alt.education

"Joe Irvin" wrote in message
news:fpcird$31a$1@news04.infoave.net...
>
> "Larry Hewitt" wrote in message
> news:fpai4i$ve$1@news04.infoave.net...
>>
>> "Joe Irvin" wrote in message
>> news:fpafmj$u7v$1@news04.infoave.net...
>>>
>>> "Bob LeChevalier" wrote in message
>>> news:6dgfr358sd40947nfpunn95213cpuiccqi@4ax.com...
>>>> "Joe Irvin" wrote:
>>>>>> What do you mean by "valid"? It can be done, as is evidenced by
>>>>>> history. It was considered "moral" then, and at the time of the
>>>>>> Civil
>>>>>> War, Southerners justified slavery on Biblical terms. So much for
>>>>>> absolute morality ...
>>>>>
>>>>>That is was done is what I meant by 'valid'. IMO, I don't think, even
>>>>>most
>>>>>Southerners, that owned slaves believed it was moral.
>>>>
>>>> On the contrary.
>>>>
>>>>>T Jefferson, a slave holder believed it was wrong.
>>>>
>>>> Jefferson was a rather exceptional person.
>>>
>>> New Orleans had a large ex slave population ... G Washington willed that
>>> his slaves were to set free after he died. There were slaves that owned
>>> land and worked their farms. I think most slave holders knew that
>>> slavery was immoral, but supported because slavery supported them.
>>>
>>
>> well, I dsagree.
>>
>> Even the constittuion counted slaves as less than "human", counting them
>> as 3/5 of a person.
>
> It was a compromise ... to get the Constitution ratified. Everyone knows
> there can be no 3/5 of a person.
>
It was not a compromise.

The 3/5 was for enumeration in the census, so there _can_ be 3/5 of a
person.

And the fact that even in the constitution blacks were counted as less than
a person shows that your "moral man" argument fails.

>> And laws throughout the country treated slaves as property, not people.
>
> True, but there were freedmen.
>

But even they were in danger.

Approaching the civil war a federal law was passed that allowed _anyone_ to
claim that a black person was an escaped slave, thus requiring their
arrrest. Often, even if they were truly escaped slaves, their :owner" could
not be found so they, and freedmen caught up in the net, were sold at slae
auctions.


>> Slaves were alloed abominable housing, poor food and diet, no medical
>> care other than what they could provide themselves, had families ripped
>> apart as children were sold to other slave owners, raped and beaten,
>> denied medical care, and denied equal legal rights with whites --- again,
>> treated as property rather than as a person.
>
> True, this happened and I'm not denying it. My argument was that Southern
> slave owners knew that owning slaves was immoral.


And my argument is that if they knew what they were doing to the slaves they
would have ameliorated their suffering with better housing, food, medical
care, kept families inteact, etc.

The fact that they continued to treat their slaves so abominally is clear
indicatioin of their lack of aempathy and sense of connection, required for
your "moral " feeling.

They needed the slaves to
> maintain there life styles and plantations so they pretended it wasn't
> immoral ...

They needed them as tools and treated them as tools --- in fact, they
treated them worse than their tools.

Plows, saws, wagins, shovels, etc were expensive and difficult t acquire.
Slaves were cheap and pelntiful, and more were produced virtually for free.

>the Southern churches backed this. \

The southern churches were very much in line with the plantation owners.

People in the North did the
> same ... they brought slaves over here to sell. It was a bleak time in US
> history.
>

yes

>>>>>It was economically profitable, at least at
>>>>>first, so they justified slavery ... using the Bible as you stated.
>>>>
>>>> Some justified it because it was profitable. But even those who did
>>>> not own slaves in the South supported slavery, and in the civil war
>>>> gave their lives to preserve it, and they weren't doing it for profit.
>>>
>>> I don't know if they supported slavery or they didn't want the North to
>>> tell them what to do ... maybe some of both.
>>
>> They supported slavery. Read the letter published by South Carolina
>> explaining why tey seceded.
>
> Sure they did, so did the whole country ... many of the slave trading
> ships were out of the North.
>

Not all in he north. And the slave raiders were ended by the sivil war.

>> The regular farmer/landowner had no
>>> personal interest in supporing the slave holders.
>>
>> Except that throughout much of hte south the "regular" farmer was not an
>> independet person, but was employed/in debt to the major plantation
>> owners
>
> I don't think this was the rule though ... I'm sure it happened.
>

It was very much the rule

For ex., in soutch carilina up til the war it was law that plantation owners
and other land owners were _requireds_ to carry a gun Sundays --- most
slaves had Sunday off and they were terrified that the slaes owuld spend
their free time organizing and revolting.

Note, though, that it was landowners only. Whites who did not own land were
feared, too, and so wre prohibited from carrying.


>> And they made tup the bulk of he confederate army. In south Carolina at
>> the tim, for ex., sl;aves made up more than half the population.
>
> I know that, I'm not arguing for slavery ... see above. The South didn't
> think it was a power of the Fed Govt to control what the States did
> domestically.
>

No no no no.

Again, read the statement of the SC convention explaining why they seceded.
States rights was not mentioned, it was all slavery. And not the economic
effects of ending slavery, but the social changes that it wouls entail..

> Wealthy
>> plantation owners were less than a fifth, the rest free white men, mostly
>> craftsmen, tradesmen, and journeymen. An army of only plantation owners
>> would have been very small.
>>
>> And when, for ex., Sherman made his march tothe sea through atlanta most
>> of the able bodied white men were elsewhere fighting leaving hte defense
>> of the state to their women.
>>
>>
>> Many in western No
>>> Carolina and eastern Tenn. supported the North.
>>>
>>
>> But the regions at that time were very sparsely populated.
>
> What does the size of population have to do with it ... my point is that
> some in the South didn't support the South.

And my points are:

1. you give too much credit to slave holders.
2. Slavery was _the_ political issue of the time.
3. SLavery was so imprtant to the south, and not just for economic reasons,
that they pushed in Congress for its expansion (see kansas nebraska act, f
ex..)
4.and your positing about the people in western NC an TN being against
slavery/secession is meaningless. No population ever goess 100% for
anything, and a small, unimportant region largely ignored by the rest of the
country has no influence on the rest of the region.

Larry

>>
>> Larry
>>
>
>