Was The Union Perpetual?

Started by Shooterman, February 11, 2012, 10:58:55 AM

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Shooterman

Quote from: mdgiles on July 04, 2012, 10:11:44 AM
The Fugitive Slave Act used the power of the federal government to enforce slave law of slave states in free states. Neo Confederate is simply a term for those who attempt to justify the Civil War on the basis either of outmoded ideas about the Constitution, or on the basis of our current problems with an overweening federal government. In a way it also refers to historical revisionists, like those who despite the slavery clause in succession documents and in the Confederate Constitution claim the Civil War wasn't about slavery. As for free blacks who owned slaves, yes there was the occasion free black plantation owner , especially in Louisiana - which due to it's French background - was  case all to itself. However, often due to the difficulty in freeing slaves in the South, slaves were often family members. It was simpler to buy your wife and children and hold them as your property, than it was to go through the long drawn out process of freeing them. Besides all you had to do was make sure they were freed in your will, which was a much easier process.

It seems the thread has been hijacked, and the issue of slavery has little to do with whether the union is, was, or shall be perpetual. However, I shall endeavor in my poor methods to answer the call on this subject.

I propose a reading of; http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

Excerpt

The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).

In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).

Excerpt

Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.

To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.

The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.

In the same article, MD, read the story of William ( born April ) Ellison of South Carolina who became a very wealthy man owning many slaves.

You may also note at times, because free Blacks could not support themselves, they would partition to become slaves.

Quite frankly, MD, your argument doesn't necessarily hold water.

There's no ticks like Polyticks-bloodsuckers all Davy Crockett 1786-1836

Yankees are like castor oil. Even a small dose is bad.
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mdgiles

You do realize that Robert M. Grooms Is a revisionist Holocaust denier, and anti Semite correct? And I should accept any "facts" he presents as valid because? I also find it difficult to believe that the quarter of a million free blacks who lived in the South, most of whom lived in the Southern states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, would form a significant group of slave owners. Finding one or two blacks who actually were plantation owners, isn't what I would think of as representative. You wouldn't happen to have some reputable historians you could refer to? Especially considering that when you attempt to Google these people the only sources you find are from people who can really be "trusted" on black history - like the Klan. And I've already noted that the majority of whites didn't own any slaves. Remember, I asked why the vast majority of Southerners would even fight for the plantation owners. Besides although there were few actual slave owners, there were any number of people who depended upon the system of slavery: cotton brokers, shippers, slave traders, people who grew the crops to feed slaves, the manufacturers who provided them with clothing and equipment.
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!

Shooterman

Quote from: mdgiles on July 04, 2012, 12:03:37 PM
You do realize that Robert M. Grooms Is a revisionist Holocaust denier, and anti Semite correct? And I should accept any "facts" he presents as valid because? I also find it difficult to believe that the quarter of a million free blacks who lived in the South, most of whom lived in the Southern states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, would form a significant group of slave owners. Finding one or two blacks who actually were plantation owners, isn't what I would think of as representative. You wouldn't happen to have some reputable historians you could refer to? Especially considering that when you attempt to Google these people the only sources you find are from people who can really be "trusted" on black history - like the Klan. And I've already noted that the majority of whites didn't own any slaves. Remember, I asked why the vast majority of Southerners would even fight for the plantation owners. Besides although there were few actual slave owners, there were any number of people who depended upon the system of slavery: cotton brokers, shippers, slave traders, people who grew the crops to feed slaves, the manufacturers who provided them with clothing and equipment.

I'm sure you will find fault with Joseph E Holloway in The Black Slave Owners

http://slaverebellion.org/index.php?page=the-black-slave-owners

Or possibly.  Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 by Larry Koger, a black author.
There's no ticks like Polyticks-bloodsuckers all Davy Crockett 1786-1836

Yankees are like castor oil. Even a small dose is bad.
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mdgiles

Quote from: Shooterman on July 04, 2012, 02:34:16 PM
I'm sure you will find fault with Joseph E Holloway in The Black Slave Owners.
http://slaverebellion.org/index.php?page=the-black-slave-owners
From your link:
QuoteThe majority of urban black slave owners were women.  In 1820, free black women represented 68 percent of heads of households in the North and 70 percent of slaveholding heads of colored households in the South. The large percentage of black women slave owners is explained by manumission by their white fathers,  or inheritance from their white fathers or husbands.  Black women were the majority of slaves emancipated by white slave owning men with whom they had sexual relations.  Thirty-three percent of all the recorded colonial manumissions were mulatto children and 75 percent of all adult manumissions were females.
And this:
QuoteAccording to the federal census of 1830, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves in Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia.  The majority of black slave-owners lived in Louisiana and planted sugar cane.
Let's see 10,000 out of 4,500,000 slaves in the South. That's called reaching. That's a minuscule percentage
QuoteOr possibly.  Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 by Larry Koger, a black author.
I went here and checked:
Quotehttp://www.liveleak.com/view?i=23e_1241404707
Where they discussed Koger book. What's bothers me is over a period of 70 years he names an occasional example, but doesn't give overall figures. And he mentions as does Hollyway, the special circumstances that lead to them coming to own slaves. But getting back to the main question. I have no doubt that there were black slave owners. But some act as if they were this significant number of people, which some how makes the overwhelming examples of chattel slavery a "non issue". 
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!

Shooterman

Quote from: mdgiles on July 04, 2012, 03:07:45 PM
From your link:And this:Let's see 10,000 out of 4,500,000 slaves in the South. That's called reaching. That's a minuscule percentageI went here and checked:Where they discussed Koger book. What's bothers me is over a period of 70 years he names an occasional example, but doesn't give overall figures. And he mentions as does Hollyway, the special circumstances that lead to them coming to own slaves. But getting back to the main question. I have no doubt that there were black slave owners. But some act as if they were this significant number of people, which some how makes the overwhelming examples of chattel slavery a "non issue".

No one, to my knowledge has ever said it was a non issue. This terrible instrument of inhumanity, though, was practiced by those that should have known better, is my point.

Again, though, this has really nothing to do with whether the union was perpetual.
There's no ticks like Polyticks-bloodsuckers all Davy Crockett 1786-1836

Yankees are like castor oil. Even a small dose is bad.
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mdgiles

Quote from: Shooterman on July 04, 2012, 06:02:38 PM
No one, to my knowledge has ever said it was a non issue. This terrible instrument of inhumanity, though, was practiced by those that should have known better, is my point.

Again, though, this has really nothing to do with whether the union was perpetual.
Absent the issue of slavery, do you believe the question ever would have been raised? To ignore chattel slavery as pretty much the basis, of questions over the perpetual union, is to ignore the driving force behind the question. BTW, I've never held that the Union was perpetual, because there are procedures in place to change it, either a Constitutional Convention or the Amendment process. Every time we amend the Constitution, in no small measure, the union we were in the day before the amendment was ratified, no longer exists the day after the amendment is ratified.
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!