I’m a bit like this, but really honestly the institution of the US wasn’t all that great even in the context of ending slavery. Lincoln (and especially Johnson after) killed radical reconstruction, which was looking like it might make revolutionary change in the status of PoC. Instead they went mega-soft on former confederates, handed power pretty much right back to them, which in turn directly caused the Jim Crow era etc. I highly recommend anyone interested to read “Black Reconstruction in America” by W.E.B. DuBois
They also were still committing genocide against the indigenous peoples of America.
Despite Lincoln's soft initial stance on Reconstruction, it's impossible to know how his opinions would have developed, considering the circumstances that arose in the rebellious states after the war and the bullet going through his head. Reconstruction managed to survive, after all, and thrive under the Grant administration, which even passed a law against segregation in public accommodations and pursued a peace policy with regards to Native American polities. It was only after Grant's administration that the gains were walked back and power returned to the former slaverocracy.
I don’t think “yeah his actions kinda sucked but maybe he would have changed if he kept living” is a reasonable argument.
And I said radical reconstruction. Like land seized from slavers and given to the newly freed people (and keep conditions such that the freed people could actually keep that land), former confederates jailed and barred from ever holding office, reparations paid, etc.
Grant was still soft on Confederates, though certainly better in most aspects than Lincoln or Johnson. But a president does not a country make. Perhaps despite Grant the measures taken during his presidency were woefully inadequate and blunted.
As far as his treatment of indigenous peoples, well this quote from his first inaugural address is enough really. “the proper treatment of the original occupants of the land, the Indian, is one deserving of careful study. I will favor any course towards them which tends to their civilization, Christianization and ultimate citizenship”
When it turned out that hey, maybe the destruction of their culture and religion isn’t really what they wanted- Grant’s feelings were quite clear in this 1872 letter to General Schofield: “Indians who will not put themselves under the restraints required will have to be forced, even to the extent of making war upon them, to submit to measures that will insure [sic] security to the white settlers of the Territories,” - this is still absolutely genocide.
He was also the President under which the US stole the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota. First he offered to “buy” them from the Lakota and other tribes, and then when refused he sent the army in to steal them. (Though the tribes put up a damn good fight, repelling the invaders once before Grant sent reinforcements)
I don't think there's going to be any common ground between us in this discussion, but as someone with a keen interest in the period, I'll leave it that I disagree strongly with the main thrust of your argument.
Also literal slavery under the 13th amendment for convicts, which is one of the primary drivers of disproportionate incarceration rates of minorities for non-violent crimes.
While you are right about it being a step in the right direction, the big “except” in the 13th amendment led to slavery never leaving. Vagrancy laws and other racial laws led to slavery because forced servitude was legal as a punishment, but with worse conditions since the employers cared less about slaves than plantation owners since there really wasn’t much penalty for killing them, and instead of buying them you were only leasing them. Being in the convict leasing system was lethal.
I wouldn’t call it a huge step, the 13th amendment was terribly written. It was just the first step in the right direction, making it look a lot larger than it was.
The primary driver of disproportionate incarceration rates is for-profit prisons, not the legality of involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Most states don't allow involuntary labor to be forced on convicts. Only voluntary and deeply underpaid labor.
The issue is deeper and more fundamental than that - the fact that the drive of right-wing loons to make everything profitable, whether pro forma 'for profit' or not, has created a sick system of incentives to incarcerate individuals, regardless of whether it can extract economically useful labor from them, simply because it can extract rent for each person so incarcerated from state governments subject to severe regulatory capture.
The fact that it's disproportionately minorities is just because the country is still deeply fucking racist.
I mean, for-profit prisons make a LOT of their money from forced servitude which is made legal by the 13th amendment, so it’s not like they’re wrong either.
Again, most states don't allow involuntary servitude in their prisons. It's more like setting the minimum wage outrageously low. It's exploitative and must be ended, don't get me wrong - but it's not something that the 13th Amendment addresses.
There are not as many for profit prisons as you think. Regular state prisons are used for cheap labor to benefit people politically, and for racists to hold power over minorities
If we got rid of private prisons right now we would still have disproportionate incarceration and many prisoners forced to labor even if someone didn't make a profit off of it. Yes, it is part of the problem and for profit prisons should be abolished, but doing that only fixes a small part of the problem.
You may be right, I may be overestimating the effect of for-profit prisons. I would have sworn it was closer to 25%, but my memory is like swiss cheese.
The other point, that the exact form of labor exploitation performed by most states on the incarcerated is not addressed by the 13th amendment, still stands.
They probably are referring to prison labor. Five states can still force prisoners to work without pay. While a vile injustice that must be fought and extinguished, it is very far from the system of slavery we fought to eradicate in the Civil War.
It’s kinda disingenuous to not also mention that in most (all?) states in which they do get paid minimum wage doesn’t apply, and they get paid laughably little and get way overcharged for basic stuff and telephone use such that they may as well not be paid.
Google for profit prisons. People are being thrown in these things for next to nothing to keep the numbers up and from there they are forced labor. Hell multiple judges have been caught being paid to make sure they get people sent to jail.
This is 100% slavery and it’s 100% legal. On top of that… The number of slaves that were active in this country back then is a fraction of the number of people that are currently in these for-profit prisons, many of them for next to nothing.
Slavery is alive and well in this country and it’s not going anywhere.
Are you trying to pretend you have really never heard this saying before? Or are you just salty and lashing out because I’m pointing out that America is still a country that is based on slave labor?
No, I’m pointing out that it’s a stupid saying since there’s nothing particularly American about apple pie. Slavery certainly isn’t unique to America, either, but it is very relevant to its history.
I never said it’s unique to America and I wouldn’t just say it’s relevant to our history considering, as we’re discussing right now, there are currently more slaves in the United States of America than any point in its history.
But yeah let’s argue the semantics of an old saying instead.
Equating prison labor with the system of slavery that existed before it was abolished is very disingenuous. Both are shitty practices, but not the same thing.
People are literally rounded up off of the street and put in jail to work against their will. Quite often it turns out these people were innocent. They’re also abused physically and mentally and sometimes simply left to fucking die in their cell. And let’s not forget how often they’re raped! And the fact that they’re always being raped is literally comedy to most of the world.
You’re trying to downplay this, and also, for some reason, change the subject to semantics.
Were they brought to prison crammed into boats like livestock and bred like them as well? Forbidden having any rights due to the way they look even when not in prison? A lot of slavery’s legacy has resulted in people whose ancestors were slaves being fed to the prison system, yes, so they’re connected, but it’s extremely unhelpful to lump them together as being entirely the same thing. You can hate the prison system without completely equating it to the institutional slavery of the past.
I never said it’s exactly the same. I’m just saying it is literal slavery. They are forced to work against their will.
But okay what is the acceptable terminology? What word do you personally feel is morally acceptable to call the people that are currently being forced to work against their will?
Also I just want to be very clear, and I don’t think you understand this, but you are flat out saying that a person who is being forced to work against their will cannot be considered a slave as long as you treat them relatively nicely when they are not working the fields.
This is a literal argument for why slavery wasn’t bad in the past. They were better off then in Africa.
It works at turning private profit for private, sociopathic investors, almost never at improving or even maintaining a formerly government run service.
And the governmental service almost always goes to shit because it was defunded to cut wealthy investor’s taxes at their demand, leading to cries for privatization by the same wealthy investors when it goes to shit as a result.
Effective grift if you have the lobbyists, the bully pulpit, and no conscience or humanity.
Market capitalism belongs in optional products/services, like fidget spinners and massages. It doesn’t belong in prisons, healthcare, utilities, roads, etc, because private industry is all about getting maximum return they can get away with at the product/services expense, and finding new ways of giving even less while pocketing more, even if that means buying courts and politicians with that profit to make it legal.
Despite what they say about themselves, market capitalists have antisocial motivations in practice. They’re want to own everything, purely out of ego and greed, and it will never be enough.
IKR especially considering the space program, shipbuilding and aerospace & automotive manufacturing explosions down South in the last 30 years. To name a few:
Airbus
Mobile AL
(somewhere in FL)
Austal USA - Mobile AL
BMW - Spartanburg SC
Boeing - North Charleston SC (whoops...bad example)
Ford
Atlanta GA
Norfolk VA
GE Aviation (somewhere in NC)
Geely (owns Volvo Cars) - (somewhere in SC)
GM:
Shreveport LA
(somewhere in TX)
Haas F1 team (somewhere in NC)
Honda:
Swepsonville NC
Greensboro NC
Lincoln AL
Timmonsville SC
(some transmission plant in GA)
(some parts facility in GA)
Hyundai - Montgomery AL
Kia (somewhere in GA)
Mercedes-Benz - Vance AL
Nissan
Canton MS
(somewhere in TN)
Volvo Trucks - Dublin VA
I'm probably missing a Toyota plant in Texas. Ole Miss aided with the HondaJet program.
The overwhelming majority of antebellum Southerners did not own slaves. The Southerners that did did not fight on the fight on the front. The people whose deaths you celebrate were victims of propaganda and conscription.
Five days later, the Confederate government passed the Exemption Act, which excused from military service select government employees, workers deemed necessary to maintain society (such as teachers, railroad workers, skilled tradesmen, and ministers), and owners of twenty or more slaves.
Had to look it up cuz I wasn’t sure, but that last bit is extremely relevant.
The insurrectionists that stormed the capitol were also ‘victims’ of propaganda.
Such ‘victims’ they were and are willing to kill US law enforcement to over throw the legally elected government of the United States.
Such ‘victims’ that they’d like to relegate women to second or third class citizen positions in society.
Such ‘victims’ they’d like to should migrants at the border and anywhere else they can find them.
These people; they’re the same people: You have no obligation to offer charity to a moral position that a reasonable person should know better than to have taken.
Yes, this is all true. My comment is a very, very basic application of Marxist history. The ruling class has always fought their battles through the proletariat. Nobody born in the antebellum South came into this world with a desire to own other humans or one day to be needlessly slaughtered in defense of such an institution. A lifetime of propaganda and social manipulation from the elites taught them that.
None of the people you describe were born with hatred, either. They were taught to hate by the 1% ruling class. They are victims too. Identifying a victim of a greater injustice does not excuse the microaggressions they commit as an effect of being a victim themselves.
Yes, I agree, the Confederacy is a stain on the history of America and their desire to own other human beings cost the lives of 620,000 people. Included in that total are 258,000 Southerners, the majority of whom were victims of circumstance themselves.
The problem is we didn't drop it when we had the chance, so the first chance they got they rewrote the history books.
It's fucking horrific. From the late 1870s to the 1940s, Lost Causers were borderline unchallenged in historical academia. We're still recovering from that.
So? Name a war where the people dying aren’t victims of propaganda and conscription? My grandfather was conscripted by the German Army in WWII, but I can still make fun of Nazis and celebrate the failure of the Axis. The majority of people that participated in the Jan 6 insurrection were also victims of propaganda, that doesn’t mean I’m sad they failed and it doesn’t make it socially unacceptable to celebrate that failure. Southern Pride is Slavery Pride, that’s just the way it is.
Historian Joseph Glatthaar’s statistical analysis of the 1861 volunteers in what would become the Army of Northern Virginia reveals that one in 10 owned a slave and that one in four lived with parents who were slave-owners. Both exceeded ratios in the general population, in which one in 20 owned a slave and one in five lived in a slaveholding household. “Thus,” Glatthaar notes, “volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population.” In short, Confederate volunteers actually owned more slaves than the general population.
Not even getting into the fact that those who didn't own slaves often engaged in the broader practice of the (ab)use of slaves and aspired to own slaves, and were quite openly fighting to perpetuate and expand slavery.
Not even getting into the fact that those who didn’t own slaves often engaged in the broader practice of the (ab)use of slaves and aspired to own slaves, and were quite openly fighting to perpetuate and expand slavery.
Well, that's mostly a look at the modern effects of slave patrols and descendants of the practice, but yes. Slave patrols were notable in that they included mostly non-slave owning white volunteers. It really shows just how deep the rot went. Slavery wasn't 'incidental' to the Antebellum South's existence as a society, it was the Antebellum South.
So you’re saying that 9/10 did not own a slave? Sounds like an overwhelming majority to me. The quote from Glatthaar ( Here’s the link, because you didn’t cite it yourself ) also cherry-picks the most slave-owning army in the CSA.
Not even getting into the fact that those who didn’t own slaves often engaged in the broader practice of the (ab)use of slaves and aspired to own slaves, and were quite openly fighting to perpetuate and expand slavery.
See: victims of propaganda.
I’ll copy my reply to another comment. You’ve seriously misinterpreted my argument, whether you know it or not.
My comment is a very, very basic application of Marxist history. The ruling class has always fought their battles through the proletariat. Nobody born in the antebellum South came into this world with a desire to own other humans or one day to be needlessly slaughtered in defense of such an institution. A lifetime of propaganda and social manipulation from the elites taught them that.
Identifying a victim of a greater injustice does not excuse the microaggressions they commit as an effect of being a victim themselves.
I believe slavery is an inexcusable, horrible stain on our nation's fabric, but it was the economic engine of the day down South. Not saying that doesn't make it reprehensible: I am merely giving context. Dismantling it at the speed Washington demanded would have ground things to a halt. That's a big reason the South fought. Another issue was gun control.
No, I have never affiliated with any white supremacist or southern heritage group.
Providing context doesn't magically make something morally correct. It illustrates the circumstances.
There are all kinds of circumstances under which people commit grave wrongs in the face of adversity. If we're going to punish everyone for every wrong committed regardless of surrounding circumstances, there's far more punishment to dispense, regardless of political stripes.
So would you like to explain how a failed proposal to extinguish slavery almost a hundred years before the rebellion was a big reason why the South fought their slaver rebellion?
Providing context doesn't magically make something morally correct. It illustrates the circumstances.
"But you have to understand the context!" brought up in response to a condemnation of the evil is a plea for sympathy. Don't play coy.
There are all kinds of circumstances under which people commit grave wrongs in the face of adversity. If we're going to punish everyone for every wrong committed regardless of surrounding circumstances, there's far more punishment to dispense, regardless of political stripes.
Okay. I support only punishing people for serious wrongs committed. Like enforcing the bondage of one's fellow man in one of the most cruel and vile systems of our nation's history, treason, or murder of American citizens.
You’re defending the circumstances of the time, unfortunately. You’re not even fully condemning it, or saying it shouldn’t have happened in the first place
Let’s imagine for a second that there’s a big huge magical machine that generates anything that any American could want. Anything at all! Hunger is immediately eradicated. Health problems begin to vanish. Scarcity is a thing of the past.
Now imagine that we discover that the machine is operated by stuffing hundreds of thousands of human babies into one side of it. They can never leave. Inside, they will be sucked of all their energy and discarded as husks. Parents who try to keep their babies from being thrown into the machine are killed.
Should we take an incremental, slow approach to shutting down and dismantling this machine, knowing that it’s driving the entire American economy now?
Or should we just blow it up?
slavery is an inexcusable, horrible stain on our nation’s fabric
On one hand, I appreciate that you’ve tried to defend me, but this is not the argument I’m making. Slavery was always a morally objectable practice. My comment was in defense of the poor, maniupulated proletariat soldiers who made up the bulk of the Confederate’s army and who were sacrificed en masse for a cause they never would have believed in without a lifetime of propaganda.
Good. Dumb chumps who support shit still got what they deserved. Hopefully their lesson on losing isn’t lost on future generations. Looking back at all the sides that lost in history, so many are right wing bullshit spitters who can spin some propaganda but have no discernable skills for anything else. Hopefully you learned from history and don’t support losers.
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