[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
I have issues with them for the same reason, my daughter qualifies for the DAR - my son (an adoptee) does not.
Which happens to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of because God only knows how many people have birth certificates and baptismal records with their father’s name on them - but their mother was two timing. This isn’t something that (until recently) was provable for most people.
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Curious-do they allow African Americans who are descendents of slaves, who were fathered by white plantation owners and the like?
(I totally forgot about that! How much did we bet?)
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We bet one year’s subscription to The Dope. If you wanna’ go double or nothing, it’ll have to wait until September of '08. It’ll be in Knoxville. Until then, War Eagle!
[QUOTE=An Arky]
… back then, that belief was not all that common yet; it was still formulating and catching on. …
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[RIGHT]Bold=CMC[/RIGHT]but how many Americans in the 1800’s knew of this strange foreign nation called England?
[QUOTE=An Arky]
… back then, that belief was not all that common yet; it was still formulating and catching on. …
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, if you ignore Europe, North America, South America, and the Caribbean,
Something tells me the only people who really thought slavery was still debatable, were the folks who wanted to own slaves.
Seems to me that you’re making Arky’s point for him, as you provide an excellent time line detailing the formation and spread of the belief that slavery was wrong and should be abolished; I note also that with the exception of Japan (which is a non-sequitor to this discussion), all of the examples happened within a hundred years of the Civil War. It’s a textbook example of an idea “formulating and catching on” over the course of a century.
When it comes to ardent Confederate apologists, I’ve learned not to argue with them. It’s like trying to argue a fanatic out of his religion; they’re immune to logic and facts. I learned this after dating a Southern Belle who was inordinately proud of her Southron heritage and was a Civil War reenactor. (Have you ever been under one of those hoop skirts? It’s like a little circus tent.) Cost me some incredible sex.
I always wanted to be a Civil War reenactor but I just couldn’t stand the thoughts of the heat or all the things that could go wrong on one of those battlefield meetings, so I paid an Irish guy $300 to go reenact it in my place.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Seems to me that you’re making Arky’s point for him, as you provide an excellent time line detailing the formation and spread of the belief that slavery was wrong and should be abolished; I note also that with the exception of Japan (which is a non-sequitor to this discussion), all of the examples happened within a hundred years of the Civil War. It’s a textbook example of an idea “formulating and catching on” over the course of a century.
[/QUOTE] An Arky’s point was that the idea of slavery being wrong was “not all that common” in 1857. Crowmanyclouds’ time line demonstrates that dozens of nations around the globe, including America’s own neighbors Canada and Mexico, already considered slavery to be wrong.
By 1857, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Portugal, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Equador, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, Mauritius, Denmark, Russia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and the Northern U.S. all considered the abolitionist cause sufficiently obvious to warrant enacting into law. How does that possibly represent a “not all that common idea?”
Because you fail to take into consideration just how non-connected everything was back then. We’re used to the instant communication of the later half of the twentieth century and the twenty first. Anytime someone farts in Uganda, we can access dozens of reports detailing how that fart sounded, what it smelled like, why it happened and when we can expect a follow up fart, and everyone, everywhere has that knowledge and reacts to it. It wasn’t like that back then, and as always, economic reality drives everything. In parts of the world where slavery did not give a great economic advantage to slave owners, it was easy to outlaw it, nobody, or at least not many people, lost money by doing so, and it’s easy to do the right thing when it’s not costing you anything. In parts of the world where slaves were particularly valuable and were the means by which people got rich, it wasn’t so easy. Look at how many of the countries on the list outlawed slavery at home (but not in their colonies until some later date). The idea that slavery was bad certainly was around, and where it was economically feasible to outlaw it without hitting the pocketbook very hard it happened fairly quickly. The southern states in the US were in a unique position that made slavery an economically lucrative practice, and so they resisted the hardest. Still, even had the war not happened, I would expect that slaves would have been manumitted on a state by state basis over the next twenty years or so as advances in technology made the institution cost prohibitive. From Americans 150 or more years past that time, the idea that slavery itself is simply repugnant seems like more than enough of a reason to abolish the practice. Well, we are where we are now as a result of the civil war and all that followed, through the civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s and beyond. What we assume is as plain as the nose on our face wasn’t back then. Yes, the idea that slavery is evil and should be abolished because of that existed back then, but it wasn’t a majority view; lots of people thought so, sure, but just about as many didn’t, and a great number of people in the middle didn’t care one way or another, to one degree or another. That’s simply the way it was back then. Looking back from out perspective as twenty first century Americans it seems bizarre and abhorrent that most people didn’t just condemn slavery because of what it was, but that’s the way things were back then. Societies grow and evolve just as people do, it takes time for beliefs and attitudes to change.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
Nitpick: Alexander Stephens was the Confederate VP. Stephen Douglas was a Democratic candidate for President from Illinois in 1860 and a friend of Lincoln; Douglas strongly backed the Union war effort once fighting began.
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:smack:
Worst part was that I did actually get it correct in other posts.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Because you fail to take into consideration just how non-connected everything was back then. We’re used to the instant communication of the later half of the twentieth century and the twenty first.
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What, the telegraph wasn’t fast enough? Even Moldavia was on board with the idea by then! When even Dracula’s neighborhood agrees that slavery is bad, it’s a bit too late to claim that the idea is outrageously progressive. Instant communication doesn’t enter into it.
I don’t think anybody is arguing that the South held on to slavery solely because they enjoyed it; certainly the driving reason was economical. But they didn’t cling to slavery because abolition was a new and audacious idea; they hung onto the institution long after all their neighbors had abandoned it precisely because they uniquely stood to gain from it.
This is true, but to shrug and say ‘that’s the way things were back then’ seems to grossly minimalize the fact that many, many nations and people did condemn slavery because of what it was, even at that time… perhaps not ‘most’ people, but a significant fraction of the world’s population.
Word on the street is that Mauritania still practices slavery today; should the rest of the world refrain from judgement, because their society just hasn’t evolved far enough yet?
You’re overlooking the fact that most people in Europe had no problem with slavery per se. They just didn’t want white slavery. Black slavery was perfectly alright too; they just wanted it kept nicely far and distant where they didn’t have to look at it. Slavery was banned not because of any great moral courage, but because no-one had a reason to defend it. Even in England, it was banned only after considerable debate - and was left for some time untouched in their colonies. France, too.
This is not to be confused with saying that slavery was good or should not have been dismantled. But the idea that slavery was actually a morally bad thing in and of itself was relatively new. It had lasted about two generation in America before the Civil War, and was gaining steam. In the South, certain actions by the pro-slave side made speaking against slavery a very dangerous thing to do, but there was a considerable antislave sentiment. However, many Southerners felt they could not morally fight against or abandon their home states, either - poor whites especially felt torn.
America was unique in the amount of blood we were willing to shed over the issue. And this convinced the Latin American nations to end the practice.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
America was unique in the amount of blood we were willing to shed over the issue. And this convinced the Latin American nations to end the practice.
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Except, as was mentioned, the Latin American nations, with the exception of Brazil, abolished slavery before we did.
[QUOTE=Monty]
If you were taught the reason the southern states went to war was to preserve state’s rights, you were taught wrong. If you were taught that those fought for the Confederacy weren’t traitors, you were taught wrong.
I’m with the OP. Let’s put the kibosh on this revisionist history of a bunch of traitors and slavers.
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And don’t forget losers. They were slavers, traitors, and losers.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I always wanted to be a Civil War reenactor but I just couldn’t stand the thoughts of the heat or all the things that could go wrong on one of those battlefield meetings, so I paid an Irish guy $300 to go reenact it in my place.
[/QUOTE]
When mentioning hanging of important Confederate figures, it’s interesting to note that the only person hung, for any reason, after the Civil War, was the commandant of the Andersonville prison camp.
The story of that camp is a little more connected for me because my grandmother, still with us at the age of 102, can remember, and tell us about her grandfather, who was incarcerated in that camp.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
You’re overlooking the fact that most people in Europe had no problem with slavery per se. They just didn’t want white slavery. Black slavery was perfectly alright too; they just wanted it kept nicely far and distant where they didn’t have to look at it. Slavery was banned not because of any great moral courage, but because no-one had a reason to defend it. Even in England, it was banned only after considerable debate - and was left for some time untouched in their colonies. France, too.
[/quote]
Wait… Europe had no problem with slavery, even though most of Europe had already outlawed slavery? No one had a reason to defend it… yet it was banned only after considerable debate? You’re trying to burn out my logic circuit, aren’t you? So why did they bother to ban slavery if everyone was cool with it? And if no one was defending it, then why was it debated? Can someone get Dracula in here to explain how all this makes sense?
Vermont outlawed slavery before they were even a state. The president of the first abolitionist society in America was Ben Franklin. This ‘relatively new’ idea had been circulating since before the United States was founded, and was promoted by some of its most distinguished citizens.
It’s been less than two generations since the Jim Crow laws were overturned, so their repeal is a much more ‘relatively new’ idea than abolitionism was in 1861. Yet I sincerely hope that few Americans still consider them morally debatable.
Well, yeah… but I think that’s because in most other countries, huge numbers of people weren’t willing to kill to preserve slavery.
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
Hey, I was a Union reenactor for five years. And we were 'way smarter and less inbred than those Johnny Rebs, lemme tell ya…
[/QUOTE]
