If... When would slavery have ended?

jgrubbs said:

"The secession wasn't over slavery, if it were, then why did the Northern states own slaves, many in the North owned and supported slavery longer than many in the South."

You really should get your facts straight. According to the 1860 census, the North — outside of the border states — had 46 slaves (29 of them in Utah.)

Among the border jurisdictions, slaves accounted for 2.7 percent of the population in Delaware and D.C. In the other three states, slavery was more substantial, but still far lower than in the states of the Confederacy — 20% in Kentucky, 13% in Maryland, 10% in Missouri. In all, the Northern and border states accounted for 11 percent of all the nation's slaves, almost all of them in three border states.

 

Maybe, maybe not. I'm not dogmatic about it. You could make a case either way. I do not presume to know how God works His sovereign will.

And how do you know that God did not provide a receptive audience in some places and not in others? Did he not harden Pharoah's heart?

 

Bunyon said:

"RSR, I am simply saying that if God was behind the ending of slavery in England, and I think he was since it was mainly the long work of a Christian with Christan motives, there would be no obsticles for him to do it here also."

Certainly true; but the fact is that is not the way it happened here. Whether it was by God's design, we don't know. It's certainly a possibility.

"Perhaps, the Civil War was not the way God would have chose to do it."

Perhaps. But that's the way it happened. The Northern abolitionists, of course, took a long time to gain any sympathy. Trouble is, the South was in control of the federal government (because of compromises made at the beginning of the Republic) up until 1860. And the Southerners were in no mood to listen to abolitionists.

 

JGrubbs:

I'm not sure that Roberts' reductionist column really has anything to do with the argument. The whole country was racist, just as most of it had been since the founding. It was in the political blood, so to speak. How otherwise to explain the treatment of blacks, Native Americans and former Mexicans?

Lincoln's colonization scheme is, alas, a red herring. Lincoln certainly favored colonization as a pragmatic measure, but it was always on a voluntary basis. Because it was voluntary, it could not have been carried out because the vast majority of American blacks didn't want to go back to Africa. They considered this country their home.

Did Lincoln intend to spark a slave revolt? I know of no evidence of that. The Emancipation Proclamation was intended to 1) deprive the South of the slave labor that supported the economy and 2) put Southern slaveholders on notice that they would either give up or lose their property. Incitement to rebellion was not a factor.

 

Bunyon said:

"What do you think about the whole institution of slavery? i.e. Could it have been God's providence. Think Joseph"

May have been. But I think it's dangerous for us mortals — as Baptist Richard Furman did — to think we can always discern providence and not mistake our own inclinations for the Will of God. In the Old Testament, God often used heathen nations as His instruments, but he did not let them escape punishment for their actions.

 

JGrubbs posted:

"President Lincoln made it abundantly clear that the Civil War was not about slavery. He invaded the Confederacy in order to maintain the union and the revenue base for his expansionist plans."

Americans of all sections were expansionist. The North wanted land for homesteaders and manufacturing, the South for plantations.

Besides, the South fired first. (Silly, silly mistake, as many Southerners tried to tell the Confederate government.)

"In 1862 Lincoln wrote a public letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley: 'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.' "

I didn't know this was in dispute.

 

Some cultures were more suspectible than others. Europeans seemed particularly prone to it, possibly because of their technical superiority during the era of discovery. Of course, it was not unknown elsewhere. The Chinese were convinced of their cultural superiority. The Japanese were indeed racist, which made for a really nasty encounter with racist Americans.

I would not overgeneralize about Native Americans; many of them seemed more concerned about culture rather than race and readily adopted outsiders. There are, in fact, many cultures that seem oblivious to what we call "race."

 

Bunyon said:

"Think about it. All of Africa is a war torn, disease ridden, mostly pagan, back water. If it was not for the peace of the American pie now possesed by the decendants of the slaves, blacks would have no real voice of power in the world. I do have a point, and it is not to justify our inclinations, i'll share momentarily."

You can make that case. But I'm not sure we as mortals are competent to think we are doing the Will of God in such situations.

A thousand years ago, most of Europe was disease ridden, pagan influenced, war torn and a backwater of civilization. And the Muslims took them as slaves. Forgive me if I don't feel kindly toward such treatment and do not wish it upon others.

 

"I doubt if there are any cultures that are or were oblvious to race exept in our romanticized version of them."

To be sure, romanticization is a malady of the modern world. I blame Rousseau and his silly idea of the "noble savage," which writers like Cooper perpetuated. However, I think it is clear that some cultures are more prone to racism than are others. This often arises — on both sides — when one group is technically far superior than another.

"I read of an account by a man in Silver City NM during the Wild West days of indians who mauraded and killed men women and children on verious settlements and hung the victims on meat hooks."

And European Americans did much the same thing.

"It really upset our idealized notions about Native Americans when one professor produced irrefutable evidence that the Pueblos of the south west were cannibalistic."

Well, this is upsetting. Idealized notions about any group of people — including our own — are prone to be upset by looking at how people actually behave.

On a further note, I know of the evidence for cannibalism in the Pueblos. On the other hand, the cannibalism of the Donner Party — and of European sailors in the late middle ages and early modern era — is equally well established.

 

OK. I just think it's dangerous for us to try to justify our evil actions by proposing that either we are doing the Will of God or God is acting through us.