Georgia
Here’s an excerpt from Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750-1860 on the “exploitation” of poor Whites by the planter class:
“Cultivating Race argues that nonelite Whites in Georgia not only benefited from the rise of white supremacy but pushed hardest to enact legislative changes to make Georgia conform to the tenets of the ideology. White supremacy provided slave owners with an argument to counter the growing assault on slavery by northern abolitionists, but it also provided nonelite whites with a rationale to shape slavery in line with their interests.
Contrary to depictions of white laborers and yeomen as subordinates manipulated or oppressed by their social and economic superiors, nonelite white men actively sought to protect their economic interests. By emphasizing both elite and nonelite white men as agents of change, this study highlights class divisions over issues of race and citizenship. The vast majority of nonelite white men in Georgia supported the institution of slavery, even in the late antebellum era, when rampant speculation inflated prices and placed slave ownership well beyond their means. But they also believed in republicanism and the revolutionary ideal of the equality of all white men. Cognizant that their numerical advantage provided them leverage to shape social policy and influence political debate, nonelite white men pushed for reforms that democratized slavery.”
The poor Whites may not have been deliberately exploited, and class antagonism may not have been present, and and Whites may have shared an interest in maintaining White supremacy after a Black population had been introduced, but the fact remains that unrestricted slave immigration was bad for non-elite Whites in various ways:
1. Diseases like hookworm that came over from Africa with the slaves.
2. Military efficiency impaired. In the 1715-1717 Yamassee war, majority White South Carolina was able to defeat a coalition of south eastern tribes without outside assistance. In the 1760-1761 Cherokee war, majority Black South Carolina needed royal assistance defeat a single tribe – and settlers on the frontier paid the price. During the Revolution, Georgia and South Carolina were devastated by successful British invasion and occupation, unlike New England where a large White population provided a large militia.
3. On the islands, the economic toll on non-elite Whites can be seen in the fact that the White population actually declined in numbers during the 18th century.
1.) In the antebellum era, the health of White Southerners compared favorably with Northerners and Europeans. I want to say the average slave on a Southern plantation lived longer than a contemporary Italian. There was a precipitous decline in the health of White Southerners after the abolition of slavery.
2.) You’re comparing apples and oranges.
The American Revolution started in Massachusetts. It was really the Yankee Revolution. The Southern and Mid-Atlantic colonies were much less enthusiastic about the Revolution. Georgia and South Carolina were two of the most reluctant colonies to join the Revolution. Cornwallis invaded the South because of the strength of the local tories.
3.) The islands are in the tropics whereas the area from Miami to Baltimore has a sub-tropical climate.
What evidence is there that poor white Georgians of the mid-eighteenth century were concerned about equality, or that they believed in “the revolutionary ideal of the equality of all white men”? I think this a pretty good example of a historian’s projecting the obsessions and predilections of the modern era onto the past. The fact is, “equality” didn’t matter all that much to poor whites of that era, and “the revolutionary ideal of equality” had nothing at all to do with the Revolutionary War. It was born out of Lincoln’s war propaganda on the fields of Gettysburg.
The writer is a professor of African American studies which makes me skeptical. Even if his data and interpretations are correct, his conclusions are about Georgia only.
Plain Folk’s Fight: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia
http://www.amazon.com/Plain-Folks-Fight-Reconstruction-Georgia/dp/0807829633
In an examination of the effects of the Civil War on the rural Southern home front, Mark V. Wetherington looks closely at the experiences of white “plain folk”–mostly yeoman farmers and craftspeople–in the wiregrass region of southern Georgia before, during, and after the war. Although previous scholars have argued that common people in the South fought the battles of the region’s elites, Wetherington contends that the plain folk in this Georgia region fought for their own self-interest.
Plain folk, whose communities were outside areas in which slaves were the majority of the population, feared black emancipation would allow former slaves to move from cotton plantations to subsistence areas like their piney woods communities. Thus, they favored secession, defended their way of life by fighting in the Confederate army, and kept the antebellum patriarchy intact in their home communities. Unable by late 1864 to sustain a two-front war in Virginia and at home, surviving veterans took their fight to the local political arena, where they used paramilitary tactics and ritual violence to defeat freedpeople and their white Republican allies, preserving a white patriarchy that relied on ex-Confederate officers for a new generation of leadership.
“Abolitionists are right when they say that there are thousands and tens of thousands of people in Georgia who do not own slaves. A very large portion of the people of Georgia own none of them. In the mountains there are but a few of them; but no part of our people is more loyal to race and country than our bold and hardy mountain population, and every flash of the electric wire brings me cheering news from our mountain-tops and our valleys that these sons of Georgia are excelled by none of their countrymen in loyalty to their rights, the honor and glory of the commonwealth.
They say, and well say, this is our question: we want no negro equality; no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own, and, as one man, they would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. They will tell you, ‘When we choose to abolish this thing (slavery), it must be done under our direction, according to our will. Our own, our native land shall determine this question, and not the Abolitionists of the North.’ That is the spirit of our freemen.”
– Sen. Robert Toombs
Hunter,
What is the house you are using in your banner?
Not sure.
It’s Oak Alley where Interview With The Vampire was shot.
The Fiery Trial chronicles how Lincoln’s position on slavery changed during his life, as he witnessed slavery in his early life, growing up in Kentucky and Indiana. He occasionally dealt with issues of slavery in his law practice in Illinois. The book also discusses Lincoln’s position on slavery in the context of his political career. Lincoln was a moderate, attempting to bridge the gap between the Radical Republicans and conservative Democrats, including those in the slave-holding states, who he hoped would choose preserving the Union over steadfastly defending slavery.[1] Lincoln initially supported the idea of voluntary colonization of freed blacks to Africa, a stance supported by politicians at the time.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Foner
“no part of our people is more loyal to race and country than our bold and hardy mountain population, and every flash of the electric wire brings me cheering news from our mountain-tops and our valleys”
Poor and middle class folk are very loyal. They were TOO loyal to the immense-wealth-creating (for a few) Golden Circle System that was importing and breeding more and more “diversity.”
Very loyal, bold and hardy, but not very wise.
“Georgia and South Carolina were two of the most reluctant colonies to join the Revolution.”
– Wrong. Charasmatic South Carolina revolutionary leader Christopher Gadsden for example, was often called the “Sam Adams of the South”. Charleston was as much a hotbed of the Independence Movement as Philadelphia was.
“Cornwallis invaded the South because of the strength of the local tories.”
– And guys like Marion proved what a foolhardy assumption that was.
The American Revolution was a civil war in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
“I want to say the average slave on a Southern plantation lived longer than a contemporary Italian…”
…because it was necessary to take care of those immense-wealth-producing human livestock. The health of poor, non-slave-owning whites was generally worse than the slaves.
Yes, Francis Marion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion
He was a slave owner, and said to have raped his negresses regularly — and he led a biracial force against the British.
Booth guy was an inside job of Lincoln repatriation of slaves.
And the good guys won.
It was the single worst decision ever made in Southern history.
No, that would be, not picking your own cotton.
As Toombs said, we could have ended slavery on our own terms and dealt with the negro at our leisure with our own government.
The fatal mistake was participating in the American Revolution and chaining ourselves to the Union afterwards.
I agree with HW – our worst decision was joining the Union. 313Chris, did you not read the history of colonial GA that both HW and I have posted on? The plantation system worked for Dixie. What didn’t work was the Union.
But it didn’t. The plantation system worked the same way Reaganomics worked. Most of the wealth was captured by a few people at the top.
In every other Western country, the majority of wealth was captured by a few people at the top, and it is still that way today.
Slavery wasn’t synonymous with plantations. The typical slaveowner in the South owned a few slaves. The planters were a small minority.
The closest approximation to the WN ideal in antebellum America was Vermont which was almost 100% white and which had the “fairest” class structure due to the lack of a coastal oligarchy.
“But it didn’t. The plantation system worked the same way Reaganomics worked. Most of the wealth was captured by a few people at the top.”
The exact same can be said of the system of industrial capitalism that prevailed in the North.
The fact is, every economic system, from the dawn of history to today, has been based on the frank exploitation of one class by another class. Marxists call this injustice. I, along with Calhoun, call it civilization.
@ Hunter
There was sooo much good cheap land in the South, anyone with a work ethic, and good health & good luck could look forward to making a good living. There was always jealousy and there always will be jealousy, but, for the most part everyone got as much as they were able to get.
I look at the homes and property my ancestors owned, they may have not had modern appliances, but they generally owned well built brick & frame homes on nice rolling well watered land. I wonder how much we have progressed in some ways. My dear old grandmother, called them the bad old days, but, really they were not all that bad. What I’ve seen of the Southern States it all seems to be about the same…or was the same.
The exact same can be said of the system of industrial capitalism that prevailed in the North.
Yes, and you will notice I didn’t deny it. Every criticism of the South is not an endorsement of the North.
The fact is, every economic system, from the dawn of history to today, has been based on the frank exploitation of one class by another class. Marxists call this injustice. I, along with Calhoun, call it civilization.
False is broad strokes.
1) There are different species of capitalism. There is a capitalism of production and a capitalism of exploitation, extraction and parasitism.
The Southern oligarchs are more akin to today’s billionaires who made their money repackaging default credit swaps than to Henry Ford or any productive genius.
One of Ford’s innovations was paying the working man a decent wage for among other reasons so he could afford to buy a car and other goods. Paying the working man a decent wage had multiplier effects across the community. Ford created wealth that rippled across society.
The Southern oligarchs reversed Ford’s model. Their approach was to pay no wage. What is slavery if not extreme cheap labor? It looks a lot the Wal Mart model, no?
2) Marx did not discover economic injustice. Fascism contains a strong critique of the parasitical forms of capitalism. So does Christianity especially the Catholic strains. The ancients wrote about wealth inequality. Aristotle cited it as a factor that leads to unstable societies.
This seems like a patently obvious conclusion to draw- non-elite Whites (Po’ white trash) would jump at a chance to be ontologically better than any one, esp. one who is not of the race of the elite class- i.e., their racial brethren.
Sometimes, the obvious is just so…. well, obvious!
You forgot to mention that one of Henry Ford’s innovations was bringing blacks to the North to bust unions.
Slave labor wasn’t cheap. It was reliable.
The typical slave didn’t become profitable until around the age of 27 in a world where the average life expectancy was 35. The average return on investment on a slave was around a 10% profit.
Under slavery, all the costs of using slave labor were privatized. In the free labor system, the costs of crime, healthcare, education and social welfare are unloaded onto society.
Walmart’s employees are on Medicaid and foodstamps. The slaveowner, not society, paid for the healthcare and food of the slaves, and was responsible for settling domestic disputes as well.
When we choose to abolish this thing (slavery), it must be done under our direction, according to our will.
Typical Southern weasel, trying to bluster his way out of a tight spot. A breed without honor.
Henry Ford, inventor of the assembly line mode of production, in which man was finally and completely reduced to nothing more than a cog in a machine. Who was the greater slave: the black artisan at Monticello, or the white worker whose function was nothing more than to turn a screw, day in, day out, for years and years?
John, why are you here? Why don’t you go start an anti-Southern website?
“Who was the greater slave: the black artisan at Monticello, or the white worker who’s function was nothing more than to turn a screw, day in, day out, for years and years?”
– An utterly stupid question. The black was property, legally bound to his owner, in spite of whatever pretty occupation you assign to his condition, and the white worker was an employee, free to leave if he chose to.
Bonaccorsi is exactly correct — you Southerners are truly a breed without honor.
STATES’ RIGHTS VERSUS WORLD POLITICS
The defenders of the South always frame their arguments in terms of state’s rights and the constitutionally guaranteed right to secede from a compact that no longer suits them. Theoretically these arguments have considerable merit. But they always ignore the realities of world politics. The American republic was very young and the European powers, particularly the British, had tried before to regain control of it. The British had almost succeeded in the war of 1812, failing only because of: (1) the defeat at New Orleans and (2) their preoccupation with Napoleon Bonaparte in Europe. Both the British and the French had considered intervening on the side of the South, only to be deterred by the threat of the Russian Czar to intervene on the side of the North.
Southern independence would have made the United States ripe for European intervention. The various powers could have sided with either North or South as their various interests dictated. The French were only evicted from Mexico in 1867 shortly after the end of the war. General William Tecumseh Sherman had warned that the U.S. could become another Mexico if the rebellion succeeded. The purchase of Alaska probably would have been prevented as the Russian Czar would not have known who to sell it to, north or south. All the pre-war difficulties of states going slave or staying free would have reignited – and the decision of various territories to go Confederate or Federal could easily have reignited the war.
All these realities of the time are washed aside by Southerners who wish to debate endlessly about the eternal Constitution and the holiness of states’ rights. These people also ignore that the institution of slavery was obsolete and a distinct impediment to an emerging industrial economy. The United States were not going to rise to industrial prominence if slaves continued to pick cotton while singing “Dixie”.
The south was a thing of the past, even in 1861. It is understandable that southerners resented their way of life being swept aside. No one can hold that against them. It is equally undeniable that negative consequences did flow from southern defeat. Federal power was expanded and states’ rights were curtailed. Reconstruction, in particular, was a disgrace. The radical Republicans, exemplified by Thaddeus Stevens, were a blot upon the land. Jewish carpetbaggers and other riff-raff preyed upon the south and newly liberated slaves became pawns in the hands of skilled manipulators. The impeachment of Andrew Johnson for allegedly “thwarting the will” of Congress was a farce.
No one can deny the justice of these complaints. But had the south won, the United States today might very well look like a British northwest, a French southwest and God only knows what else. It is time to stop singing Dixie and objectively analyze reality.
THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
The great Civil War, or the War Between the States if you prefer, was a very bloody and unpopular affair. The casualties were enormous. Over 110,000 Irish and over 170,000 German immigrants to the United States were kidnapped, or drafted, into the Union armies. In many cases, the immigrants were forced to sign an “X” next to their names under threat of deportation back to Europe. Desertion was a huge problem in both the Northern and Confederate armies. This was aggravated in the South by the desperate lack of food for the Confederate army. The union naval blockade and the cutting off of Texas cattle by Union control of the Mississippi river were creating a desperate food situation for Robert E. Lee. During his invasions of Pennsylvania, his army “requisitioned” huge quantities of food and livestock from local farmers. They were “paid” in Confederate bonds which became valueless after the war. Thus, when Sherman began his famous “scorched earth” march through Georgia, there was widespread sentiment in the North that the South was merely getting a well-deserved dose of its own medicine.
The South was also suffering from the virtual destruction of its economy through the cutting off of the cotton trade with England. The British, interestingly enough, got their cotton during the war from the Arab cotton farmers of Palestine. Palestinian cotton exports multiplied exponentially during the war. The armies of the Confederacy plundered their own civilians as mercilessly as the Union. They had little choice, given the Union blockade. Conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps have always been a sore issue in the war’s conduct. The Union hung the commandant of the infamous Andersonville camp, a Swiss immigrant named Wirth. The Union ignored that Sherman had destroyed all the farms in his march, making Wirth’s feeding the prisoners impossible. Conditions for the Confederate prisoners in Union hands were just as bad. The North, however, had no food shortage to deal with.
Reconstruction was an abominable affair. The radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, put it to the South mercilessly. Newly liberated slaves murdered and raped until the Ku Klux Klan put an end to it. Corrupt carpetbaggers, many of them Jewish, preyed upon a defeated people and used newly enfranchised blacks as a means to their ends. The Constitution was prostituted and the disastrous Fourteenth Amendment rammed through. Despite these abuses, the Union had been saved. The political balkanization of the United States had been prevented. The European powers were denied the opportunity to play one state against the other and interfere with the western expansion of the U.S. Slavery was abolished and the old problem of Free State or slave state that had plagued the country before the war became moot.
Many arguments have been made over whether the war was “necessary”. No one can ever say. What can be said is that all efforts to compromise the issues that led to the war had failed. One further point needs to be made. Neither the North nor the South believed in the equality of blacks. Lincoln had stood unreservedly for white supremacy before the war. In his Senatorial debates with Stephen Douglas in Illinois, Lincoln had stated that under no conditions would he support putting blacks into a position of social or political equality with “the superior white race”. During and after the war, Lincoln devised many unsuccessful plans for expelling blacks from the United States. These plans usually involved sending blacks to the island of San Domingo or to places like Panama or various British imperial possessions. Lincoln was assassinated before any of these plans could be seriously considered. Moreover, the opposition of the radical Republicans, who wanted to use the freed blacks for political purposes, would probably have vetoed the plans. Lincoln, like previous presidents such as Andrew Jackson, was a lifelong member of the American Colonization Society. His ruthless general, William Tecumseh Sherman, held blacks in utter contempt. He did nothing to stop the raping of black women by his soldiers in Columbia, South Carolina.
The great “War Between the States” forever changed the course of the United States. The South and its largely obsolete slave economy became defunct. The Constitution, as a compact where states’ rights were paramount, vanished. Federal power was greatly enlarged but nowhere near the degree that was to follow U.S. intervention in World Wars One and Two. The ambitions of European imperial powers on the North American continent became a thing of the past and the inexorable rise of the United States began. It came at a frightful price, as any Southerner can tell you. And that was the Civil War that was.
@Hunter Wallace: “Under slavery, all the costs of using slave labor were privatized.” I disagree on two grounds. First, White men who did not own slaves had to subsidize the cost of returning escaped slaves and keeping slaves intimidated. Second, White men who did own slaves and who had to work as “wage slaves” had to take pay cuts to compete with slave labor. Genocide and slavery never go away, although they might change form with technological progress. Third world immigration, equal rights for non-whites, birth control, cultural Marxism, and anti-White propaganda are a form of genocide against Whites. The Napoleonic wars and Lincoln’s War are the prototypes of wars in which the main point of war is to make money for industrialists and banksters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. Thomas Jefferson, 1788
Excellent comment, GonerWithTheWind. All the costs are private, and there is no such thing as a public cost. The costs of the slavery, endless unjust war, etc. are all laid on the back of the suffering white non-elite “trash.”
” ‘The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.’ Thomas Jefferson, 1788″ It is time for liberty to reclaim ground.
Hunter wrote: “In every other Western country, the majority of wealth was captured by a few people at the top, and it is still that way today.”
But now free men, who naturally detest and resist that long-established Anti-Christian, “Golden Circle” Elitist system, must work together to destroy it.
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/
That should have been: http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/his-majestys-jewish-government-vs-africa/
The GC is the natural order.
The Yankees have been trying to square the Golden Circle for more than 150 years. By the time they give-up they’ll find themselves in an expanded Yanqui-land racial caste system.
This is the sort of thing we should be learning about and discussing: How to regain our Liberty, rather than how to justify and regain Slavery:
http://mindweaponsinragnarok.com/2013/06/01/25-of-americans-have-economically-downshifted-this-is-way-way-past-the-tipping-point/
There’s too much liberty Mosin. Without generous welfare, WN wouldn’t exist. Linder, others are on the dole. Linder should have been worked to death in a sugarcane field.
“The GC is the natural order.”
But the ridiculed “Failed Utopia,” which is the SUPER-natural Order, will destroy and supplant the “Golden” natural order, someday. The Stone will strike the Golden-headed Image of the Kingdom of Satan that the world worships, on its feet of iron mingled with clay, and grind it all to dust. Babylon will fall, and the Kingdom of Christ shall have no end.
Attend a good church this morning, read the Holy Scriptures. “The love of money is the root of all this evil.”
I don’t have to go to Church until September when the next RCIA starts.
On the way to the Gym. Have a nice service Mosin.
@Mosin Nagant: “The love of money is the root of all this evil.”
As Milton Friedman said, liberalism is liberal spending of other people’s money. The liberals on the east and west coasts of the U.S.A. may someday go too far.
If it’s Kansas, if it’s Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. – David Carr, columnist for the New York Times
http://www.michaelbrowntoday.com/2011/06/flyover-country-now-middle-places-home-of-low-sloping-foreheads-new-york-times-david-carr/
liberal attitude: flyover country with dans-le-trou-de-cul Christian people
Reading various passages in Sirach (“Ecclesiasticus”) in church this morning, on the pursuit of unjust riches, and the final outcome.
I listened to Luke 7:1-10 this morning. That’s the story of the Roman Centurion who appealed to Christ to save his slave’s life.
>>>You forgot to mention that one of Henry Ford’s innovations was bringing blacks to the North to bust unions.<<<
Another way Mr. Ford busted unions was by paying $5 a day- about twice the typical wage.