As you might suspect, this one comes from … wait for it … the gift that keeps on giving.
The worst thing to ever happen to the American Negro was the abolitionists. But for them ever agitating to free the Negro slave forthwith, the issue MIGHT have been resolved in such a manner so as to prepare the Negro for the duties and responsiblities of liberty and citisenship. Thus ensuring the bond of eternal friendship between the former slave and the master.
But alas, such was NOT meant to be. For had fate intervened, mighten not American liberty, and responsible citisenship been taught to these unfortunates? And mighten not this continent been spared the evils of “”civil war”" such as been unseen? And the resulting consequences?
And was not this to have been the greatest yet legacy? The handing down of the prepared ctitisenship responsibilities to a formerly subjugated race, properly readied for the awesome tasks of American liberty?
The whole world would yet be praising us for this deed, some 100/150 years later.
Those nasty abolitionists … and those wonderful, caring slaveholders … and fate intervening (why would fate have to intervene if slaveholders were so wonderful?)
Wouldn’t it be nice?
Oy!
If the war had not intervened, slavery would have grown stronger in the late nineteenth century, economically speaking, although not necessarily politically.
Eventually, the mechanization of agriculture would have eliminated the need for slaves in the cotton fields. Blacks continued to pick cotton into the 1930s in the South. I doubt that slavery would have survived given the fact that free labor would have been much more competitive outside the plantations.
A stronger argument can be made that the health and material standard of living of the former slaves suffered a sharp decline in the aftermath of abolition. The typical slave in the South had a life expectancy on par with the French in the antebellum era.
The life expectancy of blacks in the postwar era declined significantly under freedom.
1930′s? I remember driving to college back in the late 1980′s and passing hundreds of field hands in the cotton fields as I drove. Old times here are not forgotten, neither are old ways of doing things.
As I said on your front page, than can be cured:
New Evidence That Racism Isn’t ‘Natural’
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/new-evidence-that-racism-isnt-natural/263785/
Gary (as usual) tries to steer a moderate course, and (as usual) muddles it up. He observes, “the issue was not with the negros but the whites who thought they were doing Gods work.” I wonder if he sees an “issue” in the attitudes of generations of whites who believed chattel bondage was the will of God, endorsed by the Bible, and that maintaining the institution was itself “doing Gods work” — or at least, as Robert E. Lee believed, doing his Christian duty by submitting to God’s will on the matter.
I’ve never yet met an historian (Marxist or otherwise) who argued that Reconstruction worked as it should have when it came to establishing Freedmens’ political and economic status as citizens.There are many reasons for this, including the nation’s impatience with fighting a years-long insurgency in the South led by folks like Forrest and Hampton. Gary and Michael, of all people, ought to be able to recognize that.