The Southern Argument for Slavery...

5fish

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I found a condense list of Southern Arguments for Slavery ... https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp


Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.

Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos. This would lead to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy. They pointed to the mob's "rule of terror" during the French Revolution and argued for the continuation of the status quo, which was providing for affluence and stability for the slave-holding class and for all free people who enjoyed the bounty of the slave society.

Defenders of slavery argued that slavery had existed throughout history and was the natural state of mankind. The Greeks had slaves, the Romans had slaves, and the English had slavery until very recently.

Defenders of slavery noted that in the Bible, Abraham had slaves. They point to the Ten Commandments, noting that "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, ... nor his manservant, nor his maidservant." In the New Testament, Paul returned a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and, although slavery was widespread throughout the Roman world, Jesus never spoke out against it.

Defenders of slavery turned to the courts, who had ruled, with the Dred Scott Decision, that all blacks — not just slaves — had no legal standing as persons in our courts — they were property, and the Constitution protected slave-holders' rights to their property.

Defenders of slavery argued that the institution was divine, and that it brought Christianity to the heathen from across the ocean. Slavery was, according to this argument, a good thing for the enslaved. John C. Calhoun said, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually."

Defenders of slavery argued that by comparison with the poor of Europe and the workers in the Northern states, that slaves were better cared for.
They said that their owners would protect and assist them when they were sick and aged, unlike those who, once fired from their work, were left to fend helplessly for themselves.

JAMES THORNWELL, a minister, wrote in 1860, "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other."
 

5fish

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I found this where General Longstreet adds to the Southern Argument for Slavery....

Link: https://acwm.org/blog/myths-and-misunderstandings-slaveholding-and-confederate-soldier/

Confederate General James Longstreet understood this when he rallied his troops before the Seven Days Battles in 1862. He told his men that the Yankees were determined to seize Southern land and property; as proof, he cited “one of their great leaders [who has] attempted to make the negro your equal by declaring his freedom. They care not for the blood of babes nor carnage of innocent women which servile insurrection thus stirred up may bring upon their heads.”

Certainly, many soldiers did not fight because they personally enslaved a person, but they did fight for a society predicated on slavery and against an invader they were convinced would destroy it. A soldier could be consistent in thinking his cause the defense of family, and the support of a slaveholding republic against abolitionist fanatics, at the same time.

Causes and motivations for the Confederate soldier cannot be separated into mutually exclusive categories of slavery, and other than slavery. It is likely Confederate soldiers would not have recognized the difference. The challenge is to see the ways that slavery, family, duty, liberty, faith, and nation were inextricably intertwined in the larger, complex worldview that inspired them.
 

Matt McKeon

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I agree with much of this post. Most of it didn't turn out to be true, of course, the premise of black inferiority and savagery being false. In the 1840s and 50s, the defense of slavery became more and more strident. Its a sociological truism that in homogenous groups, solutions tend to become more extreme, while in heterogenous groups, compromise is sought to reconcile differences. Slavery had become the one true faith and heresy became unthinkable and its defense absolute.
 

diane

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There's a lot of digesting to do here - thanks for all this information! I've always held that the ideology of eugenics, which influenced the state of California's education system into the late 1940s, takes heavily from the slavery ideology/theology. With eugenics, it was twisted even further than your inferiority makes you fit for slavery - let's see if people even lower can be improved enough to serve us. That's why I always recommend Rabbit Proof Fence, particularly Kenneth Branagh's part.
 

Matt McKeon

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There's a lot of digesting to do here - thanks for all this information! I've always held that the ideology of eugenics, which influenced the state of California's education system into the late 1940s, takes heavily from the slavery ideology/theology. With eugenics, it was twisted even further than your inferiority makes you fit for slavery - let's see if people even lower can be improved enough to serve us. That's why I always recommend Rabbit Proof Fence, particularly Kenneth Branagh's part.
I saw that film. Eugenics as a whole gives me the creeps.
 

5fish

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The end of Stephens Corner Stone speech... https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/05/in-defense-of-slavery/239719/

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Snip...


At the South, the interests and feelings of many non-property holders, are identified with those of a comparatively few property holders. It is not necessary to the security of property, that a majority of votes should own property; but where the pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the mass of them in feeling and interest from the property holding class, revolution and agrarianism are inevitable. We will not undertake to say that events are tending this way at the North.
 

5fish

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I've always held that the ideology of eugenics,
the premise of black inferiority and savagery
Here is a thread about Eugenics aftre the Civil war... Darwin's cousin stated it...

 

diane

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I saw that film. Eugenics as a whole gives me the creeps.
Yes, and it still affects some areas of our social services system. One of those insidious things! There was even some of it in slavery, when masters would buy 'breeding' females or couples hoping to produce better 'stock'. Uhg! This for thee, but not for me....
 

Matt McKeon

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Here is a thread about Eugenics aftre the Civil war... Darwin's cousin stated it...

Darwin himself thought his insight into evolution would decrease racism, since it proved that all mankind was a single species. He was profoundly antislavery as well. Of course racism, being irrational, can not be disproved by science.
 

Matt McKeon

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Yes, and it still affects some areas of our social services system. One of those insidious things! There was even some of it in slavery, when masters would buy 'breeding' females or couples hoping to produce better 'stock'. Uhg! This for thee, but not for me....
The Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY was the nexus for the disease of eugenics. How abruptly it came to a halt with the end of WWII.
 

diane

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Darwin himself thought his insight into evolution would decrease racism, since it proved that all mankind was a single species. He was profoundly antislavery as well. Of course racism, being irrational, can not be disproved by science.
No, there is nothing logical about racism. It's all in the mind. I could never understand the eugenics ideas of improving man by science and engineering. David Jordan, who was one of the founders of Stanford University, helped slide the thought into the curriculum, and thereby into the entire educational system of California.

The Eugenics Records Office in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY was the nexus for the disease of eugenics. How abruptly it came to a halt with the end of WWII.
Yes, that did indeed show where such ideologies could lead.

It wasn't until the 1970s when Mexican farm workers sued the state over forced abortion and sterilization that it came to a halt in California.
 

Matt McKeon

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No, there is nothing logical about racism. It's all in the mind. I could never understand the eugenics ideas of improving man by science and engineering. David Jordan, who was one of the founders of Stanford University, helped slide the thought into the curriculum, and thereby into the entire educational system of California.



Yes, that did indeed show where such ideologies could lead.

It wasn't until the 1970s when Mexican farm workers sued the state over forced abortion and sterilization that it came to a halt in California.
David Jordan: I had never heard of him, now I curse his name.
 

diane

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Jordan wasn't the first to advocate eugenics, that would be Darwin's cousin Francis Galton. (Think that's the name.) Galton wanted to apply Darwin's survival of the fittest theory to people and advocated marrying superior people to other superior people so that the lower class would be eliminated. Jordan, however, was the first to apply it to specific races. Naturally, his own was the one worth saving and the rest had varying degrees of worth. He was in a position as president of Stanford University to embed it into the educational system. This is part of the reason for California's unique rancheria system - no other state has it - which was supposedly to give Indians not on a reservation a piece of land to make a living, but was actually to destroy tribal unity (no one tribe had a rancheria, but a mix of unrelated peoples) and force assimilation, thereby 'improving' our race. He considered the Chinese to be possibly human and more intelligent, but Indians were totally useless creatures to be eliminated - in time, of course - from humanity's gene pool.
 

5fish

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Woodrow Wilson...anyone?
This link is all about the history of eugenics and the people in it... http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/531f81aa132156674b000209

You Ask ... You receive.... as Governor ... when was the law stuck down?

Wilson supported eugenics, including policies that would result in eugenic reform (Lombardo, 2008). In 1911, while acting as the governor of New Jersey, he signed a eugenic sexual sterilization bill into legislation (Trent, 1994). Under this legislation, criminals or adults considered to be ‘feeble-minded’ could be forced to undergo sexual sterilization (Trent, 1994; Lombardo, 2002). As part of enacting this legislation, Wilson was also responsible for appointing a board of examiners (Lombardo, 2008). These examiners were responsible for determining who ought to be sexually sterilized given the new legislation. The law was eventually struck down because it was deemed to be inhumane (Lombardo, 2008).

You asked more... http://www.ourgreatamericanheritage...clude-his-distorted-view-of-social-justice-2/

Wilson, like many other white men of the time, believed that African-Americans were inferior to whites. Unlike the others, Woodrow Wilson engaged in the science of eugenics as a way to justify his feelings of racism. He studied articles related to eugenics, he talked about his support of eugenics, and he wrote a number of articles supporting the twisted notion.

Not a rabid white supremacist, he was, however, so confident in the superiority of whites, that it seems he never questioned the morality of his giving speeches about social justice for others, while ignoring the plight of a struggling class of people in his own country.

Early 20th century America was a highly racist culture, and because of that, some past historians have let Wilson off the hook. Woodrow Wilson, however, used his political power to enact laws that turned his beliefs about race and eugenics into legislation. In 1907, Woodrow Wilson campaigned in Indiana for the compulsory sterilization of criminals and the mentally retarded; and in 1911, as New Jersey governor, he signed into law a similar bill.
 

diane

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Well, let's not stop there! Wilson's predecessor -Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on eugenics, breeding, race, intelligence got downright repulsive. The racial attitudes of the American presidency were that way starting with Hayes and were considered part of the progressive/populist movement in politics. It didn't start ending until Harding keeled over from a heart attack in California and his VP - Silent Cal - became president. Coolidge was a true Yankee - Vermont born, Congregationalist, New England education, Revolutionary war ancestors but no blue blood. Just folks!

This is a really interesting phase in the American presidency, by the way. Selected black leaders were sometimes invited to the White House as examples of black support for Jim Crow and other repressive government (state or federal) policies. This era was really a fit of twisted progressive policies. And, for those on the receiving end it was - sucks to be you!
 

Kirk's Raider's

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If a family consistintly breeds criminals or a man consistintly breeds children but won't support them then hats the harm of forces sterilization?
Kirk's Raiders
 

rittmeister

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If a family consistintly breeds criminals or a man consistintly breeds children but won't support them then hats the harm of forces sterilization?
Kirk's Raiders
  1. how many generations?
  2. who's to be sterilized? pontential moms who are dumb enough to fall for him?
i look forward for the sponsors of such a bill - i won't speculate on it, though.
 

O' Be Joyful

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Well, let's not stop there! Wilson's predecessor -Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on eugenics, breeding, race, intelligence got downright repulsive. The racial attitudes of the American presidency were that way starting with Hayes and were considered part of the progressive/populist movement in politics.
But, Wilson was the one to start kicking them out and put the remaining into caged officies.
 
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