So, it’s like the difference between being privately anti-abortion and going out and picketing clinics or lobbying legislatures?
I’m sure I would have been passionately opposed to slavery, and spoken out against it within my small circle of family and friends. But based on my current level of political activism, I’m also sure that my passionate opposition would never have gone further than that small circle. I would have had to have been directly confronted with the issue – witnessing a slave being whipped in front of me, or having an escaped slave seek refuge with me – in order to take direct positive action.
Incidentally, I’m also convinced that I would have been a Tory during the American Revolution. Once of the reasons that I have such admiration for the founders is that I would never have had the guts to stand up to established authority the way they did.
Anti-slavery folks thought slavery was wrong, and were in favor of doing things like restricting the expansion of it into new territories/states and didn’t like the Fugitive Slave Laws. Abolitionists were people that wanted to abolish slavery even within sovereign states where it already existed and were willing to break laws to help free individual slaves. There were many, many more anti-slavery types than outright Abolitionists.
Most Abolitionist literature was designed to move anti-slavery folks into the Abolitionist camp.
In the 80’s, when I was in college, the biggest issue amongst college kids in the U.S. was apartheid. Obviously, what was going on was half a world away but there were protests calling for boycotts against companies who did business there and for the university to divest all of their investments in those companies.
Some students wanted the university to immediately divest all of their funds in those investments. Others didn’t think that we should divest at all. You would be hard pressed to find someone who was pro-apartheid but many thought that it wasn’t an important issue and/or we should do out best to make as much money as possible for the school so that fees wouldn’t be raised and we could get better facilities.
My view was more nuanced. I felt that would shouldn’t immediately divest and take a potential loss on our investments. I felt that we shouldn’t make any new investments in S.A and that we should slowly divest existing funds as soon as it was financially prudent to do so. I only boycotted the companies with the worst policies. I didn’t see the need to boycott Coca-Cola because they sold soda there. Note: I know that am oversimplifying here. Please let’s not hijack this thread.
My view on slavery would have probably been equally nuanced. I am sure that I would have found slavery to be a necessary evil at best. I probably would have wanted us to ween ourselves off of it slowly so that the freed slaves would have been able to support themselves and the Southern economy wouldn’t collapse. Maybe this would be accomplished through Federal assistance although that is probably a concept that didn’t exist in the late 19th Century.
Would have held radical abolitionist views: definitely
Would have done useful and effective things to end it: well, probably not, I’m afraid I’m not a very effective agent of social change.
Would have participated in any organized groups to try to end it: if they existed where I lived, yes, even if I accompished no more than giving voice to my abolitionist opinions.
Would have spoken out in hearing distance of pro-slavery folks and etc: yeah, I’m kind of inclined to value [del]trolling[/del] confronting folks like that above self-preservation unless the danger is really severe and imminent.
Disclaimer: I have to assume I would have still been ‘me’. There’s no way to answer the question otherwise.
I’ve thought about this before, and it is hard to take yourself out of the current cultural and historical context and put yourself back into an environment so completely different.
I think I would be confused by slavery and bothered by it, and I would be kind to slaves and other black people and particularly upset by the more brutal aspects. I don’t think I would have devoted my life to stop it. I am not a person who likes to make waves, I have never been that sort of person, it took me a lot of courage just to show up at the gay marriage ban protest a couple of weekends ago, and that’s an issue I feel very strongly about. Perhaps if I were a writer at that time I might include the issue of slavery as a theme, but in general I think I would try to live a life according to my own principles without making too much of a ruckus.
It sounds horrible like that, but I am trying to be honest here, not to justify my probable behavior but just to state it as it would most likely be.
I think your candor is only admirable, Olives, even if the sentiments aren’t. This thread is really more about our estimation of our own moral courage, rather than abolitionism per se.
I come from a very, very long line of slave owners starting at Jamestown and not actually ending in spirit after the Civil War. My great-great-great grandfather was murdered by one of his slaves in Mississippi. I grew up in a completely racially divided tiny town in Louisiana (although, oddly, more integrated in many respects than most places including the Boston suburbs where I live now) that was about 50% black and I am probably one of the youngest people in the U.S. to have attended segregated public schools (we were desegregated in 1980 but both of my parents taught at the black school and my grandfather was the president of the school board who had to make it happen). I was practically raised by a black nanny who took care of me from the age of 17 months until high school and who I still visited until my early 30’s. She died about two years ago in her 90’s. I didn’t see much problem with the situation although she was similar to an antebellum house slave.
I would not have been an abolitionist at all and maybe not even anti-slavery. Given my family history, I think I would have been kind to all blacks and treated them as humans and probably would have gone overboard as much as possible to befriend individual ones and help their children to learn but I doubt it would have gone much beyond that.
I don’t know if the question is a good estimation of one’s own moral courage, because it, first of all, starts with the belief that slavery is wrong and abolition is right, which is something pretty much everyone agrees on now, but, if we were living at the time, wouldn’t be so obvious. Undoubtedly, many of us would have thought slavery was fine and dandy.
Along with that, another reason it’s not the best way to get an estimate of our moral courage is because it’s so easy to be against right now. Anybody in this thread now can say “Oh, yes, I would have done something”, but if you were actually living back then, it wouldn’t have been so easy.
Seems to me most people in this thread are very candid and self-effacing in assessing their probable behavior. This isn’t a whole thread of “I would have given my life to sneak those slaves on the Underground Railroad, and I would have killed me a couple of slave catchers fershure” posts, as I would have thought.
As to your first point, it takes a certain amount of moral courage to think for yourself, especially when the whole culture is thinking otherwise–that’s why moral courage is being examined here, I think. This thread seems to be answering (again with a surprising amount of candor) how capable people really are of opposing a system that is both entrenched and morally reprehensible.
Whites could have black slaves, blacks could have black slaves, blacks could have white slaves, whites could have white slaves. Feel free to throw in some other racial/ethnic groups, legal persons, transhuman intelligences, et al. in there as well.
With the slave/worker bill of rights, slavery wouldn’t be particularly different from other employment, except your owner wouldn’t pay you and would be required to make sure you had suitable room and board, health care, reasonable working hours, retirement, etc. Under certain circumstances it might be preferable to leave it to the slaves to work out the particulars of their own accommodations and the owner pays for it (directly, or have the slave do it by proxy… which amounts, basically, to paying them a wage).
You can argue against the excesses of southern/black slavery (owning humans as property) but not every concept of slavery (bartering labor or owning someone’s labor).
Which is pretty much what happened.
This is confusing. Are you saying we have moral courage for thinking it is wrong, or moral courage for acting on our thoughts ( i.e. by participating in rallies, or marches, or impassioned public speeches)?
I would probably fall into the “I don’t think this is right, but probably don’t care enough to make an effort to change it” category. I’m not really sure that qualifies as ‘moral courage’.
To draw another parallel, homelessness is a serious issue which I feel society ought to solve. But I don’t give money to panhandlers when I pass them on the street, and I don’t go to candlelight vigils, or any other kind of fundraisers to help in anyway solve the problem. So, do I have moral courage for recognizing there is a problem, or moral cowardice for failing to do anything about it?
There are tens of millions of slaves left in the world today mainly in Africa and Asia but still a few in the U.S. if you want to search thoroughly enough. If someone really wanted to know the answer to their own introspection, they could simply google a few stats and come up with their own plan today without screwing around with theoreticals.
It’s different when the status is transferable to one’s children, or when one is entered into that status as a child. Or when one is forced into slavery due to being captured in battle (which may, itself, have been totally involuntary).
Humanity has come up with many, many routes to enslavement, but truly voluntary commitment to that status is so rare as to be meaningless: it’s like if we were discussing horse racing, and someone offered their opinion, provided that the horses were actually unicorns. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the 19th C ever proposed keeping slavery in a “race-blind” fashion.
In theory, sure, but that wasn’t really a practical position in the antebellum US.
More moral courage than those who deny the problem, less than those who devote themseves to doing something about it?
Antebellum Louisiana had a complicated set of racial rules including tons of free blacks. Some of them where quite wealthy and owned slaves themselves. It wasn’t strictly a racial phenomenon in the pure sense of the word. It was based on law.
Most people know that Thomas Jefferson kept and slept with his slave, Sally Hemmings. What most people don’t know is that she was only 1/4 black and was also his ex sister in law. Their kids were only one eighth black and almost certainly appeared to be completely white yet they remained in slavery.
It was simply a matter of law at the time and that is a big hurdle for anyone to overcome once they are ingrained in the context they are brought up in including Mr. Jefferson himself.
Let’s see, my family was a Southern planter family (tobacco, not cotton) but did own slaves. So no, if I was alive back then, in my family, I would definitely not be an abolitionist.
I’d be soooooooo abolitionist. I’d be the most abolitionist nigra out in the fields getting my ass whipped.
Well if I was living in the US and knew where my meals were coming from without much worry and that I would have a place to sleep comfortably and keep warm I am sure I would have been an active abolitionist.
I would have been part of groups, supported efforts of those doing the real work and tried to convince others to help out however they could. I am an activist in a fairly passive way IRL and I would probably be the same back then. I would not be part of the Underground Railroad in slave territory but I would have lobbied for abolition. Helped the escapees get settled in the North and participated in community actions in the NJ & NY area.
Of course I am active in environmental groups and support many others and even as an 18 year old I chose to serve in Reagan’s Navy as I believe in the nation and believe we could end the cold war finally. Please note I chose the nice safe Navy though and not the Army or Marines. I was willing to volunteer and serve but I was not willing to commit to direct violence or likely harm to myself.
I hope that was an honest enough assessment. I hope you believe me.
Jim