would it have been possible to be a confederate and a devout catholic?

[manualman]

Reading this thread makes me understand how ethnic and regional hatreds in Europe that date from wrongs committed centuries ago still have the power to ignite killing and strife (Bosnia, Ireland, etc…) Here we are only a bit over 200 years old and we have our own pet peeves 150 years old that we still feed and let fester.

Having lived with folks from both sides, it is clear to me that NEITHER side is much honest about what the war was really about and BOTH sides exaggerate terribly to make the other side look like the “bad guys.”

Southerners are right to conclude that it is an utter sham for the North to claim they went to war over the moral issue of slavery. Slavery was a moral PR veneer placed over the top. I tend to agree with Southerners that the North feared what the South could do if it industrialized and retained the institution of slavery. The North feared that their power was threatened. As usual, that motivates nations more than moral outrage. The North would no more go to war to free slaves than the USA would go to war today just to free a nation of a despotic dictator - unless that dictator had the power to switch off a hefty percentage of the world’s oil supply!

Southerners are tragically dishonest about their motives as well. States rights ARE something precious and consistent with catholic values of subsidiarity - right up until those rights conflict with more basic human rights. The North may be dishonest about its true motives, but still wins the moral high ground. In the end, basic human rights for all trump the right of states to self rule apart from the federal government. In this case subsidiarity supports federal intervention against the states that were violating basic human rights. I find it amazing to hear southerners STILL arguing that slaves were better off as slaves. Amazing.

In the end, the naked truth is the that THE states right the southern states were fighting for was the right to classify an entire group of human beings as mere chattle property to be bought, owned, bred and used as goods like domesticated animals. No matter how bad the North was in its true motives and conduct, the South was worse.

I am constantly struck by how identical the slavery issue was 150 years ago to the abortion issue today. The defenders use all kinds of smoke screens and rationalizing to take the focus of the REAL issue: what is an unborn child? Answer - a human being just like you and me. What is a black man? A human being just like you and me. It really is that simple in concept (if awfully messy in the implementation in both cases).

Northerners sometimes romanticize the civil war far beyond what is reasonable. Even many abolitionists were beyond the pale. John Brown was no different than Eric Rudolph is today. Neither is a hero. Both are men who made the dreadful mistake of attempting to use violence to end injustice. The ends STILL don’t justify the means. Too many history books make a hero of John Brown, IMO. To me, he’s as tragic as Eric Rudolph. As GK Chesterton put it “Reformers are usually right about what is wrong, but almost always wrong about what is right.”

 

[Beau_Ouiville]

To add to the historical setting of the Civil War, people need to remember that Georgetown University was partially built by slaves and Jesuits in Maryland owned slaves. So the Catholic Church at that time was not all that opposed to African chattel slavery.

www8.georgetown.edu/departments/americanstudies/jpp/

As to ethnic conflicts, Irish Catholic mobs in NYC, in the worst riot in US history, burned a black orphanage after nailing the door shut and shot at anyone trying to escape. The bishop of NY was against any draft and anyone fighting to preserve the Union.

bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Vote/NYC.Draft.Riots.html

So it is a very technical question. Surely, it was not purely economics on the side of the confederates – slavery was a moral abomination. The North also did not have to fear the south’s rise in the country – most industry and population and immigration was in the northern states. The confederacy felt itself threatened by new territories and the Northern states congressional measures.

What should have been settled at the time of independence was just put off for two generations.

 

[Holly3278]

I read partway through this thread and I must say that I am confused. Did the Pope of the time during the Civil War condone the South’s seceding from the Union or not?

 

[CentralFLJames]

I don’t think I’ve read an uglier pro-Southern argument.

I have waited a few days and counted 1-2-3 to remain calm and not give you the reply I should give to you on this. Let me just say you are good at moralizing and hyperbole but have an unbalanced empathy for the average Southerner who had no slaves. This was an immigration control problem at the federal level and only a very few percentage of the southern population had anything to do with the mass importation of slaves - up to nearly a 1 for 1 slave to free ratio. Dropping that many people of a completely different social ethic, morality and way of life onto the south was a like using people as a social-bomb of mass destruction. No culture can peacefully assimilate that number of radically alien cultures into its corpus and expect to be stable. America was overwhelming founded on an European social fabric - with structure, civil authority, Christian morality and rule of law. Africans were pure tribal and were at least 500 years behind in societal evolution than was Europe. It was as insane as it was irresponsible for Washington to imagine it could force the South to suddenly make all their slaves “free men” overnight and not suffer massive social unrest. The North used “morality” in a twisted and diabolical way as a club to destroy the south - no one could be that stupid or naive to imagine the South had even a remote chance of dealing with the easily anticipated civil unrest that would ensue. And I suspect there were Machiavellian thinkers (on both sides of the Atlantic since England was facilitating the supply the slaves from the Muslims) who deliberately used morality as a weapon to not only subjugate the south but to destroy their culture, independence, and saddle them with internal problems for generations to come.

Again - NO average Southern citizen had a single vote in the matter of mass importing of slaves and had no way to stop it since the privateers were doing this unimpeded. The Federal Gov. had a substantial naval fleet and easily could have stopped the slave ships and offered bounty’s (e.g. ownership of ships intercepted) to bounty hunters to seize slave ships on the high seas and turn them around.

So they needed to keep the slaves because they were making money off of them. And because their entire society was based on it. So you’re admitting, flat out, that antebellum Southern society was based on the institution of slavery. Which is true; it is, after all, what Alexander Stephens said in his famous cornerstone speech.

Antebellum Southern society was enjoyed by a privileged few wealthy plantation owners. You seem only to be capable to empathizing with the slaves. Why are you incapable of empathizing with the common Southerner who was every bit as hard working as anyone else in the country was (and more so) and had nothing whatsoever to do with the importing of a massive number of foreign people into his homeland? I think you are way overplaying the moral card and are really showing the typical selective morality of the liberal mind where only one side is a victim. I know your thinking is probably biased by the bigoted histories that would hold all Southerners are ignorant rednecks who hated blacks - but this is just the typical demonizing that happens when one side wants to feel self-righteous in imposing its own views on others. Southern society was not based on slavery - that is a wild excursion from reality. Southern society was not founded on hate or slavery.

But the argument that follows is horrendous and immoral: in order to preserve that society, you’re arguing that it was worth maintaining slavery. So, by that token: when should the slaves have been freed? Your argument has answered the question: essentially never.

The alternative argument is doubly immoral and is based on bigoted judgements. You would have it morally proper to destroy the entire southern way of life and have all southerners living in total chaos to free slaves by fiat and end up getting all drawn into a a mixture of two incompatible cultures that shared nothing whatsoever in common. You would use morality as a club to instigate a new civil war in the South that got both Southerners and slaves killed and infighting among themselves and living in a hellish society that would never know peace for generations. Your strawman conclusion that puts the words “never” on my lips (against my sentiments) is just as reversible and more suited to your own vision that forces an imposition of a morality that would “never” result in a civil peace without a forceful police force. You would exchange freedom of one group for a penal system under marshall law for all. Brilliant.

Like the Civil War that happenned after 1865? Waitaminute, there weren’t any massacres of whites by blacks! That’s not what happenned!

So you claim that the Civil Rights movement of Martin Luther and all the race riots and Black Panther movements that were only put down by massive social spending were unnecessary?

And you’re ignoring that Lincoln’s platform was against the expansion of slavery; abolitionists voted Republican, but the Republican Party did not favor immediate emancipation until after Abraham lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Before that, it was all about the restriction of slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a mere political tool to demonize the south by suddenly criminalizing a previously legal practice. It was a way moralize and justify inflicting the Northern atrocities that Lincoln was about to unleash on the South. Using morality as a means to kill one’s brothers and burn entire cities is more abhorrent than slavery my friend.

[continued]

James

 

[CentralFLJames]

What were Lincoln’s wishes? He hadn’t taken office yet. And I think you are now the first living person I’ve had contact with who has the temerity to argue that the South was right to oppose abolition because it would have been bad to free the slaves.

Lincoln had broadcast his political platform ahead of time so its easy to know what his intentions were.

I don’t believe your assertion that I am the first person. It would have been entirely wrong and unfair to both slaves and southerners to suddenly turn the slaves free to fend for themselves. In fact the responsible thing to do would be to transition them into society after indoctrination into the cultural mores, education and training or to return them to Africa. They were essentially illegal aliens and could have been exported as “freemen”. The Fourteenth Amendment granted only partial recognition of citizens of freed slaves later in 1868. We must never forget the northern morality had been proven wrong before. Have you forgetting that the Supreme Court had declared slaves as NOT protected by the Constitution and could NEVER be citizens of the United States in
1857?? The South was victim of morally incompetent judges and for believing in the law and thought they were well within their legal rights. Why did the South have to be devastated by a politically convenient change in morality and law?

Opportunistic nations and interests like slavetraders, slave auctioneers, and slave owners?

Great Britain and the Islamic nations were instrumental in profiting by slave trading with America. I don’t think you have a grasp of the world context of the time and how new and novel the idea of individual rights and human rights and mixing of races. It was unheard of in the day.

Their worst fears, based on racial imagery of blacks as bloodthirsty monsters. You’re arguing that it was okay for white southerners to be racist, and okay for them to support slavery. From that perspective, then yes, the South was right. But that requires you to take up the John C. Calhoun argument that slavery was good.

It only seems that way to you since you are frustrated in your attempts to paint me as a racist (which I am not). It was OK for Southerners to embrace their hard won advances in carving out a living from the land and advancing the Southern Culture. The importation of slaves was not a thing any Southerner had a vote in and was done by a few enterprising men who profited by it (in the short term). You are acting like you personally or anyone else in America did not benefit by slavery and exploitation of cheap labor in the westward expansion (e.g. the Chinese laborers). America was labor poor and needed a mass importation of labor to build the country. Labor was good for the country. Slave labor or a caste system of labor was more the norm than the exception of the times in the world. You need to stop back projecting new human rights norms not even yet 200 years old on a culture that had not codified them yet. The Catholic Church had spoken out against slavery since the times of St. Patrick - it was the Catholic Church that even shaped the moral conscience in this area. And you need to remember that most of the country was reflecting Protestant values rather than Catholic values but was in a transition period. It is regrettable that one of the lead jurists on the Supreme Court’s infamous Dread Scott decisions was in fact Catholic and voted as he did.

I won’t say that slavery is good. What I will say is that it was the lessor of evils to phase it out or offer an optional expedient means to export slaves immediately rather than destroy the entire south with an immediate change of moral standard and cause massive social chaos.

Oh, and by the way: none of it happened after emancipation. There was no race war in the South. Terrorism by the KKK in some areas, maybe, but a flat-out race war: never happenned. So the fears were groundless. Except for one: blacks got rights.

Emancipation was declared under a state of war by Lincoln acting under a war title: “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy”. It was without practical force until the South was destroyed by the Civil War. So The South paid for the aftermath upfront in the cost of Civil War and its utter subjugation and destruction. So my scenario DID happen - 50 million Southerns and more died (ironically the same number that have been murdered by our “moral” Federal Courts authorization in Roe Vs Wade – see a pattern here?). The same or worse would have happened internally in the South if it had accepted Emancipation by fiat. The South simply brought that cost to share with its northern brothers who rammed hell down its throat. Never before in history have we seen morality be used as an excuse to kill and destroy so many. It would have been living hell in southern cities (to both southerners and freed slaves) if 4 million slaves were all on one motion suddenly freed and turned loose on the streets to fend for themselves. If the South had not tried to protect themselves from the incompetency of the northern social engineers who had a motive to see the South decimated the destruction would have only been limited to the South - how convient to the “moral” North.

James

 

[lucybeebee]

I’m black, Catholic, and a Southerner, and I have to say that I view this issue very differently from the previous posters. It seems that whenever people talk about “regular Southerners” I’m assuming they’re not referring to black people, many of whom belong to families that have been here longer than many whites. For me, the issue of the historiography of the Civil War is not a dispassionate historical question, but one that continues to have implications for what happens in right now.

The neo-Confederate view of history and what I will call the “black historiography view” cannot co-exist, because they have vastly different assumptions and conclusions. The former assumes that slavery was justified, or at least not too bad. It also assumes that the African slaves were fortunate to be Christianized by the Europeans and that they had no history, save what the whites gave to them. Black inferiority and the need to keep complete separation of the races is also implied. For example, James Ford Rhodes, a respected nineteenth century historian of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period, said that Negroes were “one of the most inferior races of mankind.” Accordingly, Rhodes believed that blacks possessed limited intellectual capacities, an inclination towards sloth, and were incapable of exercising the virtues of love, bravery, and chastity. Given Rhodes’ racist attitudes, it should not be surprising that he concluded that Reconstruction was a failure and that blacks were unfit to exercise public office. Although Ford’s writings had a reputation as being objective, Rhodes’ choice of sources further illustrate the anti-black character of his works. Rhodes used only white sources (scientists, magazines, newspapers) that fulfilled his pre-existing prejudices, purposely avoiding the works of the black press and black scholars on the grounds that they were “partisan” and “controversial.” He also purposely avoided using the testimony of white sources that were sympathetic to Reconstruction, such as General Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freeman’s Bureu in South Carolina. It should be obvious how this view of history doesn’t sit well with blacks.

Under American chattel slavery, marriages between slaves weren’t considered valid, either by the state or the churches (I include the Catholic and the Protestant churches here). Families were routinely broken up when various members were sold off to other plantations. Slave masters “bred” their slaves like show dogs, thereby encouraging fornication and lax sexual morality. If this is how any sane person would treat their “family” I would feel very afraid. My paternal great-grandmother was the product of a rape between a white man and a black woman during Reconstruction. Her mother appears to have been the product of a liason between a Confederate statesman and a slave on his plantation. Such behavior was widespread throughout the South, and is the reason why skin colors vary so much between “black people.” So if nothing else, slavery was responsible for a gross devaluation of the family and flagarent violations of the sixth and ninth commandments.

When I hear about how sympathetic Pius IX was to the Confederacy, it makes me sick. When I read about how the French priests serving in the Old South thought the abolition movement was “modernism” or how they would inform on slaves trying to run away, I can’t blame those same slaves for becoming Protestant (see Catholics in the Old South by Randall M. Miller for more on this topic). Why would any sane person stay in a religion where the hierarchy sees them as a bipedal ape?

The real question that needs to be asked is whether it is/was possible to be a devout Catholic and black. I can’t just act that the black Protestant church is the “work of Satan” because frankly they’ve done more for me in many religious, material, and political senses. This isn’t a part of my history that I can junk simply because it doesn’t fit into the Euro-centrist triumphalism view of Catholic history.

 

[bluelake]

I’m proud of my southern heritage and I’m a fan of state rights. Unfortunately state rights justified slavery I of course disagree with slavery. I know the constitution says we the people have the right to stand up and defeat the government if it no longer represents the people. This in my opinion is what the south was fighting for. And this is what I’m proud of as a southerner. But I’m also a devout catholic there’s not anything wrong with that is it?

odell,
This is 2010.
A Phrarisee asked Jesus , (He was testing Jesus) (Mt.22:36-40)
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?
37. Jesus replied, ""Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself. 40. “All the Law and the Phophets hang on these two commandments.”
Mt.7:1-5 (You may want to look this up This is another passage to get our attention. it worked for me.

God bless you,
bluelake

 

[bluelake]

I’m proud of my southern heritage and I’m a fan of state rights. Unfortunately state rights justified slavery I of course disagree with slavery. I know the constitution says we the people have the right to stand up and defeat the government if it no longer represents the people. This in my opinion is what the south was fighting for. And this is what I’m proud of as a southerner. But I’m also a devout catholic there’s not anything wrong with that is it?

odell,
I’m not sure what you are referring to. Is it slavery or race?
If it is race, we are commanded by Christ to love one another.

bluelake

 

[Lujack]

The truth of the matter is that given the large # of slaves the only viable option was to ship them back (itself not a small feat and it would take 10 or so years to do) or to resettle them out west in the new territories and give them their own mini-state or self contained nation within nation like America did with the native Indians. Expecting the south to socially integrate them and educate them etc. in even 1 or 2 generations was untennable and absolutely a no go. Anyone with a shred of honesty has to admit that the social chaos that came out of this whole area still haunts us this day if one merely looks at the demographics and who is in jail and who is fatherless. It’s not a race issue so much as it is a social & cultural issue. My heart goes out to blacks who were total victims in this whole mess.

James

No. You’re wrong when you say that. The problem was that the South essentially stopped making any and all moves to improve the condition of African-Americans in the South after the Compromise of 1876; sharecropping was the “next best thing” to slavery. It would have been very possible for the freedmen to be integrated into a whole and healthy Southern society had the Freedmen’s Bureau and other such organizations been allowed to continue after President Grant left office.

The abandonment of Reconstruction froze the whole process for nearly 100 years. The problem was not that the work was undoable, it was that the work was left undone. And to make the argument that you are making treads close to some very ugly territory.

 

[Lujack]

I have waited a few days and counted 1-2-3 to remain calm and not give you the reply I should give to you on this. Let me just say you are good at moralizing and hyperbole but have an unbalanced empathy for the average Southerner who had no slaves.

Too bad. You seem to have no empathy for the slaves themselves.

 

[Lujack]

Two incompatible cultures.

And you called me a bigot. You’re an apologist for slavery.

 

[Zooey]

I’m not sure whether the Church has an official position on that issue, but the way I see it is that the Civil War and the American Revolution were very similar. If the Southern states had been able to secede from the Union successfully, they would probably see look at it in the same way as we look at the American Revolution. Likewise, if America had lost the Revolution, it would have just been a civil war between Britain and its colonies, and no new nation would have been formed. So basically, in my opinion, both wars were a group of people fighting for their independence because they didn’t think the government was representing their interests. During the American Revolution, there were Catholics on the American side, so I don’t see any reason why there couldn’t have been Catholics on the Confederate side during the Civil War.

I don’t have any documentation at hand, but as I recall the pope at the time was quite sympathetic to the Southern cause of States Rights. I think he sent a letter stating this to President Jefferson Davis.

Yes, this is true; what you do not mention, is that the pope actually sent the letter to accompany a crown of thorns that he had made with his own hands, to express his deep dismay (and offer his prayers) over the way Davis, & & other Confederate leaders were treated.

 

[GratefulDad]

I’m black, Catholic, and a Southerner, and I have to say that I view this issue very differently from the previous posters. It seems that whenever people talk about “regular Southerners” I’m assuming they’re not referring to black people, many of whom belong to families that have been here longer than many whites. For me, the issue of the historiography of the Civil War is not a dispassionate historical question, but one that continues to have implications for what happens in right now.

The neo-Confederate view of history and what I will call the “black historiography view” cannot co-exist, because they have vastly different assumptions and conclusions. The former assumes that slavery was justified, or at least not too bad. It also assumes that the African slaves were fortunate to be Christianized by the Europeans and that they had no history, save what the whites gave to them.

Wow! Even though I do not walk in your shoes, these seem like pretty wild and broad brushed accusations. You may not have done this on purpose, but you have offended me and my feelings. These comments just seem so racist and bigoted. I am not sure why your comments are so hostile and almost hateful to other poster’s on this thread.

I have never heard anyone say Black Folks are not regular Southerners in life or on the thread.

Also what is a neo-Confederate? Is it like a neo-Marxist, is it like a neo-Communist, is it like a neo-Black Liberationists? Again, just trying to be rational here, can you point to a post on the thread that talked so negatively?

The Lord’s Peace.

 

[Zooey]

I read partway through this thread and I must say that I am confused. Did the Pope of the time during the Civil War condone the South’s seceding from the Union or not?

Yes. He recognized that the Radical Republicans were largely anti-Catholic specifiaclly, & anti-Christian in general.
Many were nominally Unitarian; more (including Lincoln) were avowed atheists who sought to establish a government that would circumscribe the practice of Christianity by Catholics & Protestants alike, in favor of a godless socialism like unto that attempted by the French Revolutionaries.

Slave masters “bred” their slaves like show dogs, thereby encouraging fornication and lax sexual morality. If this is how any sane person would treat their “family” I would feel very afraid.

Lucy,forgive me, but I cannot let this pass!!
:nope:Slaveowners:nope: DID NOT “breed” their slaves!!
It is true that the slave traders of New England had attempted this, before the American Revolution. They were forced to give it up as impossible. Why? Because the slaves refused to cooperate. They were human beings with SOULS, & could not be made to take part in such an appalling enterprise…precisely because they were NOT “show dogs”.The Christians of the South never even tried.
Show dogs breed :shrug:when the season is upon them; men& women made in the image of God are made of better stuff. Despite the efforts of Rhode Island & Massachusetts to prove otherwise.
You will think what you will of my Southern ancestors, but :tsktsk:shame on you for perpetuating such wicked racist lies about black men & women!!
Shame!!!
As a person of colour, you should know better!!!

Why would any sane person stay in a religion where the hierarchy sees them as a bipedal ape?

What religion would that be??** Not Christian. Neither Catholic nor Protestant believers ever saw black people as “bipedal apes”.**
Atheists, agnostics, & “deists” often did. Their homes were in the North…and in President Lincoln’s bedroom.

 

[Lujack]

Yes. He recognized that the Radical Republicans were largely anti-Catholic specifiaclly, & anti-Christian in general.

That’s not true.

Many were nominally Unitarian; more (including Lincoln) were avowed atheists who sought to establish a government that would circumscribe the practice of Christianity by Catholics & Protestants alike, in favor of a godless socialism like unto that attempted by the French Revolutionaries.

What on earth are you talking about? Lincoln was not an avowed atheist at all; while he was never formally a member of any church, he did attend, and his speeches reflect a deep religion on his part.

Furthermore, Lincoln was not a radical republican. It took all his political skill to keep the radicals from bolting the party and nominating John Fremont in 1864. And where is your evidence that the Radical Republicans wanted to ban Christianity? They did have control of the government for about ten years (after the 1866 midterms, they made Andrew Johnson irrelevant, and Grant was sympathetic), but never did anything like that.

Oh, and some Radical Republicans of note included the Methodist Edwin Stanton, the strict Episcopalian Salmon Chase, the deeply religious Unitarian Charles Sumner, and the Congregationalist Henry Wilson. These were, you know, only the leaders of the movement. And although the other big-time Radical Republicans; Zachariah Chandler, Henry Winter Davis, and Benjamin Wade, were not particularly known for their piety, neither were they avowed atheists.

What religion would that be??** Not Christian. Neither Catholic nor Protestant believers ever saw black people as “bipedal apes”.**
Atheists, agnostics, & “deists” often did. Their homes were in the North…and in President Lincoln’s bedroom.

Another piece of nonsense. Senator Sumner opposed segregation. Zachariah Chandler worked on the Underground Railroad. Salmon Chase was a hero to free blacks in Ohio.

It is also not true that no Christian ever saw black people as bipedal apes; that’s a truly absurd statement that basically implies no Christians, not even slaveholders, were ever racist.

You seem determined to slander the North and everyone in it, which is incredibly unfair, and you’re doing it without a very good grasp of the history. Lincoln was no Radical Republican, for starters.

 

[lucybeebee]

Yes. He recognized that the Radical Republicans were largely anti-Catholic specifiaclly, & anti-Christian in general.
Many were nominally Unitarian; more (including Lincoln) were avowed atheists who sought to establish a government that would circumscribe the practice of Christianity by Catholics & Protestants alike, in favor of a godless socialism like unto that attempted by the French Revolutionaries.

Lucy,forgive me, but I cannot let this pass!!
:nope:Slaveowners:nope: DID NOT “breed” their slaves!!
It is true that the slave traders of New England had attempted this, before the American Revolution. They were forced to give it up as impossible. Why? Because the slaves refused to cooperate. They were human beings with SOULS, & could not be made to take part in such an appalling enterprise…precisely because they were NOT “show dogs”.The Christians of the South never even tried.
Show dogs breed :shrug:when the season is upon them; men& women made in the image of God are made of better stuff. Despite the efforts of Rhode Island & Massachusetts to prove otherwise.
You will think what you will of my Southern ancestors, but :tsktsk:shame on you for perpetuating such wicked racist lies about black men & women!!
Shame!!!
As a person of colour, you should know better!!!

What religion would that be??** Not Christian. Neither Catholic nor Protestant believers ever saw black people as “bipedal apes”.**
Atheists, agnostics, & “deists” often did. Their homes were in the North…and in President Lincoln’s bedroom.

I have no idea what your ancestors in particular were up to during the antebellum period. However, it seems like you are being willfully ignorant about the history of slavery. While most Southerners did not own slaves, those who did owned a large number of people. By 1860, for example, the US Census indicated that 393,975 individuals owned 3,950,528 slaves. Since there were actually more blacks that whites in many Southern states, slaves made up a considerable part of the population early on in American history. After the importation of slaves ended, a new source of slaves was needed. The only way to do this was “breeding.” This was often done by the slave master taking a concubine from the slave women, the most famous example being that of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Ira Berlin in his book, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American slaves says that the internal slave trade created it’s own terminology, coining terms such as, “prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and fancy girls.” As I mentioned before, the wide variation of skin colors among blacks is indicative of this phenomenon. It’s not as if racism or slavery suddenly came into existence when Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species.

For example, Cape Coast Castle, a slavery fort in Ghana built by the Portuguese in, contained a chapel for the slavers, right next to where the imprisoned Africans were “stored.” As in the New World, the slavers routinuely took women and raped them at will. Missionary work was an important justification for the slave trade. Since clergy were needed to staff the chapel, they must have seen what was going on, but didn’t care. Blacks certainly were considered subhuman, as they were displayed in “Human Zoos” even into the 20th century. For example, Ota Benga, a Congolese man of the Mbuti people, was “convinced” by an American missionary (Samuel Verner) to come to the United States where he was imprisoned in the Bronx Zoo and displayed with an orangutan.

I sense a bit of defensiveness in your continual attempts to blame slavery on Northerners.While it is true that the rest of the country certainly benefited from slavery and turned a blind eye to racism, the fact is that the local Southern governments were most responsible for the institution of slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed. If you believe the notion that local governments know what’s best for their citizens, then one has to admit that the Southern states willfully underdeveloped the talents of their black populations (see the famous book The Miseducation of the Negro). You might find it interesting that during the 1950s and 60s, the movement that we now call the Civil Rights Movement was referred to either as the Negro Revolution or the Southern Freedom Movement.

Lastly, I would define neo-Confederate as a group or individual that is attracted to or advocates the “Old South” or “Lost Cause” view of history. Such individuals view slavery as a benign societal force, Reconstruction as an unmitigated disaster, and the Civil Rights Movement as signaling the decline of American culture. The movie Birth of a Nation exemplifies this view, as does Gone With the Wind. I think that the aspects of white Southern culture that are important and worth saving - mountain music, piedmont pottery, quilting, and other forms of folk art - are being lost as people focus on preserving a “comedy sketch” version white Southern identity (e.g. the Confederate flag, NASCAR, Lost Cause mythology).

 

[CentralFLJames]

Two incompatible cultures.

And you called me a bigot. You’re an apologist for slavery.

Another emotional strawman. Please get a grip and accept that there are different opinions than yours.I did not call you a bigot. Your form of thinking resolves that to be the case since your simple world view must just see everything in terms of absolutes. Your world is all black or white and is “my way” vs the “wrong way”. The real world is rarely so simple.

I am not an apologist for slavery I am simply sympathetic to the supremacy of states rights vice naked federalism. If anything call me a rationalist for seeing the insanity in using force and an moral club to beat everyone into pulp to be “moral” and “obedient”. Who gets to demonize and spank who in a democracy? The South didn’t vote to be spanked – it just wanted to be left alone and divorced itself from an arbitrary and convenient “union” used to break away from its parents during the Revolutionary war.

You have been trying earnestly from the get-go to “label” me something or other to demonize me and discredit me to further your own opinions… And now you are again trying to label me a thing I am not. I don’t even consider myself a “Southerner” even though I have lived in the geographical “South” all my life. I am a Floridian before I am a Southerner. I grew up and lived mostly among transplanted Northerners who had northern cultural biases and attitudes. The most racism I have witnessed in my life have been in transplanted northerners (Yankees) who came here to escape the big city problems and crime of the north and live in an area that is 95% white.

Ironically the first time I heard the “N” word ever spoken was when one of my childhood friends from “the north” called me that after I punched him in the nose for teasing and bullying my little sister. I had to ask my parents what the word meant and learned that it was an ugly word usually spoken by ignorant people who were not very nice. I later learned from another northern friend in a similar childhood altercation (I think my hand-made kite tangled with his by accident ) that since I was half Italian with darker skin than he that I was a stupid “WOP”. And again a few years later I learned from another Northern “friend” that his daddy had told him he could not play with me anymore since we were “dirty Catholics”. Apparently it was because my mother had so many children (8) and because we wore parochial school uniforms and that meant that we thought we were better than everyone else since we wouldn’t go to the same school as “normal kids” do. I could go on and on.

Listen, The South was the closest thing to a real and genuinely endearing culture this country has ever had. Slavery was a seperate thing that was instituted by a very few men. Many Southerns were sympathetic to the slaves. “Dixie” was a way of life, congeniality, a forward looking spirit of hope and vision, strong independence, a vibrant love of: community, citizen, neighbor, order, and the land; and a respecter of women and family. I believe if left alone the South would have heard the moral arguments and in a few generations changed the norms and given blacks an option to work as freemen and be accepted into mainstream society. I am not so naive though to imagine that there would be no segregation - since that has always been the natural order that the entire world has always seen. The races have never historically mixed socially - in trade yes - but not socially. We need to remember that the notion of a great “melting pot” of America is ALL NEW to the planet and is an experiment that has yet to be declared a success as people move away from the large cities and opt to live in walled and gated communities. The forms of segregation have just changed. Let’s be honest about it.

In retrospect, completely seperate from slavery issues the north had NOTHING to offer this country in terms of a real culture and vision.There is no similar northern concept of a “Yankee-Dixie” that has a vision for a romantic and love of life spirit of living that knit together its individual member states like the South had. The north as a whole (excepting small individual communities) was as socially sterile as it was industrial and as it was enslaved and beholding to a culture of big city bankers, financiers, factories and manufacturers. People were commodites in the northern assembly lines. Just a different kind of slave my friend. The country to this day still suffers from that same soulless and sterile lack of “community vision” and lifestyle that was Dixie. We are not a people with a common vision and with common hopes and dreams. We are more like flea market of individuals who only come together to compete for our favorite football and sport teams on weekend matches and in times of national calamity (natural disasters and world wars).

How very sad.

James

 

[CentralFLJames]

So my scenario DID happen - 50 million Southerns and more died (ironically the same number that have been murdered by our “moral” Federal Courts authorization in Roe Vs Wade – see a pattern here?). …

Making a correction - 50 thousand Southern dead (very conservatively) not 50 million. The irony still applies in the casualty of a 1,000 X expansion of centralized-secular morality viz the Supreme Court. And people say the Catholic Inquisitions were bad in imposing morality on a few thousand souls who would not plead for mercy or recant and were turned over to the secular governments?! I’ll take a dual monarchy and papal form of government ANY day to be free of the tyranny of unelected “moralizing” “Supreme” Court Judges who project their own secular morality and social chaos on the masses with impunity!

James

 

[Lujack]

Another emotional strawman. Please get a grip and accept that there are different opinions than yours.I did not call you a bigot. Your form of thinking resolves that to be the case since your simple world view must just see everything in terms of absolutes. Your world is all black or white and is “my way” vs the “wrong way”. The real world is rarely so simple.

I am not an apologist for slavery I am simply sympathetic to the supremacy of states rights vice naked federalism. If anything call me a rationalist for seeing the insanity in using force and an moral club to beat everyone into pulp to be “moral” and “obedient”. Who gets to demonize and spank who in a democracy? The South didn’t vote to be spanked – it just wanted to be left alone and divorced itself from an arbitrary and convenient “union” used to break away from its parents during the Revolutionary war.

The South lost an election and decided to leave. After years of being on top, as soon as things didn’t go their way, they wanted to pull out. And Lincoln had no intention of doing anything but keeping slavery out of Kansas. The Union was not arbitrary and convenient; not even secessionists made that argument. Even they felt a deep emotional attachment to the United States and felt that only a serious matter could cause secession. I believe very strongly that they were wrong and did it for wrong reasons, but they certainly didn’t do it flippantly or lightly.

And yes, you are an apologist for slavery. You’ve defended it as a system that should not have been abolished until it was convenient for the South to do so and advocated the deportation of freed slaves.

You have been trying earnestly from the get-go to “label” me something or other to demonize me and discredit me to further your own opinions… And now you are again trying to label me a thing I am not. I don’t even consider myself a “Southerner” even though I have lived in the geographical “South” all my life. I am a Floridian before I am a Southerner. I grew up and lived mostly among transplanted Northerners who had northern cultural biases and attitudes. The most racism I have witnessed in my life have been in transplanted northerners (Yankees) who came here to escape the big city problems and crime of the north and live in an area that is 95% white.

I don’t care whether or not you consider yourself a Southerner.

Ironically the first time I heard the “N” word ever spoken was when one of my childhood friends from “the north” called me that after I punched him in the nose for teasing and bullying my little sister. I had to ask my parents what the word meant and learned that it was an ugly word usually spoken by ignorant people who were not very nice. I later learned from another northern friend in a similar childhood altercation (I think my hand-made kite tangled with his by accident ) that since I was half Italian with darker skin than he that I was a stupid “WOP”. And again a few years later I learned from another Northern “friend” that his daddy had told him he could not play with me anymore since we were “dirty Catholics”. Apparently it was because my mother had so many children (8) and because we wore parochial school uniforms and that meant that we thought we were better than everyone else since we wouldn’t go to the same school as “normal kids” do. I could go on and on.

I live in the North. Some people are racist, most are not. Are you going to take your experience with some people who have moved South and generalize it to call the entire North, including the enormous cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago racist?

Listen, The South was the closest thing to a real and genuinely endearing culture this country has ever had. Slavery was a seperate thing that was instituted by a very few men.

No, it really wasn’t. Slavery was closely woven into the antebellum South. Maybe “Dixie” could have survived without it, but as “Dixie” existed before 1865, slavery was an important feature that defined the way a lot of other things existed.

Many Southerns were sympathetic to the slaves.

But not sympathetic enough, apparently. Families were still sold apart, slaves were still whipped, slave catchers still went north to kidnap free blacks and drag runaways back into slavery.

“Dixie” was a way of life, congeniality, a forward looking spirit of hope and vision, strong independence, a vibrant love of: community, citizen, neighbor, order, and the land; and a respecter of women and family.

And there have never been any communities in the North that do this? Ever? I beg to differ on all counts.

And how can a culture that sells men and women apart from one another, that breaks up families, that tears a child from her mother’s embrace and sells her to another state claim to be a respecter of women and family? Slavery was a degrading institution to all involved. It was a bad, terrible thing.

 

[Lujack]

I believe if left alone the South would have heard the moral arguments and in a few generations changed the norms and given blacks an option to work as freemen and be accepted into mainstream society. I am not so naive though to imagine that there would be no segregation - since that has always been the natural order that the entire world has always seen. The races have never historically mixed socially - in trade yes - but not socially.

Segregation is the natural order? That’s a blast from the past.

We need to remember that the notion of a great “melting pot” of America is ALL NEW to the planet and is an experiment that has yet to be declared a success as people move away from the large cities and opt to live in walled and gated communities. The forms of segregation have just changed. Let’s be honest about it.

The forms of segregation have indeed changed. There is still work to be done to truly integrate American society. But many walls have been knocked down. America is more integrated, and is more a land of opportunity for many today than it was in the past. The KKK no longer burns crosses on the lawns of blacks who dare to vote; George Wallace isn’t standing in schoolhouse doors; housing “covenants” are no longer legal and sundown towns have vanished from the map. Its ridiculous to pretend that things haven’t gotten better on that front.

In retrospect, completely seperate from slavery issues the north had NOTHING to offer this country in terms of a real culture and vision.There is no similar northern concept of a “Yankee-Dixie” that has a vision for a romantic and love of life spirit of living that knit together its individual member states like the South had. The north as a whole (excepting small individual communities) was as socially sterile as it was industrial and as it was enslaved and beholding to a culture of big city bankers, financiers, factories and manufacturers. People were commodites in the northern assembly lines. Just a different kind of slave my friend. The country to this day still suffers from that same soulless and sterile lack of “community vision” and lifestyle that was Dixie. We are not a people with a common vision and with common hopes and dreams. We are more like flea market of individuals who only come together to compete for our favorite football and sport teams on weekend matches and in times of national calamity (natural disasters and world wars).

I really find this offensive. The city has something to offer, too. Bustling neighborhoods packed with people, museums and libraries and stores and street vendors selling there wares. Corner store pizzerias and beat cops walking the street, yelling out greetings to people they are familiar with. Union workers down on the docks heading home to their row houses and their families.

The cities might be down now, but they can come back again. Life was pretty good growing up in an old city neighborhood during the 1950’s. There were places to walk to, places to play, family on each corner, museums to go to. You didn’t need a car to get places. You could walk to church, and everybody knew everybody else. Even now, when many areas of the city have been left to waste, there’s still something special about cities. You can’t callously write them off like that. I’m proud of the North, of New Jersey, and of New York City. Massachusetts folks are proud of their state and of Boston. Pennsylvania is proud of PA, Philadelphians proud of Philly, Pittsburghians proud of Pittsburgh, and Chicagoans proud of Chicago. You can’t call it a culturally sterile wasteland. That’s absurd.

Oh, and there’s a key difference between factory workers in the 1860’s and slaves: “Go west, young man.” Even though the factory workers in the 1860’s and for years to come lived under bad conditions and were ill-treated, and even though it took a long struggle for them to get treated the way they deserved, they could leave. They could go west, and they knew that nobody was going to track them down and beat them, dragging them back to their old factory. They could vote. They could go home to their family every day and know that they’d never be sold apart to pay off an outstanding debt.

There will always be a long and clear line between “slave” and “free”, even when “free” lives in bad conditions.