Since you’re so fond of quotes, here’s one from you:
>>>While slavery occurred in many parts of the world prior to its institutionalization, here, it was generally a matter of tens or thousands of persons taken in war. The slavery practiced by Europeans created a market in which the slave trade reached the millions.<<<
As I’ve already mentioned, the slave trade as practiced by the Arabs involved millions of people (according to Thomas Sowell in a newspaper column), and went on longer than the Atlantic slave trade. In that respect, the Arabs rivaled or even surpassed the Europeans. The Atlantic slave trade was not unprecedented or unmatched.
The forced removal of Africans to other parts of the world began in the ninth century and continued legally until the nineteenth century, almost a thousand years. There were two major routes or waves, one over the Sahara conducted by the Arabs and the other over the Atlantic conducted by Europeans. Some twenty million Africans were taken, with some five million dying in transit. Africans taken on the trans-Sahara route or wave were sold in North Africa and the Mediterranean area generally, with more than ten million in all taken into slavery by non-European Muslims. This wave lasted from the nineth to the fifteenth century. Africans taken on the trans-Atlantic route or wave ended up, of course, in the Americas. This went on roughly from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, and about ten million Africans were taken into slavery by this route. Sources: James Walvin, "Slavery and the Slave Trade; and George F. Dow, “Slave Ships and Slaving”.
>>>It remains, however, that the use of slaves in this country created a market whereby more slaves were sought and captured.<<<
The vast majority of African slaves, 94%, went to South America and the Caribbean, not the U.S. Even if the U.S. had never imported a single slave, the market would still have been tremendous. (Of course, a huge wrongdoing by A doesn’t excuse a smaller wrongdoing by B.) Please don’t tell me, “I didn’t say that the U.S. was the only market.” You’ve certainly implied it here.
>>> … a large body of evidence shows that many (not all) are still treated as an underclass by culture even today.<<<
Which could also be said of many whites. Ever been to Appalachia? Ever hear the term “Okie?” Do you know what kind of reception the Okies got in California when they fled there from the Dust Bowl during the Depression? Ever wonder why people who would never use words like “nigger,” “spick,” or “kike” think nothing of using words like “hillbilly,” “redneck,” “white trash,” or “trailer trash”? Ever meet someone who’d laugh at a “redneck” joke but not a a “nigger” joke or a “Jew” joke? Take some time to find and read “The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats” by Jim Goad. You might get some idea of why I’m so pissed off.
>>>The specific difference is that however bad the condition of an indentured servant, there was an end to that service.<<<
Sigh. As I’ve already pointed out, many of them never survived to the end of their term of service because of the inhumane conditions of servitude. In the Caribbean islands, the overwhelming majority of indentured servants died before their terms of service expired, primarily because their living conditions were Hell on earth. And often when they managed to live out their terms, their health was so shattered that they were left with little option except to beg in the streets, or they were shoved off to the least desirable land to shift for themselves as best as they could. What is more, most of them were brought to the New World in chains, having been sold into servitude for crimes such as stealing bread for their families or not having enough money to pay their debts. Before the Revolution, the colonies were dumping grounds for England’s undesirables, a job Australia took on when the Brits needed a new dumping ground after the Revolution. Blacks were not the only ones who came here in chains in large numbers, and indentured servitude was no more humane than slavery.
>>>Of course, this rather blithely ignores that well over 90% of the people in the South actively supported the institution of slavery, (going to war to protect it), even if they didn’t own slaves.<<<
So you got in a time machine, went back to the Old South and took a poll, did you? While you’re at the library looking for “The Redneck Manifesto”, find a copy of “What They Fought For: 1861-1865” by James T. McPherson, and get a clue.
An estimated 90% of Confederate troops were not slaveowners - the rich (i.e. slaveowners, who were probably no more than 1/15th of Southern society) often managed to wiggle out of military service altogether. Johnny Reb and Billy Yank alike complained, with more than a little justification, that it was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” The average Confederate grunt most likely saw himself as defending his home from invaders. Consiering the devastation wreaked on the South both during and after the war, this view was well justified. While Johnny Reb probably took the doctrine of white supremacy more or less for granted, he wasn’t fighting primarily for the right to own slaves.
Sometimes I feel so sorry for Yankees. They have to have some moral rationalization for the massive destruction of both life and property they inflicted on the South, and the best they can do is to pretend that it was a noble crusade against slavery.
>>>Slavery of blacks by blacks in Africa was more nearly the sort of slavery practiced in Greece and Rome (bad as it was) whereby it was quite possible to “earn” one’s freedom and actually become a member of society. I do not claim that slaves held in sub-Sahara Africa were treated with respect. The difference is that they could be treated with respect. When white masters began behaving in the same way in the U.S., laws were passed to impede that action.<<<
The conditions a slave might have met in the South varied a great deal. It was often possible for a slave to earn enough money to buy his freedom. Throughout the entire period of slavery, there were free blacks in the South, some of whom owned slaves themselves. House servants were often treated with a great deal of respect and sometimes were virtually members of the family.
A quote from “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South” by Kenneth Stampp: “Visitors often registered surprise at the social intimacy that existed between masters and slaves in certain situations. A Northerner saw a group of Mississippi farmers encamped with their slaves near Natchez after hauling their cotton to market. Here they enjoyed a ‘cheek by jowl’ familiarity with perfect good will and a mutual contempt for the nicer distinctions of color.”
In “The Slave States of America,” James Buckingham, a noted English abolitionist, is quoted as saying in 1842: “This is only one among the many proofs I had witnessed of the fact, that the prejudice of color is not nearly so strong in the South as in the North. [In the South] it is not at all uncommon to see the black slaves of both sexes, shake hands with white people when they meet, and interchange friendly personal inquiries; but at the North I do not remember to have witnessed this once; and neither in Boston, New York or Philadelphia would white persons generally like to be seen shaking hands and talking familiarly with blacks in the streets.”
Another quote from you:
>>>While your comparison of Northern mill workers to Southern slaves can, indeed, be argued, this quote
quote:
The southern slave often had better food, more leisure time and his family was less likely to be broken up.
is simply not true. Whatever the odds of families in the North being broken apart as men left to find work (or abandoned their families in bad times) it was a standard practice in the South to sell members of families (with a denial of their right to marry as a fundamental aspect of that practice in some areas).<<<
Untold numbers of worki