Slavery in the US

It is a racial issue because at the core, humans are tribal. We are willing to commit acts of barbarism toward people who don't look like us that we would never do to our own kind.

Slavery requires the slave holders (in the US, whites) to feel superior to those who are enslved (in the US africans). You could never whip your neighbors, if you believe they are like you. But if I convince them that they are bad, sub-human or inferior, you would mistreat them if it were to your advantage.

This same trait that allowed slavery, is responsible for the Nazi genocide, the trail of tears and Rwanda.

Doing barbaric acts against people simply because you convince yourself that they are inferior or deserving of abuse is the very definition of evil. Whether there is an economic benefit is rather irrelevant.

What was your question?

ebrown your opinion of slavery is that all slaves are mistreated and beaten.

Take cleaning ladies for example. They are usually illegal immigrants and get paid in cash, and often not very much. They are doing our own jobs cleaning up after us and managing our homes becaue we are either too lazy or don't have time. Their cheap labor is worth not cleaning it up on our own. We don't beat them or anything but they could be considered to be slaves because of their cheap wages.

So i ask you as i did in my earlier thread is giving up freedom to have a better life justified?

It is not slavery if the laborer is free to terminate the agreement at any time. The employer exercises no property rights over the employed. Whether or not it's exploitation or not might be another question, but that ain't slavery.

Re: Slavery in the US


There can be no "valid" reason for slavery. There can be rationalizations in the form of "economic" reasons or "cultural" reasons ("this is the way we've always run things"), but none of these are valid. No human has the right to enslave another human for economic gain. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution clearly says so. That amendment even covers indentured servitude, indicating that a person may not even become a slave voluntarily.

I have seen some very good responses, and I thank you for that. However, as I posted earlier, this is not a race issue question. To respond to some of the replies, slavery has taken place in one form or another throughout the world. Not all slaves were abused and beat. Some slaves were even allowed to "purchase" their freedom. Others yet were used to operate banks and to be teachers.

Edger, he did not have to pay for the surgery, the rope, the fuel, the matches, or to clean up the mess. Damned near socialism if you ask me.

Re: Slavery in the US


I've spent a good many years reading history and historiography. I know of no "research" which reinforces a suspect contention that slavery was established in the North American colonies for economic reasons, nor in the Windward Islands for that matter. That there was an economic cause and effect is not in dispute, rather it is the nature of that cause and effect which is questioned. The traditional view, which was formulated far too closely to the period immediately after slavery ended, and which is in large measure a "crypto-apologist" view, is that slavery was pervasive in the United States because of the economic advantages which it conferred. I could not agree less, and do not see that anyone has ever advanced compelling evidence to that effect.

When i was born, slavery had only been ended less than a century before. In terms of historical research, strong caveats are placed on any assertions about the comprehensive nature of an event, an era, an institution made so soon after--which is to say that people too close to an event make suspect witnesses. History is as replete as are newspapers with examples of individuals witnessing the same event, and producing divergent, sometimes radically divergent, accouts.

The importation of west African negroes for use as slaves in the Windward Islands (the long curve of islands which stretches from the east coast of Puerto Rico to the big island of Trinidad off the coast of South America) was a project of the Dutch. Modern Dutch historians are some of the best sources for documentation on the early history of black slavery in the "new world." The issue of black slavery is crucial, because in fact, virtually every other race on earth was carried, enslaved, to the Carribean to be used as slaves--including Chinese "coolies." These other experiments failed--the monoculture of sugar combined with the malarial fever the conquistadores brought to America from their wars in Italy to kill off virtually every population of slaves which was tried--only the west African negroes survived. The Dutch merchants spotted this early on, although they did not know the cause. What we know today is that the propensity to sickle-cell anemia in west African negroes made them proof against death from malaria--they contracted it, they suffered from the consequences for the rest of their lives, but it did not kill them. In the quaternary stage of the life cycle of the malaria plasmodium parasite, the organism colonizes the red-blood cells of the host organism. Those west African negroes who suffered from sickle-cell anemia were proof against the parasite because it could not colonize their red blood cells and continue the life cycle.

Therefore, the west African slave markets were developed to a high degree, and the infamous "middle passage" resulted from the trade routes favored by the slavers. In the Windward Islands, there was a monoculture--i.e., only one cash crop raised--in sugar. The work in the cane fields was brutal, and even without malaria, white bond servants could not endure in the subtropical climate of St. Kitts and Antigua and Barbados. The blacks "enjoyed" an additional advantage in being innured to the heat and the sun.

All of that explains why the slaves came almost exclusively from west Africa. But why slavery was used is the economic story. And that this labor source was economically efficient is the red herring drawn before the historical hounds. Free labor can be made to care about the volume and the quality of their work--slaves cannot, there being no incentive short of emancipation which is likely to consistently move them. But the owners of sugar plantations were absentee owners. They didn't live in the hot, noisome miasmas of the West Indies, they live in London, they lived in Amsterdam, they lived in Paris. Almost all early European attempts at colonization were failures, or near failures. Jamestown hung on by the skin of its collective teeth, and the Virginia Company was soon dissolved, the colony passing into royal control. In the Windward Islands, the only colonization by whites of any significance came from small planters and the agents of the absentee owners of the large plantations, along with local officialdom. When the powerful capitalists who set up the sugar operations in the Greater and Lesser Antilles counted their assets, they also numbered the many vested interests they owned--they owned the merchant companies which took trade goods to Africa to buy slaves, and then sold the slaves for a profit, even after buying molasses in the Islands. This they took back to Europe initially, but later it was taken to New England. There it was made into rum, and that along with more of the glass beads and cheap mirrors were used to begin the cycle all over again. Basically, the vested interests were buying slaves, and then selling them back to themselves in the person of their factors (the word means agent, therefore, a factory originally simply meant the place where a factor works), and then purchasing molasses from themselves, which they would then sell to themselves, in order to make rum, which they would purchase from themselves, in order to buy more slaves. This was the quintessence of vested interests, the more so because they usually also controlled the manufacturies which produced the glass beads and cheap mirrors.

But in North America, the white man could survive the labor in the pre-eminent monoculture there--tobacco. And sufficient people could be interested in colonization that many small holders came over. A Dutch merchant called at Jamestown in 1609. His slaves were near starvation, and he had lost enough people in the middle passage that he despaired of the investment. When a storm drove him north, he found a sanctuary on the Virginia coast. He tried to sell off his slaves--but without much success. They didn't look good, and most people didn't have ready cash to shell out. For most of the first century of English colonization of North America, the planters were largely uninterested in slave labor.

After the English civil wars, in 1660, Charles Stuart was restored to the English throne as Charles II. He had a lot of markers out--for a civil war his father had lost, before losing his head; for the 14 years that he, his mother, and his brothers and sisters were shabby-genteel royal moochers in France and the Low Countries; for the substantial loans advanced to him after Cromwell's death, and before the Restoration. But he had no source of income to repay people. Parliament barely gave him enough for the operation of his royal establishment, let alone a surplus. And his father had lost the first civil war, and then his head, because he tried to overreach himself for revenue, in the opinion of the Parliament which had executed him. Charles was too canny to create another such confrontation, so he negotiated with Louis XIV in secret for subsisdies to further his political goals, and he repaid his debts by giving away huge tracts of land in America.

One of those grants was to Admiral Penn, who had lent him sixteen thousand pounds for the expenses of his restoration and coronation. The grant which was made to repay this went to the good Admiral's son, William Penn, because the Admiral had gone to a reward of a different character. This became Pennsylvania. To George Monck, the single man most responsible for his restoration; Prince Rupert of Bohemia, his cousin who had been the dashing lealder of the Cavaliers on horse in the civil wars; and all of the other closest friends and supporters of the Stuarts, he gave the northern half of North America--to the Company of Gentleman Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay. The Hudson's Bay Company was history's most powerful venture capital operation--they had the power to treat with foreign Princes and Potentates, to make treaties and alliances, and to levy war in their own or the King's name. For which they were required to provide a mated pair of beavers and a black stag upon any such occassion as the monarch appeared in their territory. This was not paid until Queen Elizabeth II visited Canada in the 1970's, and the beavers immediately proved to the notables assembled that they were indeed a mating pair.

So how much more trivial seemed the grant of half of Virginia to Lord Fairfax, and the territory of the Carolinas to the rest of the creditors of the Stuarts? It was trifling in comparison . . . it seemed--as you see, it is very easy to misjudge of the significance of events if you live through them, or very near them.

The stage was now set for one of the most horrifying unintended consequences to have worked themselves out in the modern history of Europe. These new proprietors began public relations campaigns, with slick brochures and new low, low land prices to attract settlers. In what became North Carolina, this worked pretty well, as the coastal environment was sufficiently familiar for farming to thrive, and the northern portion of the grant was already filling up with small-holding tobacco farmers from Virginia. In South Carolina, however, it was not that simple. The hill country was not settled for another 60 years, and in the interim, someone needed to figure out what to do with the coastal regions, a lacey network of streams, rivers and ocean inlets. The solution was to produce indigo for sale in Europe, and rice to sell to slave owners in the Windward Islands to feed their human chattels. And in Virginia, slavery suddenly became "attractive" because it became the only way to compete with the new absentee landlords. With tobacco, as it was to be with cotton after the foundation of the United States, the monoculture quickly exhausts the soil. The solution in the 17th and 18th centuries was to abandon the old fields, and clear land for new fields. As a slave owner, even with the most reluctant of laborers, could accomplish this far faster than the small holder, the small holders began to disappear. A great many of them disappeared over the mountains to wilderness to become pioneers once more as had been their forebears.

A new system of vested interest now arose. Ambitious New England provided the South Carolina planters their cartage, and took their rice to the Windward Islands. There, they would purchase molasses and slaves. Back to the Carolinas, and soon Virginia and Maryland, to sell slaves, and to pick up indigo for sale and tobacco to be smuggled. Then back home to sell the molasses and pick up rum, to be sold and smuggled. Then off to England to sell, and Holland to smuggle. Finally, down to the African coast to pick up slaves, and restart the cycle. Everyone profited, except, of course, the poor unfortunates 'tween decks in the middle passage.

In Virginia, the cycle was somewhat different. As in the Carolinas, the rivers of Virginia allowed traders to sail right up to the warf of the plantation from which the tobacco would be loaded. The planters committed their cargo to a factor in London. The factor in London was the same old cheap goods & rum/slaves/molasses vested interests whom i have before mentioned. They could and routinely did rob the planters blind. They could and did sell the tobacco for whatever the market would bear while reporting much, much smaller profits to the planter. They would then fill the "wish lists" the planters had sent with the tobacco by buying the cheapest, shoddiest merchandise and reshipping it to Virginia. They could and did charge whatever that market would bear for those goods.

The bottom line in it all, is how much of a vested interest a rather large group of venture capitalists and merchants had in perpetuating slavery. Large in terms of a percentage of the investment and mercantile population. Very small in terms of the population of England, the Windward Islands and North America. In a Parliament as rotten as those which routinely sat from the Whig settlement of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 until the reform bill of 1832, these men weilded immense power. Members of Parliament were bought and sold as surely as any of the other commodities of the trade cycle of vested interests. Edmund Burke is the most celebrated example of a politician with a silver tongue for hire--although i don't believe his particular skirts were ever soiled with slavery.

So now we see that slavery came only gradually to North America, and that it only came and stayed because of the peculiarities of monoculture products in a trade cycle of vested interests.

Which lead us finally to the question, cui bono? The owners of large scale slave operations certainly benefited. Without a point of comparison, it is impossible to say with any certainty if they would have benefited in the same degree by employing hired labor. The investors and merchants of the vested interests certainly profited, and by extension, so did their placemen in Parliament, the office of the Secretary of State for the Southern Department (responsible for colonies) and the Lords of Trade (who actually adminstrered the colonies).

Leaving aside the obvious, i won't discuss an issue as silly as whether or not the slaves could be said to have benefited. What about the small holders? They certainly did not benefit--their production could never equal that of the slave-driven enterprises, there was little hope for them to rise beyond marginal profitability. What about local tradesmen, did they benefit? With slaves trained to do poorly what these tradesmen did well--iron mongery, carpentry, cooperage, rope walking, fulling, dying--they never rose above marginal profitability in their chosen métiers. Even the planters were not getting what they might, had they not been in the clutches of the vested interests, but the scale of their operations was such that although eternally in debt, they lived on the banks of the Rappahanock or the Pee Dee or the Ashely as though they lived in London. Did the aboriginal Americans benefit? Despite some tribes purchasing slaves, by and large, the effect on them was to be driven further west each year, as new land was opened up for first tobacco, and later, cotton--the old land left to run rank, and perhaps picked up at a bargain by a small-holder who could make a subsistence living raising corn and market garden products.

Did the people of the mid-Atlantic colonies (and later states) profit? The Quakers of Pennsylvania, for all of their unintentional hypocricty, piled up their wealth while refusing to deal in rum or human flesh. In New Jersey and New York, the large land-holders squabbled with their tenants and rack-rented them as much as they could, but they were not involved either in rum or human flesh. Ah, but New England . . . the canny merchants and seafarers there definitely benefited from this organized human misery--but once again, while a significant portion of those populations, they were but a small part of all New Englanders. But New England's many small industries puttered along, selling on margin and completely unable to break into the trade cycle of tobacco and cheap English manufactures.

Certainly, the environments of the regions of the South did not benefit. The fields exhausted, trees in wood lots and the ancient forests would be banded, cut down when dead, the brush slashed and burned, and a new crop put in. Within less than a decade, those fields would be abandoned for the green woods just across the hill.

After the Revolution, and thanks to the three-fifths formula, the politically powerful of the South exercised an enormous power in the Congress. They did their level best to block all efforts at a tarriff, because they continued the practice of mercantilism by buying European manufactured goods from the merchants who came to get the tobacco and cotton. Without protection, the New England and mid-Atlantic manufacturers depended upon the constantly expanded markets of immigrants to compete, and the bitterness just grew.

Certainly slavery was an economic boon--to a handful of people. It worked its misery directly upon the devoted brows of the Africans, and it kept Americans in their millions in the South impoverished through their inability to compete with the slave owners. It certainly kept the English, and Dutch and French vested interests happy. At the time of the turmoils which soon resulted in the American Revolution, the curmudgeonly wag of London, Samuel Johnson enquired: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" In view of the provenance of the slave culture in the Windward Islands and North America, that is a particularly digusting bit of hypocricy by someone claiming to condemn hypocricy.

Certainly, someone somewhere always benefits from slavery.

Re: Slavery in the US


The small holders of southern New England (Mass. Ct, RI) benefited more than has been admitted, mostly I the sale of pork and beef. The trade was out of Boston in the 17th century but increasingly through Newport and New London in the 18th century. Most of this was hauled to the Bahamas where it was redistributed. Most of the New England economy was in reciprocal exchange (see Clark Rural Capitalism) but taxes and certain other debts had to be payed in species and the sale of a half dozen pigs or a cow annually would accomplish that. There were a number of trading companies, basically associations of local elites who handels this generally fronted by a prominent merchant, Trumbull, Shaw, Brown. These guys also dabbled in slaving to a small degree.

Yes, Acq, but the small holders of New England were likely simply selling to someone else's factor. I don't say they knew or didn't know the destination of their livestock--whether or not they did, and at that time slavery was legal throughout the colonies, it is certain they formed no vested interest. That is crucial, because the institution was aggressively pushed and it's continuation formed a critical "leg" in the trade routes of those with vested interests.

Ralpheb - under what conditions would you agree to become a slave?

Well, I see we have some newer responses to this message. Let me respond. First and foremost, I never once condoned slavery. I feel that the taking of a persons freedom for personal gain is wrong. It is very important to read the questions and the statements completely.
I will respond to some previous statements. Lynching was never ever ever a slave issue. Lynching has been strongly associated with racism. Rascism does not equal slavery in world history. Lynching has been used in the US since its birth as a way of some people taking the "law" into their own hands. Many people were lynched for cattle rustling, horse stealing etc. People only want to associate lynching with slavery but there is no correlation that slaves were lynched because they were slaves. Blacks were lynched in the American south because they were black. If a black from the North went to the south he had the same chance of being lynched as a southern black. Also, most of the lynchings took place AFTER slavery was abolished.
To answer Green witch's question. If I was forced to be a slave it would be during Greek or Roman rule. As long as I wasn't a Christian of course:)
I hope that answers some questions and clarifies some issues. And yes there has ligitement historical research that discusses slavery as an economic means.

Well, I see we have some newer responses to this message. Let me respond. First and foremost, I never once condoned slavery. I feel that the taking of a persons freedom for personal gain is wrong. It is very important to read the questions and the statements completely.
I will respond to some previous statements. Lynching was never ever ever a slave issue. Lynching has been strongly associated with racism. Rascism does not equal slavery in world history. Lynching has been used in the US since its birth as a way of some people taking the "law" into their own hands. Many people were lynched for cattle rustling, horse stealing etc. People only want to associate lynching with slavery but there is no correlation that slaves were lynched because they were slaves. Blacks were lynched in the American south because they were black. If a black from the North went to the south he had the same chance of being lynched as a southern black. Also, most of the lynchings took place AFTER slavery was abolished.
To answer Green witch's question. If I was forced to be a slave it would be during Greek or Roman rule. As long as I wasn't a Christian of course:)
I hope that answers some questions and clarifies some issues. And yes there has ligitement historical research that discusses slavery as an economic means.