If slavery was not the cause in Missouri, then it’s likely, even probable, that it was not in other states as well. Arkansas, for example, according to some historians, seceded even though the majority of Arkansans opposed slavery. Some historian (sorry, can’t remember the name, but might have been Shelby Foote) claimed the only states that really wanted the war were Massachussetts and South Carolina, but they carried everybody else into it with them. Indeed, one of the reasons why Missouri’s government wanted to stay neutral was that, at the time, most Missourians had come from one southern state or another, and they didn’t want to war against their own kind and kin. But there were only two choices, as it turned out, because your people were going to be drafted by one side or the other.
And for the most part I agree with your above. What I disagree with is what actually caused the Civil War. Remove slavery from the picture and we don’t have any state (North or South) with a grievance or past wrong that would result in a Civil War. The Civil War was caused by slavery, once caused all these other secondary reasons were brought to bear as a kind of “cleaning house” which is a common event once a nation enters into a Civil War (the sectarian inter and intra tribal based “cleaning house” we saw in Iraq’s “we won’t call it a civil war” civil war is a good example of this).
I can’t read the minds of the living, let alone of the dead. Undoubtedly, some of the better treatment of some (though certainly not all) slaves was economic interest and nothing else. But it’s counter-intuitive to imagine that southerners who grew up with slaves and had them as playmates had no human regard for them at all. Undoubtedly, like all things human, it was mixed in a lot of cases.
I would wager the fewer slaves a person owned the more the person saw them as a person and treated well because they saw them as a person and not property. But, when speaking of Southern society and culture as a whole we’re faced with slaves being treated well or deemed to be persons for some things due to the self-interest of the slave owners, who also happened to be the ruling elite.
And no doubt some factory owners in the north actually did care whether their workers lived decently and were afforded at least some minimum of safety. Just as beyond doubt is that some did not, if chronicles at the time are to be credited.
And today, I have known people who work in the workers’ compensation field who could not possibly care less in a human way whether injured workers are treated, recover, or whatever, but just don’t want to deal with a permanent total disability. But some actually do care, and go out of their way to ensure proper treatment, and it’s not all economic.
All of which is true, but it doesn’t address the difference between the workers in the North or today being deemed legally, socially, and morally to be people and slaves being deemed to not be.
But I will at least guess this. Some of the Deep South plantations had a great number of slaves, and the owners likely didn’t know many of them, leaving all relationships to overseers. It is well known that “troublesome” slaves were “sold South” into what were considered worse conditions. That’s where the expression “sold down the river” came from. Likely it was more than just a climate change. The really huge plantations were there. I do not maintain that today small employers deal with workers on a more human level than do, say, employers who never learn the name of a single one of them. But I do believe there is less potential for it in large organizations than in small ones.
But I do not concede any moral superiority to the north as a society generally, or to northerners as individuals. Remember the draft riots in NYC in which rioters killed every black they could lay hands on, blaming them for the war?
And I’m not claiming that the North was generally or on a whole morally superior to the South. My claim of moral superiority is specifically about slaves and slavery. The historical record is that the North held a much more morally correct view in this regard than the South did.
Also, your above mention of the Draft Riots and who was targeted and why supports my claim that slavery was cause of the Civil War.
My own great-grandfather came here from Italy. The only work he could find was in the deep coal mines. It was so hot down there the men worked naked. If there was a rock fall (which happened a lot) and if it was impractical to dig the men out, they were just left. There were no safety provisions whatever. Men were gassed, flooded and killed in rockfalls. The carts were hauled by ponies to the lift. The ponies spent their whole lives there, so the mines reeked of manure, sweat, and urine, both animal and human. If a pony died, there was no rush to haul it to the surface, so it grew ripe in place. Because mice can fall any distance without being killed on impact, the mine was full of them as well. Now and then a pony would go mad and kill miners. It would run wild through the tunnels, attacking here and there until somebody finally managed to deal it a death blow. Where was the “recognition of personhood” in all that? There were blacks in that part of the country, but none of them would work in the deep mines. It was all immigrants, and a lot of them were Italians.
It is, therefore, difficult for me to attribute moral superiority to those northern mine owners, for example, over slaveholders in the South. My great-grandfather’s experience was after the Civil War, (just) but I doubt the mine owners treatment of immigrants deteriorated just because the war was over.
Did the mine owner legally own your great grandfather as a piece of his private property?
