DeSantis signs bill limiting tenure at Florida public universities

[Flelm]

Worth mentioning that there was no such thing as slavery in the US at all until a black man went to court to create it:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180962352/

What point do you think you're making here? Just because the word "slave" wasn't used doesn't mean some people didn't live in a de facto state of slavery already.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that some people made money off of slavery instead of lumping all white people, including those from states that never allowed slavery, together? Wouldn't it be more honest to say that this is a class issue rather than a race issue? Don't you feel kind of stupid damning the hundreds of thousands of people who died fighting against slavery during the Civil War as racists who got rich off of the practice?

Wow, nice strawman you constructed there. I asked why you brought up the "point" that slavery in the proto-US (not the US) happened because someone sued for their freedom, after 15 years as an indentured servant. You still didn't answer me.

And you're taking an extremely simplistic view. No one reasonable is arguing that 100% of all white people in the history of the United States were raving racists. What they are saying is that the success of this country, especially the economy of the Antebellum South, was at least partly due to the practice of treating people as property. And because they were treated as property, there was a long, hard-fought battle to gain equal rights and respect as the white population of the USA.

[freeloader]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that some people made money off of slavery instead of lumping all white people, including those from states that never allowed slavery, together? Wouldn't it be more honest to say that this is a class issue rather than a race issue? Don't you feel kind of stupid damning the hundreds of thousands of people who died fighting against slavery during the Civil War as racists who got rich off of the practice?

It's fun how fast "I TEACH FACTS" turns into "well I can only talk about my experiences" when someone is challenged.

Ultimately, the answer to your first question is a matter of opinion.  Somewhere around 5% of the US population in 1860 lived in a household that owned one or more slaves.  Clearly, they benefited in a direct and meaningful way.  I would argue that slavery, as the economic engine of the South in particular, but the North more generally, meant that far more than 5% "made money" from slavery.

In the South, of course, there were many hired whites--overseers, drivers, and other specialists--on farms and in factories that utilized slave labor; same for slave traders, slave catchers, and similar occupations.  I would argue that they "made money" from slavery as their livelihoods would not have existed without slavery.  As the main industries in the South revolved around the slave system, I would argue that the tends if not hundreds of thousands of people who worked on railroads and riverboats, in markets, and in countless other industries that existed to service the agricultural produce of the South (including cotton) "made money" from slavery.  

Let's step to the North for a minute.  A good deal of the cotton and other surpluses borne of slave labor found its way to the shops and mills of the North, other was exported to foreign markets, particularly in Europe.  Those mill jobs, those shipping jobs, and, of course, the jobs that existed to service the people who worked in the mills and on the ships, would not have existed--certainly not in such large numbers--without slavery.  

This brings us to a very difficult question.  Many of the people who worked in the mills of the North were paid terribly.  Many of the sailors whose vessels carried King Cotton to Europe fared little better.  So, did these people benefit from the slave system or were they its victims, albeit not in the same way as the enslaved people of the South?  I can honestly see this both ways.  The slave system also, by its very nature, put a lot of pressure on the economy of the South.  White farmers in the South had to compete against slave labor, and slave labor was more productive.  Here again, I think it's quite reasonable to ask if these people benefited from or were victims of the slave system.  To be honest, I think Karl Marx was spot on when he said that slavery corrupted the economic systems of slave-holding nations and that slavery naturally hindered the ability of non-enslaved working peoples not to be the victims of those economic systems.

Let's take thousand mile-high perspective on the sweep of American history for a moment.  The slave system in the South produced surplus which fueled industry in the North and exports, bringing wealth and technology back to the United States.  Some of that wealth ended up in the South, some of it in the North.  Then the Civil War happened.  Northern industry boomed.  The nation's factories grew in number, size, technology, and efficiency.  The efficiency of Northern farms also increased, meaning less labor was necessary to produce more crops.  Crucially, for the first time the factories started to really be able to compete with the factories in Europe.  The creation of the "modern" industrial economy of the North was accelerated by the Civil War, a war that would not have happened without slavery.  I do not, however, "credit" slavery with that economic and industrial transformation.

If we acknowledge that a goodly part, though not all and perhaps not most, of the white population of 1860 benefited financially, made money, from slavery, is that the end of the story?  I would say no, because it ignores two hundred years that came before and 150 years that have come after.  You mentioned the states that never allowed slavery.  Slavery was or had been legal in all 13 of the founding colonies; indeed the plantation system was created by the Dutch in New York.  Much of the early wealth and prosperity of New Amsterdam/New York was, in fact, due to the slave system in the Hudson River Valley.  Most of the wealthy merchants and politicians in places like Connecticut and Massachusetts owned slaves in the late pre-Revolution time period, with up to 5 percent of the different New England states being enslaved in the late colonial period.  Getting harder to view slavery as a system which only benefited a handful of rich people in the South, I think.

So, then, what of the Northwest Territory and its lands which became, basically, the Midwest.  Slavery was illegal there; indeed, it was made illegal before slavery was made illegal in a number of the "free" states of the Northeast.  This was the land of the small farmer.  This was the land of the independent Westerner.  It was the land of self-made men like Abraham Lincoln.  But Lincoln, of course, came from a Kentucky family and married the daughter of a Kentucky slaveholder.  She brought more (at least financially) to the marriage than he did.  But, of course, we can not attribute any of his subsequent success to his wife or to slavery.

The Northwest Territory and the states that would be carved from it were, it is true, the domain of the small farmer.  Bounding the Northwest Territory were two great rivers, the Ohio to the South and the Mississippi to the West.  They were two great rivers that carried the agricultural surplus of the region into the Deep South, into the mouths and bellies of Southern slaves who, freed from the necessity of growing so much corn and wheat could grow cotton.  Because of the Appalachian mountains, very little of the region's surplus went East and what did went primarily in the form of distilled sprits.  So, what do we make of the people in places like Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio whose economic prosperity, nay, viability, was fundamentally linked to slavery?  I would say they benefited from the system, even if they never owned or even met a slave.

I would like to know who, exactly, damed the Yankee soldiers who died in the Civil War.  Nobody in this thread, that I can see.  I think on your part, OP, that it is remarkably shortsighted and frankly ill-informed to think that a Civil War soldier who died fighting for the North couldn't also have benefited from slavery.  Men on both sides fought for many reasons.  Based on the work that has been done looking at soldiers' letters and journals, that few from the North (at least prior to the Emancipation Proclamation) would have stated they were fighting to end slavery.  They were fighting for their nation, for their families, for their friends.  The same was largely true of the South, though more soldiers said they were fighting to defend slavery, including early in the war.  Many expressed fear that freed slaves would take over the South, raping and murdering along the way.  I think a farm kid who grew up in Indiana and joined up at age 17 in 1862 and whose father sold a few bushels of wheat each year to raise a little cash could benefit from slavery (through the sale of the wheat) and could die on a Civil War battlefield in a war to end slavery.  But he more likely than not did not fully comprehend that his family benefited from slavery, more likely than not was fighting for reasons other than ending slavery, and--lets be honest--might have personally disliked or even hated black people. 

I did teach facts.  I also interpreted facts.  That interpretation was built on my knowledge and experience.  OP, do you even comprehend how profoundly stupid the last sentence that I excerpted is?  History is interpretation.  History is literally the act of interpreting the past.  That is the definition of the discipline.  Interpretation happens by people; that interpretation is driven by and build upon EXPERIENCE.  The North had more soldiers and factories than the South.  Those are facts.  The North won the Civil War because it had more soldiers and factories is an interpretation.  It is an interpretation made by historians, drawing from their knowledge of facts, their education, and their experiences, to make a truth claim.  So, yes, I taught my version of history.  It was a version built on years of intense study and analysis that helped me understand the accuracy of the truth claim that the North (in large though not exclusive part) won the Civil War because it had more soldiers and factories. 

And respectfully, OP, I don't think you have effectively challenged much of anything.  I just felt like typing this evening.

[jsh1138]

lol the guy who damns all white people for getting rich off of minorities wants to complain about strawmen now.

I think I've said all I care to say about this.

[LevelUP]

And respectfully, OP, I don't think you have effectively challenged much of anything.

By OP you mean jsh1138?

The original poster is Pats20 which wasn't in the debate of history.

[jsd]

lol the guy who damns all white people for getting rich off of minorities wants to complain about strawmen now.

doubling down on the strawman is a good strategy.

[freeloader]

And respectfully, OP, I don't think you have effectively challenged much of anything.

By OP you mean jsh1138?

The original poster is Pats20 which wasn't in the debate of history.

Oh yes, that’s right; apologies for any confusion and the error on my part. I meant the person (jsh1138) to whose post I was responding, not the OP.

[Pats20]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=452XjnaHr1A

[Alpha]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that some people made money off of slavery instead of lumping all white people, including those from states that never allowed slavery, together? Wouldn't it be more honest to say that this is a class issue rather than a race issue? Don't you feel kind of stupid damning the hundreds of thousands of people who died fighting against slavery during the Civil War as racists who got rich off of the practice?

It's fun how fast "I TEACH FACTS" turns into "well I can only talk about my experiences" when someone is challenged.

...I would like to know who, exactly, damed the Yankee soldiers who died in the Civil War.  Nobody in this thread, that I can see.  I think on your part, OP, that it is remarkably shortsighted and frankly ill-informed to think that a Civil War soldier who died fighting for the North couldn't also have benefited from slavery.  Men on both sides fought for many reasons.  Based on the work that has been done looking at soldiers' letters and journals, that few from the North (at least prior to the Emancipation Proclamation) would have stated they were fighting to end slavery.  They were fighting for their nation, for their families, for their friends.  The same was largely true of the South, though more soldiers said they were fighting to defend slavery, including early in the war.  Many expressed fear that freed slaves would take over the South, raping and murdering along the way.  I think a farm kid who grew up in Indiana and joined up at age 17 in 1862 and whose father sold a few bushels of wheat each year to raise a little cash could benefit from slavery (through the sale of the wheat) and could die on a Civil War battlefield in a war to end slavery.  But he more likely than not did not fully comprehend that his family benefited from slavery, more likely than not was fighting for reasons other than ending slavery, and--lets be honest--might have personally disliked or even hated black people. ...

I am reminded of a scene from the film Gangs of New York in which immigrants were herded straight off the ships into the waiting arms of the Union Army recruiters (conscriptors).  I doubt very much that these men felt they were fighting to end slavery.
https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum....e%20ethnic

Beyond that, I would simply refer to the old adage "A rising tide lifts all boats" as an indication that if slavery added to the overall economy in any substantial way (and I think it did) then all white people benefitted from it to some degree.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/11/...my-baptist

[Flelm]

At the start of the Civil War, (basically) no one was fighting to end slavery. It was only nearer to the end of the war, after the Emancipation Proclamation, that the narrative started to turn from preserving the Union to ending the institution of slavery. Here's a recent video essay about the institution of slavery in the US:

[LevelUP]

Slavery was/is a horrible thing, and all races, whites, blacks, Asians, and Latinos, were/are involved in it.

There were a few freed blacks that owned slaves in America. The Great Wall of China didn't get built by not using slaves.

"Only about 6 percent of all Africans shipped across the Atlantic were taken to North America. The largest numbers went to Brazil and to the Caribbean."
http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0011

Unfortunately, this doesn't fit the narrative of whites being the only bad people involved in slavery in the Americas. 

Currently, 30 million slaves exist today
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worl...n-the-u-s/

It's horrible we haven't learned from history, but that is the world's reality today.