From the gift that keeps on giving …
A poster sought to have a discussion concerning the following proposition: “Regardless of it’s level of involvement in the war, whether it was the primary cause as many believe, or just one issue of many, does that make slavery any less horrendous?”
The discussion that followed took a number of strange (but not unexpected) turns. However, a few observations stand out.
One … we’re all slaves today. Just ask John C. Hall, Jr.:
For those with a taste for the ironic, Mr. Hall’s a CPA.
Two … the idea that slavery was/is bad is simply a matter of opinion:
Apparently spelling is a matter of taste as well.
Third … slavery might just be a pretty good deal:
And that’s exactly how it worked, right?
You can’t make this stuff up.
One of my favorites, from the time when I actually used to tiptoe through that li’l cesspool, was the contention that anti-slavery types were overlooking the fact that what was being provided were room, board, clothing and health care; backed by the gift of good, hard, honest work. I heard more than one crow on about “cradle to grave care.” It’s a mantra for several of ‘em.
Just so long as you don’t call them “slavery apologists.” They don’t like that, at all.
They see no need to apologize.
I wish people with the above sentiments could transported Twilight Zone style to a large Mississippi cotton plantation circa 1850 for a lengthy time period where they would be field slaves. I wonder if upon their return they would still feel the way they do now on the subject of slavery? I suspect not.
As a friend of mine says, they all imagine that they’d be on the veranda, sipping mint juleps, not even some white dirt farmer struggling to survive.
It amazes me that people with these views exist, never mind publicly comment with opinions on how slavery, might, after all, not have been to bad. It stretches credulity that it also seems to be being put forward as a potential solution to some of today’s third world ills.
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The entire thread is quite revealing, and some of those folks wonder aloud why their “heritage” is under assault. Now that being said, alot of what I read in that thread echoes the words of the secessionists in 1860-1861, so at least some honesty was on display, however unintentional.
Here’s a great chestnut from that thread too: “If the South had agreed to an immediate emancipation prior to the war. just where would these people go?”
Why would they need to “go” anywhere? Weren’t the grand majority by 1860 naturally born folks who might, just might, have been deserving of being Americans?
Bummer thinks that we ought to ship all three out of the country on a slow boat to a 3rd world country and let them recruit to their hearts content. They’ll never be heard from again.
Bummer
I don’t know why people are amazed at this. Before free world-wide communications of the type we’re all using, talk like this wasn’t broadcast around the world. What’s new isn’t that it exists, but that we’re hearing what used to be private communications, much of which is . . . well, stupid. Calm down, situation normal.
I am not amazed that certain people think this way. I am intrigued that they so freely share those views in public.
Well in an online public setting.
Years ago when I ran a collection agency in Arizona (yup, that’s right!!), we had a term for people who owed really small bills and cursed liked sailors when you asked them to pay for it – Telephone Tough Guy(s). I think some of the same thing applies to the thread in question. The telephone shielded people from any sense of reality and so does the Internet. Now I could be wrong. People like John Hall might actually blabber like that in the town square. Who knows? But more importantly, who cares?? But it amazing to watch, like a six car pile up on a sunny afternoon.
This quote from the thread really caught my eye:
“Cruel Southern slavers, who were rare, were usually reported to the authorities by their neighbors, after which they were arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Some were executed.”
Some comments are just too good to not repeat. I’d like to see some proof of this, but we know that won’t be coming. Anyway, I’m sure the gifts will keep on coming……
You answered your own question. They aren’t at all embarrassed by their views and don’t give a rat’s ass if people for whom they have contempt don’t like them which was a characteristic of secessionists and pro-slavery forces n the antebellum period as well.
It’s the lack of self-awareness that’s remarkable. A relative of mine was doing grad work in psychology years ago, and gave a Rorschach (ink-blot) test to a profoundly disturbed patient. In reviewing the patient’s responses later, the psychologist mentoring my relative shook his head at one particular description of what the patient perceived in the blot. “Wow,” he said. “You may see that, but you don’t say that.”
These are the folks, and the group, who are constantly whinging that they’re being unfairly depicted by larger society as bigoted troglodytes on matters of race and culture, and willfully blind to the historical reality of the “heritage” they celebrate. And they profess to have no idea why people might think that.
The plain old “defenders” of the 19th century institution are bad enough. But my favorites are the ones who think that their tax rates are too high and therefore that they’re in the same situation as a field hand working sunup to sundown plucking cotton bolls for Massa 7 days a week, etc. I wasn’t aware that the Tax Code grabbed your kids or your wife and sold them to strangers 250 miles away or involved a periodic flogging with a cat-o-nine tails.
They obviously have no concern for the heritage that they are leaving behind (I am assuming they found like minded females willing to bare them children).
Jeez. After reading all that you’d think that the whites of the period would have been itching to be slaves themselves.
Back in the early 90′s I was on a list-serv for Civil War discussion. I joined because not being an academic it was difficult to find folks interested in talking about the American Civil War at any depth. The problem was those guys were on that list along with the ancestor worshiping clowns. I mostly avoid things like this now because I find it so damn depressing to smack my head against the same stupidity over and over and over.
I don’t know how you do it. I just want to open a vein.
What’s especially intriguing is that Dan Williams speaks in the present tense: “For the record we don’t whip our property…” Ummm…that’s reassuring, Dan. That, or there’s a rip in the time-space continuum of Dan’s world.
These people just want to feel so oppressed that they compare their modern day situation with one from the past. It shows the incredible lack of understanding the historical context of the past. It also reflects a romanticized view of the past in which these people see things from an elite viewpoint of the past and not from the bottom up. I sometimes get the feeling that they are not happy with the way historical research has delved into researching how about 97% of the people were in the past instead of the Great Man (Woman) type of history which prevailed for so long.
For the gentleman (Dan Williams) who believes the Bible doesn’t consider slavery wrong – Bible references that discourage slavery (rather than bond servants):
1 Timothy 1:10: “For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.”
Exodus 21:16: “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.”
He clearly did not do his research.