Origins of slavery in the US

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Many Northern laborers did not have a vote becouse of age (to young like 10 to 15) or sex (female inclulded, at any age, with children and slaves) or other legal reason (like just ‘off the boat’). As for ‘the opportunity to unionize’, the unions, before the 1870’s, were non existed; it was not like it is to day in 2014 or even back in the 1960’s and '70’s. 🤷 👋
You neglect the major point…

Slaves are not paid.
 
If the states are sovereign then the US was a foreign nation. If the US is a blood in, blood out gang then it would be bogus.
The Confederates did not constitute a sovereign nation. By your reasoning, there’s nothing to stop any group of people from seceding from the U.S. If all the undocumented immigrants in Texas banded together to overthrow the government because they feel they’ve been unfairly treated, I guess that would be o.k. with you.

I’ve never met someone who really seems to believe that the south was justified in rebelling and in maintaining slavery.

This is a pointless discussion. 🤷
 
Many Northern laborers did not have a vote becouse of age (to young like 10 to 15) or sex (female inclulded, at any age, with children and slaves) or other legal reason (like just ‘off the boat’). As for ‘the opportunity to unionize’, the unions, before the 1870’s, were non existed; it was not like it is to day in 2014 or even back in the 1960’s and '70’s. 🤷 👋
Ok, let’s try this. Many slaves tried to escape from the plantations. No slave ever returned voluntarily because he could not stand the free North. No freeman ever voluntarily enslaved himself to a Southern plantation owner.
 
But is this true?

Without defending slavery or wage slavery either one, there was a virtual explosion of enterprise in the north during and after the Civil War.

The south was not so much feudal as it was simply agrarian. Few owned slaves. Most of the free population consisted in “yeoman farmers” who owned small acreages and farmed for subsistence and some modest cash. Slavery was not the backbone of the economy. It was, rather, the backbone of the “agribusiness” of the time and place.

As wealthy as southern planters must have seemed to their fellow citizens and slaves at the time, their wealth did not begin to equal equal that of the wealthy industrialists and merchants in the north.
The “explosion of enterprise” in the North was nothing more than Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.

The South could have “hitch-hiked” along with this wave of prosperity and increased its standard of living…but they decided to remain “feudal” in the sense that the the grand old plantation owners in white linen suits and big broad rimed hats didn’t want to invest in a “new fangled” cotton gin and elected to keep their slaves rather than hire them.

Sure, “industrialist” and merchants in the North prospered but that was because they offered their workers more than the plantation owners of the south wanted to offer…FREEDOM.
 
Since we are Catholics here does anyone think God punished the South as predicted in the Bible"

*James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. *
 
Since we are Catholics here does anyone think God punished the South as predicted in the Bible"

*James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. *
No. God does not “punish” us while here on Earth. (although Jewish people believe that He does)

Whatever “punishment” we deserve is reserved for the afterlife. Remember at the last second…anyone can be saved.
 
No. God does not “punish” us while here on Earth. (although Jewish people believe that He does)

Whatever “punishment” we deserve is reserved for the afterlife. Remember at the last second…anyone can be saved.
This would be the case for a believer, as God disciplines us.

Still, can we state that those that willingly treated blacks as less than animals would be considered a believer in God eyes? I think not. In fact all my experience with prejudiced adults would confirm this based on the observation that hate of another man for principal sake is a direct rejection of the Gospel.
 
This would be the case for a believer, as God disciplines us.

Still, can we state that those that willingly treated blacks as less than animals would be considered a believer in God eyes? I think not. In fact all my experience with prejudiced adults would confirm this based on the observation that hate of another man for principal sake is a direct rejection of the Gospel.
Yes…I agree with you but there is no indication of possible earthly punishment due to transgressions.
 
The “explosion of enterprise” in the North was nothing more than Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.

The South could have “hitch-hiked” along with this wave of prosperity and increased its standard of living…but they decided to remain “feudal” in the sense that the the grand old plantation owners in white linen suits and big broad rimed hats didn’t want to invest in a “new fangled” cotton gin and elected to keep their slaves rather than hire them.

Sure, “industrialist” and merchants in the North prospered but that was because they offered their workers more than the plantation owners of the south wanted to offer…FREEDOM.
This ignores the fact that most southerners were white “yeomen”; independent farmers who did not have slaves.

I will however agree with you that there was a significant misallocation of scarce capital in the South with the plantation system. It was dependent on expensive means to produce largely export crops, and the South was dependent on manufactured goods from the north and from abroad.

But it wasn’t really a “system” in the sense that it was somehow organized in that manner. It was largely a matter of chance. The North, for example, had a lot of useable water power which the South, with its sluggish streams and lack of “fall”, didn’t have. The North also had a lot of developed coal and metallurgy, which the South lacked because the resources simply weren’t there or known to be there. Finally, the North was better provided with good harbors and a shorter trading route to Europe. On the other hand, the growing seasons in the south were longer, and certain cash crops could not be grown in the north at all.

It is exactly because it was the No. 2 manufacturing slave state that my own state, Missouri, was invaded initially by the Union and fought over so bitterly throughout the war. Missouri had the resource base and transportation capabilities that no state in the South other than Virginia had.

Slavery would have ended fairly soon anyway, as those cash crops prices plummeted shortly after the Civil War because they could be produced more cheaply elsewhere. Slavery would not have overcome that disadvantage. Those prices never did recover, and those products are heavily subsidized to this day.
 
This ignores the fact that most southerners were white “yeomen”; independent farmers who did not have slaves.

I will however agree with you that there was a significant misallocation of scarce capital in the South with the plantation system. It was dependent on expensive means to produce largely export crops, and the South was dependent on manufactured goods from the north and from abroad.

But it wasn’t really a “system” in the sense that it was somehow organized in that manner. It was largely a matter of chance. The North, for example, had a lot of useable water power which the South, with its sluggish streams and lack of “fall”, didn’t have. The North also had a lot of developed coal and metallurgy, which the South lacked because the resources simply weren’t there or known to be there. Finally, the North was better provided with good harbors and a shorter trading route to Europe. On the other hand, the growing seasons in the south were longer, and certain cash crops could not be grown in the north at all.

It is exactly because it was the No. 2 manufacturing slave state that my own state, Missouri, was invaded initially by the Union and fought over so bitterly throughout the war. Missouri had the resource base and transportation capabilities that no state in the South other than Virginia had.

Slavery would have ended fairly soon anyway, as those cash crops prices plummeted shortly after the Civil War because they could be produced more cheaply elsewhere. Slavery would not have overcome that disadvantage. Those prices never did recover, and those products are heavily subsidized to this day.
The manner in which sharecropping was practiced in the South after the war and the Jim Crow laws would indicate that slavery wouldn’t “have ended fairly soon anyway.”
 
If political self-determination is irrelevant, then why did you bring it up?
I meant irrelevant to the question of was the Union justified in making war on the CSA. The CSA might not have respected self-determination within their states. But that does not make the Union right in refusing it to the South. In other words just because the neighbor kid did it doesn’t make it right.
Wrong, the South started the war. Who fired on Fort Sumter again?
Yes, the CSA fired the first shots. The Union also refused to vacate a fort controlling a port city. The Union was happy they were fired upon. Considering the whole war the CSA did not intend to take over Union states as it did not take DC when it could have or make war in Northern states in general. Had the Union abandon the fort there would have been no war. Had the Union not campaigned in the CSA there would be no war. The Union is responsible for the rest of the war and the body count.
You cannot have it both ways. You claimed the CSA was a foreign nation. Thus, you cannot bring up the Constitution. Besides, it just goes to show the hypocrisy of the South.
How would I be having it both ways? Why can I not bring up the constitution? How does it show the hypocrisy of the South? The Federal constitution did not apply to the CSA but did apply to the Union. The Union was the party ignoring parts of it.
I did not raise this issue, you did. So why make a claim about the relative badness possessed by both sides and then when you get hit with the facts, back down to the position that we cannot differentiate between a free if flawed economy and a barbarous system that enslaved nearly half of it’s population?
I didn’t say we can’t differentiate I said measuring badness is difficult. Do you disagree? The only reason I respond is because I get tired of the narrative about the evil South and the heroic North. It is the same fable that has us killing people overseas ever since.
The Confederates did not constitute a sovereign nation. By your reasoning, there’s nothing to stop any group of people from seceding from the U.S. If all the undocumented immigrants in Texas banded together to overthrow the government because they feel they’ve been unfairly treated, I guess that would be o.k. with you.
Your claim is the claim of the victors. But I see no reason why the states can not secede from the Union. There is nothing in the constitution that prohibits it. I guess it could be in there invisibly like the right to abortion and sodomy. What a glorious document! The states predated the current federal constitution. They as sovereign states joined together under the Articles of Confederation. They as sovereign states ended that federation and created a new one. At what point did they cease to be sovereign states and under what legal theory?

One answer is, for the South, when the Union government dissolved the states at the end of the war. The states were replaced with military districts. As a condition to end the occupation and become states again they had to ratify the 14th amendment. Interestingly the states had ratified the 13th amendment, which ended slavery. Thus began the spreading of democracy, American style - you force the occupied party to vote for the laws you want.

By the way it is interesting you bring up Texas. Texas most definitely has within their treaty to join the US language that guarantees the right to leave the Union. So at the very least Texas had this right. But ignoring treaties is second nature to the Union. Just ask the Indians.
 
Yes…I agree with you but there is no indication of possible earthly punishment due to transgressions.
Being punished is not exclusive to salvation. There are consequences to actions in this life and the farther a person or a people is from God the worse the consequences are.
 
I meant irrelevant to the question of was the Union justified in making war on the CSA. The CSA might not have respected self-determination within their states. But that does not make the Union right in refusing it to the South. In other words just because the neighbor kid did it doesn’t make it right.

Yes, the CSA fired the first shots. The Union also refused to vacate a fort controlling a port city. The Union was happy they were fired upon. Considering the whole war the CSA did not intend to take over Union states as it did not take DC when it could have or make war in Northern states in general. Had the Union abandon the fort there would have been no war. Had the Union not campaigned in the CSA there would be no war. The Union is responsible for the rest of the war and the body count.

How would I be having it both ways? Why can I not bring up the constitution? How does it show the hypocrisy of the South? The Federal constitution did not apply to the CSA but did apply to the Union. The Union was the party ignoring parts of it.

I didn’t say we can’t differentiate I said measuring badness is difficult. Do you disagree? The only reason I respond is because I get tired of the narrative about the evil South and the heroic North. It is the same fable that has us killing people overseas ever since.

Your claim is the claim of the victors. But I see no reason why the states can not secede from the Union. There is nothing in the constitution that prohibits it. I guess it could be in there invisibly like the right to abortion and sodomy. What a glorious document! The states predated the current federal constitution. They as sovereign states joined together under the Articles of Confederation. They as sovereign states ended that federation and created a new one. At what point did they cease to be sovereign states and under what legal theory?

One answer is, for the South, when the Union government dissolved the states at the end of the war. The states were replaced with military districts. As a condition to end the occupation and become states again they had to ratify the 14th amendment. Interestingly the states had ratified the 13th amendment, which ended slavery. Thus began the spreading of democracy, American style - you force the occupied party to vote for the laws you want.

By the way it is interesting you bring up Texas. Texas most definitely has within their treaty to join the US language that guarantees the right to leave the Union. So at the very least Texas had this right. But ignoring treaties is second nature to the Union. Just ask the Indians.
Um, Texas was guaranteed the right to unilaterally split itself into up to 5 different states, it didn’t actually get the right to secede from the Union.
 
The manner in which sharecropping was practiced in the South after the war and the Jim Crow laws would indicate that slavery wouldn’t “have ended fairly soon anyway.”
Disagree. Sharecropping in no way suggests the value of the crop. People sharecrop today. It is, in fact, increasing as resident landowner/farmers decrease in number and increase in age, combined with increasing cost of land. Nor does it say anything about the economics of slavery.

The fundamental purpose of sharecropping is to protect the landowner against investing in a crop in which the actual worker has no stake. It’s very different from slavery, in which, of course, the slave had no stake.

Jim Crow laws were political and social in intent, not economic.
 
Disagree. Sharecropping in no way suggests the value of the crop. People sharecrop today. It is, in fact, increasing as resident landowner/farmers decrease in number and increase in age, combined with increasing cost of land. Nor does it say anything about the economics of slavery.

The fundamental purpose of sharecropping is to protect the landowner against investing in a crop in which the actual worker has no stake. It’s very different from slavery, in which, of course, the slave had no stake.

Jim Crow laws were political and social in intent, not economic.
And the particular usage of sharecropping in the South was in effect a continuation of the practice of slavery in regards to economics, with the non-landowner forced to work the land under increasing debt for the land owner. Your claim that slavery was on the way out because it was uneconomical is invalidated by the fact that the version of sharecropping that came about in the South after the war kept the landowners on their land and pushed the economic failures onto the sharecroppers. This should be evident in the fact that the economy of the South didn’t actually change from pre- to post-war. Agriculture remained king, particularly cotton and tobacco.

The Jim Crow laws do actually affect economics since they limited what economic activities blacks could actually engage in and their movement to new economic opportunities.
 
And the particular usage of sharecropping in the South was in effect a continuation of the practice of slavery in regards to economics, with the non-landowner forced to work the land under increasing debt for the land owner. Your claim that slavery was on the way out because it was uneconomical is invalidated by the fact that the version of sharecropping that came about in the South after the war kept the landowners on their land and pushed the economic failures onto the sharecroppers. This should be evident in the fact that the economy of the South didn’t actually change from pre- to post-war. Agriculture remained king, particularly cotton and tobacco.

The Jim Crow laws do actually affect economics since they limited what economic activities blacks could actually engage in and their movement to new economic opportunities.
The “new economic opportunities” for blacks (and whites) were in the North, notwithstanding that segregation in the North was perhaps even more rigid than it was in the South.

Sharecropping has no relationship to slavery, though it must be admitted that sharecropping requires less capital investment than did southern slavery. The South lost massive capital from the loss of slaves, oftentimes the loss of land to carpetbaggers, the insolvency of banks, the destruction of infrastructure, and the worthlessness of Confederate money and bonds. It lost a great deal of income from the decreasing prices of its cash crop mainstays. The price of cotton in 1876 was about 1/5 what it was in 1863.

The economy most definitely did change due to the destruction of wealth and loss of income. It probably affected subsistence food producers least of all.

It didn’t take long, either, for cotton to crash. First of all, England’s alternative (and cheaper) source, Egypt, produced the higher quality long-staple cotton. If you look at most of the old cotton land today, it’s either ranchland or woodland. Vast swaths of the cotton producing south was exhausted by just a few years of raising upland cotton.

Certainly, many tried to make cotton work anyway, but it just kept spiraling downward for years, and that’s why so much of the south is now grassland or woodland. Cotton is still raised in very fertile places, (as are corn and soybeans) but the widespread planting of upland cotton is gone.

Nevertheless, agricultural products are still big in the south, though they’re somewhat different and much more “agribusiness” than they were even during the antebellum plantation era.
 
Being punished is not exclusive to salvation. There are consequences to actions in this life and the farther a person or a people is from God the worse the consequences are.
Being punished = no salvation.

I agree about people distancing themselves from God and facing consequesces, but these consequences will be faced on Judgement Day
 
You might find the book, A Renegade History of the U.S. by Thaddeus Russell interesting reading on this topic on the condition of slaves relative to free whites, or otherwise. The popular conception of ‘12 years a slave’ brutality being the norm may not be historically accurate, according to Prof. Russell.

Thanks by the way for that info on Irish Catholics being the first slaves to be sent to America, I didn’t know that.
 
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