# "Slaves lived a life of plenty, of simple pleasures" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 11, 2004, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273 "2004-12-11T05:17:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/1 "2004-12-11T05:17:12Z")
[Christian school requires reading of “South-sympathetic” booklet about slavery.](http://newsobserver.com/news/story/1913619p-8258411c.html) > [@](#): > > Students at one of the area’s largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures.” > > Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using “Southern Slavery, As It Was,” a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren’t treated as badly as people think. > > Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery. > > “You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective,” he said. Whiskey tango foxtrot? To be fair, the article has several quotes by school administrators and parents who say they know slavery is wrong, but also quotes a parent who says it “offers an accurate portrayal that is overlooked of how many slaves were treated kindly by their owners.” Yeah, because even though they bought and sold human beings, that doesn’t mean all slaveholders were bad! Why should the slaveholders get so much stick? Poor slaveholders. And these unfortunate kids, by reading so much anti-slavery “indoctrination,” are only getting one side of the story. Because, you know, there’s so many different sides when it comes to slavery. It’s such a hard moral dilemma, whether or not treating people like property is wrong. I mean THE BIBLE says it’s okay. Yeah, you can just forget all that crap about loving thy fellow human beings as thou wouldst love thyself, I’m sure Jesus would think slavery is totally awesome. After all, those slaves had such great medical care. I’m trying to be fair to the South, and to Christians, since I know a lot of rad people who are Southern and/or Christian, but fuckit, that’s getting a lot harder to do. I only hope that enough parents will be outraged at this that they’ll yank their kids out of that crazy fucking school, but somehow I doubt that. P.S. If you really want to be sick, read the quotes from the booklet in the sidebar. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/2 "2004-12-11T05:24:40Z")
They ought to follow it up with the PBS show where they had the forensic anthropologists discussing their finds in the slave graveyard they found in NYC about 10 years ago. In particular, the segment where they show a skull which fractured around the top of the vertibra because the woman had to carry excessively heavy loads on her head. I think she lived about three days after her skull fractured, and the anthropologist said she was in excruciating agony the whole time. Or maybe the segment where they’re holding up a twisted femur, and describe how the man it had belonged to, had broken it, but had been forced to continue working with it broken. He lived for years with that, and was in constant pain the entire time. Yeah, slavery, it was great, that’s why we had a war about it, and so many people died because of it. Asshats. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/3 "2004-12-11T05:30:03Z")
Quite frankly, even if slaves had been treated well, they were still slaves, and that very fact makes it an act of cruelty. If you want to treat a person well, well, you don’t try and OWN them in the first place! ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/4 "2004-12-11T05:36:27Z")
You don’t understand. Christians have to agree with slavery. It’s ok’d by the bible. If they don’t ok it…then all this bullshit about gays falls by the wayside. You can’t accept one without the other. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/5 "2004-12-11T06:18:37Z")
Every day it seems like someone is intent on showing “the other side” of things like this. What’s next: the Japanese internees didn’t have it so bad? Those concentration camp prisoners were exaggerating? Oh, wait a minute…That stuff has been said already. Enough! ---
**Author:** ![MrFantsyPants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MrFantsyPants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrFantsyPants)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/6 "2004-12-11T06:24:06Z")
> [@aforementioned asshats](#): > > There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. hee hee hoo hoo ha ha. Can we hunt these fuckers down and show them some “mutual intimacy”? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/7 "2004-12-11T06:34:51Z")
This must be that new Bush-voting “moral values” coalition I keep hearing about. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/8 "2004-12-11T07:33:23Z")
> [@Reeder](#): > > You don’t understand. Christians have to agree with slavery. > > It’s ok’d by the bible. > > If they don’t ok it…then all this bullshit about gays falls by the wayside. > > You can’t accept one without the other. I wonder how Jews would feel about this considering the implicit wrongness of slavery mentioned by the Egyptians in the…um…Bible. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/9 "2004-12-11T07:34:29Z")
> [@Reeder](#): > > You don’t understand. Christians have to agree with slavery. > > It’s ok’d by the bible. > > If they don’t ok it…then all this bullshit about gays falls by the wayside. > > You can’t accept one without the other. Careful with those brush strokes. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/10 "2004-12-11T07:34:46Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > **slavery mentioned by the Egyptians** That’s, slavery mentioned commited by the Egyptians. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/11 "2004-12-11T07:35:45Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > That’s, slavery mentioned commited by the Egyptians. Yeah, but that was in the \*other \* Bible. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/12 "2004-12-11T07:36:07Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > This must be that new Bush-voting “moral values” coalition I keep hearing about. Yup, 51% of voters want to re-implement slavery. Even us Republicans whose party was formed primarily to end slavery. Lincoln wept. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/13 "2004-12-11T07:37:10Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > Yeah, but that was in the \*other \* Bible. Well, it’s in my Bible. Not sure which one anyone else is reading. ---
**Author:** ![Milkman\_Dan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Milkman\_Dan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milkman_Dan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/14 "2004-12-11T08:01:22Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > Yeah, slavery, it was great, that’s why we had a war about it, and so many people died because of it. The civil war was not just about slavery. Besides which, people in the North were not opposed to slavery on ethical grounds so much as the fact that they didn’t need it any more because of industrialization. ---
**Author:** ![Milkman\_Dan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Milkman\_Dan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Milkman_Dan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/15 "2004-12-11T08:04:55Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > Yup, 51% of voters want to re-implement slavery. Even us Republicans whose party was formed primarily to end slavery. Lincoln wept. So then why do you support the Republicans if it means you’re helping the re-implementation of slavery? That’s like saying, “I voted for the Nazis, but it’s OK because I’m opposed to their policy of exterminating the Jews.” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/16 "2004-12-11T08:15:58Z")
> [@Milkman Dan](#): > > So then why do you support the Republicans if it means you’re helping the re-implementation of slavery? That’s like saying, “I voted for the Nazis, but it’s OK because I’m opposed to their policy of exterminating the Jews.” :rolleyes: Wow, I actually get to do this. The post overall could be seen as, oh I don’t know, [sarcasm?](http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=sarcasm) The link to Lincoln could be seen as, let’s see here, [irony?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony) Try again, Sparky. That shit was weak. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/17 "2004-12-11T08:33:19Z")
Southern history is not something I, as a Southerner, am very proud of but it annoys the hell out of me to see \*\*\*American \*\*\*slavery labeled as Southern. It’s disingenuous at best as the North was not especially abolitionist and Lincoln especially was not. If I remember correctly, the man was even an advocate of forced resettlement of American blacks to Africa and the vaunted Emancipation Proclamation was nothing more than a political weapon instead of a true humanitarian gesture. If Fort Sumter had not been fired on, it would have been decades more before slavery was ended in America. Don’t kid yourself otherwise. > [@Milkman Dan](#): > > The civil war was not just about slavery. Besides which, people in the North were not opposed to slavery on ethical grounds so much as the fact that they didn’t need it any more because of industrialization. Indeed. It was also in large part about states’ rights but even that was tinged by slavery as the South wanted all new states to decide on the issue of slavery by itself instead of having to uphold the Missouri Compromise. As disingenuous as the “Southern slavery” label is, so is the argument that “the Civil War wasn’t only about slavery”. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/18 "2004-12-11T13:01:04Z")
> [@Aesiron](#): > > Southern history is not something I, as a Southerner, am very proud of but it annoys the hell out of me to see American slavery labeled as Southern. Especially since the vast majority of slaves were actually _sold_ by New England slave merchants. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/19 "2004-12-11T13:22:28Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Especially since the vast majority of slaves were actually _sold_ by New England slave merchants. You’re not supposed to remind the North Easterners of such a nasty part of history. They are the saviors of all oppressed peoples. Bad on you! ---
**Author:** ![MMI](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/53a042/32.png) [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/20 "2004-12-11T15:26:43Z")
I was educated in the elite liberal public school systems of Connecticut, which as a point of context is right next to _Massachusetts_. In learning about slavery we learned such things as: The New England states were at the heart of the triangle trade in slaves. The fact that slavery was not particularly profitable in New England was certainly a contributing fact behind the absence of slavery here. The curriculum did not attempt to hide the involvement of the northeast. **Aesiron** The reason slavery is associated primarily is that the history of the northeast, absent slavery, would not change terribly much. Similarly for the midwest. The antebellum south (well, the deep south certainly) was built by and on slavery. No slavery, no bellum. **Liberal** Would it not be fair to say that the vast majority of slaves _imported_ were imported on New England ships (in the uniquely miserable conditions of the middle passage)? Given the arguments made about the relatively salutory conditions of American slavery and the fact that the institution (and domestic sales) continued for fifty years after the trade ceased to be legal I would guess that the majority of _sales_ were by southerners to southerners of slaves bred right here in these United States. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273.md?page=2)