I’m something of a slavery buff myself.
I’ve got some book reviews coming up of Adam Rothman’s book Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South and Randolph B. Campbell’s book An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865. I’m interested in the spread of slavery around the rim of the Gulf Coast in the early 19th century and how that created the culture of the Old Southwest.
This is less an exhibit of antebellum slavery though than a window into the mindset of the Baby Boomer cuckservative who believes True Conservatism is synonymous with classical liberalism:
“Life-sized photographs of the bodies of four African American people dangled from nooses on Barney’s tree in Glenn Beck’s studio on Wednesday evening in Dallas. Beck didn’t kill them, but some white man did. They were images of slaves who had been hanged in the past for real and then hanged again in the present, this time from a tree once used for a children’s television show starring a purple dinosaur.
They were part of 12 Score & 3 Years Ago, an interactive and immersive slavery exhibition by Beck’s Mercury One foundation. It opens to the public on Saturday and runs until July 7. Beck will even show you around if you pay for the VIP tour. …
In the VIP lounge area, Beck appeared onstage sounding like a Southern gospel preacher. With short, white hair and goatee, he wore a black jacket, black vest and blue jeans. The crowd is a mixture of new and old money and far more diverse than I expected. Beck acknowledges that he is probably committing “political suicide” for hosting this kind of exhibition. Then he begins his talk about 40 million people enslaved today and how no one is paying attention. …”
LOL … what does this have to do with slavery?
The Glenn Beck cult isn’t even in the right century or region. The historical Klan didn’t look like this and it was founded in the Reconstruction era after the abolition of slavery. Southern planters didn’t go around lynching blacks for no reason. Slaves were their investment portfolio.
This is what you call a nutty Yankee enthusiast.
Culturally speaking, I have nothing in common with these people.
Damn, Brad! That looks like James Edwards in the bottom photo. 😀
Beck has been a crackpot for years. This nonsense is typical of this grifter.
He shilled hard for the Iraq war. A good deal of time after it was over, he said if no WMD were ever found, he would, in a year’s time, explain why. I don’t know if he ever did.
Beck’s a Mormon clown. Honk, Honk.
Glenn Beck should go back to drinking at least a pint of grain alcohol a day, he made more sense drunk than sober. Maybe the magic Mormon underwear makes him crazy, who knows?
He should marry Marianne Williamson, they would make a good pair. Even though he already has a wife he can have another one being a Mormon. He could run for President and she could be vice-President. She could channel Saint Rev. “Dr.”(sic) Martin Luther King Jr. for moral advice, Charles Ponzi for financial tips and Freddy Mercury for everything else.
UGH, Hunter! (please use this easier to read edition of my last comment)
My eyes bled when I read your Beck article!
Just keep telling the unvarnished truth. You are young and people like Beck (and me) will eventually vanish. If you don’t get kicked off ‘the air’, your historical perspective will win out. Carefully constructed narratives eventually get demolished by concrete facts and common sense.
I had a ‘fun’ time with a conservative Catholic Yankee blogger on this topic last Christmas…
https://www.the-american-catholic.com/2018/12/22/shout-your-slave/
I eventually got banned for not being willing to just let it go…..
I’ll agree with anyone that slavery was brutal and not nice…it’s just that it is undeniable that what the Republicans created was worse by just about any measure:
antebellum————————————————-postbellum
few-lynchings——————————————–lots-of-black-lynchings
jails-w/out-black-prisoners————————-jails-full-of-black-prisoners
no-KKK——————————————————KKK
free-healthcare-for-blacks————————–no-healthcare-for-blacks
free-aged-care-for-blacks————————–no-aged-care-for-blacks
sheltered-work-for————————————
–handic’ped-blacks———————————-instant-hobo-fication
integrated-and-harmonious———————–segregated-and-resentful
no-starvation——————————————-starvation-and-malnutrition
no-black-drug-abuse———————————lots-of-black-drug-abuse
no-black-abortions————————————-lots-of-black-abortions
semi-intact-nuclear-families———————–non-nuclear-families
Some good, non-conservative experts on the above are Eugene Genovese’s ‘Roll Jordan Roll’and Jim Downs ‘Sick from Freedom’. Downs estimates that the war killed at least 100,000 slaves.
Downs e.g. talks about how the Freedmen’s Bureau was astounded by how many handicapped blacks there were yet the slave owners had found all of them useful work and had been keeping them,clothed,fed, housed and entertained from cradle to grave.
I believe your first column is quite idealized and fantastical. Regardless, they never should have been brought here in the first place. But since they were, they should have been removed after the war. We’re now all paying for that epic foolishness.
Powell,
>>>>I believe your first column is quite idealized and fantastical. <<<<
Thank you for jumping in!
Anything specific? I started out as you. I used to think that the post war south was pretty much the antebellum south w regards to race and poverty and malnutrition and racial hatred etc. In other words, I just ignored the War and Reconstruction's 'magic effects'.
However, out of sheer curiosity I tried searching specifically for those topics I posted….and I did some reading of authors like those I mentioned… I admit I am biased in favor of authors who rely upon original documents and quantifiable data.
Mr. Powell, If you can give me some data or documentation to disprove me, then I am all ears.
Do try to remember that antebellum Dixie was Christian, thru and thru, and had not yet been influenced by Darwinism which suggested that blacks were monkeyfied prehumans or subhumans. That came later. Ironically the scientific attitude of supreme indifference towards blacks was the view of some prominent Abolitionists like Julian Sturtevant and Ralph Waldo Emerson and, according to Jim Downs, many Yankee Freedmen’s bureau bureaucrats.
Also, being Christian, it was important for the Southern ruling class to believe that slavery benefited blacks both materially and spiritually. They put lots of energy into making slaves fellow Christians. Genovese reported that it was common practice for slave owners on Christmas Day to dress up as Santa and to give every slave child a present. This nugget came from accounts of slaves- who usually added- that those good times are long gone. Somehow I think you might be feeling disgusted at this point by me recounting ‘rainbow stories’.
If that is the case, then perhaps your views on race are not the same as those of the antebellum southern aristocrats?
“This is what you call a nutty Yankee enthusiast.”
Unfortunately for us, it’s these “enthusiasts” who are destroying our culture and interfering in our political processes and state governments.
They’re carrying on Massachusetts’ two-hundred year old vendetta against Dixie because they believe that they’re entitled, as “Americans®,” to exercise this “right,” to do so.
As an aside, Yankees labour under the delusion that all kinds of Constitutional amendments, which only they can see, grant them all kinds of special, exclusive rights, or the unlimited power to do almost anything, including things that are illegal for Southrons and Westerners to do. Or even absolutely unconstitutional.