A teacher hangs a BLM flag at a school named for a Confederate general. Now she's under investigation

WuWei · 2021-05-26T13:22:18.408Z

I’m not talking about former slaves.

WuWei · 2021-05-26T13:23:00.054Z

Jezcoe:

WuWei:

Jezcoe:

WuWei:

Jezcoe:

The war didn’t erase the wealth that was built up by slave labor.

Too broad.

Explain

It erased a lot of it in the south.

And it erased a lot of wealth in the North. A ton of capital on Wall Street was tied to slavery.

My response is boohoo.

What it didn’t erase was the previous decades and the enormous growth that the country saw. The US would not have grown like it did nor would have industrialized like it did without cotton, and cotton relied on slavery.

The abuse of that labor pool continued into post Reconstruction with sharecropping arrangements.

I will agree with that.

PurpnGold · 2021-05-26T13:23:06.447Z

WuWei:

I’m not talking about former slaves.

You missed my point. Plantation owners traded slave labor for paid labor.

Jezcoe · 2021-05-26T13:23:45.533Z

PurpnGold:

WuWei:

I’m not talking about former slaves.

You missed my point. Plantation owners traded slave labor for paid labor.

Slave labor for barely paid labor.

WuWei · 2021-05-26T13:23:52.478Z

PurpnGold:

WuWei:

I’m not talking about former slaves.

You missed my point. Plantation owners traded slave labor for paid labor.

And land was confiscated. Taxes levied forcing the selling of more land.

zantax · 2021-05-26T13:26:34.197Z

PurpnGold:

zantax:

What benefit did it provide prior to the war? Slavery is a poor economic choice. More wealth would have been generated by paying labor to produce cotton. Choosing slave labor over free labor is precisely why the south lost, why they were too poor to win.

Slavery made the USA and economic power and it showed no signs of slowing down leading up to the civil war.

No, slavery held us back economically. Do you really want to argue slavery is a better system than paid labor for generating wealth? I don’t think slaves were very good consumers.

WuWei · 2021-05-26T13:28:39.557Z

zantax:

PurpnGold:

zantax:

What benefit did it provide prior to the war? Slavery is a poor economic choice. More wealth would have been generated by paying labor to produce cotton. Choosing slave labor over free labor is precisely why the south lost, why they were too poor to win.

Slavery made the USA and economic power and it showed no signs of slowing down leading up to the civil war.

No, slavery held us back economically. Do you really want to argue slavery is a better system than paid labor for generating wealth? I don’t think slaves were very good consumers.

That’s silly.

zantax · 2021-05-26T13:30:43.667Z

WuWei:

zantax:

PurpnGold:

zantax:

What benefit did it provide prior to the war? Slavery is a poor economic choice. More wealth would have been generated by paying labor to produce cotton. Choosing slave labor over free labor is precisely why the south lost, why they were too poor to win.

Slavery made the USA and economic power and it showed no signs of slowing down leading up to the civil war.

No, slavery held us back economically. Do you really want to argue slavery is a better system than paid labor for generating wealth? I don’t think slaves were very good consumers.

That’s silly.

Is it? Slavery was an enormous waste of human capital. How many potential black Edison, Fords and Franklins died as slaves?

zantax · 2021-05-26T13:32:01.215Z

It always amuses me when people start extolling the economic superiority of slavery, in 2021 no less.

Jezcoe · 2021-05-26T13:52:08.029Z

zantax:

It always amuses me when people start extolling the economic superiority of slavery, in 2021 no less.

Recognizing that the wealth of the nation was built in the 1800’s in large part by slave labor does not equal “extolling the economic superiority” of it.

zantax · 2021-05-26T14:15:23.865Z

Jezcoe:

zantax:

It always amuses me when people start extolling the economic superiority of slavery, in 2021 no less.

Recognizing that the wealth of the nation was built in the 1800’s in large part by slave labor does not equal “extolling the economic superiority” of it.

When you refuse to admit it held us back, it is.

Jezcoe · 2021-05-26T14:54:43.680Z

zantax:

Jezcoe:

zantax:

It always amuses me when people start extolling the economic superiority of slavery, in 2021 no less.

Recognizing that the wealth of the nation was built in the 1800’s in large part by slave labor does not equal “extolling the economic superiority” of it.

When you refuse to admit it held us back, it is.

It held the south back from the industrialization that the North saw.

Jefferson wrote about it.

In 1857 a non Slaveholder guy from North Carolina named Hinton Helper wrote “The Impending Crises of the South” in which he argued that the landed gentry in the south were sucking up all of the economic oppurtunities and creating a class of poor white. He talked of the evils of slavery as one of class, not race.

Now before we think he was some woke dude… he was virulently racist… even for the time… pretty bad.

The response to that book was for the South to outlaw it and to block John Sherman from taking the Speaker of the House position because of his endorsement of Helper’s work.

What I find really frustrating about the issue of slavery during this time period is that there are plenty of examples going back to the founding where they wrote about how slavery was not good. Quite a few of those authors even owned slaves. Yet they did nothing about it and in later decades slavery was expanded.

As far as I can tell one of the primary reasons that it wasn’t abandoned was because they didn’t know what to do about a bunch of free blacks just living their life… being free… going wherever they wanted. That they didn’t want to think about.

Recognizing these facts about the period does not mean that it is an endorsement for the economic superiority of slavery.

It is what happened.

Borgia_dude · 2021-05-26T20:16:38.499Z

Ben_Natuf:

of course it did, and then the entire country bled out 600k lives to end it. paid in full

A bit odd how other countries were able to peacefully end slavery yet ours had to go to war. I’m not sure that should be a point of pride.

Ben_Natuf · 2021-05-26T21:44:23.532Z

if you read my other posts you’d see i feel the same. could have been done better by both sides.

TheRedComet · 2021-05-26T22:58:22.351Z

I don’t think it was possible for it to be resolved peacefully here.

It was a clash of societies and civilizations.

The pre war south’s entire societal structure was built on slavery. If the “peculiar institution” ended, it would fall apart. And they knew that. It went far beyond just the “act” of enslavement. The Ancien South’s entire society was built on top of it.

There was no other way it was going to end but with violence. Too many principled (morally warped principles, but principles nonetheless) men were involved.

WuWei · 2021-05-27T00:47:21.058Z

Borgia_dude:

Ben_Natuf:

of course it did, and then the entire country bled out 600k lives to end it. paid in full

A bit odd how other countries were able to peacefully end slavery yet ours had to go to war. I’m not sure that should be a point of pride.

Did they?

Ben_Natuf · 2021-05-27T14:22:08.527Z

i’m not sure. if trade laws had been changed allowing export of raw cotton instead of only finished goods, and if plantation owners could have made a profit that would sustain employment over slavery it may have turned the tide. it would have been a slow process, but it may have been enough that good people would have seen a way to survive without it. oh, i know, people will still say the wages would have been meager, but i don’t see a lot of difference between that and the industrial sweat shops that gave rise to the union movement.

Jezcoe · 2021-05-27T15:06:43.672Z

Ben_Natuf:

if trade laws had been changed allowing export of raw cotton instead of only finished goods,

There were no such trade laws in place.

By 1850 over 50% of all of the value of US exports was raw cotton… mostly to England.

There were tariffs involved, the one that was most hated was the 1828 Tariff of Abominiations. But that tariff had been scaled back over the decades. The Tariff of 1842 saw really low tariff rates and with the Warehousing act it was basically an era of free trade.

In 1857 the tariff rates were set even lower. But after the Panic of 1857 calls for more protectionist tariffs happened. That was the Morrill tariff and that only passed because the South had left the Union.

Ben_Natuf · 2021-05-27T16:10:13.745Z

hmmm… odd thing. i do recall reading in historical tomes about this. i do recall that trade laws and agreements pretty much forced plantation owners to sell to northern industrialist for export of finished goods even though they could get more money for it elsewhere. the arrangement kept southern owners cash poor and enriched northern industrialists.

but i see no support for this now. I concede, I was ill informed.

Jezcoe · 2021-05-27T16:11:23.241Z

Ben_Natuf:

hmmm… odd thing. i do recall reading in historical tomes about this. i do recall that trade laws and agreements pretty much forced plantation owners to sell to northern industrialist for export of finished goods even though they could get more money for it elsewhere. the arrangement kept southern owners cash poor and enriched northern industrialists.

but i see no support for this now. I concede, I was ill informed.

The Lost Cause myth is quite pervasive.