USA vs. CSA

>>>>>Look beneath the surface, Ben, look beneath the surface.<<<<<<<<<


Sometimes things are as they appear on the surface. I see no reason to believe that this is not true with the latest election.

 

You are probably wrong though there is no way of proving either point.

Technology had already began to erode the value of slave labor in agriculture. The internal combustion engine in all likelihood would have ended it if it had survived the steam engine.

Something I heard of interest- At the time of the Revolution, the greatest concentration of abolitionists were in the south. If I understand correctly, most plantation/slave owners were Tories. The continuation of slavery may have been an olive branch extended to get the support of these wealthy antagonists.

Ken is right about the percentage of whites who owned or had a vested interest in slaves. Non-slave owning southern whites had significant financial incentive to see slavery end.

States Rights was the over-riding concern however. Slavery just happened to be the most sensitive point of the debate. Sort of like the morality debate in our current politics. Abortion is probably the hottest point but it is by no means the totality of the divide between social conservatives and social liberals.

 

"Technology had already began to erode the value of slave labor in agriculture."
"
Slavery is just as usefull at the assembly line as it is on the fields of a plantation.

 

I would have to disagree with mioque’s statement

I think we can look at the history here. At the time of the American Revolution all 13 colonies allowed slavery. It had been outlawed in the states of the north without war. I think Great Britain outlawed slavery in the 1840’s; perhaps one of our British members can verify that for me. Without the war there can be little doubt that the southern states would have followed their northern brothers and other nations of the world in eliminating slavery.

 

I went online to check that date for British slavery. What I found was that the British Parliament formally abolished the slave trade in 1807 and called for the emancipation of all slaves in British territories in 1833.

 

North Carolina Tentmaker
Once again, normally looking at other places with a similar culture has a certain predictive value. Not when it comes to predicting changes in the United States by looking at Europe however.
All of Europe has abondened the deathpenalty, not the US. All of Europe is heading towards gay marriage, not the US. Guns are scarce overhere even among criminals, but not in ther US. Need I go on?

 

But mioque, it was not only European nations that had abolished slavery it was other states and other nations and colonies in the Western Hemisphere. Other nations that had similar economies and environments.

The key was that they abolished slavery gradually to prevent economic upheaval and to ensure the protection of those formally held in bondage. Without the American Civil war slavery would have ceased in the South because it was no longer economically viable.

Now as for the United States not following the world example when it comes to gay marriage, the death penalty, and gun control. You just wait, it seems like we are headed towards all three of those as well, just a few years behind everyone else.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>Technology had already began to erode the value of slave labor in agriculture. The internal combustion engine in all likelihood would have ended it if it had survived the steam engine.<<<<<<<

I don't agree that technology had already begun to reduce the value of slave labor. The growing of cotton was a major use of slave labor. It was not until the 1950s that technology really started to reduce the amount of hand labor involved in producing cotton. In my childhood, I picked cotton by hand alongside the descendents of slaves. In fact in the growing of all kinds of crops there was an enormous amount of hand labor until relatively modern times. There is no reason to think that the financial rewards of slavery, at least for the owners, decreased much at all in the last half of the 1800s.

 

>>>>>States Rights was the over-riding concern however. Slavery just happened to be the most sensitive point of the debate.<<<<<

States rights is just another way of dressing up slavery in a cheap suit and with the hope that nobody notices the snake inside the suit.

 

>>>>>Without the American Civil war slavery would have ceased in the South because it was no longer economically viable.<<<<<<<

The owners of the 4 billion dollars worth of living property thought it was viable - enough to start a war over it. If it was no longer viable, how do you explain the fact that slavery was expanding? In 1860 it was a larger and more important form of property than in 1850. You have been taken in by a myth propagated by those who even now excuse slavery.

 

Ben, if it was still economically viable then why had most other countries already outlawed it. The United States was not the only nation growing cotton and the sugar plantations and other agriculture of the Caribbean operated under the same structure.

There is a valid argument that sharecropping actually increased the productivity of the land and was cheaper than slavery because you did not have to feed, clothe, and guard them.

The difference between the U. S. And the other nations is in the way they abolished slavery. Great Britain did it gradually to reduce the economic impact that the Southern United States still suffers from today. One thing that really gets me upset is this talk of reparations. I will agree to reparations for the descendants of former slaves as soon as we pay the descendants of the former slave owners for the property taken from them. I am not saying slavery was right, but it was legal at that time.

 

As to whether slavery was viable or not, it seems reasonable that someone in business would not long continue to use a form of labor that was no longer profitable. That is contrary to human nature. To those who idolize the south, consider that the southern way of life included this not so pleasant characteristic:

"The slave had no civil rights including even the right to live. A master could kill a slave if he wished although it was assumed that masters would not destroy valuable property. Where there were restrictions placed on what masters could do to slaves. This was to protect other whites. It was recognized that slaves too badly abused would attempt to escape and might become a danger to white property and lives. (The few cases that I know of where a white was prosecuted for abusing slaves occurred only after it was obvious that significant numbers were being tortured horribly -and only after some slaves had escaped and caused problems. (Or, in one well known case, their screams had kept the neighbors awake nights!)"

 

>>>>>>>>>>There is a valid argument that sharecropping actually increased the productivity of the land and was cheaper than slavery because you did not have to feed, clothe, and guard them.<<<<<

If that were true, then you would expect that sharecropping would grow at the expense of slavery. Did that happen? The falsity of the above argument becomes apparent when it is realized that the sharecropper too must eat, and wear clothes. As for guarding, there was no expense for that because slaves were not guarded. They could and did run away if they wanted to risk severe punishment.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>I will agree to reparations for the descendants of former slaves as soon as we pay the descendants of the former slave owners for the property taken from them. I am not saying slavery was right, but it was legal at that time.<<<<<

You still have some nostalgia for slavery, don't you? I am sure you would enjoy drinking a mint julep on the veranda while being served by a darkie.

 

The economics of slavery is of course a highly debatable issue. I tend to think that it was a growing and profitable arrangment prior to the Civil War. A book named: "Time on the Cross" provides some supporting evidence. Here are some of the book's conclusions:

1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.

2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.

3. Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.

4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.

5. The typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.

6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.

7. The belief that slave-breeding, sexual exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. It was to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of slave families and most of them did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of individuals who were at an age when it would have been normal for them to have left the family.

8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.

9. Slaves were exploited in the sense that part of the income which they produced was expropriated by their owners. However, the rate of expropriation was much lower than has generally been presumed. Over the course of his lifetime, the typical slave field hand received about 90 percent of the income he produced.

10. Far from stagnating, the economy of the antebellum South grew quite rapidly. Between 1840 and 1860, per capita income increased more rapidly in the south than in the rest of the nation. By 1860 the south attained a level of per capita income which was high by the standards of the time. Indeed, a country as advanced as Italy did not achieve the same level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.

Several of these, such as the matter of the profitability and viability of slavery or the growth of demand for slaves in cities, were already well-known conclusions at the time and were the product of other researchers (Conrad and Meyer, Stampp, Yasuba, and Goldin, among others). Fogel and Engerman may have added a bit to these sorts of issues, but their role was more that of making such results more widely known among the general public and integrating that information into their bold, new vision of the way the slave system functioned.

Other revisionist claims were provocative. Could slave agriculture possibly be more efficient than free? Was the family the basic unit of social organization under slavery? Was the material condition of slaves as favorable as that of free industrial workers? Was the rate of exploitation or expropriation really that small? Did southern per capita income increase faster than that in the rest of the nation? The slave-based, monocultural agricultural system of the South was Douglass North's archetypal example of an economy that was not going to be successful. Did he get it all wrong?

 

Ben:

If your postings above are true, then why did other nations give up slavery without the pain and death of civil war? Am I supposed to believe that England (1833), Holland (1863), Denmark and France (1848) and other countries disbanded and outlawed slavery out the goodness of their hearts? Slavery continued to be legal in many places after the American Civil war. Cuba freed their slaves in 1886 and I think Brazil was the last in the Americas in 1888. The United States would have done the same.

In response to your personal comments, no I do not hold any romantic views toward slavery. It is a horrible practice and am glad that it exists today in only remote (Sudan and other Moslem African nations) locations. What I find odd is that we did not follow the practice of the other nations like Great Britain who paid over 28 pounds per slave to the owners when they were freed in 1833.

 

I found some interesting information about the emancipation of British slaves in the colonies. Great Britain outlawed the importation of slaves in 1807 but the ownership of slaves was still legal. In 1833 they passed the emancipation act that called for the release of all slaves in British territory December 1st, 1834. However, each of these freed slaves had to serve a 4 year apprenticeship to make them "fit for freedom." Actual freedom for these men and women came December 1, 1838 at which time payment was made by the British government to the families that had previously owned them.

This may have been common knowledge to the rest of you, but it was new to me.

To summarize, my opinions are:
1. Slavery was and still is a horrible sinful practice that creates all kinds of problems.
2. I am glad the United States and other Nations got rid of slavery.
3. I wish we could have done it without a Civil war that killed so many Americans on both sides.

 

It occurs to me, and I haven't read through this entire thread so forgive me if it's been mentioned...

I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but I remember nothing prohibiting a state from voluntarily leaving the union. Thus, a state's right to leave the union would be protected by the tenth amendment as a reserved power.

 

OOOOO! I think I like this thread!!Reasonably intellegent and civil discussion going on !