Stacy asks for HELP: Atrocities under slavery?
RStacy2229
Friend & foe:
Having flamed with the best of them, I wish to set aside any sectional,
ideological or personal animosities for a moment, in order to post a
sincere request for help regarding the history of slavery in the United
States, particularly in the South during the 19th century.
As I have pointed out before, I first came to this group in search of
information regarding the military history of the War, which had been my
primary area of interest since childhood. However, due to events both
inside and outside the Newsgroups (I'll never forget the first time I saw
the words "Robert E. Lee" and "traitor" used in the same sentence), I
became more and more deeply involved in questions of the politics of
secession and the socio-economics of slavery.
These subjects had never really commanded much of my attention, either in
school or afterwards, and my opinions in these matters were based upon an
early familiarity with various articles in encyclopedias, U.S. history
survey texts and other such general works. In the last six or seven
months, however, with the pre-Olympic media assault upon Georgia's history
and with flame wars on these newsgroups, I have been forced to dig a
little deeper into slavery per se, since outrage over slavery seems to
constitute the essence of the case argued against the South. Catton,
Olmstead, Toqueville, Genovese and D'Souza are among the sources I've
consulted, as well as refreshing myself from articles in my several sets
of encyclopediae.
But in all of this I keep running into a certain conception of slavery the
source of which I have been unable to determine. It seems like there is
some major and influential book about slavery that I've never read or even
heard of, or as if -- in the 15-20 years since I left school -- the texts
have been rewritten in regard to slavery. Most of this new view is
centered on inhumane atrocities which are alleged to have been frequent,
even mundane, occurences in the antebellum South: Slave women raped with
impunity on a nightly basis, the men castrated, slave family life
systematically undermined, women and children purposefully sold away from
their husbands and fathers, religious activity banned or suppressed,
slaves bred like cattle on special plantations devoted to such practices,
runaways hunted down and tortured or killed, and the most brutal methods
of oppressive generally prevailing throughout Dixie.
In studying such matters in "Roll, Jordan, Roll" and other works, and in
making observations based on a synthesis of all I've read on this subject,
I find no real justification for this "Holocaust" view of slavery.
Genovese, in his "Roll Jordan Roll" chapter titled "Miscegenation" comes
to conclusion that sexual involvement between white and black under Old
South slavery was rare -- certainly a single-digit percentage. Further,
white-black relationships were more frequent in towns and cities than on
farms and plantations, and if miscegenation was uncommon, the use of
actual physical force in its accomplishment was even more rare. In other
words, most sexual relations between master and slave (or mistress-slave
or overseer-slave or relations between whites and free blacks) was
consensual.
From D'Souza's citation of "Time On the Cross," I get the impression that
the breakup of families by masters was never a commonality. D'Souza says
that some two-thirds to three-quarters of all slave marriages were never
disrupted by sale of a spouse. And I suppose, then, if family dissolution
and rape in the Old South were less frequent than South-haters have
generally claimed, then we might suspect that whippings, mutilations and
other inhumanities were also more rare than such propagandists suggest.
And I might also add that a passing knowledge of human nature tells me
that, had such brutality been commonplace, that uprisings in the South
would have amounted to more than Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and the
abortive John Brown raid. Slaves or not, four million people -- sometimes
far outnumbering their masters on a local basis -- would not have put up
with abuses like that had they been routine.
With all this terrorism, it's amazing that anybody would ever find time to
pick the cotton.
But, as I've said, it seems there are people -- politicians, playwrights,
journalists, scholars -- who have access to some popular account of
slavery which contradict the books I've been reading, and it is apparently
a book which lays great emphasis on this "slavery as the Holocaust" theme,
for I hear the same charges repeated over and over from a variety of
sources. If someone could give me the title of this book -- which I must
have overlooked somehow -- I would be greatly obliged.
I do not mean to touch upon the question of whether people should be
subject to being bought and sold, or to get into some labyrinthine
elaboration of the psychological trauma induced by "paternalism," and I
know that people sometimes do bad things to other people, but I merely
want to find out where I can get my hands on this one book.
Thanks for your help -- please reply to author by e-mail if possible.
Robert Stacy McCain
Rome GA
jcr...@epix.net
In Article<4vuaue$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, <rstac...@aol.com> writes:
> From: rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229)
> Friend & foe:
>
< snip >
> But, as I've said, it seems there are people -- politicians, playwrights,
> journalists, scholars -- who have access to some popular account of
> slavery which contradict the books I've been reading, and it is apparently
> a book which lays great emphasis on this "slavery as the Holocaust" theme,
> for I hear the same charges repeated over and over from a variety of
> sources. If someone could give me the title of this book -- which I must
> have overlooked somehow -- I would be greatly obliged.
>
> I do not mean to touch upon the question of whether people should be
> subject to being bought and sold, or to get into some labyrinthine
> elaboration of the psychological trauma induced by "paternalism," and I
> know that people sometimes do bad things to other people, but I merely
> want to find out where I can get my hands on this one book.
>
> Thanks for your help -- please reply to author by e-mail if possible.
>
> Robert Stacy McCain
> Rome GA
The book is called _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
zolton
I'm afraid I don't know the book you are referring to. But
while I'm here I figured I'd mention a line of thought that
has been bothering me.
For the life of me I can't figure out why people are so
concerned with comparing suffering (ie: Slavery versus the
Holocaust). It's not like the sheer level of suffering
inflicted upon a given group increases or diminishes the
standing of their position. Okay, American slavery may not
be a tale awash in blood but what does that matter? The
basic evil of the whole shebang remains whether or not the
most lurid aspects of the worst case scenario are true or
no. It doesn't matter if the situation was as bad as
potrayed, it was still involved a basic violation of human
rights.
The defense of the Confedrate cause can only be hurt by
playing this game.
FYI: I find the traditional idea of cringing, battered and
otherwise thoroughly cowed slaves little more than an insult
to the people who could wrest as much from a pretty crappy
situation as the slaves appearantly did.
Linda Teasley
Lynn Berkowitz (lynn...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
[bibliography snipped]
: Mr. McCain would probably also like a recommendation of a book written
: by a "happy darkey", I have to admit I have never come across such a
: work.
Neither have I.
The fact that slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write
: may be a contributing factor to the paucity of this type of
: literature.
Perhaps (although many of them learned anyhow). I think a bigger
reason is that no one who writes his autobiography ever intentionally
presents himself as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Linda "where's the interest in that?" Teasley
--
Five pelican bedecked battle flags began to flap. . . three thousand
men stepped off on the left foot. With strict cadence, ninety paces per
minute, a forest of burnished steel paraded up the hill.
Winchester --- 25 May 1862
Lynn Berkowitz
On 27 Aug 1996 04:17:18 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
:Friend & foe:
:
:Having flamed with the best of them, I wish to set aside any sectional,
:ideological or personal animosities for a moment, in order to post a
:sincere request for help regarding the history of slavery in the United
:States, particularly in the South during the 19th century.
:
:But in all of this I keep running into a certain conception of slavery the
:source of which I have been unable to determine. It seems like there is
:some major and influential book about slavery that I've never read or even
:heard of, or as if -- in the 15-20 years since I left school -- the texts
:have been rewritten in regard to slavery. Most of this new view is
:centered on inhumane atrocities which are alleged to have been frequent,
:even mundane, occurences in the antebellum South: Slave women raped with
:impunity on a nightly basis, the men castrated, slave family life
:systematically undermined, women and children purposefully sold away from
:their husbands and fathers, religious activity banned or suppressed,
:slaves bred like cattle on special plantations devoted to such practices,
:runaways hunted down and tortured or killed, and the most brutal methods
:of oppressive generally prevailing throughout Dixie.
:
Someone mentioned "Uncle Tom's Cabin", this is, of course, a work of
fiction, although wildly popular at the time of its publication, made
into numerous stage plays and musicals (seeing as how motion pictures
and television miniseries were not yet invented) yet its inaccuracies
and bias were obvious from the start.
For firsthand accounts of the paternalistic and benevolent nature of
the institution of slavery, I recommend to Mr. McCain the following:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, the autobiography of Solomon Northrop (Northrop
was a free Black man from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into
slavery as an adult, rescued 12 years later from a Louisiana
plantation) (1854)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAMS WELLS BROWN (1850's)
THE KIDNAPPED AND THE RANSOMED by Kate Pickard (1856)
WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ--THE DIARY OF A FREE BLACK
There is, of course, a tremendous body of literature consisting of
freed-slave narratives, some of which are undeniably accurate and
other unreliable. The four listed above are the best documented
(Northrop's is the most objective and accurate account, since he was
an educated and literate adult at the time of his abduction). The "as
told to" atrocity stories that appeared regularly in the abolitionist
press of the day are less well documented.)
I'm at work now but I have a more comprehensive bibliography at home.
Mr. McCain would probably also like a recommendation of a book written
by a "happy darkey", I have to admit I have never come across such a
work. The fact that slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write
may be a contributing factor to the paucity of this type of
literature.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
Justin M Sanders
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
> Having flamed with the best of them, I wish to set aside any sectional,
> ideological or personal animosities for a moment, in order to post a
> sincere request for help regarding the history of slavery in the United
> States, particularly in the South during the 19th century.
I will not be able to provide the information which Mr. McCain
specifically requested, namely, the one book which gives the distorted
view of slavery which he discusses. Rather than recommend works which
give such a distorted view, perhaps it would be better to give works which
represent some of the best scholarship on the subject of slavery.
Mr. McCain has already mentioned Genovese's "Roll, Jordan, Roll." I have
found Peter Kolchin's, "American Slavery, 1619-1877" to be a concise
review of the subject with an excellent bibliographic essay at the end.
Kenneth Stampp's, "The Peculiar Institution" is another, older, but solid
general history of the subject.
All of these books (and a couple of others) are mentioned in the Suggested
Reading List which is posted along with the FAQ each month.
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/civil-war-usa/reading-list
Mark Pitcavage's Alternate Reading List contains the titles of several
more valuable works. It (and the FAQ Reading List, too) is readily
available at the American Civil War Homepage
http://funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/pub/~hoemann/cwarhp.html
As I have stated, none of these works will provide the distorted view that
was requested, but they will provide some of the best and most thoughtful
analysis that historians have to offer on the subject.
--
Justin M. Sanders "I shot an arrow into the air. It fell
Dept. of Physics to earth I know not where." --Henry
Univ. of South Alabama Wadsworth Longfellow confessing
jsan...@jaguar1.usouthal.edu to a sad ignorance of ballistics.
Maury
In article <50437i$2...@panix2.panix.com>, l...@panix.com says...>: Mr. McCain would probably also like a recommendation of a book written
>: by a "happy darkey", I have to admit I have never come across such a
>: work.
>
>
> The fact that slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write
>: may be a contributing factor to the paucity of this type of
>: literature.
Blacks, freed and slave, learned to read. Some learned to write
and some were taught by their masters. I can site one famous person,
Frederick Douglass was taught to read and write by his master's
wife. It's in his Frederick Douglass' autobiography.
Beyond "reading" there are other skills for communication.
I don't recall that the native Americans read and wrote either,
but regarding blacks, they were often the first to hear of the
latest news because the trusted ones were sent to fetch the mail
and in doing so they heard any gossip by whites on matters and
thereby they could pass that (singing I Heard It Through
The Grape Vine) informatiom amongst themselves quicker than the
master would get his hardcopy snail mail. -- Maury
.
RStacy2229
In article <502u7q$16...@cheatum.frontiernet.net>, zolton
<zol...@pop3.frontiernet.com> writes:
> It's not like the sheer level of suffering
>inflicted upon a given group increases or diminishes the
>standing of their position.>
I'm not saying that, but there are those who say that the level of
African-American slaves in North America suffering as compared to, say
Native American slaves in Central America, SHOULD affect our consideration
of African-Americans as a group. Others would say that Old South slavery's
comparability with various other oppressive systems is fundamental to our
attitudes toward manifestations of Confederate heritage, inter alia, the
battle flag.
Still others (some of whom have used this argument sneeringly toward me
for even suggesting a comparison) would say that the exploitation,
oppression and alienation of the slave under the Old South regime was so
infinitely greater than the exploitation, oppression and alienation of the
proletariat under the industrial capitalist regime as to be beyond
reckoning.
And yet these same people bear little apparent hostility toward Brazil,
Cuba or other New World slave nations, nor towards the active agents of
enslavement in Africa (Arabs, Jews, Europeans, the Africans themselves),
and even less toward the trans-Atlantic slave traders (among them the
Yankees). All the hostility toward slavery, in other words, is focused
upon the condition of 4 million slaves in the United States in 1860. Thus
-- if, as the Yankees claim, a Norhtern humanitarian concern for the slave
was the cause for the war -- it seems we should be concerned as to how the
condition of those slaves would be comparable to other oppressed peoples
before, during and after the war. If some comparably oppressive situation
could be discovered, either at home or abroad, certainly the U.S. should,
by the principles of the "irrepressible conflict," declare war upon the
oppressors and end the oppression.
>Okay, American slavery may not
>be a tale awash in blood but what does that matter?
Oh, it does indeed, if the conditions of slavery were so intolerable as to
render the great-great-grandchildren of the freedmen necessitous of
special consideration according to their ancestry (and some argue that it
does), then an oppression factor becomes necessary, that these claims to
consideration may be judged against any potential competing claims. And if
slavery were sin, does it not follow that the slaveholders are now
roasting in the fires of hell?
>The
>basic evil of the whole shebang remains whether or not the
>most lurid aspects of the worst case scenario are true or
>no.>
Yes, but "the most lurid aspects of the worst case scenario" are
frequently cited by political leaders (former Atlanta mayor Maynard
Jackson) and social leaders (major writers at the New York Times, et al.)
in reference to various latter-day political questions. If it is for those
lurid aspects which slavery must be condemned, the prevalence of those
aspects should be determined. And if, as you suggest, it is "the basic
evil of the whole shebang" which we condemn, let us ask: Evil how?
> It doesn't matter if the situation was as bad as
>potrayed, it was still involved a basic violation of human
>rights.>
Human rights, as defined by whom? I do not think that the Islamic Africans
who sold their Kaffir slaves to the European traders considered that the
Kaffir had any more human rights than would have Chief Justice Taney. And
if the vendor recognizes no rights for this person, nor does the purchase,
his Constitution or his Chief Justice, then who is the agent who may
justly infer upon such rights upon the slave? We are at the baseline of
political theory, you see, and must decide who is the best custodian of
the slave's interest.
The problem, you see, is that slavery as an institution rubs roughly
against some basic premises of republican government, contrasting the
right of liberty to the right of property. It is only to egalitarian or
collectivist social theory, really, that we may turn to find a critique of
slavery. It was not subject to criticism by the Constitution of 1860,
which recognized it. Nor is slavery condemned, per se, in Judeo-Christian
scripture. So by the basic political and religious tenets of Americans in
1860, the existence of slavery should have been no evil, had it not been
for the egalitarian phraseology of the Declaration of Independence. The
Declaration, thus, is in direct conflict with the Constitution and
Judeo-Christian scripture.
Studying the rise of abolitionism after the Missouri Compromise, I think
we should be able to see that it was in mimickry of the British abolition
of colonial slavery that the American fanatics came to their position.
> The defense of the Confedrate cause can only be hurt by
>playing this game. >
Who is playing this game? I am seeking information. By the way, this
inquiry was prompted by a specific event of which you are unaware. I have
since discovered that "racial sensitivity trainers" employed by the U.S.
government in the 1960s and '70s were supplied with a great deal of
Marxist and neo-abolitionist literature on the history of slavery for
training purposes, leading me to suspect that our own government
(unwittingly?) helped spread this "slavery as the Holocaust" mythos. The
fellow I was querying about the source of his opinions, upon my asking if
he had read Fogel and Engerman, shot back cleverly with: "Have you read
James Baldwin?" AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
>FYI: I find the traditional idea of cringing, battered and
>otherwise thoroughly cowed slaves little more than an insult
>to the people who could wrest as much from a pretty crappy
>situation as the slaves appearantly did.
Ditto. To imagine that slaves would be mistreated so badly and never raise
more than a few local rebellions, one must think them quite cowed indeed.
But as both slave and master were generally Christian in faith, one must
suppose the master a very bad Christian, and the slave a very good
Christian, in order for such cruelty and docility to exist within the same
system.
Robert Stacy McCain
jcr...@epix.net
> Subject: Re: Stacy asks for HELP: Atrocities under slavery?
>
> On 27 Aug 1996 04:17:18 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
>
> :Friend & foe:
> :
> :Having flamed with the best of them, I wish to set aside any sectional,
> :ideological or personal animosities for a moment, in order to post a
> :sincere request for help regarding the history of slavery in the United
> :States, particularly in the South during the 19th century.
> :
>
> :But in all of this I keep running into a certain conception of slavery the
> :source of which I have been unable to determine. It seems like there is
> :some major and influential book about slavery that I've never read or even
> :heard of, or as if -- in the 15-20 years since I left school -- the texts
> :have been rewritten in regard to slavery. Most of this new view is
> :centered on inhumane atrocities which are alleged to have been frequent,
> :even mundane, occurences in the antebellum South: Slave women raped with
> :impunity on a nightly basis, the men castrated, slave family life
> :systematically undermined, women and children purposefully sold away from
> :their husbands and fathers, religious activity banned or suppressed,
> :slaves bred like cattle on special plantations devoted to such practices,
> :runaways hunted down and tortured or killed, and the most brutal methods
> :of oppressive generally prevailing throughout Dixie.
> :
> Someone mentioned "Uncle Tom's Cabin", this is, of course, a work of
> fiction, although wildly popular at the time of its publication, made
> into numerous stage plays and musicals (seeing as how motion pictures
> and television miniseries were not yet invented) yet its inaccuracies
> and bias were obvious from the start.
>
< other referances snipped >
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
I mentioned "Uncle Tom's Cabin" because, even though it was fiction,
this book did more to shape public opinion towards slavery than any
other book before or since. Prior to the CW few northerners had seen
slavery first hand. While most were generally opposed to it or at
least found it distasteful they were not nearly ready to
abolish it. Slavery, as portrayed in "Uncle Tom's Cabin", suddenly
became so morally revolting that the abolitionism became a religioun
unto itself. I can think of no other piece of propoganda in
our nation's history as successful as that one book.
The legacy of this book can still be seen today. If you read about
slavery in high school textbooks or watch any of the several
CW mini-series on TV you will see material taken straight from
this book. Even "Roots" was little more than a retelling of this same general
theme.
Please understand that I am in no way defending slavery or
trying to excuse it as some would seek to do. I would hope everyone
in this NG has read at least some of the resources cited. My wish is
that we could rid ourselves of the popular history views on slavery by
replacing "Uncle Tom" with the stories of real slaves. However, since
Mr. Stacy asked for the "major influential book on slavery" I gave it
to him.
Joel
RStacy2229
In article <32256ead...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, lynn...@ix.netcom.com
(Lynn Berkowitz) writes:
>For firsthand accounts of the paternalistic and benevolent nature of
>the institution of slavery, I recommend to Mr. McCain the following:
>
>AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Well, DUH! As Douglass was from Maryland, and as Maryland remained in the
Union, this is hardly an indictment of the Confederate states. And as
Douglass was a leading abolitionist writer, it certainly behooved him to
paint slavery in the worst possible light, didn't it? Just as it behooves
me to make the worst of the oppressive yoke of Yankee bondange which binds
my homeland involuntarily to a nation that is viciously biased against me,
right? (See how this works?)
>TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, the autobiography of Solomon Northrop (Northrop
>was a free Black man from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into
>slavery as an adult, rescued 12 years later from a Louisiana
>plantation) (1854)
Ah, excuse me, but hadn't New Yorkers and New Jerseyites been quite active
in selling their OWN SLAVES to the South but a few decades prior to the
publication of this? Indeed, did not New Jersey continue to sell its black
"convicts" at auction in New Orleans right up until the South seceded?
While I have never read Northrop's account, nor do I know whether his
account is substantiated by documentary evidence (census data or
plantation records, for instance), if his account is true, he was the
victim of a crime, since I know of no U.S. law which made it legal to make
a slave of a free man. Still, his account has an interesting publication
date -- how coincidental that it should be published at the height of
outrage over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. I suspect that, whatever element of
truth if any it contains, the story might properly be classified, like
Douglass' work, as Yankee abolitionist propaganda. Remember, these folks
wanted to sell books, and "abolitionist" was a full-time job for some
people.
>AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAMS WELLS BROWN (1850's)
>THE KIDNAPPED AND THE RANSOMED by Kate Pickard (1856)
>WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ--THE DIARY OF A FREE BLACK
>
These titles are unfamiliar to me, but again -- any writing about slavery
published in the North during the 1850s should not be accepted as
unbiased, nor even factual, until checked against documentary evidence.
This would be like reading a 1950s-era John Birch Society tract about
conditions in China or the Soviet Union and not verifying it against the
record or, more appropriately, this would be like reading Hitler's lurid
claims in "Mein Kampf" and supposing they were true. Get it, Lynne? You're
reading from "The Protocols of the Learned Elder of Dixie" here.
How idiotic that the devotees of Boasian relativism extend their dogmatic
cultural neutrality to all but the putative oppressors. Don't you see that
there was an intense propaganda campaign being directed against the South?
Was there not an ongoing struggle for control of the central government?
Are political parties not prone to distorting the truth to gain power? Do
you suppose that "media bias" is a recent phenomenon? Are we to supposed
that no escaped slave, free black or traveling Yankee ever fudged a little
bit to substantiate the prejudices of his audience? Was there never any
"helpful" abolitionist editing of these sagas to reflect unfavorably on
the South?
Am I the only one who brings a cynical attitude to my historic reading? My
goodness, people, I work at a newspaper and I KNOW how a propaganda
campaign operates. I KNOW how facts are omitted and distorted to generate
the desired public response. Look at the current debates over taxes,
affirmative action, welfare -- either side can produce the facts and
"spin" to defend its position. Does anyone believe that the policy
initiatives of either party is designed for any other purpose than to win
elections and placate various interest groups within the party? Have you
taken leave of your senses?
Wake up and smell the agitprop, people. Imagine what you would say about
me if I brought such a gullible naivete to my readings of the pro-slavery
argument. Are you truly so blind as to be unaware of the bias in these
sources?
Robert Stacy McCain
Professional cynic
Rome, GA
RStacy2229
>by a "happy darkey", I have to admit I have never come across such a
>may be a contributing factor to the paucity of this type of
>literature.
Well, well, if we don't have the old "ignorant redneck racist"
stereotype cropping up again. Does Ms. Berkowitz imagine that I subscribe
to some rose-tinted moonlight-and-magnolia picture of the Old South? Or
does she think that I am so stupid as not to realize that the slave
generally had a hard lot in life? Nor am I unaware of the irony that
people were classified as chattel in a nation founded upon a basically
egalitarian doctrine.
I have interviewed former sharecroppers and tenant farmers and am
myself the son of a land-poor Depression-era Southern farm boy who was
only too happy to escape the tedium and drudgery of mule-powered
agriculture.
For all their suffering, however, these people usually are able to
remember happy times from their experiences and to reflect that no one was
really to blame for their condition. Even black people talking about the
days of Jim Crow, without defending segregation, will often say: "That's
just the way things were. We took it for granted." I have interviewed one
well-known woman, who participated in lunch-counter sit-ins with Lonnie
King, who speaks with great pride of the teachers at her all-black school
and of her parents' status within the segregated black community. She has
little or no prejudice or animosity toward white people, probably less
than many younger black people do. But, despite her efforts to achieve
racial equality in the South, some "new jack" types would probably call
this courageous lady an "Aunt Thomasina" -- why? Because she doesn't hate
white people enough to suit their tastes.
So it is with the latter-day neo-abolitionists: Anyone who does not
speak with the utmost vituperation toward the antebellum gentry is
immediately lampooned as a nostalgic romantic, an ill-read ignoramous or
an outright racist. That such people should be allowed to parade
themselves as paragons of color-blind social virtue is a shame. And that
no one has seen through this humanitarian pose is evidence of the extent
of indoctrination which is possible under the regime of political
correctness.
Remember: Slaveholders were human beings, too, and were furthermore
citizens whose rights under the Constitution were far more explicit than
any egalitarian claim which could be advanced on behalf of their servants.
The slaveholders always contended that freedom for the slaves would be a
very difficult problem in a nation where racial attitudes were very rigid,
and so it has proven.
It was scarcely a question, in 1860, of whether slavery in North
America should have been instituted 200-plus years earlier. This was a
fait accompli. Rather it was, among other matters, a question of whether
the slaveholders and the slaves themselves should be allowed entry into
the western territories. (Read the first chapter of Jefferson Davis' "Rise
and Fall" for a good treatment of this issue.) Even if the emancipation of
slaves was one's objective, the question was who would be the agent of the
slave's freedom -- the Southern people among whom he had lived his entire
life, or the residents of the 98-percent white Northland? Further, was a
war of conquest and subjugation the best means of accomplishing this,
without compensation to the master? Are we not to suppose that this might
create problems for the freedman, never mind the effects upon his
erstwhile owner?
Why is it that Yankees and scalawags are unable to approach these
questions with anything like true objectivity?
RStacy2229
In article <5042ln$l...@hermes.acs.unt.edu>, jsan...@jove.acs.unt.edu
(Justin M Sanders) writes:
>Kenneth Stampp's, "The Peculiar Institution" is another, older, but solid
>general history of the subject.>
Fogel and Engerman, in "Time On the Cross" (Vol. 2, pp. 217-247), point
out the several distortions in Stampp's book, which they say represented
"a climax" of the "neo-abolitionist resurgence." Though Fogel and Engerman
stop short of accusing Stampp of bias, it is obvious that Stampp's
selection of data for his studies was, shall we say, convenient to his
purposes. Fogel and Engerman's wider and more systematic approach to the
census data and plantation records produced a far different picture of Old
South slavery than had been previously known.
The economic findings which formed the basis of "Time On the Cross" were
severely denounced upon their first publication in 1967, Fogel and
Engerman facing charges which were (sound familiar?) tatamount to racism.
Since that time, I might point out, critics of the Old South have
concentrated more on plantation narratives and other non-statistical data
on slavery, since the numbers -- by Fogel and Engerman's measure, anyway
-- are substantially a vindication of Dixie.
More than just a reaction to Ulrich Phillips' racist interpretations of
the slave experience, neo-abolitionism -- the historiographic trend of
which "Peculiar Institution" was the apotheosis -- was essentially a
Communist movement. No kidding, folks. Herb Aptheker, author of "Negro
Slave Revolts in the U.S.," was among other things the official party
historian of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (You can look it up in Genovese's
"On the Southern Front," Genovese being the Whittaker Chambers of the
post-Cold War era.)
And -- for extra paranoia points -- ask yourself this: Why would Aptheker,
a CPUSA officer in the 1930s, be so interested in earlier insurrections by
American workers? Why has the insane moral inversion and murderous
terrorism of Nat Turner been celebrated as an act of justice by leading
writers and academics? Why does the mere fact that I am asking these
questions shock you? Would it surprise you to learn that leading American
conservatives have been claiming for 40 years that CPUSA infiltration of
U.S. colleges and universities (particularly Columbia and Berkeley) was a
danger to our Republic?
Enough of the scary McCarthyite stuff, though. Volume 1 of Fogel and
Engerman's "Time on the Cross" is available for for 13.95, postpaid
(credit cards accepted) from The Confederate Shoppe at 205-942-8978.
(e-mail inquires to: confe...@wwisp.com)
By the way, don't think to hard about my paranoia trip. If you've been
thoroughly indoctrinated by public-school textbooks, it sounds like
lunacy. If you skipped indoctrination class and were instead chugging rum
in the high school parking lot, however (ahem), you shouldn't think too
hard about the possibility that Chambers and McCarthy were essentially
right about subversive plots. The knowledge that a certain Moscow-trained
dissident is living at a well-known address on Pennsylvania Avenue, and
the further knowledge that the head of the world's leading news agency is
married to an apologist for the VietCong, is sure to disturb you. And
then, when I win my $10 bet that I can demonstrate that your kid's high
school history textbook is thoroughly pervaded with Marxist doctrine, well
-- it's not paranoia, if they really are out to get you, is it?
Have a nice day!
Robert Stacy McCain
SERVANT: "Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
KING: "You don't have to tell me that -- I can smell them from here!"
RStacy2229
In article <NEWTNews.841340...@epix.net>, jcr...@epix.net
writes:
>The legacy of this book can still be seen today. If you read about
>slavery in high school textbooks or watch any of the several
>CW mini-series on TV you will see material taken straight from
>this book. Even "Roots" was little more than a retelling of this same
general
>
>theme.
Thank you, Joel, for having the courage to tell the truth. I recently
rented a video of "Roots," sat down with a notebook and analyzed it both
for content and theme. More on that later, if you want it.
Let me ask you some questions:
The author of "Roots" also wrote an earlier book, an "as-told-to"
autobiography. Whose?
The subject of that best-seller died before the book was published. What
is the deceased subject's widow's last name?
What is the origin of that name?
When the subject of Haley's autobiography died, who was accused of his
death and why?
Who took over the movement of which the deceased had once been a major
leader?
What is the ideological doctrine of that movement?
Who recently asked permission to accept a $1 billion gift from a foreign
dictator, vehemently hostile to the U.S.?
Knowing the answers to these questions -- try Dinesh D'Souza's "The End of
Racism" for a starter -- ask yourself: What is to account for the horrific
and blatantly anti-white (not to mention false and inaccurate) depiction
of slavery in "Roots"?
Have a nice day,
STACY
Lynn Berkowitz
On 31 Aug 1996 18:53:51 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
[much ranting deleted]
:>WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ--THE DIARY OF A FREE BLACK
:>
I would suggest you get this book out of the library and read it. It
will surprise you. You might even like it. You might even find it
useful for your own purposes.
Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
Paul E Larson
Maury <w...@cstone.net> wrote in article <504ncj$m...@dot.cstone.net>...
> Beyond "reading" there are other skills for communication.
> I don't recall that the native Americans read and wrote either,
Actually as I recall the Cherokee People had there own written language before the Europeans arrived. Also , the Iroquois may have had a written language.
--
Brought to you from the brain of Paul E Larson a.k.a.
whis...@servtech.com. Okay it might not be much but
I thought they said trains. I believe that everyone
has the right to their own opinion no matter how wrong
they are.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50afue$a...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <5042ln$l...@hermes.acs.unt.edu>, jsan...@jove.acs.unt.edu
>(Justin M Sanders) writes:
>>Kenneth Stampp's, "The Peculiar Institution" is another, older, but solid
>>general history of the subject.>
>
>Fogel and Engerman, in "Time On the Cross" (Vol. 2, pp. 217-247), point
>out the several distortions in Stampp's book, which they say represented
>"a climax" of the "neo-abolitionist resurgence." Though Fogel and Engerman
>stop short of accusing Stampp of bias, it is obvious that Stampp's
>selection of data for his studies was, shall we say, convenient to his
>purposes. Fogel and Engerman's wider and more systematic approach to the
>census data and plantation records produced a far different picture of Old
>South slavery than had been previously known.
Fogel and Engerman produced a far different picture of old south slavery
primarily because their book was riddled with errors and methodological
problems.
>The economic findings which formed the basis of "Time On the Cross" were
>severely denounced upon their first publication in 1967, Fogel and
>Engerman facing charges which were (sound familiar?) tatamount to racism.
>Since that time, I might point out, critics of the Old South have
>concentrated more on plantation narratives and other non-statistical data
>on slavery, since the numbers -- by Fogel and Engerman's measure, anyway
>-- are substantially a vindication of Dixie.
Sigh.
>More than just a reaction to Ulrich Phillips' racist interpretations of
>the slave experience, neo-abolitionism -- the historiographic trend of
>which "Peculiar Institution" was the apotheosis -- was essentially a
>Communist movement. No kidding, folks. Herb Aptheker, author of "Negro
>Slave Revolts in the U.S.," was among other things the official party
>historian of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (You can look it up in Genovese's
>"On the Southern Front," Genovese being the Whittaker Chambers of the
>post-Cold War era.)
If you'd been in this newsgroup longer--and we all heave a hearty sigh of
relief that this was not so--you'd have seen plenty of discussions about
Aptheker, as well as his Marxism. The rest of the above paragraph is
essentially just bull.
>And -- for extra paranoia points -- ask yourself this: Why would Aptheker,
>a CPUSA officer in the 1930s, be so interested in earlier insurrections by
>American workers? Why has the insane moral inversion and murderous
>terrorism of Nat Turner been celebrated as an act of justice by leading
>writers and academics? Why does the mere fact that I am asking these
>questions shock you? Would it surprise you to learn that leading American
>conservatives have been claiming for 40 years that CPUSA infiltration of
>U.S. colleges and universities (particularly Columbia and Berkeley) was a
>danger to our Republic?
That splashing sound came from the deep end.
> Enough of the scary McCarthyite stuff, though. Volume 1 of Fogel and
>Engerman's "Time on the Cross" is available for for 13.95, postpaid
>(credit cards accepted) from The Confederate Shoppe at 205-942-8978.
>(e-mail inquires to: confe...@wwisp.com)
> By the way, don't think to hard about my paranoia trip. If you've been
>thoroughly indoctrinated by public-school textbooks, it sounds like
>lunacy. If you skipped indoctrination class and were instead chugging rum
>in the high school parking lot, however (ahem), you shouldn't think too
>hard about the possibility that Chambers and McCarthy were essentially
>right about subversive plots. The knowledge that a certain Moscow-trained
>dissident is living at a well-known address on Pennsylvania Avenue, and
>the further knowledge that the head of the world's leading news agency is
>married to an apologist for the VietCong, is sure to disturb you. And
>then, when I win my $10 bet that I can demonstrate that your kid's high
>school history textbook is thoroughly pervaded with Marxist doctrine, well
>-- it's not paranoia, if they really are out to get you, is it?
Why don't you go back to your militia rally?
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <3228f4da...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Lynn Berkowitz <lynn...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>On 31 Aug 1996 18:53:51 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
>
>[much ranting deleted]
>
>:>WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ--THE DIARY OF A FREE BLACK
>:>
>I would suggest you get this book out of the library and read it. It
>will surprise you. You might even like it. You might even find it
>useful for your own purposes.
>
>Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
I think he was out buying gasoline and lumber.
steven f miller
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
: In article <32256ead...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, lynn...@ix.netcom.com
: (Lynn Berkowitz) writes:
: >For firsthand accounts of the paternalistic and benevolent nature of
: >the institution of slavery, I recommend to Mr. McCain the following:
: >
: >AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS
: Well, DUH! As Douglass was from Maryland, and as Maryland remained in the
: Union, this is hardly an indictment of the Confederate states.
What is the point of this snippy little comment? Mr. McCain had, in
his patently disingenuous, asked for sources documenting the atrocities of
slavery, even while indicating that he was disinclined to believe any of them.
Ms. Berkowitz, justifiably suspecting his motives, nevertheless provided
appropriate suggestions. So what if Douglass was from Maryland?!
Behold the Confedero-centric mind at work.
: And as
: Douglass was a leading abolitionist writer, it certainly behooved him to
: paint slavery in the worst possible light, didn't it?
Sure. But his abolitionism derived from his experience as a slave; he didn't
have to make this stuff up.
: >TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, the autobiography of Solomon Northrop (Northrop
: >was a free Black man from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into
: >slavery as an adult, rescued 12 years later from a Louisiana
: >plantation) (1854)
: Ah, excuse me, but hadn't New Yorkers and New Jerseyites been quite active
: in selling their OWN SLAVES to the South but a few decades prior to the
: publication of this?
Yes. What's the relevance of this to the point under discussion?
: I have never read Northrop's account [off-the-point rantings deleted]
I didn't think so.
: I suspect that, whatever element of
: truth if any it contains, the story might properly be classified, like
: Douglass' work, as Yankee abolitionist propaganda.
: Remember, these folks
: wanted to sell books, and "abolitionist" was a full-time job for some
: people.
Just as "slave" was a full-time job for four million people.
: >AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAMS WELLS BROWN (1850's)
: >THE KIDNAPPED AND THE RANSOMED by Kate Pickard (1856)
: >WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ--THE DIARY OF A FREE BLACK
: >
: These titles are unfamiliar to me,
Picking up a pattern here.
: but again -- any writing about slavery
: published in the North during the 1850s should not be accepted as
: unbiased, nor even factual, until checked against documentary evidence.
Agreed. That would be *almost* as silly as rejecting a whole category of
sources without having read any of them. The Johnson diary, by the way, was
not published in the 1850s and is not an indictment of slavery.
: How idiotic that the devotees of Boasian relativism extend their dogmatic
: cultural neutrality to all but the putative oppressors.
Exactly which "devotees of Boasian relativism" do you have in mind? The
production line's humming at McCain's Straw Man Manufactory.
: Am I the only one who brings a cynical attitude to my historic reading?
No, but to judge from your posts here your cynicism is applied in a highly
selective manner. In any case, I'd suggest that skepticism is a
more useful attitude to bring to historical reading than cynicism.
: goodness, people, I work at a newspaper and I KNOW how a propaganda
: campaign operates. I KNOW how facts are omitted and distorted to generate
: the desired public response.
Practice makes perfect, I suppose. I'm not sure, though, that your omissions
and distortions of facts are getting "the desired public response." Or
perhaps they are.
: Wake up and smell the agitprop, people. Imagine what you would say about
: me if I brought such a gullible naivete to my readings of the pro-slavery
: argument.
Not much, given the gullible naivete you've brought to your readings of
_Time on the Cross_, Genovese, and Dinesh D'Souza. Being a gentleman,
I'd never call you a "devotee of Boasian relativism." ;)
Steven F. "them's fightin' words" Miller
RStacy2229
In article <50bee3$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>Fogel and Engerman produced a far different picture of old south slavery
>primarily because their book was riddled with errors and methodological
>problems.
Such as?
RStacy2229
In article <3228f4da...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, lynn...@ix.netcom.com
(Lynn Berkowitz) writes:
>Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
Who is Ted Werntz?
RStacy2229
In article <50bee3$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>Herb Aptheker, author of "Negro
>>Slave Revolts in the U.S.," was among other things the official party
>>historian of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (You can look it up in
Genovese's
>>"On the Southern Front," Genovese being the Whittaker Chambers of the
>>post-Cold War era.)
>
>If you'd been in this newsgroup longer--and we all heave a hearty sigh of
>relief that this was not so--you'd have seen plenty of discussions about
>Aptheker, as well as his Marxism. The rest of the above paragraph is
>essentially just bull.
>
Was not Aptheker the CPUSA official historian? Is Genovese lying?
RStacy2229
In article <50beh7$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>>Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
>
>I think he was out buying gasoline and lumber.
Ha, ha. I repeat: Who is Ted Werntz? And while I'm at it, how was he
"terrorizing the newsgroup"?
RSMc
Dave Smith
sfmi...@wam.umd.edu (steven f miller) wrote:
>RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
>: but again -- any writing about slavery
>: published in the North during the 1850s should not be accepted as
>: unbiased, nor even factual, until checked against documentary evidence.
>Agreed. That would be *almost* as silly as rejecting a whole category of
>sources without having read any of them. The Johnson diary, by the way, was
>not published in the 1850s and is not an indictment of slavery.
And gosh, I guess rejecting out of hand the writings of anyone
published in the North in the 1850s regarding slavery as biased would
lead one to the inescapable conclusion that any Southern writings
written in the 1850s on slavery was:
a) equally biased.
b) genuinely factual.
c) both of the above.
d) none of the above.
Dave "what am I missing here?" Smith
------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Smith "Always Store Beer in a Dark Place"
Villa Hills, Ky --- Lazarus Long
http://users.aol.com/dmsmith001/
The Cincinnati CWRT http://users.aol.com/CintiCWRT/
------------------------------------------------------------
RStacy2229
In article <50bee3$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
Hey, Mark, you're invited to be guest of honor at our next target-practice
session. :)
RSMc
RStacy2229
In article <01bb97ab$334b5f40$4e90...@PPP.syr.servtech.com>, "Paul E
Larson" <whis...@servtech.com> writes:
>Actually as I recall the Cherokee People had there own written language
>before the Europeans arrived. Also , the Iroquois may have had a written
>language.
WRONG. The Cherokee alphabet was the work of Sequoyah, and was not
developed until the 19th century. Sequoyah was certainly influenced by
Christian missionaries and was able to read English before he developed
the Cherokee written language. By the way, the Cherokees were not native
to this region, but -- after the collapse of the Coosa (Muscogean)
chiefdom, caused mainly by the De Soto expedition -- the Cherokees moved
down from the area of Virginia. The Cherokee were part of the 17th-century
Indian slave trade with Virginia and were bitter enemies of the Creek
descendants of the Muscogean peoples of historic Georgia and Alabama. The
Cherokee helped Jackson fight the Creek at Horseshoe Bend.
Robert Stacy McCain
Who used to live just a couple of miles from New Echota, capital of the
Cherokee Nation, whose grandmother lived not far from Horsehoe Bend, and
who did a lot of study of this region's prehistory.
James F. Epperson
On 1 Sep 1996, RStacy2229 wrote:
> In article <50beh7$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
> mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>
> >>Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
> >
> >I think he was out buying gasoline and lumber.
>
> Ha, ha. I repeat: Who is Ted Werntz? And while I'm at it, how was he
> "terrorizing the newsgroup"?
Ted Werntz was the Anti-McCain -- more correctly, several participants
have characterized you as the Anti-Werntz. He is the reason, more than
anyone else probably, that the moderated group was formed. In terms of
"blue" and "gray," he was blue, but none of us would claim him or defend
him. Like you he could occasionally be constructive and tolerable, but
also like you he was capable of extraordinary leaps of illogic and venom,
both without any apparent provocation or cause. One moment you are
having a semi-decent discussion, the next he is calling you a racist and
other fun names because you dared to disagree with him. His hobby horse
was the "thesis" that the North American slave trade was entirely the
fault of <exageration mode on> five elderly Jews in Newport <end
exageration>. Ted disappeared from the NG about a year or so ago, and we
all breathed a collective sigh of relief. I hear the same sigh whenever
you are gone for a few days, but those have all been false alarms,
unfortunately. I have heard rumors about why Ted disappeared but they
involve other participants here and so I do not feel at liberty to
discuss them. I hope he is receiving good care wherever he is.
My apologies for even spending this much time discussing the putz.
Jim Epperson
The student who changes the course of history is probably
taking an exam.
Lynn Berkowitz
On 1 Sep 1996 15:23:13 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
:
:Ha, ha. I repeat: Who is Ted Werntz? And while I'm at it, how was he
:"terrorizing the newsgroup"?
:RSMc
"Terrorizing the newsgroup" (I mighta misspoke. Maybe "harrassing" or
"annoying" or "irritating" or "making a total @ss of himself" would be a
better choice of words)
The Werntzter's M.O.
1. Binge posting, at times posting the same 40K nonsense message multiple
times.
2. Ad hominem attacks.
3. Calling anyone who disagreed with his peculiar, far-out, whacko views, a
"fascist".
4. Quoting out of context. (He especially liked the "Encyclopedia Judaica"
as a favorite source of information on the transatlantic slave trade, and
the genocide of Native Americans)
5. Fixation on bizarre and unproven theories of slavery.
6. Master of the non sequiter
7. Boasting about the exploits of his ancestors, in particular his Aunt
Maury-- er-- I mean his Aunt Mary.
Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
Boy howdy, we should have an a.w.c.u. "Gladiatorial Combat to the Death"
between these two soul brothers! Put these dudes in the pit and let them
slug it out with 2X4's. Then, we can shoot the winner!
Of course, a duel of this nature would require the return of the
Werntzmeister from underneath whatever rock he has crawled off too, and I
have to admit that McCain has occasionally demonstrated a sense of humor
which suggests a human being deep down inside. Werntz was truly psychotic
and a prime candidate for postnatal abortion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50cmo2$1...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50bee3$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>>primarily because their book was riddled with errors and methodological
>>problems.
>
>Such as?
There have been two entire books devoted to nothing other than the errors in
_Time on the Cross_. One is _Slavery and the Numbers Game_ by Herbert Gutman,
and the other is a collection called _Reckoning with Slavery_. In addition, a
number of other scholars have pointed out gross errors in _Time on the Cross_;
see, for instance, the introduction to _The Overseer_.
The fact that you are not aware of all this speaks volumes.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50cn6k$1...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <3228f4da...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, lynn...@ix.netcom.com
>
>>Geez. WHERE WERE YOU when Ted Werntz was terrorizing the newsgroup?
>
Another bigot.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50cnjf$1...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50bee3$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>
>>>Slave Revolts in the U.S.," was among other things the official party
>>>historian of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (You can look it up in
>Genovese's
>>>"On the Southern Front," Genovese being the Whittaker Chambers of the
>>>post-Cold War era.)
>>
>>If you'd been in this newsgroup longer--and we all heave a hearty sigh of
>
>>relief that this was not so--you'd have seen plenty of discussions about
>>Aptheker, as well as his Marxism. The rest of the above paragraph is
>>essentially just bull.
>>
>Was not Aptheker the CPUSA official historian? Is Genovese lying?
This little snippet was not what I was talking about.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50cnr1$1...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50beh7$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>>
>
>"terrorizing the newsgroup"?
>RSMc
Ted Werntz was a passionately anti-semitic man who was interested in proving
that Jews were responsible for slavery. In some ways he is the yin to your
yang; in others, you are both yangs.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <322ad1f...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Lynn Berkowitz <lynn...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Of course, a duel of this nature would require the return of the
>Werntzmeister from underneath whatever rock he has crawled off too, and I
>have to admit that McCain has occasionally demonstrated a sense of humor
>which suggests a human being deep down inside. Werntz was truly psychotic
>and a prime candidate for postnatal abortion.
Too deep for my flashlight. I'd call it a pretty close race.
RStacy2229
In article <50f1cq$1...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
Well, kiss my Southern hindquarters, you uppity postgraduate scalawag son
of a b****!
If it is not in the local library or the local bookstore, I fail to see
where I am to be held accountable for not having read it. By the way, I
happen to have a job and a family, plus a few interests which are
unrelated to the topic of slavery, so for you to say that it "speaks
volumes" that I have not read these titles is rather high-handed.
And as for "speaking volumes," it speaks volumes of this newsgroup that no
one had ever mentioned "Time On the Cross" during my 7+ months here, and
that had I not been digging through the footnotes of "The End of Racism,"
I would have been completely unaware of the general content of Fogel &
Engerman.
While grinding axes here, let me quote Eugene Genovese, from "The Southern
Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War" (1995, University of
Missouri Press), beginning on page 201:
"I was unfair to Herbert Aptheker, the Communist Party's longtime
principal historian, whose contributions to Afro-American history have
been seminal. ... He comes as close as any man I know to being an
exception to the dictum I laid down in my essay "On Being a Socialist and
a Historian" ... about the virtual impossibility of combining a career as
an activist with sustained, serious scholarship. .... Writing for
*Political Affairs*, his party's theoretical organ, and other
publications, and having to prepare pamphlets for mass education,
inevitably led to some compromises with the highest standards of his more
leisurely scholarly writing."
Genovese further describes Aptheker "as a staunch party man -- something I
have always admired and envied him for being."
Now, having been sneered at as a "militia" goon for asserting that
Aptheker was a Communist propagandist, I will say again: The man was a
thoroughgoing Red, who while writing history books about slave revolts was
quite actively preparing "mass education" tracts intended to bring about
proletarian revolution in our own time.
And, I should say, that I quite unexpectedly stumbled onto Genovese and
his wife -- both well-known Marxists, whom I'd never heard of -- two years
ago while researching the National Standards for U.S. History. Ms.
Fox-Genovese was listed as the leading Georgian on the panel which
supervised the putting-together of the Standards -- and a dissenter, as I
later learned. I went into "Contemporary Authors" and discovered that she
was a Yankee Commie carpetbagger. I guessed that her selection to this
panel was based upon her presumed anti-American, anti-Western bias (Gary
Nash at USC was heading the thing up). I made much of this in my column:
"Marxists in Georgia! How did they ever get in?"
It was only later that I discoved the extent of the Genoveses' apostasy
from Leftism. He is actually starting to say nice things about God, for
instance, and her latest book is called "Feminism Is Not My Life." I
suppose that at some future date, Bubba-Gene is going to "get religion" at
a tent revival and Miz Betsy will get a beehive, trace her ancestry back
and join the UDC.
Robert Stacy McCain
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50h5qd$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50f1cq$1...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>>The fact that you are not aware of all this speaks volumes.
>
>Well, kiss my Southern hindquarters, you uppity postgraduate scalawag son
>of a b****!
>If it is not in the local library or the local bookstore, I fail to see
>where I am to be held accountable for not having read it. By the way, I
>happen to have a job and a family, plus a few interests which are
>unrelated to the topic of slavery, so for you to say that it "speaks
>volumes" that I have not read these titles is rather high-handed.
If you come in here and wield a source as if it were a bludgeon, then you damn
well ought to be aware of the weaknesses of that source--or else expect the
consequences. If you have a job and a family and other interests which limit
your knowledge of slavery, then you should limit your assertiveness in due
proportion.
>And as for "speaking volumes," it speaks volumes of this newsgroup that no
>one had ever mentioned "Time On the Cross" during my 7+ months here, and
>that had I not been digging through the footnotes of "The End of Racism,"
>I would have been completely unaware of the general content of Fogel &
>Engerman.
Perhaps there is a reason why -Time on the Cross- rarely gets mentioned, and
that is because it is discredited as a source.
>While grinding axes here, let me quote Eugene Genovese, from "The Southern
>Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War" (1995, University of
>Missouri Press), beginning on page 201:
>"I was unfair to Herbert Aptheker, the Communist Party's longtime
>principal historian, whose contributions to Afro-American history have
>been seminal. ... He comes as close as any man I know to being an
>exception to the dictum I laid down in my essay "On Being a Socialist and
>a Historian" ... about the virtual impossibility of combining a career as
>an activist with sustained, serious scholarship. .... Writing for
>*Political Affairs*, his party's theoretical organ, and other
>publications, and having to prepare pamphlets for mass education,
>inevitably led to some compromises with the highest standards of his more
>leisurely scholarly writing."
>Genovese further describes Aptheker "as a staunch party man -- something I
>have always admired and envied him for being."
>Now, having been sneered at as a "militia" goon for asserting that
>Aptheker was a Communist propagandist, I will say again: The man was a
>thoroughgoing Red, who while writing history books about slave revolts was
>quite actively preparing "mass education" tracts intended to bring about
>proletarian revolution in our own time.
You were sneered at as a militia loon (I prefer that to goon) because of your
paranoid conspiratorial theories, not because you said Aptheker was a
Communist. Since many of his books were printed by what was the "leading"
Marxist press at the time, it would be hard for someone to deny that he was a
Marxist (not that he ever did). I don't see where in the above quote Genovese
mentions "proletarian revolution in our own time," though.
>And, I should say, that I quite unexpectedly stumbled onto Genovese and
>his wife -- both well-known Marxists, whom I'd never heard of -- two years
>ago while researching the National Standards for U.S. History. Ms.
>Fox-Genovese was listed as the leading Georgian on the panel which
>supervised the putting-together of the Standards -- and a dissenter, as I
>later learned. I went into "Contemporary Authors" and discovered that she
>was a Yankee Commie carpetbagger. I guessed that her selection to this
>panel was based upon her presumed anti-American, anti-Western bias (Gary
>Nash at USC was heading the thing up). I made much of this in my column:
>"Marxists in Georgia! How did they ever get in?"
I am surprised that, for all your avowed interest in Southern history, you had
never heard of the man who has written one of the major works on slavery or the
woman who has written one of the major works on Southern women. Actually, I'll
be frank, I am not surprised in the least.
>It was only later that I discoved the extent of the Genoveses' apostasy
>from Leftism. He is actually starting to say nice things about God, for
>instance, and her latest book is called "Feminism Is Not My Life." I
>suppose that at some future date, Bubba-Gene is going to "get religion" at
>a tent revival and Miz Betsy will get a beehive, trace her ancestry back
>and join the UDC.
People's politics concern me far less than whether they do good history.
Justin M Sanders
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
> And as for "speaking volumes," it speaks volumes of this newsgroup that no
> one had ever mentioned "Time On the Cross" during my 7+ months here, and
> that had I not been digging through the footnotes of "The End of Racism,"
> I would have been completely unaware of the general content of Fogel &
> Engerman.
If Mr. McCain has been reading this newsgroup for 7+ months, then he
should have seen "Time on the Cross" mentioned *at least* seven times.
Each and every month, the suggested reading list for this group is posted,
and "Time on the Cross" is one of the recommended books dealing with
slavery. The entry contains a brief, general description of the book,
mentions that it was controversial and that much subsequent work was done
which opposed various points in the book. Another book on the list is
Paul Davies' "Reckoning with Slavery", a collection of essays dealing with
the issues raised by TotC.
Since "Time on the Cross" is mentioned monthly (at least) here, this
newsgroup cannot be blamed for Mr. McCain's previous unfamiliarity with
it and with the subsequent literature.
--
Justin M. Sanders "I shot an arrow into the air. It fell
Dept. of Physics to earth I know not where." --Henry
Univ. of South Alabama Wadsworth Longfellow confessing
jsan...@jaguar1.usouthal.edu to a sad ignorance of ballistics.
efr...@cc.memphis.edu
> RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
>> And as for "speaking volumes," it speaks volumes of this newsgroup that no
>> one had ever mentioned "Time On the Cross" during my 7+ months here, and
TotC has to wait its turn, right after the Kennedy bros.
>> that had I not been digging through the footnotes of "The End of Racism,"
>> I would have been completely unaware of the general content of Fogel &
>> Engerman.
And Justin replied:
> Since "Time on the Cross" is mentioned monthly (at least) here, this
> newsgroup cannot be blamed for Mr. McCain's previous unfamiliarity with
> it and with the subsequent literature.
I think Abe Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, Herbert
Aptheker, and Mark Pitcavage must have conspired to
remove the 'reading list' from 2229's server each and
every month.
Ed "it's always someone else's fault" Frank
REB 4 LIFE
In article <322ad1f...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, lynn...@ix.netcom.com
(Lynn Berkowitz) writes:
>1. Binge posting, at times posting the same 40K nonsense message
>multiple times.
>2. Ad hominem attacks.
>3. Calling anyone who disagreed with his peculiar, far-out, whacko views,
a
>"fascist".
>4. Quoting out of context. (He especially liked the "Encyclopedia
Judaica"
>as a favorite source of information on the transatlantic slave trade, and
>the genocide of Native Americans)
>5. Fixation on bizarre and unproven theories of slavery.
>6. Master of the non sequiter
>7. Boasting about the exploits of his ancestors, in particular his Aunt
>Maury-- er-- I mean his Aunt Mary.
>Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
Yeah, I do. Sounds like Brooks Simpson.
R4L
System Janitor
>On 1 Sep 1996, RStacy2229 wrote:
"James F. Epperson" <eppe...@math.uah.edu> writes:
* He is the reason, more than
* anyone else probably, that the moderated group was formed. In terms of
* "blue" and "gray," he was blue, but none of us would claim him or defend
* him. Like you he could occasionally be constructive and tolerable, but
* also like you he was capable of extraordinary leaps of illogic and venom,
* both without any apparent provocation or cause.
This makes Ted sound like Mark Pitcavage.
I recall I have defended him at least once in his absence. No
one needed to defend him while he was here.
* I hope he is receiving good care wherever he is.
He can be reached at wer...@eisner.decus.org, and might be
interested in returning if he knew we were discussing him.
-Mike
System Janitor
Sigh.
Mark, you do such a poor job of speaking for yourself, please
don't assume you can speak for me.
-Mike
gary charbonneau
In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.960901183122.2980D-100000@zonker>,
James F. Epperson <eppe...@math.uah.edu> wrote:
>Ted Werntz was the Anti-McCain -- more correctly, several participants
>have characterized you as the Anti-Werntz. He is the reason, more than
>anyone else probably, that the moderated group was formed. In terms of
>"blue" and "gray," he was blue, but none of us would claim him or defend
>him. Like you he could occasionally be constructive and tolerable, but
>also like you he was capable of extraordinary leaps of illogic and venom,
>both without any apparent provocation or cause. One moment you are
>having a semi-decent discussion, the next he is calling you a racist and
>other fun names because you dared to disagree with him. His hobby horse
>was the "thesis" that the North American slave trade was entirely the
>fault of <exageration mode on> five elderly Jews in Newport <end
>exageration>.
Don't forget to add three other hobby horses:
1. That as many as 1,000,000 slaves may have been illegally smuggled
into the United States from Africa between 1808 and 1860.
2. That John Bell Hood was a military genius because he had a superb
bridge train and managed it effectively.
3. That, because John Bell Hood had a superb bridge train, the
South must have been much more industrialized than most historians
are willing to admit.
- Gary Charbonneau
System Janitor
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) said (again):
>>speaks volumes about you and makes you quite detestable.
>>speaks volumes and volumes and volumes
>>speaks volumes about you.
Yawn. Not that line again. What were we even talking about? Oh yeah,
check out the intro to The Overseers by Scarborough, if you want
to see the hokus-pokus that he used to refute Fogel and Engerman's
hokus-pokus.
That I think it is basically hokus-pokus probably ______ _______ about
me, what do you think? :-)
-Mike
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <hubcap.841769469@hubcap>,
System Janitor <hub...@hubcap.clemson.edu> wrote:
>Yawn. Not that line again. What were we even talking about? Oh yeah,
>check out the intro to The Overseers by Scarborough, if you want
>to see the hokus-pokus that he used to refute Fogel and Engerman's
>hokus-pokus.
>
>That I think it is basically hokus-pokus probably ______ _______ about
>me, what do you think? :-)
Maybe you thought it was hokus-pokus, but Fogel and Engerman did not think it
was hokus-pokus, and Robert Fogel made sure to send an advance draft of his
next book to Scarborough so that he could critique it.
efr...@cc.memphis.edu
In article <hubcap.841765736@hubcap>, hub...@hubcap.clemson.edu (System Janitor) writes:
>>On 1 Sep 1996, RStacy2229 wrote:
>>> Who is Ted Werntz?
>
> "James F. Epperson" <eppe...@math.uah.edu> writes:
> * anyone else probably, that the moderated group was formed. In terms of
> * "blue" and "gray," he was blue, but none of us would claim him or defend
> * him. Like you he could occasionally be constructive and tolerable, but
> * also like you he was capable of extraordinary leaps of illogic and venom,
> * both without any apparent provocation or cause.
> This makes Ted sound like Mark Pitcavage.
>
> I recall I have defended him at least once in his absence. No
> one needed to defend him while he was here.
>
> * I hope he is receiving good care wherever he is.
>
> He can be reached at wer...@eisner.decus.org, and might be
> interested in returning if he knew we were discussing him.
OH GAWD NO!
Ed "I will admit that he was aware of the existance of
pre-steamboat upriver trade on the mighty Miss'ippi" Frank
REB 4 LIFE
In article <hubcap.841769469@hubcap>, hub...@hubcap.clemson.edu (System
Janitor) writes:
>Yawn. Not that line again. What were we even talking about? Oh yeah,
>check out the intro to The Overseers by Scarborough, if you want
>to see the hokus-pokus that he used to refute Fogel and Engerman's
>hokus-pokus.
>
>That I think it is basically hokus-pokus probably ______ _______ about
>me, what do you think? :-)
>
>
Uhhhhh......speaks volumes? Ooops! Should I have given
my answer in the form of a question?
R4L
RStacy2229
In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
>QUOTING LYNN
>: >TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, the autobiography of Solomon Northrop (Northrop
>: >was a free Black man from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into
>: >slavery as an adult, rescued 12 years later from a Louisiana
>: >plantation) (1854)
>QUOTING ME
>: Ah, excuse me, but hadn't New Yorkers and New Jerseyites been quite
active
>: in selling their OWN SLAVES to the South but a few decades prior to the
>: publication of this?
>AND NOW STEVE
>Yes. What's the relevance of this to the point under discussion?
The point is that Lynn was, by citing these titles, attempting to indict
the South. But the kidnapper who breaks the laws of New York to sell a
free man to a Louisiana planter hardly serves this purpose. And I do not
know that Solomon Northrop's account has been authenticated. As for the
sneer which someone had early made: I haven't read it, because it is not
available in the local library or local bookstores. I read an excerpt of
Douglass' autobiography in my college AmLit anthology, but that was 15
years ago and I don't remember much. I recently bought "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
and have tried to read it, but can't stop laughing hysterically: These
people sit around all day and never talk about anything else but "Negro
this" and "Negro that," as if it were the only possible subject of
discussion. A similarly laughable obsession is detectable in "Roots: The
Miniseries." How absurd, that 100 percent of the Southern population sat
around all day, year after year, and discussed the circumstances of 35
percent of the population. An abolitionist idee fixe, I suppose.
Robert Stacy McCain
RStacy2229
>I work at a newspaper and I KNOW how a propaganda
>: campaign operates. I KNOW how facts are omitted and distorted to
generate
>: the desired public response.
>AND HIS COMMENT
>Practice makes perfect, I suppose. I'm not sure, though, that your
omissions
>and distortions of facts are getting "the desired public response."
Steve: You're missing the point. What I'm saying is, that in the 1850s, a
tremendous power struggle between Northern and Southern politicians was
taking place, and the North used the agitation over slavery for propaganda
purposes. And the same sort of thing happens today. We've got a fax
machine at the newspaper office that spews out political propaganda seven
days a week. The techniques are fascinating and I, for one, do not believe
that we have greatly advanced the methods of propaganda very much in the
past 130 years, except in purely techological means.
It should never be forgotten that the primary beneficiaries of the Woah
were not the slaves, who on the whole merely made a creeping step into
peonage. Rather, it was the Yankee industrialists, speculators and
politicians who really raked in the gravy. That was the point, you see.
And we knew that all along.
Robert Stacy McCain
RStacy2229
In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
QUOTING ME
>: me if I brought such a gullible naivete to my readings of the
pro-slavery
>: argument.
>NOW HIS COMMENT
>Not much, given the gullible naivete you've brought to your readings of
>_Time on the Cross_, Genovese, and Dinesh D'Souza. Being a gentleman,
>I'd never call you a "devotee of Boasian relativism."
Gullible naivete toward what? How so? Please elaborate, sir.
Robert Stacy McCain
RStacy2229
In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
>QUOTING ME
>: Douglass was a leading abolitionist writer, it certainly behooved him
to
>: paint slavery in the worst possible light, didn't it?
>NOW HIM
>Sure. But his abolitionism derived from his experience as a slave; he
didn't
>have to make this stuff up.
Right. But "professional abolitionist" was one of the most promising
careers open to Douglass, and I'm sure he was willing to give the people
what they wanted. I do not doubt that Douglass' master was about as cruel
as Douglass depicted him, nor do I doubt that Douglass had reasons to
object the treatment he received. But I do not think that his account of
his treatment in Maryland was a characterization of the life of the
typical slave in Columbia, S.C., or Chattanooga, Tenn. Douglass was not a
typical slave and I do not assume that his experience under slavery was
typical of the institution in general.
Robert Stacy McCain
Lynn Berkowitz
On 4 Sep 1996 03:19:17 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
:The point is that Lynn was, by citing these titles, attempting to indict
:the South. But the kidnapper who breaks the laws of New York to sell a
:free man to a Louisiana planter hardly serves this purpose. And I do not
:know that Solomon Northrop's account has been authenticated.
I was attempting nothing of the kind, but merely offering (off the top
of my li'l ole head) some suggested reading material of the variety
Mr. McCain solicited. As for Northrop's story, it is one of the better
documented "freed slave" narratives and an annotated edition may be
found in any public library or ordered through ILL. (publisher is
Louisiana State University, I'll have to look up the ISBN) As for New
York state laws being violated, Northrop was freed under Louisiana
state law which prohibited the sale of a free person.
There was a movie made of this book, along the lines of the "Roots"
miniseries. It sucked.
I notice Mr. McC. has not addressed my recommendation of WILLIAM
JOHNSON'S NATCHEZ. I don't know why. It doesn't contain any Marxist
dogma, is a reliable, authenticated first person account by a free
Black man of Mississippi in the 1830's. Yes, he owned slaves too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
Justin M Sanders
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
> The point is that Lynn was, by citing these titles, attempting to indict
> the South.
No, Lynn was not attempting to indict the South. She was attempting to
assist Mr. McCain by giving him *exactly what he requested*-- a book which
might be *the* source of the Horrific View of slavery (see the "subject:"
line composed by Mr. McCain).
Given Mr. McCain's ungracious response to Lynn's helpfulness, I suspect
that at least two of us, who attempted to comply with McCain's
disingenuous request, will not be so ready to help in the future. Troll
me once, shame on you; troll me twice, shame on me.
Axel Kleiboemer
Friends,
A modest observation.
Some time ago, Mr. McCain began this thread with the observation that he
had engaged in flames with the best of them, implying that he was now
ready to engage in civilized discussion.
He then asked for help in finding the single book on the miseries of
slavery which, in his omniverous reading, he might have missed. The
insincerity of his inquiry, in my opinion, was apparent from the nature
of the request for help.
He then got all kinds of suggestions and comments.
Every two or three days, Mr. McCain sits down and knocks every response
for imaginary or quibbling reasons. For a non-contributor to the thread,
like me, the context is totally lost by then.
My response is none. Mr. McCain, I think, must get a great deal of
self-gratification out of this method of obfuscation. I find it difficult
to believe that the self-gratification is entirely intellectual.
Regards, Axel
RStacy2229
In article <50cld6$o...@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>, dmsmi...@aol.com
(Dave Smith) writes:
>
>And gosh, I guess rejecting out of hand the writings of anyone
>published in the North in the 1850s regarding slavery as biased would
>lead one to the inescapable conclusion that any Southern writings
>written in the 1850s on slavery was:
>
>a) equally biased.
>b) genuinely factual.
>c) both of the above.
>d) none of the above.
>
I would say C. That is, the Southerner writing PUBLICLY about slavery in
the 1850s was de-facto an apologist for the "peculiar institution," as
were of course many Northern writers of the same era. I did NOT say that
Northern writings about slavery from the 1850s should be "rejected out of
hand," only that we should assume that any writings about such an
inflammatory topic in such an inflammatory decade should be checked
against the documentary evidence, and we should suspect abolitionist bias
in any work published or written by abolitionists.
An "abolitionist bias" might be defined as a tendency to dramatize, dwell
upon, exaggerate or even to fabricate stories of outrageous abuses against
the slaves. For instance, some slaves were almost certainly murdered
during the antebellum period, but people were also murdered elsewhere,
under other social systems and in other periods. Yet every slave murder is
held -- in abolitionist and neo-abolitionist literature -- to be
representative of slavery itself, whereas if we tried to say that the
number of murders in L.A. or New York was an indictment of life in those
cities, the Angelenos and New Yorkers would be justifiably angered.
Neo-abolitionist bias is quite evident in this newsgroup, as in the thread
headed, "Slavery and the Holocaust: An Apt Comparison" -- a thread, I
might add, which quickly devolved into something utterly unrelated to its
header.
Robert Stacy McCain
RStacy2229
In article <50f1hg$1...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
proving
>that Jews were responsible for slavery. In some ways he is the yin to
your
>yang; in others, you are both yangs.
>
course).
2. Jews were responsible for slavery, but to no greater extent than were
Arabs, Africans, Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British and Yankees.
What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing," its collateral ironclad
association with the Confederacy and the acceptance at face value of the
view that every antebellum Southerner was a wenching, slave-driving brute.
Anyone protesting against this purposeful stigmatization is classed (by
Mark, anyway) as a racist, anti-semite, Holocaust-denying, gun-wielding
militia goon.
3. Got your yin-yang, buddy -- hanging low.
Robert Stacy McYang
Rome GA
RStacy2229
In article <50hpps$8...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>Don't forget to add three other hobby horses:
>
>1. That as many as 1,000,000 slaves may have been illegally smuggled
> into the United States from Africa between 1808 and 1860.>
Wait, wasn't that the job of those five elderly Jews in Rhode Island?
>2. That John Bell Hood was a military genius because he had a superb
> bridge train and managed it effectively.
A delusion as vain as to imagine that Braxton Bragg was worthy of
commanding an army.
Robert Stacy McCain
The medication seems to be working now
RStacy2229
In article <50f234$1...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>>Of course, a duel of this nature would require the return of the
>>Werntzmeister from underneath whatever rock he has crawled off too, and
I
>>have to admit that McCain has occasionally demonstrated a sense of humor
>>which suggests a human being deep down inside. Werntz was truly
psychotic
>>and a prime candidate for postnatal abortion.
WAIT! No less a Confederatephobe than Ms. Berkowitz, she of the "happy
darkeys," has spotted the possibility that I might be a human being and
somewhat less psychotic than the "passionately anti-semitic" Werntz!!
There is yet hope!
RSMc
Who is no more psychotic than W.T. "Got a light?" Sherman
RStacy2229
In article <50hae4$a...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>
>I am surprised that, for all your avowed interest in Southern history,
you
>had
>never heard of the man who has written one of the major works on slavery
or
>the
>woman who has written one of the major works on Southern women.
Actually,
>I'll
>be frank, I am not surprised in the least.
To repeat what I have repeatedly repeated before, my previous interest in
the Woah was purely from the standpoint of military history. It is only in
recent months that I've given any real study to the socio-economic and
political aspects of the matter. Forgive me. Mea magna culpa.
Robert Stacy McCain
Trying to make up his deficits here
RStacy2229
In article <50jus9$5...@hermes.acs.unt.edu>, jsan...@jove.acs.unt.edu
(Justin M Sanders) writes:
>
>No, Lynn was not attempting to indict the South. She was attempting to
>assist Mr. McCain by giving him *exactly what he requested*-- a book
which
>might be *the* source of the Horrific View of slavery (see the "subject:"
>line composed by Mr. McCain).
>Given Mr. McCain's ungracious response to Lynn's helpfulness,
And Lynn's suggesting that I was trying to find "happy darkey" tales was
"gracious" in what sense of the word?
RSMc
RStacy2229
>1. Binge posting, at times posting the same 40K nonsense message multiple
>times.
outtakes from "Roots" ...
>2. Ad hominem attacks.
The poltroon! Just like a damn lying Yankee ...
>3. Calling anyone who disagreed with his peculiar, far-out, whacko views,
a
>"fascist".
favorites for those who disagree with my whacko views.
>4. Quoting out of context. (He especially liked the "Encyclopedia
Judaica"
>as a favorite source of information on the transatlantic slave trade, and
>the genocide of Native Americans)
hell?
-- Matthew 23:33
>5. Fixation on bizarre and unproven theories of slavery.
>6. Master of the non sequiter
Robert Stacy McCain
Rome GA
RStacy2229
In article <50hae4$a...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
> I don't see where in the above quote Genovese
>mentions "proletarian revolution in our own time," though.
Can an out-and-out Marxist ever have any other objective? Marx sneered at
social democrats, if I am not mistaken.
RSMc
Linda Teasley
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
: Well, kiss my Southern hindquarters, you uppity postgraduate scalawag son
: of a b****!
Stacy, that is an off-the-wall, inappropriate, and embarrassing
remark. It diminishes your argument, which is that Fogel and Engerman
have NOT been discredited, just argued with, and that kind of
intemperance just closes out discussion.
Linda T.
--
Five pelican bedecked battle flags began to flap. . . three thousand
men stepped off on the left foot. With strict cadence, ninety paces per
minute, a forest of burnished steel paraded up the hill.
Winchester --- 25 May 1862
steven f miller
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
: In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
: (steven f miller) writes:
: QUOTING ME
: >: campaign operates. I KNOW how facts are omitted and distorted to
: generate
: >: the desired public response.
: >AND HIS COMMENT
: >Practice makes perfect, I suppose. I'm not sure, though, that your
: omissions
: >and distortions of facts are getting "the desired public response."
: Steve: You're missing the point.
No, I got the point. I was making a joke at your expense.
: What I'm saying is, that in the 1850s, a
: tremendous power struggle between Northern and Southern politicians was
: taking place, and the North used the agitation over slavery for propaganda
: purposes. And the same sort of thing happens today. We've got a fax
: machine at the newspaper office that spews out political propaganda seven
: days a week. The techniques are fascinating and I, for one, do not believe
: that we have greatly advanced the methods of propaganda very much in the
: past 130 years, except in purely techological means.
Point taken. What I objected to, and still object to, was your complete
dismissal of an entire category of sources (without having read any of
them, it would appear) because some of them were used for propoganda
purposes. As Dave Smith (I think) pointed out, application of that same
standard would result in the dismissal of proslavery tracts, partisan
newspapers (and there were no other kind), Congressional debates and
pretty much everything else, since in a highly charged political
atmosphere almost anything can be put to political use. I objected all
the more because it was you who had disingenuously asked for "help" in the
post that started the thread, then ambushed the people who actually gave
you some. And also because of your arrogance in presuming to lecture the
benighted multitudes on a subject that you, by your own admission, don't
know very much about.
: It should never be forgotten that the primary beneficiaries of the Woah
: were not the slaves, who on the whole merely made a creeping step into
: peonage.
Certainly they were among the main beneficiaries, even though not many
people had expected that they would be when the war began. The freedmen
themselves would have disputed your assertion, especially between 1865 and
1877.
: Rather, it was the Yankee industrialists, speculators and
: politicians who really raked in the gravy. That was the point, you see.
: And we knew that all along.
Who's "we"? More to the point, the fact that the Gilded Age followed the
war does not mean that the war caused the Gilded Age, still less that the
industrialists et al. who "raked in the gravy" supported the war because
they knew that the war was going to lead to that result. Here, as
elsewhere, I think your vaunted cynicism is not only misplaced but an
impediment to historical understanding.
Cordially,
Steven F. Miller
gary charbonneau
In article <50k9t9$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50hpps$8...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>
>>Don't forget to add three other hobby horses:
>>
>>1. That as many as 1,000,000 slaves may have been illegally smuggled
>> into the United States from Africa between 1808 and 1860.>
>Wait, wasn't that the job of those five elderly Jews in Rhode Island?
While they were elderly, they were not immortal. The Methuseleh genes
dropped out of the pool in Old Testament times.
>>2. That John Bell Hood was a military genius because he had a superb
>> bridge train and managed it effectively.
>A delusion as vain as to imagine that Braxton Bragg was worthy of
>commanding an army.
Indeed. And as to the bridge train itself:
1. It was ordered built by Johnston, not Hood (though Hood of course
got most of the use).
2. Because of a shortage of horses and mules, it was pulled by longhorn
cattle.
3. At one point, Hood more or less misplaced it -- he forgot to give
it orders to move out, and it was temporarily left behind.
- Gary Charbonneau
Dave Gorski
In article <50hae4$a...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) wrote:
> If you come in here and wield a source as if it were a bludgeon, then
you damn
> well ought to be aware of the weaknesses of that source--or else expect the
> consequences.
Mark, write this line down, and keep it close to your keyboard
for YOUR future reference ;)
Dave Gorski
gary charbonneau
In article <50ka2f$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a "Southern
thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the slaveholding states"
were used synonymously by virtually everyone, Southerners as well as
Northerners.
>its collateral ironclad association with the Confederacy
Seems perfectly reasonable. All the states of the Confederacy were
slave states. True, there were some slave states which did not join the
Confederacy,. However, Confederates hoped they would, thought they ought
to, and claimed that for the most part they remained pinned to the Union
only by Yankee bayonets. They thought it perfectly appropriate that
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri should be Confederate states. AFAIK, they
did not think so about Indiana or Pennsylvania, much less Massachusetts or
Minnesota.
>and the acceptance at face value of the view that every antebellum
Southerner was a wenching, slave-driving brute.
Certainly far from true. What is true, however, is Acton's dictum
about the tendency of power to corrupt, and of absolute power to corrupt
absolutely. There really _is_ no such thing as absolute power. Nevertheless
the relationship under chattel slavery, of owner and owned, is fairly close
to being one between the absolutely powerful and the absolutely powerless.
- Gary Charbonneau
Stephen Schmidt
rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) writes:
>What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
Some points that should be obvious but apparently aren't.
1) This newsgroup is called alt.war.civil.usa.
2) That name implies that posts in the group will (usually) be
about the Civil War.
3) That topic implies that posts in the group will usually be
discussing the time frame from 1850 to 1865 (or afterwards if
we discuss Reconstruction, but slavery doesn't come up in that
case).
4) I don't know what they teach in high school down in Rome GA
these days, but everywhere else, it is acknowledged that from
1850 to 1865, the South had slavery and the North did not.
5) If the South had slavery, and the North did not, then that
rather makes slavery a "Southern thing."
On those occasions when the group discusses Colonial era slavery,
or the writing of the Constitutional clauses regarding slavery,
the fact that both the North and the South held slaves has -never-
been denied or disregarded.
> its collateral ironclad
>association with the Confederacy and the acceptance at face value of the
>view that every antebellum Southerner was a wenching, slave-driving brute.
I would describe this as ravaing paranoid nonsense which is the
figment of Mr. Yang's mind, except that to do so might be repetitive.
Steve
--
Stephen Schmidt Department of Economics
210A Social Sciences Union College
(518) 388-6078 Schenectady NY 12308
steven f miller
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
: In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
: (steven f miller) writes:
: >QUOTING ME
: >: Douglass was a leading abolitionist writer, it certainly behooved him
: to
: >: paint slavery in the worst possible light, didn't it?
: >NOW HIM
: >Sure. But his abolitionism derived from his experience as a slave; he
: didn't
: >have to make this stuff up.
: Right. But "professional abolitionist" was one of the most promising
: careers open to Douglass, and I'm sure he was willing to give the people
: what they wanted.
Douglass made a decent living speaking and writing about a cause he
believed passionately in. He may have been giving other abolitionists
"what they wanted," but that was a small market indeed. Many of the
people who heard him speak were neutral or even hostile to antislavery.
His job was to convice them otherwise. You seem to believe that
there was big dough in abolitionism. There was not. Garrison had
constant money problems, especially in his early career. The wealthy
abolitionists--Gerrit Smith and George Stearns, for instance--earned their
money in other pursuits.
: I do not doubt that Douglass' master was about as cruel
: as Douglass depicted him, nor do I doubt that Douglass had reasons to
: object the treatment he received. But I do not think that his account of
: his treatment in Maryland was a characterization of the life of the
: typical slave in Columbia, S.C., or Chattanooga, Tenn. Douglass was not a
: typical slave and I do not assume that his experience under slavery was
: typical of the institution in general.
Of course not, but nobody said that Douglass was a typical slave or his
experience typical of life in slavery in general. What one individual's
life is *ever* typical? But you seem to have moved from your original
position, namely that Douglass's autobiography was ipso facto unreliable
because it was written by a "professional abolitionist" and used for
partisan purposes.
Cordially,
Steven F. Miller
Southern Witch
In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) wrote:
> In article <50ka2f$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
> RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
> >portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
>
> But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a "Southern
> thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the slaveholding states"
> were used synonymously by virtually everyone, Southerners as well as
> Northerners.
>
> >its collateral ironclad association with the Confederacy
>
> Seems perfectly reasonable. All the states of the Confederacy were
> slave states.
<the rest snipped>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's only my opinion, but since I'm a Southerner, perhaps it's of some
worth here.
We've been beating the slavery horse for so long now that it's starting to
resemble the flattest road kill you ever saw. I don't know why it's so
difficult for some of us below the Mason-Dixon Line to face the fact that
the War was about slavery, but apparently it is.
I also don't understand why it's so difficult for some folks to admit that
the South of 135 years ago was vastly different from the South of today
and refrain from passing moral judgment on the basis of what happened in
a different time and place and under a different set of moral standards.
But that's apparently difficult, too.
I have no problem agreeing with the statement that slavery was a
"Southern thing." There's nothing to be gained by denying it, just as
there's nothing to be gained by visiting "the sins of the fathers" on
those of us who post from Down South today. Now,would it be possible to
move on to other matters, which might be much more profitably discussed in
this forum?
--
Kathie Fraser http://www.erols.com/kfraser
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The South is a land that has known sorrows...a land of legend,
a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories."
--Edward Ward Carmack
Charles W. Hinton
Northrup's book (not Northrop) is available through Amazon books at:
www.amazon.com for about $13 plus shipping.
Douglas C. Scott
RStacy2229 wrote:
>
> In article <01bb97ab$334b5f40$4e90...@PPP.syr.servtech.com>, "Paul E
> Larson" <whis...@servtech.com> writes:
> >Actually as I recall the Cherokee People had there own written language
> >before the Europeans arrived. Also , the Iroquois may have had a written
> >language.
>
> WRONG. The Cherokee alphabet was the work of Sequoyah, and was not
> developed until the 19th century. Sequoyah was certainly influenced by
> Christian missionaries and was able to read English before he developed
> the Cherokee written language.
Mostly correct, except the part about Sequoyah being able to read
English.
Sequoyah is reported to have been unable to read. Further evidence that
he
was illiterate is contained in the Cherokee script he developed. It
uses several
English letters for sounds completely unrelated to their English values.
In fact it uses upper and lower case letters for different sounds and
also
has several numbers thrown in. The number '4' is a letter in the
Cherokee
script. Another thing is the writing is not an alphabet but a sylabet.
That
is each letters does not represent a vowel or a consonent. Rather each
letter represents a vowel or a vowel/consonent combination. For example
there would be separate letters for a, ba, ka, la, etc. A sylabet would
be kind of messy for English as we have lots of multiple consonets piled
on top of each other in words. But it worked fine for Cherokee which
lacks that sort of thing. The sylabet is so well suited to the Cherokee
language that native speakers are said to be albe to read and write with
it in just 10 days.
Now if Sequoyah actually was literate he would certainly have developed
an alphabet rather than a sylabet since he would have been largely
conditioned to thinking of language in terms of an alphabet as we are.
Also the letters he borrowed from English would have been used for
similar
sounds, not at ramdom as was the case. What seems to have happened is
that
Sequoyah understood that the Americans used symbols to represent their
speech and didn't know anything of the details. He may have tried to
learn
how to read and write but quickly gave it up having thought up a novel
way to cure his illiteracy.
Doug Scott
Arlington, Tx
Axel Kleiboemer
rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
>
>To repeat what I have repeatedly repeated before, my previous interest in
>the Woah was purely from the standpoint of military history. It is only in
>recent months that I've given any real study to the socio-economic and
>political aspects of the matter. Forgive me. Mea magna culpa.
>
>Robert Stacy McCain
>Trying to make up his deficits here
No, sua maxima culpa.
Vale, Axel
Chuck Allen
Axel Kleiboemer wrote:
>
> Friends,
>
> A modest observation.
>
> Some time ago, Mr. McCain began this thread with the observation that he
> had engaged in flames with the best of them, implying that he was now
> ready to engage in civilized discussion.
>
> He then asked for help in finding the single book on the miseries of
> insincerity of his inquiry, in my opinion, was apparent from the nature
> of the request for help.
>
>
> Regards, Axel
Actually, Mr. McCain's original statement was an observation that the
viewpoint of slavery in the South was horribly warped in one direction in
the general understanding. He then requested if anyone knew of a
particular book or books that were responsible for this phenomena.
He did NOT request, or imply in his request, that he was trying to find
a book presenting a pollyanniaish view of slavery "a happy darky book".
The first reply to this referenced "Happy Darkies", which totally
distorted the original request, and got Mr.McCain a bit upset, as it
missed the point of his original question entirely!
Mark T Pitcavage
>mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
>>Ted Werntz was a passionately anti-semitic man who was interested in
>proving
>>that Jews were responsible for slavery. In some ways he is the yin to
>your
>>yang; in others, you are both yangs.
>>
>1. I am not anti-semitic. I am anti-Yankee (except my Ohio-born wife, of
>course).
>2. Jews were responsible for slavery, but to no greater extent than were
>Arabs, Africans, Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British and Yankees.
>association with the Confederacy and the acceptance at face value of the
>view that every antebellum Southerner was a wenching, slave-driving brute.
>Mark, anyway) as a racist, anti-semite, Holocaust-denying, gun-wielding
>militia goon.
Hmmm. I have characterized exactly one person who has posted in this newsgroup
as an anti-semite, and that was Ted Werntz. He was otherwise a
neo-abolitionist, to use your own peculiar terminology. I have characterized
exactly two persons who have posted in this newsgroup as racists: you and James
Turner. I think the designation fits very well. I do not recall classing
anybody as "gun-wielding," since that is not really relevant to anything, and
two-by-fours seem more in evidence here anyway.
That you would say all this speaks vol---oops, never mind.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50ke52$f...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
gary charbonneau <char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>In article <50k9t9$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
I can't believe it. Werntz is gone and we're -still- talking about bridge
trains???? Haven't we had enough of that to last a Methuselah's lifetime?
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50ka35$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50hae4$a...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>>mentions "proletarian revolution in our own time," though.
>
>Can an out-and-out Marxist ever have any other objective? Marx sneered at
>social democrats, if I am not mistaken.
I know a number of people who would describe themselves as full-fledged
Marxists, yet I have heard none of them working for, expecting, or even wishing
out loud for a "proletarian revolution in our own time." Acid these days is
weaker than it was in the 60s; maybe Marxists are, too.
steven f miller
RStacy2229 (rstac...@aol.com) wrote:
: In article <50cbim$h...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
: (steven f miller) writes:
: >QUOTING LYNN
: >: >TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, the autobiography of Solomon Northrop (Northrop
: >: >was a free Black man from Saratoga, New York, kidnapped and sold into
: >: >slavery as an adult, rescued 12 years later from a Louisiana
: >: >plantation) (1854)
: >QUOTING ME
: >: Ah, excuse me, but hadn't New Yorkers and New Jerseyites been quite
: active
: >: in selling their OWN SLAVES to the South but a few decades prior to the
: >: publication of this?
: >AND NOW STEVE
: >Yes. What's the relevance of this to the point under discussion?
: The point is that Lynn was, by citing these titles, attempting to indict
: the South.
Lynn was responding to your trolling "request" for sources that
showed the atrocities of slavery.
: But the kidnapper who breaks the laws of New York to sell a
: free man to a Louisiana planter hardly serves this purpose.
Most of the book is not about the kidnapping, but about what happened to
him after he was enslaved. It does indeed contain accounts of
atrocities, along with a lot of concrete detail about life and work
under slavery. Of the antebellum slave narratives, it's one of the more
nuanced and less sensationalized ones. A good read, too.
: And I do not
: know that Solomon Northrop's account has been authenticated.
It has.
: As for the
: sneer which someone had early made: I haven't read it, because it is not
: available in the local library or local bookstores.
The sneer was mine. I had no problem with your not having read the book
as such--it's not widely read or widely available, and even those of us
who have no other life can't read *everything*. But it struck me as odd,
to say the least, that someone (a professional journalist, no less) who
had solicited suggestions for sources would then dismiss appropriate
suggestions out of hand without having read them. Northrup's narrative is
still in print, I think, and is excerpted in several anthologies of slave
narratives. I've also seen excerpts on a WWW page that includes passages
from several narratives.
: I read an excerpt of
: Douglass' autobiography in my college AmLit anthology, but that was 15
: years ago and I don't remember much.
Then perhaps you should refresh your memory on the parts you read 15
years ago and read the rest for the first time.
: I recently bought "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
: and have tried to read it, but can't stop laughing hysterically: These
: people sit around all day and never talk about anything else but "Negro
: this" and "Negro that," as if it were the only possible subject of
: discussion. A similarly laughable obsession is detectable in "Roots: The
: Miniseries." How absurd, that 100 percent of the Southern population sat
: around all day, year after year, and discussed the circumstances of 35
: percent of the population. An abolitionist idee fixe, I suppose.
Well, we all have our idees fixes, I suppose. But you don't read _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ to learn about slavery. Mrs. Stowe knew nothing about the
institution at first hand. You read the book to learn about nineteenth
century sentimental fiction, and about how the slavery issue was presented
to the Northern public.
Cordially,
Steven F. Miller
Dennis Maggard
kfr...@erols.com (Southern Witch) wrote:
>In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) wrote:
>> In article <50ka2f$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
>> RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> >What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>> >portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
>>
>> But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a "Southern
>> thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the slaveholding states"
>> were used synonymously by virtually everyone, Southerners as well as
>> Northerners.
>>
>> >its collateral ironclad association with the Confederacy
>>
>> Seems perfectly reasonable. All the states of the Confederacy were
>> slave states.
><the rest snipped>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>It's only my opinion, but since I'm a Southerner, perhaps it's of some
>worth here.
>We've been beating the slavery horse for so long now that it's starting to
>resemble the flattest road kill you ever saw. I don't know why it's so
>difficult for some of us below the Mason-Dixon Line to face the fact that
>the War was about slavery, but apparently it is.
This has long mystified me as well. Trying to deny so much well known
and well documented history regarding slavery and it's central role in
motivating secession makes it so much more difficult to defend the South,
past and present.
>I also don't understand why it's so difficult for some folks to admit that
>the South of 135 years ago was vastly different from the South of today
>and refrain from passing moral judgment on the basis of what happened in
>a different time and place and under a different set of moral standards.
>But that's apparently difficult, too.
I agree with that point as well. Unfortunately, those who seek to pillory
the South for slavery 135 years after the fact find far too many Southerons
apparently anxious to stick their heads and hands into the stocks. If
slavery and its pivotal role in the economy and society of the antebellum
South and in sesession is acknowledged and dealt with accordingly, it
becomes so much easier to uphold what was, and is, right about the South.
>I have no problem agreeing with the statement that slavery was a
>"Southern thing." There's nothing to be gained by denying it, just as
>there's nothing to be gained by visiting "the sins of the fathers" on
>those of us who post from Down South today.
Exactly!! So many of these exceedingly tiresome and repetitive exchanges
over slavery consist of great indignation on the part of someone viewing
slavery almost as though it were happening today being answered by someone
else trying to deny that slavery was of any importance at all.
> Now,would it be possible to
>move on to other matters, which might be much more profitably discussed in
>this forum?
An excellent idea. Sadly, it will be listened to by neither side. I believe
it would be a most interesting experiment to see what kind of discussion
would result if it were agreed that there could be no posts involving
slavery for two weeks.
Dennis
Chuck Allen
Stephen Schmidt wrote:
>
> <snip - obvious>
>
> 4) I don't know what they teach in high school down in Rome GA
> these days, but everywhere else, it is acknowledged that from
> 1850 to 1865, the South had slavery and the North did not.
Lee's surrender. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free these slaves
as it only took effect upon Lee's surrender.
2.Some Northern states NEVER freed thier slaves, these slaves were
emancipated by the 13th ammendment, an action of the Federal Government.
Consistantly painting the North as lilly white and the South as pure
black on the question of slavery may be politically correct, but not
historically accurate.
RStacy2229
In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>>What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>>portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
>
>But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a
"Southern
>thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the slaveholding states"
>were used synonymously by virtually everyone, Southerners as well as
>Northerners.
Exactly, Gary. But the North had been allowed to end slavery gradually, on
a state-by-state basis, often by selling the slaves off to others, an
option which was denied to the South in 1860, because of the Republican
insistence that the territories be closed to slavery. Was it not hypocrisy
for the Northern vendor to condemn the Southern customer for possessing
the mechandise? Over the course of time, 1620-1860, slavery was not such a
"Southern thing" as you would suggest. Why, it was well into the 1700s
before Georgia was established and even later before slavery was legalized
in the colony. During all that time, of course, the Yankee shippers were
up to their elbows in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was not
outlawed until 1807. I would not be surprised to learn that some of the
leading abolitionists were descended from or related to the Yankee slave
traders -- the Patty Hearst syndrome.
RSMc
RStacy2229
In article <50k8nq$c...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
> Garrison had
>constant money problems, especially in his early career.
No doubt from dallying with other men's wives, as in his later career. How
curious to read that the wealthy Mr. Phillips was persuaded by his wife to
work with the magnetic Mr. Garrison. A racket by any other name is a
racket still.
RSMc
RStacy2229
>The wealthy
>abolitionists--Gerrit Smith and George Stearns, for instance--earned
their
>money in other pursuits.
Please elaborate on the "other pursuits."
RSMc
Lynn Berkowitz
On 6 Sep 1996 07:46:13 -0400, rstac...@aol.com (RStacy2229) wrote:
:In article <50k8nq$c...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
:(steven f miller) writes:
:
:> Garrison had
:>constant money problems, especially in his early career.
:
:No doubt from dallying with other men's wives, as in his later career.
McC has Garrison confused with the Rev. Dr. Henry Ward Beecher
(brother of Harriet B. Stowe)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Berkowitz lynn...@ix.netcom.com
Stephen Schmidt
Chuck Allen <cfa...@earthlink.net> writes:
>> 1.Lousiana and Arkansas emancipated thier slaves several months BEFORE
>Lee's surrender.
Heh. The Reconstruction governments did that, not the Confederate
ones. If Chuck is willing to concede that the Reconstruction
governments were legitimate authorities that represented the
true opinion of the (white) population of the state, then I will
accept his point - but I doubt he thinks that.
> 2.Some Northern states NEVER freed thier slaves, these slaves were
>emancipated by the 13th ammendment, an action of the Federal Government.
Don't confuse border states with Northern states. All the Northern
states freed their slaves, although some of them did so by post-nati
emancipation and one (New Jersey) still had a couple dozen slaves
in 1860.
Of the four border states, two freed their slaves by state action
towards the end of the war. The other two (I think Maryland and
Kentucky but I'm not sure) were affected by the 13th Amendment.
I would be curious to know whether those two states voted to
ratify the amendment. If they did, one could make a decent case
that they freed theirs voluntarily. I would guess that at least
one of the two states did not, however.
>Consistantly painting the North as lilly white and the South as pure
>black on the question of slavery may be politically correct, but not
>historically accurate.
It's not pristinely accurate, but it's pretty close. It's a lot
more accurate than claiming that the Reconstruction governments
of Arkansas and Louisiana were representative of Southern opinion
on slavery, and that Kentucky was a Northern state.
gary charbonneau
In article <kfraser-0409...@news.erols.com>,
Southern Witch <kfr...@erols.com> wrote:
>I have no problem agreeing with the statement that slavery was a
>"Southern thing." There's nothing to be gained by denying it, just as
>there's nothing to be gained by visiting "the sins of the fathers" on
>those of us who post from Down South today. Now,would it be possible to
>move on to other matters, which might be much more profitably discussed in
>this forum?
Sure. Wanna talk about bridge trains?
- Gary Charbonneau
Antoinette M Niebieszczanski
In article <50k8ka$s...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, rstac...@aol.com says...
>
That is, the Southerner writing PUBLICLY about slavery in
>the 1850s was de-facto an apologist for the "peculiar institution," as
>were of course many Northern writers of the same era. I did NOT say that
>Northern writings about slavery from the 1850s should be "rejected out of
>hand," only that we should assume that any writings about such an
>inflammatory topic in such an inflammatory decade should be checked
>against the documentary evidence, and we should suspect abolitionist bias
>in any work published or written by abolitionists.
>
What about Mrs. Chestnut's diary? She was hardly an abolitionist or a
Northern agitator, yet her diary contained a scathing indictment of antebellum
life. Her Confederate credentials should be impecabble enough to suit you.
(I suspect you will discount her views; she was, after all, only a woman.)
I'm tempted to ask, where are you going with this?
--Toni Niebieszczanski
>
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50p2se$h...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>
>>>What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>>>portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
>>
>>But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a
>"Southern
>>thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the slaveholding states"
>>were used synonymously by virtually everyone, Southerners as well as
>>Northerners.
>
>Exactly, Gary. But the North had been allowed to end slavery gradually, on
>a state-by-state basis, often by selling the slaves off to others, an
>option which was denied to the South in 1860, because of the Republican
>insistence that the territories be closed to slavery.
No, Robert, the "North" had not been "allowed" to end slavery gradually. ALL
COLONIES/STATES, North and South alike, had been "allowed" to end slavery
gradually. No Southern state opted to do so.
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <50p2u5$h...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50k8nq$c...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
>(steven f miller) writes:
>
>> Garrison had
>>constant money problems, especially in his early career.
>
>curious to read that the wealthy Mr. Phillips was persuaded by his wife to
>work with the magnetic Mr. Garrison. A racket by any other name is a
>racket still.
What a slick character you are. You make a snide attack against William Lloyd
Garrison's monetary situation--as if that somehow refuted any of his
arguments--and then when that is refuted, you slide right over into making a
snide attack against Garrison's personal life--as if that somehow refuted any
of his arguments.
Does a person's personal proclivities affect the quality of his arguments?
Should we then ignore all pro-Southern arguments because James Henry Hammond
liked to sexually molest his nieces?
Mark T Pitcavage
In article <1996Sep6.1...@unvax.union.edu>,
Stephen Schmidt <schm...@unvax.union.edu> wrote:
>Chuck Allen <cfa...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>> 1.Lousiana and Arkansas emancipated thier slaves several months BEFORE
>>Lee's surrender.
>
>Heh. The Reconstruction governments did that, not the Confederate
>ones. If Chuck is willing to concede that the Reconstruction
>governments were legitimate authorities that represented the
>true opinion of the (white) population of the state, then I will
>accept his point - but I doubt he thinks that.
>
>> 2.Some Northern states NEVER freed thier slaves, these slaves were
>>emancipated by the 13th ammendment, an action of the Federal Government.
>
>Don't confuse border states with Northern states. All the Northern
>states freed their slaves, although some of them did so by post-nati
>emancipation and one (New Jersey) still had a couple dozen slaves
>in 1860.
>Of the four border states, two freed their slaves by state action
>towards the end of the war. The other two (I think Maryland and
>Kentucky but I'm not sure) were affected by the 13th Amendment.
>I would be curious to know whether those two states voted to
>ratify the amendment. If they did, one could make a decent case
>that they freed theirs voluntarily. I would guess that at least
>one of the two states did not, however.
Maryland and Missouri ended slavery on their own. Kentucky and Delaware did
not.
gary charbonneau
In article <50p2se$h...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RStacy2229 <rstac...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>
>>>What cooks me -- and a lot of other Southerners -- is the constant
>>>portrayal of slavery as "a Southern thing,"
>>
>>But by 1861, and in the context of the United States, it _was_ a
>>"Southern thing," was it not? The terms "the South" and "the
>>slaveholding states" were used synonymously by virtually everyone,
>>Southerners as well as Northerners.
>
>Exactly, Gary. But the North had been allowed to end slavery gradually, on
>a state-by-state basis, often by selling the slaves off to others, an
>option which was denied to the South in 1860, because of the Republican
>insistence that the territories be closed to slavery.
I don't see the logic in that argument. If the existing Federal territories
were really not economically conducive to slavery, then few slaves could
be sold there; the territories would not drain slaves away from the slave
states. OTOH, if they _were_ economically conducive to slavery, then
the expansion of slavery to the territories would not contribute
to the gradual end of slavery, but would instead contribute to its
perpetuation; in theory and at most, under your argument, slavery might
gradually cease to be a problem in -- what? -- Maryland but would instead
become a problem in -- what? -- Arizona.
>Was it not hypocrisy for the Northern vendor to condemn the Southern
>customer for possessing the mechandise?
It would have been, yes. The question is whether there were all that many
Northern "vendors" who actually engaged in such hypocrisy. By 1860, there were
no Northern (or Southern) vendors legally enagaged in the African slave trade,
and had not been for two generations. Needless to say, any of the very few
vendors engaged in the trade illegally by that time were hardly likely to be
among the most vociferous critics of slavery as an institution.
>Over the course of time, 1620-1860, slavery was not such a
>"Southern thing" as you would suggest. Why, it was well into the 1700s
>before Georgia was established and even later before slavery was legalized
>in the colony. During all that time, of course, the Yankee shippers were
>up to their elbows in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was not
>outlawed until 1807. I would not be surprised to learn that some of the
>leading abolitionists were descended from or related to the Yankee slave
>traders -- the Patty Hearst syndrome.
I would not be surprised either, just as I am not surprised by the fact
that many of the critics of slavery were Southern slaveowners (hypocrites?),
former slaveowners, or the descendents of slaveowners. But even if it is
true that this or that abolitionist was related to a slave trader, what is
the relevance of the point? It would have been hypocritical for a slave trader
to condemn slavery. Why would it have been hypocritical for the grandson
of a slave trader to condemn slavery? Suppose your great grandfather had
been a slaveowner. Would this oblige you, in order to spare yourself from
the dreaded charge of "hypocrisy," to assert that we ought to bring back
slavery here and now, in 1996? Are positions on matters of public policy
supposed to be hereditary?
- Gary Charbonneau
Charles Ten Brink
the fourth state to do so. Kentucky rejected the amendment
later that month.
Yours,
Chuck Ten Brink
--
Associate Law Librarian < He did not catch babies with a spearhead as
D'Angelo Law Library, UC * was the practice of other Vikings; for this
c-ten...@uchicago.edu > reason he was called "child-friend".
gary charbonneau
>> 2.Some Northern states NEVER freed thier slaves, these slaves were
>>emancipated by the 13th ammendment, an action of the Federal Government.
>
>Don't confuse border states with Northern states. All the Northern
>states freed their slaves, although some of them did so by post-nati
>emancipation and one (New Jersey) still had a couple dozen slaves
>in 1860.
Correct. As I indicated recently in another post, in the antebellum
era, the terms "Southern states" and "slave states" were used more
or less synonymously. The states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky,
and Missouri are typically referred to as "border states" (as Steve
says), "border South states," or "Upper South states" (though occasionally
the term "Upper South" is used for Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
and Arkansas, which are more often called the "Middle South").
The following seems like the least confusing and most useful categorization:
Lower South: The seven slave states which seceded prior to Ft. Sumter.
Middle South: The four slave states which seceded after Ft. Sumter.
Upper South: The four slave states which did not secede.
- Gary Charbonneau
RStacy2229
In article <322EDA...@earthlink.net>, Chuck Allen
<cfa...@earthlink.net> writes:
>Actually, Mr. McCain's original statement was an observation that the
>viewpoint of slavery in the South was horribly warped in one direction in
>the general understanding. He then requested if anyone knew of a
>particular book or books that were responsible for this phenomena.
> He did NOT request, or imply in his request, that he was trying to find
>a book presenting a pollyanniaish view of slavery "a happy darky book".
>The first reply to this referenced "Happy Darkies", which totally
>distorted the original request, and got Mr.McCain a bit upset, as it
>missed the point of his original question entirely!
Thanks, Chuck. Sometimes I forget exactly how I get started on these
endless flame wars. You have gotten it exactly right. Right after posting
the first message in this thread, if looked into "Time on the Cross," and
got the idea there that it was Aptheker and Stampp, among others, who in
rebutting Phillips had created the modern sturm-und-drang version.
As for what my opinion actually is of the average condition of slavery:
Hard work, lots of hard, dreary work, interrupted by occasional joy or
terror, with little or no hope of anything better. In other words, not
much better or worse than most other of the world's laboring classes in
the 19th century, the main problem being that this condition existed in a
nation with a growing egalitarian sentiment.
Robert Stacy McCain
RStacy2229
In article <50ke52$f...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>Indeed. And as to the bridge train itself:
>
>1. It was ordered built by Johnston, not Hood (though Hood of course
> got most of the use).
>2. Because of a shortage of horses and mules, it was pulled by longhorn
> cattle.
>3. At one point, Hood more or less misplaced it -- he forgot to give
> it orders to move out, and it was temporarily left behind.
>
was across the Coosa River, about seven miles west of my house in Rome. On
the morning October 13, attempting to ascertain if the bridge was still
there (it wasn't), Garrard's cavalry, reinforced by Cox's corps, went out
the Alabama Road from Rome and -- on the banks of Beech Creek, near the
Rice family farm -- charged and broke up a brigade of cavalry, capturing
two cannons and about 70 Confederate prisoners.
Robert Stacy McCain
Who filled two broadsheet pages with that story a couple of years ago
dens...@acsu.buffalo.edu
On 6 Sep 1996, RStacy2229 wrote:
> Exactly, Gary. But the North had been allowed to end slavery
gradually, on
> a state-by-state basis, often by selling the slaves off to others, an
> option which was denied to the South in 1860, because of the Republican
> insistence that the territories be closed to slavery.
I would like to see a bit of evidence here that emancipation in the north
was accompanied by selling off slaves to the south. The New York gradual
emancipation act of 1817 made it a public offense to sell slaves out of
state, and provided a fine of five hundred dollars for anyone involved in
the transaction and freed the slave who was so exported or who someone had
attempted to export. Thus any slave "sold" south from New York after 1817
was a free man, e.g., was someone illegally kidnapped and legally free.
Actually, the export of slaves had been severely restricted in 1788--
eleven years PRIOR to the first gradual emancipation act. (The first act
of 1799 emancipated those people born after July 4, 1799, after they
reached the ages of twenty-eight (men) or twenty-five (female); the second
act of 1817, emancipated everyone else as of July 4, 1827. That some
selling of slaves south occured is not in dispute-- that such sales
occured on any large scale, or with any regularity, needs proof.
Incidently, the evidence appears to be that most New York slave owners
hung on to their slaves as long as they could. After all, a male slave who
would be freed at age twenty-eight could provide enough years of labor to
provide a good return on the investment.
> in the colony. During all that time, of course, the Yankee shippers were
> up to their elbows in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which was not
> outlawed until 1807. I would not be surprised to learn that some of the
> leading abolitionists were descended from or related to the Yankee slave
> traders -- the Patty Hearst syndrome.
Well yes, Yankee shippers were up to their elbows in the trade. Any yes,
some of them changed their minds and became abolitionists. Others probably
regretted losing the business. Ex-slave owners as abolitionists was not
only a northern thing. James Birney, an active abolitionist in New York,
was a former slave owner from Kentucky. The Grimke sisters left
Charleston, S.C., for Philadelphia, PA, largely to be in a free state. The
Grimke family owned many slaves. Their brother had a slave mistress and
children that he would not free, though the Grimke sisters, when they
found out that they had black nieces and nephews-- one of whom, Archibald,
was William Lloyd Garrison's biographer, btw-- welcomed them into the
family circle.
I don't know about the Patty Hearst syndrome. I don't recall that the
Grimkes or William Lloyd Garrison or much of anyone else-- before John
Brown, anyway-- who was converted to abolitionism after being captured by
an armed gang of Philadelphia Quakers. However, there is an element of
guilt involved in some cases. Part of abolitionist rhetoric-- particularly
those of a religious bent-- was that "we" (abolitionists) had participated
in slavery, either personally or by acquisence to custom, and were guilty
of its existance, and therefore had a moral need to atone for the sin by
ending the sin. Its all part of the great drama of sin, atonement and
redemption-- if you think I am being too theatrical, look again at the
words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, particularly the verse about
Christ-- "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" for a
heavily religious Civil War era imagery.
Christopher Densmore
E-Mail: Dens...@acsu.buffalo.edu
RStacy2229
In article <50mnsk$g...@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
mpit...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark T Pitcavage) writes:
> I have characterized
>exactly two persons who have posted in this newsgroup as racists: you and
>James Turner. I think the designation fits very well.
And exactly what leads you to say that?
RSMc
RStacy2229
In article <50k763$c...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
>Who's "we"? More to the point, the fact that the Gilded Age followed the
>war does not mean that the war caused the Gilded Age,
What was the tariff rate in 1859? And in 1866? 1880?
A central purpose -- if not THE central purpose -- for the formation of
the Republican Party was to raise the protective tariff, thus to give the
Northern industrialists a monopoly on supplying the wants of the
developing nation. With this advantage, and with the further advantage of
cheap immigrant labor, the industrial interests were able to make huge
profits, protected from the worldwide market.
Because the South had long stood against this "exploded theory" of
protectionism, the men who formed the Republican Party had determined to
destroy the South. And so it was done, with the result being exactly as
originally intended by the prophets of the "irrepressible conflict" -- the
reign of mammon began.
RSMc
RStacy2229
In article <50kgpb$h...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau) writes:
>Nevertheless
>the relationship under chattel slavery, of owner and owned, is fairly
close
>to being one between the absolutely powerful and the absolutely
powerless.
So, too, is the relationship between parent and child, teacher and student
-- is the power always abused, Gary?
Logic tells me that the slaveholder who abused his servant risked the
demoralization of the servant. As the servant was intended to labor for
the benefit of his master, and as demoralization is not conducive to
labor, no sensible master would abuse his slave, no more than would a
sensible slave neglect his labor. I see in the fundamental assumptions
which many bring to the study of slavery today an apparent acceptance of
the notion that moral inversion was a rational response on the part of the
slave, as if two wrongs actually do make a right.
RSMc
Dan Bennett
> > I have characterized
> >exactly two persons who have posted in this newsgroup as racists: you
and
> >James Turner. I think the designation fits very well.
>
> And exactly what leads you to say that?
Well hell, you're a white Southerner ain'tcha? It you ain't groveling
before your Yankee betters begging their forgiveness for dang near
everything, then you're a racist. And if you done gone and disagreed with
The good Dr. Pitcavage (GasBagus Maximus), that makes you an aggravated
racist. You oughtta be ashamed.
Tennessee Reb
On Sep 06, 1996 14:24:11 in article <Re: Stacy asks for HELP: Atrocities
under slavery?>, 'char...@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau)'
wrote:
>The following seems like the least confusing and most useful
categorization:
>
>Lower South: The seven slave states which seceded prior to Ft. Sumter.
>
>Middle South: The four slave states which seceded after Ft. Sumter.
>
>Upper South: The four slave states which did not secede.
which did not."
--
Tennessee Reb
"I was a Southern Man at the start. I am yet, and will die
a Rebel. I believe I was right in all I did...."
Capt. Champ Ferguson, CSA, 20 October, 1865
RStacy2229
In article <50mt8s$o...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, sfmi...@wam.umd.edu
(steven f miller) writes:
>Then perhaps you should refresh your memory on the parts you read 15
>years ago and read the rest for the first time.
By the way, I was in the library and looked through Douglass and found an
interesting passage which I will quote for your benefit later, Steve.
RSMc
steven f miller
Stephen Schmidt (schm...@unvax.union.edu) wrote:
: Of the four border states, two freed their slaves by state action
: towards the end of the war. The other two (I think Maryland and
: Kentucky but I'm not sure) were affected by the 13th Amendment.
: I would be curious to know whether those two states voted to
: ratify the amendment. If they did, one could make a decent case
: that they freed theirs voluntarily. I would guess that at least
: one of the two states did not, however.
Kentucky and Delaware were the two states that held on to slavery until
the 13th Amendment. Maryland had abolished slavery in a state
constitution that took effect in November 1864; Missouri, via a
constitutional convention in January 1865. I know Kentucky refused
to ratify the amendment; there was a very bitter political battle about
it. IIRC the same was true of Delaware.
Cordially,
Steven F. Miller