As a Southerner by upbringing and a long heritage, I have found it astounding how quickly the rest of the country has turned against the South once again based on the acts of a lone individual. It is as if race based controversies haven’t happened in other regions but of course that isn’t true. There have been a number of current ones ranging from the Ferguson, MO riots to the 1992 Los Angeles riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict that killed 53 people and caused millions of dollars in damage plus many more scattered all over different areas of the country but not usually the South.
All of those are unacceptable and tragic but I honestly believed until the last week that people realized that racial issues are nationwide and not just a ‘Southern’ thing. However, it turns out that the blinders are a lot more opaque than I ever could have imagined.
Now people have turned their attention to the rebel battle flag even for casual references for things like the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazzard. That is not only completely ineffective, it ignores history. The South was guilty of endorsing slavery - late in the game. It was once legal in all of the original 13 colonies plus many more as states were added. If you are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or any of the early states, they had slavery too. In fact, there weren’t any major slave ports or auction sites in the South. The vast majority of them arrived in chains from Africa in ports like Boston or Newport, RI and then sent South by profiteers that bought and then resold them. People usually target suppliers of unscrupulous commerce much more than the buyers but that didn’t happen in this case. The South was the loser in the Civil War and still has to take the blame for everything associated with slavery to this day.
The Southern states are where most of the black people live - by choice. It is their historical home and they are an integral part of the history of the region. Other areas of the country like my current home in New England aren’t even remotely as integrated. We will not let a lone deranged psychopath destroy that but the rest of the country could help by not painting the entire South from Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston as one big sea of rednecks. That is close to the opposite of true. There are some but it is also one of the most thriving, quickly growing, and diverse areas of the nation.
Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1781. Pennsylvania opted not to incorporate the Confederate battle flag into their official displays during the 1950s and 1960s.
A weird trivia fact is that U.S. state closest to the west African coast is Maine believe it or not. However, there wasn’t much in Maine back then just like there isn’t today so the ships had to sail slightly further south to Boston and Newport.
I am getting different numbers than you are but it is indisputable that New England was the major slave trading center until the trans-Atlantic trade was abolished and owners had to work with existing stock.
It looks like Charleston, SC was a major slave trading port at one time as well but New England was the other major point of entry - especially Rhode Island.
This is about assigning responsibility equitably about the slave trade from in the past until today. The New England states had slavery for over 150 years and it was even longer in some of the other Northern states. The major breakdown occurred during the last few decades leading up to the Civil War and not even then for Northern states like Maryland and Kentucky. It seems disingenuous to me to assign full blame to one area of the country when everyone engaged in it until relatively shortly before the Civil War and some Northern states still had slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation after it had been abolished in most Southern states (because that only applied to rebelling states).
This is why it’s good to get rid of things as benign as the Dukes of Hazzard. It might force nice Southerns to stop being blind to reality and saying things as dumb as “there were no major slave ports in the South.”
And now, Maryland and Kentucky were Northern states? WTF?
Yes there was. Speaking as someone coming from 400 years of Southern lineage, I think it could best be called ‘not a smooth move’. It hurt and killed a lot of people and was a terrible idea in retrospect. However, Southerners as whole joined the U.S. again and are among the most patriotic of all groups. I know that is a dirty word for many on this board and elswhere but the general idea is sincere. All we ask is that we don’t get ostracized or discriminated against based on our heritage. Everything I have seen in the media in the last ten days or so has been hostile to the South even though it was one asshole killing innocent people and almost everyone would be happy to see him go to prison for life or get executed for it.
Maryland was a Union state and Kentucky a Union-ish state, but they are in the region of the US known as the South that you are referring to in your OP, unless by Southerner you mean Confederate stater by upbringing and long heritage.
I really don’t know what you mean by “upbringing and long heritage”. Did you ever live in the South?
I was talking about the Civil War division lines, not a line based on an old feud. I admit I will have to do some more research on the split between the ports of entry just out of historical curiosity. It is close to even but I keep coming up with conflicting cites and was taught different numbers by a history professor that was an expert on such things. In any event, let’s just call it even and acknowledge that some of the major ports for the slave trade were in New England but there were others from New York, Philadelphia all the way down to the South Carolina (where there was another major one). I admit that I learned something new.
If southerners are so goddamn patriotic, then get rid of the flag of treason. The south lost, it deserved to lose and it lost in the defense of evil. The flag represents that. It’s so simple even a southerner should be able to understand it.
Sorry, I’m feeling a little nit-picky. All of the states joined the Union, Maryland and Kentucky didn’t join the attempt to secede, with an asterisk for Kentucky.