USA -v- CSA

[chowder]

Why did the USA go to war against the seceded Southern States?. I cannot believe that it was simply over the issue of slavery, maybe I'm wrong about this.

I know about Fort Sumter being fired on which as I understand it started the conflict.

I can't see any reason why a war was necessary other than to keep the USA as one nation. Even so surely the USA and the CSA could have co-existed peacefully.

[John Corrado]

I can't see any reason why a war was necessary other than to keep the USA as one nation. Even so surely the USA and the CSA could have co-existed peacefully.

Why is that not good enough?

If the CSA was allowed to secede peacefully over the issue of slavery, then what point was there in having a USA in the first place? Once the CSA had set the precedent, then New England could secede when it felt that tariffs were too low, or the Midwest could seceded when it felt that tariffs were too high, etc. The CSA was trying to effectively nullify Lincoln's election; either the Union could fight to stay a union, or the federal government could admit to being irrelevant.

[David Simmons]

Why did the USA go to war against the seceded Southern States?.For the same reason that there was all of that fighting to unite England, Scotland and Wales under one government.

[ColonelDax]

Why did the USA go to war against the seceded Southern States?

The root cause was economics, IMHO. To grossly oversimplify things, the northern states sought tariffs to help protect their industries from foreign competitors, while the southern states, which made their living mainly through agricultural exports, wanted to minimize trade barriers, an excellent recipe for sectoral tensions.

[Stonebow]

To paraphrase something I heard once:
In grade school, I learned that the Civil War was fought over slavery. In High School, I learned that the Civil War was fought over a complex web of conflicts that included culture, economics, and disagreement over the limits of federal power. In college, I learned that the Civil War was fought over slavery.

If you remove slavery from the equation, many of the other issues vanish.

Now, as for why there was a shooting war (rather than a cold war)- some contend that most northerners were content to let the South secede, but they were not going to let go of federal properties that happened to lie within the CSA's borders. Hence, Fort Sumter being a flash point.

[chowder]

For the same reason that there was all of that fighting to unite England, Scotland and Wales under one government.
All that fighting as you put it was the fault of England wanting to own the whole of the island of Britain.

The wheel has almost gone full circle.

[chowder]

Stonebow Assuming that the Southern States had offered some monetary compensation for those properties, would this not have assuaged the Northerners.

[alphaboi867]

How many states would the CSA have if the federal government let the first couple states go? Didn't most of the Upper South (like Virginia) only secede after Fort Sumter?

[David Simmons]

All that fighting as you put it was the fault of England wanting to own the whole of the island of Britain.

The wheel has almost gone full circle.Well, all that fighting in our Civil War was because many wanted the US federal government to be supreme authority within the geographic boundries of the United States as it existed ante bellum.

[XT]

Stonebow Assuming that the Southern States had offered some monetary compensation for those properties, would this not have assuaged the Northerners.

No. Read what John Corrado wrote. Even leaving aside the slavery thing, there was no way Lincoln or the federal government was going to allow states to set the precidence that they could simply secede from the Union. What point HAVING a union after all, if states could simply bolt at will?

So...it was always going to come down to war, regardless. The union simply could not allow the southern states to secede, the south had to fight to win their independence...war was inevitable.

-XT

[Thudlow Boink]

I thought I remembered a previous thread about this very question. The closest thing I can find is Why can't any state secede if it wants to? (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=346343) but I'm not sure that's the one I'm remembering.

[John Corrado]

Stonebow Assuming that the Southern States had offered some monetary compensation for those properties, would this not have assuaged the Northerners.

Since you're English, I'll assume that you aren't that familiar with American politics of the 1820s to 1860s. (Not an attempt at an insult - not many Americans are, either. And I couldn't describe English politics of that period other than "There were factories, and Charles Dickens wrote a bunch.")


South Carolina had already toyed with a concept known as "nullification" in the 1830's in response to Federal tariff law; "nullification" was basically South Carolina's way of legally stating that, as a state, it had no duty to follow laws set forth by the Federal government. Obviously, if such a precedent took hold, it would basically castrate the federal government - it wouldn't matter whether Congress passed laws or not, as they would only affect states that chose to let it affect them. As Stonebow stated above, the desire in the South for Federal legislation not to affect them came from various economic and social reasons, but most of those tied back into the South desiring to keep slavery as an institution, and many Southerners believing that the Federal government couldn't be trusted to do so.

The nullification crisis was ended when President Jackson threatened to send a column of troops down to South Carolina and hang any politician who supported nullification, and suddenly South Carolina politicians decided that the state needed to abide by Federal Laws.

The secession of the CSA was essentially that fight all over again. The southern states were essentially stating that the State was a more powerful instrument than the Federal, and that the State had the right to govern itself as it saw fit regardless of what the Federal government stated the laws really were. This was specifically in regards to Lincoln having been elected President despite his not being on any ballots in the South, and Southern states refusing to accept his Presidency as legitimate - but again, this is also tied into the handwriting on the wall that slavery was no longer going to be protected by the Federal government, and forcing the issue of State supremacy vs. Federal supremacy was the only thing that was going to allow slavery to survive.

If the North had allowed the South to secede - even if they forced the South to pay restitution for Federal land or whatever - then the North would have been essentially validating the idea of Nullification and of State supremacy over the Federal government. Again, once the South had successfully seceded over slavery, why couldn't New England secede to protect New Englander rights vs. Midwesterners? Why couldn't California secede simply because it was paying more in taxes than it was receiving in services? Why couldn't Iowa secede to avoid having to enact regulations on farming?

The point is, there was no middle ground. You couldn't say "You go off and have State over Federal government over there, and we'll have Federal over State government over here", because once you've allowed secession as a valid response to Federal government action, you've already proved that it's all State over Federal government.

[chowder]

John That about sums it up in a nutshell, thanks.

You're quite right, I know bugger all about American politics of that time, hell I know bugger all about them today come to that.

[Little Nemo]

The root cause was economics, IMHO. To grossly oversimplify things, the northern states sought tariffs to help protect their industries from foreign competitors, while the southern states, which made their living mainly through agricultural exports, wanted to minimize trade barriers, an excellent recipe for sectoral tensions.
The secession was all about slavery. The seceeding states all said so, clearly and repeatedly. Areas with slave-owning minorities tried to join the Confederacy and were prevented by the non-slave-owning majority. Areas in the Confederacy where non-slave-owners were the majority tried (and in one case succeeded) in seceeded from the Confederacy to rejoin the Union.

Things like tariffs and culture and economics and states rights were all just things that were claimed after the war by people who didn't want to admit it was all about slavery.

[Spoke]

Things like tariffs and culture and economics and states rights were all just things that were claimed after the war by people who didn't want to admit it was all about slavery.

No, that's going a little too far.

While it's true that the proximate cause of secession was slavery, and that the secession documents say so, the secession documents also mention tariffs and culture and states' rights. Those issues were not simply invented after the war by Confederate apologists. Rather, the sin of the apologists was (and is) to try to downplay the central issue of slavery.

[BrainGlutton]

USA -v- CSA


USA. If they're prepared.

[John Corrado]

USA. If they're prepared.

Pshaw. USA, even if they're not. All Bobby Lee did was buy us two years from the final ass-kicking.


chowder: No, thank you. I enjoy explaining American history to people, and I'm glad to have gotten the chance. If you're interested in the subject and want to learn more, check up on the career of John C. Calhoun. He was an ardent nullificationist, and probably laid more groundwork for the coming Civil War than anyone else.

Little Nemo: While slavery was absolutely the main cause, slavery was also the main matter that defined how the economics and culture of the South developed. Trying to claim that the war was about slavery without being about tariffs, political structure, and culture is like trying to say that a problem affects New England, but doesn't seem to involve Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachussets, Connecticut, or Rhode Island.* The converse is true as well.

*How many of those states did I mis-spell? I'm thinking two.

[Jackmannii]

*How many of those states did I mis-spell? I'm thinking two.I only picked up on Massachusetts (or as George Wallace once memorably called it during a Presidential campaign stop, "Mass-a-tu-shits"). :D

[Martin Hyde]

There was a lot of stuff at issue as to both why the South seceded and why the North invaded.

The Civil War settled what had been a long standing political debate, and it settled it with blood. It wasn't the slavery debate but rather the debate regarding whether or not a State which freely and voluntarily entered the compact between the States had the right to freely and voluntarily exit said compact.

This was not a "settled" matter at any point prior to the Civil War. New England states considered secession during the war of 1812, which they felt was primarily caused by desires of the western states to expand and New England wanted no part of it, especially since they were the ones who directly bordered Canada.

As has been stated South Carolina came very close to secessionist antics during Jackson's presidency.

My personal opinion is, while it should have been clearly stated somewhere in the original constitution, unilateral secession was in fact not part of the original intent. I believe there is some argument to support bilateral secession. As evidence of this fact note that only 9 of 13 colonies had to ratify the U.S. Constitution before it was considered the law of the land. Meaning the colonial representatives who drafted the Constitution intended it to be binding once a large enough majority supported it, and ostensibly they planned to exert governmental control over any states who did not as a fait accompli. There was a strong move to make sure every state ratified the Constitution because everyone involved didn't want to have a huge conflict right at the very founding of the new state, and ultimately all 13 of the original colonies did ratify (although it was not ratified by North Carolina or Rhode Island until after March 4, 1789 which is the official beginning date of operation for the United States government.)

A growing divide between North and South emerged almost from the very day we started Government operations. Slavery wasn't the issue in the late 18th century and the early 19th century. In fact slavery wasn't really the issue because as a practice it wasn't as important to the South at that time as it would later become.

It's unfortunate that sometimes technological innovation is possibly a net negative for society, Eli Whitney's cotton gin dramatically increased the efficiency of cotton cultivation operations in the United States and dramatically increased the demand for slave labor. I doubt very seriously Whitney foresaw that kind of result when he invented something primarily designed to increase productivity.

The important of cotton and slavery to the economy of the South grew rapidly throughout the 19th century and by 1850 it was of monumental importance (well, at least to the powers that be.)

Tariffs were the early points of contention between North and South. The South had always been a fairly agricultural society, while the North was more focused on early manufacturing and shipping. The North long favored high tariffs to protect developing American industries. While the plantation-owning elites who ran government in the South had longed opposed tariffs because high U.S. tariffs insured that other countries would in turn charge high tariffs on U.S. exports. The Southern elite were also highly partial to importing fine finished goods from Europe and high tariffs significantly increased the cost of their lifestyles.

Note that most the rest of the world sympathized with the South in regard to these matters (out of economic interest), and that sympathy lead to outright support for the South during the war itself.

There was an enormous amount of distaste for tariffs, primarily forced on the South because of the North's advantageous position in the House of Representatives due to having a higher population. It is around this time that the idea (promulgated by men such as Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun) that the individual states shouldn't be so dominated by the Federal Government. This was a powerful idea that has stayed in the minds of Southerners to this day to a degree. With regard to tariffs the South was very unhappy that the North was able to unilaterally do something that had such a profound effect on Southerners.

Ultimately it was highly problematic that two major regions of the country were developing two highly incompatible and divergent cultures. It was also highly problematic that Southerners were beginning to think of themselves as a regional block, regionalism makes secession a lot more likely. Eventually the major issue, slavery, comes to the forefront. This issue is significantly exacerbated by western expansion. If we never expanded westward slavery as an issue would have been dealt with in a far different manner.

It's difficult to say if abolishing slavery required a Constitutional Amendment, the thoughts in the minds of most was that simple Federal legislation would suffice. Which meant if anti-slavery politicians ever gained control of both Houses of Congress and the Presidency, there was a very likely chance slavery would be ended in the United States. The South recognized this, and they used the Senate to protect their interests. As long as the balance in the Senate remained between free states and slave states, they could block any efforts to abolish slavery. And since new states have to be admitted with Congressional approval, the Southern Senators insured (sometimes making judicious use of the filibuster) that anytime new states were admitted the balance remained between slave and free states. This wasn't something that was done without hugely inflammatory events. And arguments over the admissions of new states lead to outright internal warfare on a small scale ten years prior to the Civil War itself.

Abolitionism as a movement was slow-growing in the North. Most of the Northern states that had abolished slavery had mostly done so because it was no longer economically viable and there was no point to it, strong abolition movements helped, but that was fairly limited for much of the early 19th century. Three things made slavery a big issue for Northerners, too. The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Dred Scott decision.

That background is what enabled Lincoln to be elected, as the anti-slavery Republican party gained widespread acceptance in the North.

Lincoln himself is integral in the actual invasion of the South. The South actually began seceding when they heard of Lincoln's election, James Buchanan was still President at the time and took no serious actions to try and suppress secession. He publicly claimed states had no legal right to secede, and ousted anyone who supported secession from his cabinet. Unfortunately he also maintained that the Federal government had no legal right to prevent secession. Which allowed the seceding states precious time to both seize Federal property, imprison Federal soldiers, and in general prepare for war.

Lincoln made it clear the moment the South took Fort Sumter that secession was invalid and he was going to use the full power of the Presidency (and then some) militarily keep the union together. His reasons, I do not believe, had anything to do with slavery. It's also important that he not give that impression, as most northerners probably weren't willing to fight solely to free the slaves, but were willing to fight to preserve the United States.

The actual Emancipation Proclamation was a measure designed to be punitive towards the South, and it specifically only freed Southern slaves and not slaves in states then loyal to the Union. It's not often remembered by the public that several states on the Union side still maintained slavery throughout the Civil War.

Paradoxically most of the men fighting on the front lines for the South were far too poor to own slaves. They were fighting to defend a regime that not only did not benefit them it actually was economically disadvantageous to them and kept their communities economically backwards. Slavery was in truth not good for the economy of the South as a whole, it was good for the ruling elite, and they were able to spin things such that they convinced the masses that they were fighting a war of liberty, to defend the ideals of the Founding Fathers against both "Northern Aggression" and attempts to subjugate the will and freedom of the South to northerners. This particular great lie was so well presented and articulated by the South's ruling elite that it lives on to this day. Some southerners to this day say they feel that their forefathers were fighting to preserve their liberties across the board, and until recently the Confederate Flag was respected almost without question in all of the Southern states and featured prominently on public buildings and even flags of many of the states.

The truth of the matter is, the Southern public was duped into fighting and dying in order to continue propping up the ruling elite that were quite responsible for most of the South's impoverished and economically backwards condition.

[Spoke]

A growing divide between North and South emerged almost from the very day we started Government operations. Slavery wasn't the issue in the late 18th century and the early 19th century.

While most of your post is spot-on, I think this statement is inaccurate. Slavery was an issue early on. It's just that the founding fathers swept it under the rug for fear that it would prevent the states from uniting. Even before cotton was king, slaves were growing rapidly in number, working the tobacco farms of Virginia and the rice plantations of the deep South.

The Quakers tried to force the issue early on, with their 1783 petition to Congress (http://www.rootsweb.com/~quakers/petition.htm). That attempt was brushed aside by an assembly fearful of disunity.

Benjamin Franklin then lent his name to the effort, with his 1790 petition to Congress for abolition of slavery (http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/franklin/). That petition sparked a heated debate which highlighted the existing (and growing) divide between North and South. The representatives of Georgia and South Carolina made fiery (even Calhoun-esque) speeches in defense of slavery. The petition met with failure, but the pattern was set and the divide apparent.

Joseph J. Ellis has an excellent chapter on this episode in his book Founding Brothers (http://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-Joseph-Ellis/dp/0375405445).

[Martin Hyde]

I tend to think early abolitionist movements are somewhat overstated by many.

They were successful in the north, where abolition had little practical effect. And a remarkable number of Founding Father's were very outspoken about believing slavery was immoral and should be abolished. What is more remarkable is that the overwhelming majority of them never really touched on the issue of slavery in the South. Jefferson is a prime paradoxical fixture, there's tons of support for the idea that he was morally opposed to slavery, but he himself owned many slaves.

Men like Franklin, Burr, Hamilton, and Benjamin Rush were active in abolishing slavery throughout the North, where slavery had never truly taken hold or become a serious issue. Yet throughout the period of the early revolution and up until the 1830s/1840s when William Garrison became prominent you don't see any serious efforts by Northern politicians to actually strike at the institution of slavery in the South.

[Spoke]

Yet throughout the period of the early revolution and up until the 1830s/1840s when William Garrison became prominent you don't see any serious efforts by Northern politicians to actually strike at the institution of slavery in the South.

I think you'd have to regard a petition signed by Benjamin Franklin and fiercely debated by Congress a serious effort. (I again recommend the Ellis book.)

It is however fair to say that the issue was dropped after that, and a strained silence on the subject prevailed for some time thereafter. That is not the same as saying slavery wasn't an issue. It was an issue -- just an issue that was too hot to handle, as the Franklin petition had revealed. No one in that first generation of politicians was willing to provoke a sectional crisis that might destroy the Union.

[Alive At Both Ends]

It's unfortunate that sometimes technological innovation is possibly a net negative for society, Eli Whitney's cotton gin dramatically increased the efficiency of cotton cultivation operations in the United States and dramatically increased the demand for slave labor. I doubt very seriously Whitney foresaw that kind of result when he invented something primarily designed to increase productivity.
While I was impressed by most of your post, I was surprised by this bit. It's the complete opposite of what I understood as the truth.

As I understood it, the main economic reason for slavery in the cotton plantations was that cotton production was highly labour intensive but the product, cotton, could not be sold at a great profit. If you had to employ lots of people in the fields, and weren't making much money, it made sense for your "employees" to be slaves, who you didn't have to pay. Once the cotton gin came along it became possible to run a plantation at a larger profit with far fewer workers - a single gin could do the work of hundreds of slaves. After the cotton gin was invented, the South had to justify slavery on religious/racial grounds; the gin had knocked the stuffing out of the economic argument.

[Telemark]

After the cotton gin was invented, the South had to justify slavery on religious/racial grounds; the gin had knocked the stuffing out of the economic argument.
Not so:
Simply put, the invention of the cotton gin, with its promise of greater profits from cotton cultivation, virtually insured the extension of racial slavery into the rich farmlands of the American west.
From here: http://www.txstate.edu/teachamhistory/lessons/HTILPCottonGin.htm

[HubZilla]

If you had to employ lots of people in the fields, and weren't making much money, it made sense for your "employees" to be slaves, who you didn't have to pay.

I wonder if it was more expensive to own slaves than hire free workers. On one hand, you don't have to pay wages for a slave, but you did need to shelter, feed, clothe, and even take care of the slave's dependents (children and older folks).

Whereas, with a free worker, you could just pay a wage and care less about what he does outside work.

Was taking care of slaves more expensive than paying laborers?

[Spoke]

I wonder if it was more expensive to own slaves than hire free workers. On one hand, you don't have to pay wages for a slave, but you did need to shelter, feed, clothe, and even take care of the slave's dependents (children and older folks).

Washington (to name one prominent example) did complain about the cost of providing for slaves. Washington was reluctant to break up families, but that meant that the slave population at Mt. Vernon grew beyond the number actually needed to work the plantation. Washington once observed the large number of idle slaves on his plantation and wondered (callously, when you think about it) whether the slaves were working for him, or he was working for the slaves.

Yet, sharecropping (i.e., freeing the slaves and letting them work for a share of the crop) seems not to have occurred to the big slaveowners.

One problem is that slaves were often subject to a mortgage. (They were regarded as property, after all.) You can't free what doesn't fully belong to you.

Then too, slaves had great value, so I imagine simple greed played its part. An average slave cost $1,658 in 1856-60. (Maybe about $20,000.00 in today's money.) Even if you were of a mind to free your slaves and set them up as sharecroppers, you would be taking a big financial chance that they would stick around.

[Der Trihs]

and even take care of the slave's dependents (children and older folks).Did they take care of older slaves, or just kill them ? That seems more likely to me, but I don't really know. For that matter, I'd expect them to use the bodies of dead slaves for leather products, soap, and such, like the Nazis, or the British in Tasmania.

[Freddy the Pig]

Once the cotton gin came along it became possible to run a plantation at a larger profit with far fewer workers - a single gin could do the work of hundreds of slaves.They still needed slaves to plant and pick the cotton, as well as to perform the many other tasks necessary to run a plantation--weeding, plowing, fence and building maintenance, care and feeding of draft animals, and on and on . . . After the cotton gin was invented, the South had to justify slavery on religious/racial grounds; the gin had knocked the stuffing out of the economic argument.No. Nobody held slaves against their better interests just to make a racial point. Slavery was profitable for slave owners, and they developed racial and religious justifications partly to assuage their own consciences and partly to defend the institution against outside objection.
Was taking care of slaves more expensive than paying laborers?It depends. If it were always one way or always the other, either every farm in the country would have had slaves, or none would.

Enslaving a person entails high fixed cost but low variable cost. You either have to claim a mother's child at the moment of birth and pay to raise it from babyhood, which involves upfront cost, or you have to buy a person, which effectively requires you to pay for a lifetime of labor in advance. But once you've done that, you don't have to pay wages (other than food and minimal housing and clothing). On the other hand, the labor you get in return for that low cost won't be as productive per hour as free labor, since you'll have a thoroughly demotivated work force. On the other other hand, you can coerce more hours out of slaves--as many as their bodies can physically tolerate.

The trade-off between free and slave labor had a lot of variables, but people are very good at calculating their own self-interest, and you can be pretty sure that wherever masters owned slaves, they were better off for doing so. The society as a whole might not be better off, and the slaves certainly weren't, but the masters were.

[Spoke]

Did they take care of older slaves, or just kill them ? That seems more likely to me, but I don't really know. For that matter, I'd expect them to use the bodies of dead slaves for leather products, soap, and such, like the Nazis, or the British in Tasmania.

Oh for pity's sake. Spare us the silly speculations, please. This subject has enough controversy without trying to create more out of whole cloth.

Slaves were not killed off when they got old. If you think about it, a slaveholder wants to keep the peace on his plantation, and wants to discourage runaways. Killing off granny is not going to serve either of those ends.

[HubZilla]

...But once you've done that, you don't have to pay wages (other than food and minimal housing and clothing)...

Right. I was questioning whether it was more expensive to provide food, housing, clothing, and even medical care* than to just pay a laborer a wage?

* with the cost of a slave upwards of $20,000 (from an earlier post), you'd have an incentive to keep the slave healthy and productive. Whereas with a laborer, you could just hire another to replace the laborer.

[Der Trihs]

Slaves were not killed off when they got old. If you think about it, a slaveholder wants to keep the peace on his plantation, and wants to discourage runaways. Killing off granny is not going to serve either of those ends.They had whips, chains, and terror for that. Raping women and selling off people's children doesn't promote peace either, but they did just that.

[Spoke]

This is Great Debates, Der Trihs. Don't speculate, provide evidence. A simple Google search of "slave burials" or "elderly slaves" would have answered your questions and spared the rest of us your lurid fantasies of slaveskin leather and slavesoap.

[John Mace]

I think it's important not to confuse the issue with quesitons like: Would there have been a civil war if slavery hadn't existed. If that had been the case, the US would have been a very different country, possibly one without all of the 13 original colonies and without some of the states added later. Sure, there very well could have been a civil war over secession but it probably would've been at a different time and had different actors.

The flash point was slavery, and the different economies that resulted because of it, as well as the differences over slavery itself. Slavery was the sine qua non of The Civil War as it actually played out in real history.

[Spoke]

Raping women and selling off people's children doesn't promote peace either...

And you're right about that. Which makes one suspect that these practices were not as common as abolitionist literature suggested. One must be careful about accepting propaganda uncritically, even when that propaganda is generated in the interest of a noble end.

[John Mace]

This is Great Debates, Der Trihs. Don't speculate, provide evidence. A simple Google search of "slave burials" or "elderly slaves" would have answered your questions and spared the rest of us your lurid fantasies of slaveskin leather and slavesoap.
Besides, how many elderly sleves were there to kill off in the first place? If you were a typical free White person in the mid 1800s, your life expectancy was what-- 45?

I wouldn't question the common occurance of rape or even selling off of family members, but people just didn't live that long back then, and if you were a slave, you lived even fewer years.

[Der Trihs]

A simple Google search of "slave burials" or "elderly slaves" would have answered your questions and spared the rest of us your lurid fantasies of slaveskin leather and slavesoap.What's so "lurid" about it ? It's not like other groups with similar attitudes haven't done the same.

And you're right about that. Which makes one suspect that these practices were not as common as abolitionist literature suggested.Or that those plantations weren't all that peaceful, and were controlled by terror tactics.

If you think about it, a slaveholder wants to keep the peace on his plantation, and wants to discourage runaways. A slaveowner isn't likely to care about "peace". He wants profit, and he wants power. The power to rape and torture and kill, for fun and profit. No one owns slaves unless they are a monster.

And yes, I'm well aware of how common slavery was historically.

Besides, how many elderly sleves were there to kill off in the first place? If you were a typical free White person in the mid 1800s, your life expectancy was what-- 45? People simply aged faster. They didn't work from dawn to dusk every day until 30 and drop over, after all; they were worn down. 45 was elderly.

[Freddy the Pig]

Right. I was questioning whether it was more expensive to provide food, housing, clothing, and even medical care* than to just pay a laborer a wage?It's hard to say. Certainly, the lowest wage-earners in Northern society didn't have much left over after feeding, housing, and clothing themselves and their families, so at first glance the cost (to hire or to enslave) should be similar. But, slave owners can economize--they can buy food and clothing wholesale, for example. They can and did skimp on quality. They don't have to pay premiums for overtime or undesirable forms of work, subject only to the constraint that it isn't in their interest to permanently destroy their captives' health. In general, once you've enslaved a person, it's cheaper.

Regarding elderly slaves, the first point to be emphasized is that there weren't many. Fogel and Engerman reported a life expectancy (at birth) of 36 for slaves and 40 for Nineteenth Century American whites. Among those who did reach "old age", I know of no documented instance of such a person being killed. Some work could usually be wrung out of all but the most incapacitated individuals; for example, elderly women often cared for children. However, Frederick Douglass tells how one of his masters dealt with a crippled slave: His cruelty and meanness were especially displayed in his treatment of my unfortunate cousin Henny, whose lameness made her a burden to him. . . .He seemed desirous to get the poor girl out of his existence, or at any rate off of his hands. In proof of this, he afterwards gave her away to his sister Sarah, but . . . Henny was soon returned on his hands. Finally, upon a pretense that he could do nothing for her (I use his own words), he set her adrift "to take care of herself". Here was a recently converted man, holding with tight grasp the well-framed and able-bodied slaves left him by Old Master--the persons who in freedom could have taken care of themselves--yet turning loose the only cripple among them, virtually to starve and die.

[Little Nemo]

I agree with others, Der Trihs - there's no evidence that elderly slaves were murdered (as John pointed out there weren't that many slaces who were too old to work). Slavery was immoral in enough real ways that there's no need to make up stories about it.

The cotton gin did make slavery a much sounder economic practice. But cotton production also had a major drawback - a decade or two of cotton planting would deplete the soil. By the 1860's, former major cotton production areas like Virginia and the Carolinas could no longer produce. So the switched to a new product - many plantations in the mid-Atlantic region were successfully breeding and exporting slaves to the states in the Mississippi region which had been settled later and where the cotton fields were still producing. But slave owners of the Old South realized their long-term economic well-being required access to a continuous expansion of slave-based agricultural territory as their market. This was the reason that arguments over slavery laws in the western territories was so devisive - it was not just a symbolic or political issue to the slave owners back East.

[Captain Amazing]

Regarding elderly slaves, the first point to be emphasized is that there weren't many. Fogel and Engerman reported a life expectancy (at birth) of 36 for slaves and 40 for Nineteenth Century American whites.

Life expectancy at birth can be a misleading statistic, though, because it's brought down by high rates of infant mortality. Assuming the 19th century individuals survived childhood, their average life expectancy goes way up.

[Captain Amazing]

Or that those plantations weren't all that peaceful, and were controlled by terror tactics.

Outright terror on slave plantations was rare. It's remarkably ineffective, for one thing. And while it went on, it wasn't the norm. The horror of slavery wasn't the gross abuses. It was the casual dehumanization and justification of exploitation.

A slaveowner isn't likely to care about "peace". He wants profit, and he wants power. The power to rape and torture and kill, for fun and profit. No one owns slaves unless they are a monster.

Most of them owned slaves because they wanted to make a profit, of course, but also because they grew up in a society where it was accepted, and because they developed a twisted sense of values that said that holding slaves was a moral good.

[Billdo]

While most of your post is spot-on, I think this statement is inaccurate. Slavery was an issue early on. It's just that the founding fathers swept it under the rug for fear that it would prevent the states from uniting. . . . .

Indeed, the question of slavery was an issue in the Constitutional Convention, and one of the many compromises made there was the concession to pro-slavery forces in Article I, Section 9, clause 1:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

[Martin Hyde]

I think you'd have to regard a petition signed by Benjamin Franklin and fiercely debated by Congress a serious effort. (I again recommend the Ellis book.)

It is however fair to say that the issue was dropped after that, and a strained silence on the subject prevailed for some time thereafter. That is not the same as saying slavery wasn't an issue. It was an issue -- just an issue that was too hot to handle, as the Franklin petition had revealed. No one in that first generation of politicians was willing to provoke a sectional crisis that might destroy the Union.

Well, a lot of things were fiercely debated in Congress (the Continental in this case) in the early days. Especially more or less every single aspect of the U.S. Constitution itself which was being hammered out. So I guess it's easy to lose sigh of one petition by Benjamin Franklin.

I don't believe slavery wasn't an issue, I've just never seen any compelling evidence it was a major issue (I may look at the Ellis book, but it would not be the first book I've read dealing with the issue of slavery in the late 18th century.)

I think I sort of look at slavery like I do prohibition or the temperance movement. There were temperance movements going all the way back to the 18th century, and even efforts to enshrine these concepts in the law all the way back then at the Congressional level, but I don't feel prohibition or temperance was an issue back then, it wasn't an issue until probably 1870-1900 and then it became a huge issue when it was actually enshrined in law.

[Martin Hyde]

I wonder if it was more expensive to own slaves than hire free workers. On one hand, you don't have to pay wages for a slave, but you did need to shelter, feed, clothe, and even take care of the slave's dependents (children and older folks).

Whereas, with a free worker, you could just pay a wage and care less about what he does outside work.

Was taking care of slaves more expensive than paying laborers?

I'm actually not sure. Whites who weren't fortunate enough to be slave owner's in the old south were quite often in almost unimaginable dregs of poverty and would do farm labor for an extremely low price.

I think part of the advantage of slaves was:

1) They can't quit.

2) The fact that they can't quit, means you can pretty much be sure you won't have a labor shortage come time to harvest.

3) If you have more than you need, you can sell them for a very tidy profit.

4) Slaves themselves reproduce, and the offspring can be sold.

5) Slaves are probably much less likely to steal, and probably much more likely to be hard workers. You can beat a slave, and you can severely punish a slave for stealing (and there isn't a huge degree of motivation for most slaves to steal if you think about their general situation.)

And slaves can do just about damn near anything you want them to, while a paid laborer will expect that he gets time off work, and that he isn't going to be responsible for anything you can imagine but instead for the work you've hired him to do. Slaves can be expected to both work your fields and clean your home, babysit your children, stable your horses, etc.

[Martin Hyde]

What's so "lurid" about it ? It's not like other groups with similar attitudes haven't done the same.

This is a historical discussion. If you have something specific that you feel happened to any wide degree or even at all in the American South in regards to slaves there are historical sources you can look in to in order to confirm or deny. Simply saying, "Well, the Nazis did it so slave owner's" did it is just not going to fly in GD. If you actually think they did these things you need to demonstrate proof that they did.

Or that those plantations weren't all that peaceful, and were controlled by terror tactics.

Some were, indeed. I doubt anyone denies that. Do you have any statistics?

How do you explain slave accounts in which the slaves speak in terms not entirely negative (or sometimes in positive) with regard to their former masters after emancipation?

A slaveowner isn't likely to care about "peace". He wants profit, and he wants power. The power to rape and torture and kill, for fun and profit. No one owns slaves unless they are a monster.

The rest of this is spurious opinion. However it is beyond doubt that a slave owner cares greatly about peace. On a plantation with, for example, 300 slaves and maybe maybe less than 10% than number of adult male non-slaves even some of the harshest tactics will be for naught if the slaves rebel. Slave revolts did happen and slaves did kill their masters, although it was remarkably rare, it remained a specter over the heads of most Southern slave owners and thus gave strong incentive to keep the slaves moderately happy.

People simply aged faster. They didn't work from dawn to dusk every day until 30 and drop over, after all; they were worn down. 45 was elderly.

Cite? I've never seen any evidence supporting the fact that someone aged 45 in the mid 19th century would have the appearance or health of someone aged 75 today.

Historical life expectancy numbers have the effect of presenting an inaccurate picture about what life was actually like in the past.

Keep in mind how life expectancy is calculated. Societies with high levels of infant mortality generally had a low "statistical" life expectancy. What would be a better indicator of what that society was actually like however would be to look at a distribution at any given year of the total number of persons of all ages.

The great number of persons dying aged 1-5 are all one entry of the number 1 through 5 which significantly brings down total life expectancy numbers.

[John Mace]

Life expectancy at birth can be a misleading statistic, though, because it's brought down by high rates of infant mortality.
True.

Assuming the 19th century individuals survived childhood, their average life expectancy goes way up.
Define "way up". What % of the adult population survived to be "elderly". I would define "elderly" as no longer able to work.

[Martin Hyde]

I've often actually been incredulous at the general view that if you were born in the 19th century you were doomed to an incredibly short life, at best maybe reaching 50 years old.

When all evidence has always suggested that, if you get past 5 or so, and don't happen to be unlucky enough to come down with a serious medical condition; medically speaking you'd live a good number of healthy, perfectly happy years.

Some statistics I've just read from the 1850 U.S. Census:

Number Of Deaths By Age

Under 1 - 54265 (16.80% of all deaths)
1 and under 5 - 68713 (21.27% of all deaths)
5 and under 10 - 21721 (6.72% of all deaths)
10 and under 20 - 28195 (8.78% of all deaths)
20 and under 50 - 90507 (28.02% of all deaths)
50 and under 80 - 47351 (14.66% of all deaths)
80 and under 100 - 10172 (3.15% of all deaths)
100 and over - 868 (.11% of all deaths)



What's interesting is deaths from birth to under 5 total 122,978, or 38.07% of all deaths in 1850.

That is a number higher than the deaths of every person who died aged 20 to under 50 that year. It is a number of deaths, indeed, higher than all deaths combined from ages 10 to under 50. So I think it is worth noting just how significant infant mortality was and what an enormous statistical influence that has.

What's also interesting is the (relatively) high numbers we see for the higher age brackets. 47,351 aged 50 to under 80 died, which suggests there was quite a good number of people in that age bracket still alive after 1850. And there was even 10172 over the age of 80 who died, and who knows how many in that bracket who [i]didn't die in 1850. Obviously the number of dead in the 80 to 100 bracket is a bigger number relative to the numbers of persons alive in that bracket, just assumed due to the fact humans (even modern, medically treated humans) just typically don't live to be 80-100 years old statistically speaking.

And there were even 868 people, all the way back to 1850, who had lived to be more than 100 years old. I seriously doubt in such a society someone aged 45 is considered elderly by anyone.

I haven't had time to look through all the Census schedules, but there is an interesting one highlighting Mobile Alabama and the deaths there in 1850:

267 blacks of all ages died in Mobile in 1850

This breaks down to:

Unknown Age - 29
Under 1 Year - 50
1 and under 10 - 42
10 under 20 - 50
20 under 30 - 19
30 under 40 - 26
40 under 50 - 17
50 under 60 - 13
60 under 70 - 10
70 under 80 - 5
80 under 90 - 2
90 under 100 - 3
Over 100 - 1

[chowder]

Did they take care of older slaves, or just kill them ? That seems more likely to me, but I don't really know. For that matter, I'd expect them to use the bodies of dead slaves for leather products, soap, and such, like the Nazis, or the British in Tasmania.
We used the bodies of the dead for leather and soap?

That's a new one to me but then again I'm an Englishman and we do tend to overlook our fuck-ups of yesteryear.

[chowder]

We used the bodies of the dead for leather and soap?

That's a new one to me but then again I'm an Englishman and we do tend to overlook our fuck-ups of yesteryear.


Forgot to add >>> :rolleyes: and>>>> :dubious:

[FRDE]

While I don't much like the idea of slavery, it seems unlikely that there was not some form of equilibrium.

Possibly some sort of feudal relationship.

As someone pointed out, a rebellion would have resulted in a Haiti like setup, and kids tend to mingle - strong relationships evolve.

I'm not sure that Mark Twain is a definative source, but being 'Sold down de Ribber' is something that strikes me as a fairly authentic description of 'cruel and unusual treatment'.

Also I'm aware of the effectiveness of covert industrial sabotage, a very real problem if you have pissed off workers.

Like Chowder, I am British, and am intrigued by Garibaldi's (Red Shirt) assertion that our ancesters made tallow and leather of Tasmanians.

I also suspect that Chowder is chewing on the possibility that states will attempt to secede from the US of Europe - as they find central bureaucracy intrudes on what the population considers 'normal'.

My suspicion is that he was asking whether slavery was just the flag, and behind it a bunch of other 'anti Federal' resentments. Probably popularist.

[Spoke]

Well, a lot of things were fiercely debated in Congress (the Continental in this case) in the early days. Especially more or less every single aspect of the U.S. Constitution itself which was being hammered out. So I guess it's easy to lose sigh of one petition by Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin's petition was after the adoption of the Constitution. It was taken up for consideration by the first Congress in 1790 and was hotly debated in both the House and the Senate. Not a minor thing.

[Thudlow Boink]

A slaveowner isn't likely to care about "peace". He wants profit, and he wants power. The power to rape and torture and kill, for fun and profit. No one owns slaves unless they are a monster.I've got to chime in in disagreement here. While your description here applied to some slaveowners, it did not apply to all. Some were (at least in their own eyes) relatively benevolent and kind to their slaves (just as they were to their horses, dogs, and any other livestock they owned). What makes your statement so horribly wrong is that it implies that the moral objection to slavery is just that slaves were treated monstrously, and that if they hadn't ever been tortured or raped, slavery would have been okay.

[John Mace]

I've often actually been incredulous at the general view that if you were born in the 19th century you were doomed to an incredibly short life, at best maybe reaching 50 years old.
No one is saying that here.

When all evidence has always suggested that, if you get past 5 or so, and don't happen to be unlucky enough to come down with a serious medical condition; medically speaking you'd live a good number of healthy, perfectly happy years.
The point is that the concept of an elderly non-working demographic is a 20th century invention and would be completely unheard of in the mid-1800s even for free white people (except maybe the extreme upper class). You worked until you died, because if you did live into your 60s or beyond it was because you were in good health. And for slaves, with poorer nutrition and medical care, the demographics would be skewed even more towards the younger folks.

[Spoke]

There would have been plenty of work suitable for older slaves anyway. For women: tending children, spinning thread, making clothes, making quilts, cooking, making soap, tending to chickens and gathering eggs. For men: tending to vegetable gardens, tending to horses, tending hogs and cattle, mending fences, capentry and repairs, butchering animals and curing meats.

[mazinger_z]

We had discussed this a while back, and I believe I said that, economically, slaves aren't better than free market labor. I believe that I mentioned that at my alma mater, a University of Chicago professor of economics won a nobel prize stating that slavery was economically viable in the South during slave times.

I still hold that slavery during this era is economically unsound, and I will even go one step further and say that having a slave workforce will actually slow down economic growth. However, I finally found the cite, where I alluded earlier that Robert Fogel stated that, "The marketplace could not have ended slavery, because slavery was an efficient and profitable system." (http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/931014/nobel.shtml)

[Martin Hyde]

Franklin's petition was after the adoption of the Constitution. It was taken up for consideration by the first Congress in 1790 and was hotly debated in both the House and the Senate. Not a minor thing.

I didn't say it was before the adoption of the Constitution, I just used the extensive debates on a wide range of topics that happened prior to the development of the Constitution as an atmosphere in which politicians were debating a huge range of issues. An entire system of government was being developed and just about everything was on the plate. The adoption of the Constitution in no way ended that atmosphere, if anything it intensified it as the new Government continued to be fleshed out, and of course the Bill of Rights was debated at this time as well.

My personal opinion is, I don't consider the abolitionist acts prior to the 1840s to be that substantial in regard to the core issue of slavery.

Was there debate about it in Congress? Yes. There was also debates in Congress about a wide number of things, vigorous debates, that no one would seriously have considered, looking back more than two hundred years to be "major issues" of the day. A few guys waxing philosophic yet taking no substantive action with regard to the institution of slavery being permitted by the federal government isn't a big issue to me.

Abolitionists from the late 1700s until the 1840s weren't even focused on the prohibition of slavery in the American South, but rather the colonization of slaves, basically sending them off of American soil to try and fix the issue by moving it elsewhere.

Even that was a relatively minor movement, resulting in a few thousand former slaves (many of them not even from the South) settling in Liberia.

[Spoke]

Abolitionists from the late 1700s until the 1840s weren't even focused on the prohibition of slavery in the American South, but rather the colonization of slaves, basically sending them off of American soil to try and fix the issue by moving it elsewhere.

That's just not so. Yes there were "colonization societies" but there were also abolitionist groups, foremost of which (in the early years) was the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:VTT5aZABoXMJ:www.hsp.org/files/newmanlegaciesarticle.pdf) (on whose behalf Franklin submitted his 1790 petition to abolish slavery). The PAS sought abolition of slavery nationwide, and petitioned governments and raised money to that end.

[chowder]

I don't believe it!!.

A thread similar to this has been opened in GQ.

Go give them the benefit of your knowledge John C and Martin H

[jimmmy]

I don't believe it!!.

A thread similar to this has been opened in GQ.



There you are mistaken my friend. What happened was that Jimmmy the complete and total Jack-@ss tried to post to this thread and link to that one because I thought it was the one some here were recalling.

I posted to that one and, linked to it too, to make it at utterly unreal hash like I am on crack or something. In the process I seem to have revived the old thread.

I apologize to the folks in this thread and that one. I am a true nitwit who should never be allowed to touch a keyboard.

What a mess :smack: . (both are good/interesting threads tho)

[chowder]

Jimmmy I doubt very much you are a total nitwit, I doubt you are even a fraction of a nitwit.

I agree, both are interesting threads and I've learned more about American politics of that era than I ever knew before the threads were opened.