I just lost an introduction I was writing to the following letter. Probably for the best, because now I’m only writing a few lines, and editing the letter itself down a little.
The short version is this: I was sitting at the Pegasus diner in New Jersey yesterday with 3 other people, and one of them (Guy A) was reading the diary of a Union Civil War soldier. The trip was work related, and my boss at my “straight job” was there when Guy A stated something quite retarded, and I objected (as seen below).
As I always do, when I got home, I checked my facts. I wrote the following letter, but am not sending it. Pragmatism tells me that (a) at best my boss will read it and maybe see that I hadn’t made an outlandish claim and I’m not a nut, or worse (b) facts don’t matter and by merely following up on such a socially controversial topic I’m an obsessed apologist for slavery.
Either way I’m continuing a discussion that caused tension, and I work at that job to make money, not make sure everyone knows “the truth”. Pragmatically it’d be a no-win situation.
So, to provide myself with some sort of catharsis, I went ahead and wrote that letter, and I’m posting it here. You people already either a) think I’m a nut, (b) are critical thinkers, (c) know this shit already, or (d) any combination of the three.
It’s not an essay, and I’m not going to spend time editing it further. There are no sources cited (nothing screams obsessive nut like citing sources in a personal e-mail).
———– (begin excerpt) ———
There was a little bit of a tense situation at breakfast when (Guy A) insisted that “every Southern family owned slaves”, and I said “no, they didn’t. Only a small percent of Southerners owned slaves.”
His jaw dropped open, eyes squinted and he shook his head and literally threw up his hands. “Where do you get your information from” he asked (implying it was probably from some crazy fringe source), and had decided I was absolutely wrong, and that “I think it’s best if we don’t continue talking about this”. He brought up slavery and how terrible Southerners were to slaves, and I just objected to a blanket statement he made. I don’t tend to talk about slavery, I’m not terribly interested in it. I also try to make it a rule that I don’t discuss controversial topics in a business situation – which we were in, even if it was “casual business”. I DO however know a little about it, and have frequently run into anti-Southern bigotry. I don’t know if you remember, but later in the car (Guy A) said “what are you reading anyway, a book on slavery?” I let it go, it was actually a reprint of a 35 year old New York based crime novel. It was a dig, reinforcing the idea that I was obsessed with slavery, when he was the one that brought the subject up, reverently discussing the diary of a Northern Civil War soldier (talk about a biased source of information).
In the year 1860, one out of every four families in Virginia owned slaves – that means 75% of VA families DIDN’T own slaves. The highest ratio was Misissippi and South Carolina, where it approached 50%, still a FAR cry from (Guy A)’s statement that “everyone owned slaves”. The border states might have seen as few at 4% of the population as slave owners.
When I responded “only a small percentage of Southerners owned slaves”, (Guy A) looked at me like I was an unreconstructed nutjob and said “where do you get your information from?”
Even if I DIDN’T know what I was talking about, pure reasoning would tell you that it was false:
If (a) every Southern landowner owned slaves, and (b) we were to assume that the average slave-owner needed 10 slaves, and the average landowner had a family with an average of 5 people (themselves, a wife, 3 kids), and the group of 10 slaves had an average of 5 children or elderly adults not able to work, then (c) there would be about 15 blacks for every 5 whites in the South, or 3 to 1.
The reality is in 15 states black slaves were actually only 1/3 of the total population, and plantations are defined by historians as having at least 20 slaves.
If you didn’t know that free blacks themselves owned black slaves, I’ll assume you also didn’t know that Native Americans owned black slaves as well. The Cherokee, Choctaws, Creek, Seminole and Chicksaw tribes were black slave owners. Look up “Cherokee Freedmen” to see that there are still legal battles over this.
Indentured servitude was in place before chattel slavery, and this is a form of slavery. Over HALF of all whites that came to the 13 colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were indentured servants – including Irish, Germans, English and Scottish. They were whipped and legally executed if they tried to escape. Like slaves, they could be bought and sold.
The women were often raped. Irish escaping the potato famine were carried across the ocean in what were termed “coffin ships”. These ships were insured for MORE than the contents were “worth”. “Owners of coffin ships provided as little food, water, and living space as was legally possible – if they obeyed the law at all.” I’ve heard over and over the death toll of the slave ships, and they indeed were brutal disease infested places. African slaves ships killed nearly 10-15% of the passengers, but up to 25% of the Irish on those Coffin Ships died. Conditions were bad all around, but in this situation (and others) the black slaves had “better” conditions than white “indentured servants”.
Of the nearly 20 million slaves brought to North, Central and South America, only 5% came to what is now the United States.
This doesn’t even touch upon slavery in the northern colonies, or the work of southern abolitionists.
I could have certainly asked (Guy A) the same question he asked me, “Where do you get YOUR information from”. The answer seemed to be the diary of a man who was trying to kill Southerners.
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was discussed before the conversation ended, it should be pointed out that Lincoln was not the committed anti-slavery advocate he’s been painted… after working on a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation he stated “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that…I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
Lincoln was also a supporter of sending slaves back to Africa once they were free: “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land.”
In 1858 he made it clear he was against the idea of free blacks getting the vote, he said: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
I don’t want to demonize Lincoln, but I don’t think he’s a saint that saved the US from evil white Southerners. But the facts are certainly less black and white than they commonly are presented.
I felt I had to get that off of my chest since I get a little touchy when people smear all Southerners as wicked slave owners, and all blacks as being victims of slavery. This wide-spread belief has real-world implications beyond just the gross stereotype. Joseph Martin Luther Gardner was executed last Friday night in South Carolina, 16 years after making a “New Years Eve resolution” with a group of other black men to kill a white woman “as retribution for slavery”. The fact is that that white woman might have been the decendant of a slave herself. Another fact is a majority of Americans (North, South and other) are descended from people who immigrated AFTER slavery had been abolished, and therefore have no connection to it at all.
—— (end of excerpt) —–
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