constitution: a government of the people”. It is “We the People of the United States” not 'We the States'. (We abandoned the Articles of Confederation (More suited to the present day EU - a economic union of actual sovereign nations not states making up a nation) The South was a plutocracy inside a democratic republic As states left the Union, they said why. During the time that the Civil started, by their own admission, Confederates stated that they would fight to keep the institution of slavery intact and their way of life, and slave-based agrarian economy - and if secession was the only way to do it, then they would. --- What’s Wrong About States’ Rights? But advocates of the Lost Cause— Confederates and later neo- Confederates—had a problem. The leaders of southern secession left voluminous records. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s prompted historians and teachers to review those records and challenge the Lost Cause. One main point they came to was this: Confederate states seceded against states’ rights, not for them. South Carolina attacked New York for no longer allowing temporary slavery (By 1860, New York made it clear that it was a free state and any slave brought there would become free.) Southern delegates also took offense that northern states have “denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery” and “permitted open establishment among them of [abolitionist] societies...” Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi. “... [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.” In other words, northern and western states should not have the (State's Right) to let people assemble and speak freely—not if what they say might threaten slavery. Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech," Savannah, March 21, 1861: “(Thomas Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery– subordination to the superior race– is his natural and normal condition.” Senator Charles Sumner "[T]here are two apparent rudiments to this war. One is Slavery and the other is State Rights. But the latter is only a cover for the former. If Slavery were out of the way there would be no trouble from State Rights. The war, then, is for Slavery, and nothing else. It is an insane attempt to vindicate by arms the lordship that had been already asserted in debate. With madcap audacity it seeks to install this Barbarism as the truest Civilization. Slavery is declared to be the "corner-stone" of the new edifice “States rights” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution; it has become popular only by much use. Some seem to think the Articles of Confederation and/or The Declaration of Independence the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution was accepted as the “law of the land”, of the Union; state laws have an application to things not addressed by the law of the land, including laws passed by Congress in keeping with the Constitution. In 1860, Congressman Laurence M. Keitt of South Carolina said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States." The pro-slavery forces sought refuge in the state rights position as a shield against federal interference with pro-slavery projects Southern anger at the attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Southern slave owners held that such a restriction on slavery would violate the principle of states' rights. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln, who won the national election without receiving a single electoral vote from any of the Southern states, triggered declarations of secession from the United States by slave states of the Deep South, and their formation of the Confederate States of America. Southern defenders of slavery, for their part, increasingly came to contend that blacks actually benefited from slavery, an assertion that alienated Northerners even further... The northern states had a far bigger population and electoral majority. The power of slaveholders to control the national government was gone, as Lincoln won the presidency w/o even being on the ballot in 10 southern states. --- No part of our history gets more mythologized than the Civil War, beginning with secession. Polls show that 55 to 75 percent of teachers—regardless of region or race—cite state's rights as the key reason southern states seceded. These conclusions are backed up by a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, which found that a wide plurality of Americans—48 percent— believe that states’ rights was the main cause of the Civil War. Fewer, 38 percent, attributed the war to slavery, while 9 percent said it was a mixture of both. Harris Interactive polled more than 2,500 adults across the country, asking what the North and South were fighting about. A majority, including two-thirds of white respondents in the 11 states that formed the Confederacy, answered that the South was mainly motivated by "states' rights" rather than the future of slavery. These results are alarming because they are essentially wrong. "States’ rights" was not the main cause of the Civil War—slavery was. Their founding documents show that the South seceded over slavery, not states’ rights. But the neo-Confederates are right in a sense. Slavery was not the only cause. The South also seceded over white supremacy, something in which most whites—North and South—sincerely believed. White southerners came to see the 4 million African Americans in their midst as a menace, going so far as to predict calamity, even race war, were slavery ever to end. This facet of Confederate ideology helps explain why many white southerners—even those who owned no slaves and had no prospects of owning any—mobilized so swiftly and effectively to protect their key institution. The issue is critically important for teachers to see clearly. Understanding why the Civil War began informs virtually all the attitudes about race that we wrestle with today. The distorted emphasis on states’ rights separates us from the role of slavery and allows us to deny the notions of white supremacy that fostered secession. In short, this issue is a perfect example of what Faulkner meant when he said the past is not dead—it’s not even past --- The Lost Cause Confederate sympathizers have long understood the importance of getting the Civil War wrong. In 1866, a year after the war ended, an ex-Confederate named Edward A. Pollard published the first pro-southern history, called The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. Pollard’s book was followed by a torrent of similar propaganda. Soon, the term “Lost Cause” perfectly described the South’s collective memory of the war. All these works promoting the Lost Cause consoled southern pride by echoing similar themes: The South’s leaders had been noble; the South was not out-fought but merely overwhelmed; Southerners were united in support of the Confederate cause; slavery was a benign institution overseen by benevolent masters. A chief tenet of the Lost Cause was that secession had been forced on the South to protect states’ rights. This view spread in part because racism pervaded both North and South, and both ex-Confederates and ex-Unionists wanted to put the war behind them. Beginning with Mississippi’s new constitution in 1890, white southerners effectively removed African Americans from citizenship and enshrined their new status in Jim Crow laws. Northerners put the war behind them by turning their backs on blacks and letting Jim Crow happen. From 1890 to about 1940, the Lost Cause version of events held sway across the United States. This worldview influenced popular culture, such as the racist 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation and Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 best-selling paean to the Old South, Gone With the Wind. History textbooks also bought into the myth and helped promote it nationwide. None of this was secret in the 1860s. The “anything but slavery” explanations gained traction only after the war, especially after 1890—at exactly the same time that Jim Crow laws became entrenched across the South. Thus when people wrote about secession influenced what they wrote. And here the states’ rights argument opens a door for teachers to explain how perceptions of the past change from one generation to the next. Most students imagine history is something “to be learned,” so the whole idea of historiography—that who writes history, when and for what audience, affects how history is written— is new to them. They need to know it. Knowledge of historiography empowers students, helping them become critical readers and thinkers. Concealing the role of white supremacy—on both sides of the conflict— makes it harder for students to see white supremacy today. After all, if southerners were not championing slavery but states’ rights, then that minimizes southern racism as a cause of the war. And it gives implicit support to the Lost Cause argument that slavery was a benevolent institution. Espousing states’ rights as the reason for secession whitewashes the Confederate cause into a “David versus Goliath” undertaking — the states against ‘the mighty federal gummint’. States’ rights became a rallying cry for southerners fighting all federal guarantees of civil rights for African Americans. This was true both during Reconstruction and in the 1950s, when the modern civil rights movement gained strength. Today, the cause of states’ rights is still invoked against federal social programs and education initiatives that are often beneficial to people of color. In other words, wrongly teaching the Civil War cedes power to some of the most reactionary forces in the United States; letting them, rather than truth, dictate what we say in the classroom. Allowing bad history to stand literally makes the public stupid about the past—today. Proudly displaying the Confederate battle flag as a so-called symbol of 'southern pride' (The Lost Cause) is the most apparent proof of the mistaken teaching of the revised facts of Civil War. What was taught in the 1970s when I was in high school in southern GA was that is was all about state rights. Slavery was not mentioned in that old high school textbook as the reason. How did that happen? --- The Civil War history was rewritten. In this case writers from the South later changed it...you can actually find the threads of how things were woven to create a very different fabric - or story Articles written during the time of secession and the war itself provide the direct reasoning without revisionist perspectives. The southerners had no reason to be politically correct in a time when PC didn't exist. According to what they – the southerners of the time - wrote (and the written record is extensive) the leading reason for secession and war is the "peculiar institution" that they wanted to maintain: slavery. So, one can argue that it's about state’s rights - but that right was slavery. It's not pretty, it's fairly embarrassing, but it’s a part of the written record, and it was a prevalent belief amongst people who I have to believe simply didn't know better. the antebellum change of emphasis by Southern writers in their depiction of the motives behind the Confederate cause, from the defense of slavery to the more abstract and sympathetic protection of limited government, states’ rights, and the freedom of a local majority to decide its own political destiny. Identifying their new nation inextricably with slavery made foreign support more difficult to attract, especially once the North decided it was explicitly fighting for emancipation. By the same token, once defeat came, Southerners who wished to save something from the ruins needed to redefine their reasons for resisting so valiantly. This necessity applied not only to the historical record, but also to their immediate political needs in grappling with Reconstruction. So, whereas 'many factors led to the Civil War' -- all of them related to slavery ~ ALL ~ the southerners of the period acknowledged that simple reality. And interestingly enough, some, as with the Ku Klux Klan and other racial superiority or separatist groups and bigots, did not think of or call themselves racists. They still don't in 2012. It's as if ~ while they acknowledge that racism and racists exist ~ they can point to no instance or example of racism or a racist - unless it is or is in black people. BD~ P "No matter what we do or the overwhelming consensus among historians, out in the public mind, there is still this need to deny that slavery was the cause of the war...It's not simply a matter of denial. For most of the first century after the war, historians, novelists and filmmakers worked like hypnotists to soothe the posttraumatic memories of survivors and their descendants. Forgetting was the price of reconciliation, and Americans — those whose families were never bought or sold, anyway — were happy to pay it. ~David Blight PS Some other enduring myths: Myths About the Civil War and Slavery No. 1 The North went to war to end slavery. The South definitely went to war to preserve slavery. But did the North go to war to end slavery? No. The North went to war initially to hold the nation together. Abolition came later. On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley, abolitionist editor of the New York Tribune, that stated: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.” Lincoln’s own anti-slavery sentiment was widely known at the time, indeed, so widely known that it helped prompt the southern states to rebel. In the same letter, Lincoln wrote: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.” Lincoln was concerned—rightly—that making the war about abolition would anger northern Unionists, many of whom cared little about African Americans. But by late 1862, it became clear that ending slavery in the rebelling states would help the war effort. The war itself started the emancipation process. Whenever U.S. forces drew near, African Americans flocked to their lines—to help the war effort, to make a living and, most of all, simply to be free. Some of Lincoln’s generals helped him see, early on, that sending them back into slavery merely helped the Confederate cause. A month after issuing his letter to the New York Tribune, Lincoln combined official duty and private wish by announcing the Emancipation Proclamation, to take effect on January 1, 1863. No. 2 Thousands of African Americans, both free and slave, fought for the Confederacy. Neo-Confederates have been making this argument since about 1980, but the idea is completely false. One reason we know it’s false is that Confederate policy flatly did not let blacks become soldiers until March 1865. White officers did bring slaves to the front, where they were pressed into service doing laundry and cooking. And some Confederate leaders tried to enlist African Americans. In January 1864, Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne proposed filling the ranks with black men. When Jefferson Davis heard the suggestion, he rejected the idea and ordered that the subject be dropped and never discussed again. But the idea wouldn’t die. In the war’s closing weeks, Gen. Robert E. Lee was desperate for men. He asked the Confederate government to approve allowing enslaved men to serve in exchange for some form of post-war freedom. This time, the government gave in. But few blacks signed up, and soon the war was over. No. 3 Slavery was on its way out anyway. Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1860. That year, the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were valued as being worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily. True, several European colonies in the Caribbean had ended slavery, but that action was taken by the mother country, not by the elite planter class. To claim that U.S. slavery would have ended of its own accord is impossible to disprove but difficult to support. In 1860, slavery was growing more entrenched in the South. Unpaid labor made for big profits, and the southern elite was growing ever richer. Slavery’s return on investment essentially crowded out other economic development and left the South an agricultural society. Freeing slaves was becoming more and more difficult for owners, as state after state required them to transport freed slaves beyond the state boundaries. For the foreseeable future, slavery looked secure. (tolerance org) ++++++ Did Free Blacks Own Black Slaves? Yes some did. From amorous relationships between masters and slaves (and free persons of color) there grew a distinct class of “brown” elites. There was a difference in the way that whites regarded free dark-skinned blacks and light-skinned blacks. Light-skinned blacks were considered closer to white in the social stratification in southern society. A racial stratification developed into a three-tiered model with whites on the top, mulattoes and free blacks (of light complexion, mostly), and slaves. Slaveholding free blacks were considered at the top of the second tier, the most respected blacks of all in white society. Remnants of this exist today in America and around the world. A third factor in the development of black slaveholding was the desire of “free persons of color” to operate in the economic world of white slaveholders and to be as ‘equal’ to whites as possible. By the mid 1700’s to early 1800’s, most free blacks considered themselves more American than they did African, for almost all of them had been born on American soil, free or slave. They wanted to live the same life as whites, and they saw slaveholding as a way to become more equal with their white counterparts. An important fourth and final factor in black slaveholding was the economic profitability of using slaves to work in jobs and businesses owned by “free persons of color.” “In a society that vested the ownership of one many in another, slaves represented another form of property held by free blacks.” (Powers, 1994, 39) Early on in the colony of South Carolina, mulattoes were often trained as artisans and were able to earn the money to purchase slaves by working. They were commercial masters who aligned themselves with the white majority in order to preserve the system of slavery. (Koger, 1985, 30) As this practice progressed, the black slaveholders often had the same incentives as whites to own slaves. (Sources)-Charleston Capitation Books, free persons of color, ca. 1852, 1861; Koger, Larry. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina ++++++++++ Source(s): The South Through Time: A History of an American Region; Tennessee Question Doc_Sonar I advocate Simplicity, Patience & Compassion...and...More than Ever - "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." ~G Keillor
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2/6/2012 6:39 am |
Condolences on the KU loss. But, revenge at the Phog on February 25, right?
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2/7/2012 9:23 am |
*smiling You didn't leave a whole lot of room for listing out reasons. I agree with most of what you said. Lincoln was in direct violation of the US Constitution and he knew it. The individual states have every right to secede from the union. (I'm not even going to talk bout the morals/lack of of slavery.) You prob know that secession is a topic still being discussed and there's a long line of States considering it to one level or another right now. The same sort of issues are in play today. Who owns your labor and whether you get a say or not in how you spend it, or how FedGov spends it. Civil War II will not be televised, it'll be right up close personal at a home near you. God help us all. Our dynamic doesn't have an off switch.
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2/9/2012 12:47 pm |
I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO GET MY MIND AROUND THE CONCEPT OF OWNING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. FOR ME IT IS UNTHINKABLE. When I was very young I worked with a guy who wanted me to come to South America to work for him he told me I could buy the prettiest girl I had ever seen for $2 I said "a two dollar hooker?" He explainded that the people there were so poor that the father would sell his daughter to me for $2 I would own her completely. The thought was for me to horifying and I knew that I would be so outraged that I would get myself killed in a place like that. HAVE YOUR SAY, I HAVE HAD MINE
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2/13/2012 4:45 am |
Fascinating reading, it kinda leaves me speechless. Most students imagine history is something “to be learned,” so the whole idea of historiography—that who writes history, when and for what audience, affects how history is written— is new to them. They need to know it. Knowledge of historiography empowers students, helping them become critical readers and thinkers. This is compelling... xoxoxo I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not" Kurt Cobain
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2/13/2012 1:02 pm |
*smiling You didn't leave a whole lot of room for listing out reasons. I agree with most of what you said. Lincoln was in direct violation of the US Constitution and he knew it. The individual states have every right to secede from the union. (I'm not even going to talk bout the morals/lack of of slavery.) You prob know that secession is a topic still being discussed and there's a long line of States considering it to one level or another right now. The same sort of issues are in play today. Who owns your labor and whether you get a say or not in how you spend it, or how FedGov spends it. Civil War II will not be televised, it'll be right up close personal at a home near you. God help us all. I've got the entire document on screen in a second tab,and I'm having no luck finding what your talking about in the text. Although I did find this bit here; Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
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2/21/2012 1:36 pm |
Fascinating reading, it kinda leaves me speechless. Most students imagine history is something “to be learned,” so the whole idea of historiography—that who writes history, when and for what audience, affects how history is written— is new to them. They need to know it. Knowledge of historiography empowers students, helping them become critical readers and thinkers. This is compelling... xoxoxo It's many things bit...the idea of historiography as well as corroborated actualities. The history in this post for example, is either omitted or frightfully misrepresentative revised in most history texts. Until it is, it's reason enough for BHM as I see it... How willing are you to bet that at least for some, the confederate's own words/reasons for the CW have never been read --til now? YUD xoxoxo Doc_Sonar I advocate Simplicity, Patience & Compassion...and...More than Ever - "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." ~G Keillor
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2/21/2012 1:42 pm |
Molly,could you please cite the specific Article(s),and section(s) Lincoln violated,and the exact nature of those violations? As well as the Article(s),and section(s) of the constitution that grant states the right of secession. I've got the entire document on screen in a second tab,and I'm having no luck finding what your talking about in the text. Although I did find this bit here; Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. The idea was 'spoken/repeated' into popular usage apparently? I always thought - but can't corroborate - the the seceding states used the word 'Confederacy' in naming their new nation in an act of defiance to the underlined word you quoted above. Doc_Sonar I advocate Simplicity, Patience & Compassion...and...More than Ever - "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." ~G Keillor
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