slavery the cause
Hugh Lawson
Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
slotrot
> Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
You may give us other causes, if you wish.
Hugh Lawson
I'm asking a question.
Why insist that slavery was the only cause? I don't insist on that, so
I don't know why others do.
HL
slotrot
Hugh, with all due respect; you do a lot of reading/research on the
ACW and I'm sure that involves its causes.
I'm also sure that you can answer your own question. I think you know
full well why there is an insistance on slavery as the cause of the
ACW.
We have the states rights argument, but if you drill down, the
underlying rationale was the protection of slavery and its
encumbrances.
IMHO only.
Hugh Lawson
[ snip ]
> Hugh, with all due respect; you do a lot of reading/research on the
> ACW and I'm sure that involves its causes.
> I'm also sure that you can answer your own question. I think you know
> full well why there is an insistance on slavery as the cause of the
> ACW.
> We have the states rights argument, but if you drill down, the
> underlying rationale was the protection of slavery and its
> encumbrances.
>
> IMHO only.
It has always seemed obvious that a cause of the war was a disagreement
about the status of the CS. That seems to be the immediate cause of the
war. There is this entity, the CS, claiming sovereignty over some
territory, and the already-established government denying that claim,
and determined to enforce its supremacy.
There you have one of the top causes for wars: conflict over territory.
This doesn't in any way touch cherished beliefs about "saving the
union", the wrongfulness of slavery, etc.
HL
Ray O'Hara
"Hugh Lawson" <hu.l...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:87tya52...@gmail.com...
>
> Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
>
>
>
who is insisting that in that manner.
a question so framed is not "just asking a question"
it is making a claim about others you haven't established the validity of.
Hugh Lawson
The only implied claim is that in addition to slavery there might be
some other cause.
HL
Hugh Lawson
I might add, as a question to Ray. Ray, have you every said that
anything other than slavery was a cause of the war?
HL
Ray O'Hara
Slavery was the cause. but it was more complex than just saying slavery.
there was slavery for long before there was a war. it was the changing
perception of slavery and the rise of Abolitionism that drove the slavers to
secede. the Nation was willing to wait the South out on slavery and to let
it die off, the South wasn't willing to go that route and they thought they
could fight the changing times and perceptions.
Wiregrass Willie
wrote:
>
>Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
Had slavery been abolished in 1855, would there have been a Secession
in 1861 ?
Most of the insisting I've heard was that slavery was NOT the cause of
the war. Why was that ?
Looking back -- after the physical destruction of the South, the
death of 300,000 men, the rape of it's natural resources, the
impoverishment of it's people -- it was somewhat embarrassing for the
leadership of the South to admit they had brought it all on themselves
while trying to enrich the top 2% of their population.
Ray O'Hara
"Wiregrass Willie" <wiregrass_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cuda37hq4um1b215q...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:58:54 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.l...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
>
> Had slavery been abolished in 1855, would there have been a Secession
> in 1861 ?
>
no there wouldn't,
no slavery, no abolition movement and no war.
of course the rest of the country could have just legalized slavery, that
might have mollified the Slave-o-crats.
what would be a nice question is why do you modern day Southerners feel so
embarrassed by events that happened 150 years ago which you had no part in?
Hugh Lawson
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:58:54 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.l...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
>
> Had slavery been abolished in 1855, would there have been a Secession
> in 1861 ?
I don't think so.
> Most of the insisting I've heard was that slavery was NOT the cause of
> the war. Why was that ?
Those who say not-slavery don't like the slavery explanation, so they
tell a story that pleases them better.
> Looking back -- after the physical destruction of the South, the
> death of 300,000 men, the rape of it's natural resources, the
> impoverishment of it's people -- it was somewhat embarrassing for the
> leadership of the South to admit they had brought it all on themselves
> while trying to enrich the top 2% of their population.
I know this is your opinion WW, but I have seen little evidence, if any,
that the leadership actually and in fact showed any embarrassment.
Many have complained that they *should* have been embarrassed, or
rejected, and the like.
But IMO what needs explaining is *why* they were *not* embarrassed. As
far as I know they were sorry they had lost, but not sorry they had
seceded and fought. It seems to me that you are criticizing the dead
for not feeling as you think they should have.
HL
Hugh Lawson
[ snip ]
> what would be a nice question is why do you modern day Southerners feel so
> embarrassed by events that happened 150 years ago which you had no part in?
Are you really curious about this?
HL
Ray O'Hara
Hugh Lawson
> "Hugh Lawson" <hu.l...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:87bowae...@gmail.com...
>> "Ray O'Hara" <raymon...@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> [ snip ]
>>
>>> what would be a nice question is why do you modern day Southerners feel
>>> so
>>> embarrassed by events that happened 150 years ago which you had no part
>>> in?
>>
>> Are you really curious about this?
>>
>> HL
>
>
>
> yes.
Then I suggest you begin with the idea that tt may not be embarrassment
that you see, but something more like indignation for some, resentment
for some, annoyance for some, apathy for some.
Then ask what could give rise to such feelings. Southerners are human
beings like you. You probably have some ways of empathizing with them.
Ask how their cultural predicament is different from that of others, and
how it is the same.
HL
Ray O'Hara
dress it up anyway you want, but it is clearly embarrassment.
the idea that your ancestors were slave beating and raping brutes leads
Southerners to make all kinds of ludicrous claims about the master-slave
relationship
Hugh Lawson
So what was it you were curious about?
HL
Ray O'Hara
why you feel that what they did taints you?
Hugh Lawson
I don't feel that way, Ray. What interests me is why anybody would
attribute such a feeling to me.
Why do you?
HL
MITO MINISTER
> Why insist that slavery was the only cause of the war?
Because the Southern legislatures told us so, in their own words.
MITO MINISTER
It is clearly stated by at least 8 seceeding legislatures that the
maintenance and preservation of slavery is the cause for their leaving
the Union. That did not have to cause a war, as indeed Buchanan, the
coward, did nothing to halt the treason. The war began months after
the establishment of the CSA with Southern armed attacks on Federal
property and the subsequent Federal counter-attacks. Full scale war
erupted when massive armies on both sides engaged in combat.
It was only after the war ended, and White Southerners (traitors and
losers) could not begin to admit that the utter CATASTROPHE that they
had brought upon themselves was due to their insistence on the "right"
to maintain slavery, that various excuses (states' rights, tariffs,
etc.)began to be made for the rebellion.
The Southern White Boys made a mistake. They still won't admit it. The
North was a Union of Free and Slave states, putting the lie to
Southern fears that Lincoln came into office wishing to abolish
slavery. He was no fan of slavery and certainly did not want it to
expand into the territories and newly admitted states BUT it was only
after the South attempted to dismember the United States that the
abolition of slavery became a Union war aim, and then only after 2
years of fighting had passed.
The White South - there is no reason for its continued existence as a
socio-cultural entity.
Ray O'Hara
because your constant harping on it and your defensiveness towards it.
Wiregrass Willie
I've never been the least embarrassed. I'm about Hugh's age -- and
it's only in recent years I learned why the South seceded. Before
now, I never really cared. One branch of my family was
impoverished by the war -- two men from another branch were killed.
I now feel that it was such a waste.
What can I do ? Nothing, except maybe show a little less respect for
the men who got them killed.
Wiregrass Willie
wrote:
>Wiregrass Willie <wiregrass_...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> Looking back -- after the physical destruction of the South, the
>> death of 300,000 men, the rape of it's natural resources, the
>> impoverishment of it's people -- it was somewhat embarrassing for the
>> leadership of the South to admit they had brought it all on themselves
>> while trying to enrich the top 2% of their population.
>
>I know this is your opinion WW, but I have seen little evidence, if any,
>that the leadership actually and in fact showed any embarrassment.
You are right. I didn't use the right word. I think sometime
after Reconstruction, the guys who wanted to be the leaders of the
South decided they had better make up a good "accepted fable" as to
why the South seceded. Otherwise the Plain Folk may have doubts
about them. They apparently settled on "states rights".
Hugh Lawson
> because your constant harping on it and your defensiveness towards it.
Ray, I won't discuss how I feel about things with you.
On this subject I am the world's greatest expert, and you
are a complete ignoramus.
HL
Hugh Lawson
> I've never been the least embarrassed.
Of course you haven't. I haven't either.
HL
Hugh Lawson
> You are right. I didn't use the right word. I think sometime
> after Reconstruction, the guys who wanted to be the leaders of the
> South decided they had better make up a good "accepted fable"
Yep. They didn't like the the story the Yanks were telling about them,
so they got up a different story that pleased them better. That's what
humans usually do.
HL
Hugh Lawson
Addendum: I will instruct others on my feelings about some things, if
they ask politely. But it would be ridiculous for me to argue with
another man about what my own feelings are.
Hugh
Hugh Lawson
> I've never been the least embarrassed.
As a general ovservation, it's impossible to destroy the self-respect
of others by talking about them.
Consider the US black population. White America for almost 400 yeears
has kept up a campaign against their self respect; it's what Frederick
Douglass called "the American system of caste."
The self-respect of the black population has endured.
There are many other instances of this.
HL
MITO MINISTER
Get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness - for being a Southern
White!
MITO MINISTER
wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:58:54 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
Enbarassing indeed, which is why they made revisionist claims about
the war NOT being about slavery.
Show me a Southern White and I'll show you a god-damned liar.
Ray O'Hara
your "feelings" come through loud and clear in your posts.
the constant themes you pursue makes that abundantly clear.
Wiregrass Willie
wrote:
>Wiregrass Willie <wiregrass_...@yahoo.com> writes:
What I find curious is the erroneous belief -- (apparently) held by
many Yankees -- that the Southerner is "still fighting the Civil War".
To tell the truth, while I was growing up in the 1950s, I seldom
talked to anybody who was even *interested* in the CW. Including
several elderly relatives whose fathers had fought in it.
My grandfather would be at all the family get-togethers and his father
had fought in the war. We kids would ask him about his father and
the War. My grandfather was more interested in telling us of his
fathers accomplishments as a small farmer and local official -- after
the War.
Come to think of it -- how many children of WW2 vets (such as I)
have any more than passing interest in those tragic years ? I don't.
copperhead
If slavery was the only cause for the Civil War, why did it continue
for another 100 years after the war ended? Sure, Lincoln declared the
slaves emancipated, and the 13th Ammendment passed, but that was
pretty much political. Neither were applied practically, or enforced
by the reconstruction crew who moved in and took control of the
southern economy after the war ended. The Union gets painted as a
bunch of saints, and I don't see where they were really much better in
terms of improving the living conditions among blacks, especially in
the South. Not that Detroit or Chicago were a whole lot better.
Hugh Lawson
> your "feelings" come through loud and clear in your posts.
> the constant themes you pursue makes that abundantly clear.
Nonsense.
HL
Hugh Lawson
>
> What I find curious is the erroneous belief -- (apparently) held by
> many Yankees -- that the Southerner is "still fighting the Civil War".
> To tell the truth, while I was growing up in the 1950s, I seldom
> talked to anybody who was even *interested* in the CW. Including
> several elderly relatives whose fathers had fought in it.
It's simple. Saying "down there the are still fighting the Civil war"
is the northern way of still fighting the civil war.
HL
Hugh Lawson
> If slavery was the only cause for the Civil War, why did it continue
> for another 100 years after the war ended?
It didn't continue. This is just a figure of speech that
confuses the ignorant.
HL
Ray O'Hara
Hugh Lawson
> "Hugh Lawson" <hu.l...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:87r553r...@gmail.com...
>> "Ray O'Hara" <raymon...@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> your "feelings" come through loud and clear in your posts.
>>> the constant themes you pursue makes that abundantly clear.
>>
>> Nonsense.
>>
>> HL
>
>
> Not at all
Believe and say what you like Ray.
It's in unmoderated newsgroup.
HL
copperhead
If slavery were the ONLY cause, that would mean the Union wanted to do
away with it. And yet, it existed for at least another 100 years
following the end of the war and the Union victory. It was just
called sharecropping instead, and people were slightly more polite in
some cases.
Wiregrass Willie
You are getting close to a subject that I find very interesting.
Let me pose a question.
Was the introduction -- and the maintenance of the institution of
slavery in the Old South -- intended more for
(a) economic need (profit) or
(b) social reasons ?
I'd suggest that for the top 2% of the slave owning population in the
years 1620 to 1861 it was (b).
Please recall that in 1620 - when slavery was introduced into the
colonies -- slavery (of white people) in England had not been totally
abandoned for more than 200 years. I would wager the men who
bought the first slaves had a hope to re-introduce a form of feudalism
into the colonies. With them as the Lords of the Manor and the
other white people as the villeins and serfs.
By purchasing slaves to do the work, the rich made sure the poorer
white people (serfs and peasants) would not have jobs and would remain
poor --- and would learn their place in the new social structure.
As your post points out, when slavery was abolished the old planters
simply turned to either tenant farming or share cropping. I would
wager they made a better profit in the 100 years after the war than in
the 100 years before. Had they done that 250 years earlier, the
South would have had a middle-class 150 years earlier and everybody
would have been better off.
As I said, I don't think profit was the primary motive for slavery.
Ray O'Hara
and of course both of you are completelty vlueless and Hugh, you are not
competent enough to talk about what Yankees think as you can't articulate
your own points clearly.
> HL
Ray O'Hara
"copperhead" <copper...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:19f81402-1f70-4cff...@l37g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
Sharecroppers could move away if they so chose or they could take the day or
even the week off and go fishing
if that was what they wanted to do..
Ray O'Hara
It wasn't a "story".
recently on a blog I defended you as not being a Lost Causer, was I wrong?
you are beginning to make me look so.
copperhead
>
> Sharecroppers could move away if they so chose or they could take the day or
> even the week off and go fishing
> if that was what they wanted to do..
heoretically, yeah. Practically, not so much. It is also said that
people should have just evacuated when Katrina was headed for New
Orleans. The only problem was, many of those folks had no private
transportation, no access to public transportation, nowhere else to
go, and no money if they were to get somewhere else. Sharecroppers
may have been legally able to come and go as they pleased, but
socially and economically were still bound to the cotton fields. They
lived in "company" shacks, and spent their money at the company store
(which essentially meant they were giving their wages right back to
their employers, who made a profit from it).
Any of you guys ever actually BEEN to Mississippi, Alabama, southeast
Arkansas, or Louisiana? I can still take you to places over in
Coahoma County MS where people live in the same old cypress shacks,
some of which have no glass in the windows, just sheets nailed up to
keep some of the mosquitoes out. No central heat, and certainly no
air conditioning. I'll bet indoor plumbing. and electricity aren't
available in some of them. You can say that slavery is dead, and
legally it is, but socially it still exists in some places. Far less
than it did fifty years ago, but conditions are not that different
for
some. Now they are "slaves" of the government. The kids don't get a
decent enough education, or opportunities to break the cycle. It's
damned near feudal at best.
Reconstruction didn't do much to change living conditions for former
slaves. All it did was change who was profiting. I think slavery
was
primarily driven by economics, but I'll agree that there was indeed a
social aspect to it, and that has continued in many places, North and
South.
And, Wiregrass, some of my colleagues and I have been discussing the
possibility that what's going on in the government today might well
be
an attempt to return to the circumstance you describe. It sure has
all the appearances of an effort to dismantle the middle class,
leaving a tiny, elite group of "lords", surrounded by a small group
of necessary craftsmen and maybe some academics, and then the great
mass of "serfs", who are of little, if any, consequence and left to
pretty much scrap it out amongst themselves.
I have to wonder how long it will be before the inner cities of the US
start to spark as the inner cities of the UK are doing now, and if it
will lead to something bigger. When you can't feed your kids, or
when you are absolutely hopeless, you're bound to take some kind of
action.
The South MAY rise again, but only because it's rural and heavily
armed, and it will be more difficult to overrun.
Hugh Lawson
> It wasn't a "story".
> recently on a blog I defended you as not being a Lost Causer, was I wrong?
> you are beginning to make me look so.
Ray, you are free to think as you like. I have been a frequent poster
here. If you wonder about something I said, quote what I said, and ask
me for an explanation.
HL
Hugh Lawson
> Was the introduction -- and the maintenance of the institution of
> slavery in the Old South -- intended more for
>
> (a) economic need (profit) or
>
> (b) social reasons ?
[ snip ]
> As I said, I don't think profit was the primary motive for slavery.
I don't know of a respected work on the history of the institution that
agrees with you on this point, WW.
HL
Hugh Lawson
> You can say that slavery is dead, and legally
> it is, but socially it still exists in some places.
It's also financially dead. You can't borrow money with slaves as the
security, because there aren't any slaves.
You don't own the children of your slaves, because there aren't any
slaves.
Slaves don't have to ask your permission to move about because there
aren't any slaves.
This could be extended indefinitely.
HL
Wiregrass Willie
wrote:
>> As I said, I don't think profit was the primary motive for slavery.
>
>I don't know of a respected work on the history of the institution that
>agrees with you on this point, WW.
I recently started reading the history of Medieval England. I can't
prove it, but I think the attitudes that were strong during feudal
England were still in the minds of wannabee aristrocrats who
established plantations in the mid 1600s. Their descendants are the
guys who lived in the Big Houses of the 1850s. Those who fancied
themselves "Lord of the Manor".
Hugh Lawson
There's some historical discussion of the planters' efforts to visualize
themselves as British lords, to portray themselves as the
descendants of the Stuart era cavaliers in the cavalier v. roundhead
struggle, etc.
HL
Ray O'Hara
Slavery still exists in parts of Africa. Real slavery in the sub-Saharan
area.
copperhead
>
> Slaves don't have to ask your permission to move about because there
> aren't any slaves.
>
> This could be extended indefinitely.
>
> HL
Can't argue with what you're saying there, Hugh. But, if your reality
is that you are financially bound to a place and unable to move about
freely because of your circumstances, and you're socialized to believe
that there is no other way to exist, what difference does it make that
you are legally free to come and go as you please?
Legally, I am free to live in a mansion, drive a Ferrari, fly around
in a private jet, and spend my summers in the southwest of France.
Not exactly my reality, however. The one advantage I have over former
slaves is that I am not socially conditioned to believe it has to stay
that way. I can act to change my circumstances. Some black kid from
Friar's Point MS may have the legal right to be whatever he/she wants
to be, or do what they want to do, but a lot of them don't believe
that, or even know it.
Things may be slowly changing in the deep south, but any time you want
to make a trip to the Arkansas or Missippi Delta and get a guided
tour, just let me know. I can take you places today where it isn't a
whole lot different now than it was 100 years ago.
Hugh Lawson
>> This could be extended indefinitely.
>>
>> HL
>
> Can't argue with what you're saying there, Hugh. But, if your reality
> is that you are financially bound to a place and unable to move about
> freely because of your circumstances, and you're socialized to believe
> that there is no other way to exist, what difference does it make that
> you are legally free to come and go as you please?
[ snip ]
That is not slavery. Slavery is like this. You are the property of
somebody else, and your owner is legally entitled to the product of your
labor. If he doesn't like you, he can sell you. I don't need to extend
this because you already know enough about it.
"Slavery" is the wrong word to use as a label for the conditions you
describe. It creates the misleading impression that rural poverty now is
"just another form of slavery".
It isn't another form of slavery. It's something else.
The abolitionists had a cure for slavery: abolition of it. It was done,
and it ended slavery. You are describing conditions for some of the
inhabitants of former plantation counties, the black-majority or
near-black-majority counties of the so called "black belt".
It's likely that most of those alive (black or white) who were born in
these counties moved away a along time ago, to Montgomery, or Jackson,
or Augusta, or to out-of-state cities. Current residents are there for
a reason: they have jobs there, or they are old and on social security,
or they don't know how to make the move, and so on. Some of them are in
difficult straits, but their difficulties are not caused by their being
slaves.
I believe that the best advice for people stuck in depressed rural areas
is that they move to some place where they can find a job. If they
can't do this, then a decent country (the kind the conservatives oppose)
would have a basic safety net while enterprising locals improve local
job opportunities.
HL
copperhead
> I believe that the best advice for people stuck in depressed rural areas
> is that they move to some place where they can find a job. If they
> can't do this, then a decent country (the kind the conservatives oppose)
> would have a basic safety net while enterprising locals improve local
> job opportunities.
>
> HL
I have a friend who taught for Teach For America in Lafayette LA five
years ago. She gave an English assignment asking for her students to
write about what they wanted to do when they grew up, These kids
didn't write about wanting to be trash collectors or Taco Bell
cashiers, much less doctors or college professors. One kid wrote
about how he just wanted to be able to make enough money to pay his
child support. In junior high he was already resigned to the fact
that he was going to be an unmarried father as an adult, and he wanted
to "honorable". She gave an assignment to write a poem. None of them
knew they were allowed to write poetry. When she took them over to a
poetry slam in NOLA to read and listen it opened a world they were not
aware existed. This is ONE teacher, in ONE class. Not really making
a sweeping change in the culture of the South.
You make it sound as if the residents of these Delta towns have only
to decide that they don't want to live that way any more and do
something different. I'm telling you that most of them don't know
there IS anything different. Their parents lived this way, and their
parents' parents, as far back as anyone can remember. They might get
into the big city (Clarksdale or Helena) every once in a while, but
most of them have never been out of Coahoma County, except maybe to
visit a relative in Parchman or something like that. I took a college
kid from Idaho over there and drove him around on the backroads to
show him what it's like, and he absolutely could not believe people in
America live like that. A very intelligent, informed individual, and
he had no clue that this still exists. It's a third wolrd country
inside what those conservatives you mentioned are working real hard to
turn into a still larger third world country. And yeah, there are some
social services over there but programs get cut far more than are
getting funded. I haven't seen much in the way of progess in the 30
years I've been aware of those living conditions. And it's systemic,
not isolated. You just don't see it driving down Highway 61, you have
to turn off onto the side roads and go into the country. But, pick
any side road in the Delta. It won't take you long to find what I'm
talking about.
The point is that the conditions for these people, economically and
socially, are not far from what they were during the slavery period.
In fact, slavery might have been better for some in terms of living
conditions. At least as property they were worth something to
someone, and it would've been in the best interest of the aristocracy
to keep them healthy and provided for to some degree. Now, not too
many people really give a damn at all now. It's really quite an
embarrassment to our society, in much the same way it is to see how
American Indians often live on the reservations. It may not be
slavery in the sense that there is a person called "Marsa", who holds
the papers, but the conditions are not much different, call it
whatever you like. The locals don't want to want to improve
conditions any more now than they did in the late 1800s, and I think
Wireless Willie touched on that aspect of it. I don't believe that
people in the modern North are much interested either, or even aware.
Schools were legally desegragated in what, 1954? There were no black
kids where I went to elementary school in southern Arkansas in the
early 1960s. They went to school "elsewhere", and had black
teachers. They went to black churches, and blacks only shopped in the
same stores as whites on Saturday morning. The Freedom Riders were
coming down and helping to get blacks registered to vote in those
days, but it was a tiny group of people trying to help a large group
that nearly 100 years after the war ended still were not able to live
equally or exercise their rights as citizens.
My initial argument was that if the North had REALLY started the war
purely to bring an end to slavery and its attending abhorent
conditions, then it follows that they would've followed through and
brought those conditions to an end. They did not during
Reconstruction, and still have not to this day. Some blacks did
escape the "Old South" over the years, and went mainly to Chicago or
Detroit, and were able to pursue a different life working in auto
plants and other industries, as you describe. Some did that in the
north prior to the Civil War. There was even a gentry free black
class in New Orleans prior to the war, but it was a minority in those
instances.
You may say that it isn't slavery now because the black people are
free to do something different, but freedom would appear to be a
matter of perspective.
Hugh Lawson
> On Aug 16, 11:22 am, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I believe that the best advice for people stuck in depressed rural areas
>> is that they move to some place where they can find a job. If they
>> can't do this, then a decent country (the kind the conservatives oppose)
>> would have a basic safety net while enterprising locals improve local
>> job opportunities.
>>
>> HL
>
>
> I have a friend who taught for Teach For America in Lafayette LA five
> years ago.
I taught for a living for decades. I take teachers' yarns with a big
grain of salt.
> You make it sound as if the residents of these Delta towns have only
> to decide that they don't want to live that way any more and do
> something different.
A great number of them have IN FACT migrated away. Your account
suggests a static immobile population. This is contradicted by facts,
because so many have migrated out.
Here is a web page on migration.
You'll see some evidence that black-belt counties, and others as well,
are losing population due to outmigration.
Just do a google search on "black belt" and "out-migration".
Hugh
Wiregrass Willie
wrote:
>Wiregrass Willie <wiregrass_...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> I recently started reading the history of Medieval England. I can't
>> prove it, but I think the attitudes that were strong during feudal
>> England were still in the minds of wannabee aristrocrats who
>> established plantations in the mid 1600s. Their descendants are the
>> guys who lived in the Big Houses of the 1850s. Those who fancied
>> themselves "Lord of the Manor".
>
>There's some historical discussion of the planters' efforts to visualize
>themselves as British lords, to portray themselves as the
>descendants of the Stuart era cavaliers in the cavalier v. roundhead
>struggle, etc.
>
>HL
I'd like to read some of that discussion. It could be very
interesting.
One old book I read touches on that subject is --
"Patrician and plebeian in Virginia" 1910 - by -- Thomas Jefferson
Wertenbaker
Hugh Lawson
[ snip ]
> I'd like to read some of that discussion. It could be very
> interesting.
See James Cobb's book on southern identity. He probably provides some
references to that topic.
Sentimentalizing the historical origins of a community is a common human
activity. See for example, The Aeneid, by Virgil. In America, I'd say
the New Englanders have been most active in sentimentalizing their
origin stories. The Old Testament and New Testament contain community
origin stories. See Exodus, and the passages in the NT that deal with
the aftermath of the execution of Jesus.
So there is nothing unique in such yarnspinning by Southerners. What is
unique is that other parts of the US (aka "the North") have a huge
interest in twitting the south about southern mythmaking.
The reason for this is that an image of "the South" as a perverse, evil
region is given the part of villain in the the songs of self-praise that
the north sings to itself. They've been at this so long that it seems
natural to them.
For many northerners and other non-southerners, especially their
intellectual classes, it is bizarre and perverse that "the South" has
any self-respect at all. A few of these feel the call to preach to the
southerners about their wickedness. By reading what they write you can
see that these preachers see their activity as a sign of their own
excellence and virtue.
In turn many southerners are influenced by these sermons emanating from
the much more powerful northern echo chamber.
HL
copperhead
>
> Here is a web page on migration.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/djbgcb
>
> You'll see some evidence that black-belt counties, and others as well,
> are losing population due to outmigration.
>
> Just do a google search on "black belt" and "out-migration".
>
> Hugh
Have you ever actually been to the Delta, or are your opinions based
strictly on books and web data?
Ray O'Hara
=======================================================================
Generally the Delta {capital D}refers to that part of northern Mississippi
that lies between the Yazoo R and Mississippi R, the home of the Blues.
that little gaffe renders the rest of your claims suspect.
thanks for playing.
copperhead
> =======================================================================
>
> Generally the Delta {capital D}refers to that part of northern Mississippi
> that lies between the Yazoo R and Mississippi R, the home of the Blues.
> that little gaffe renders the rest of your claims suspect.
>
> thanks for playing.
Generally I visit the region anywhere from ten to twenty times per
year, as it starts about an hour from where I live. It;'s no gaffe.
We who actually live around here refer to almost everything south of
Blytheville on either side of the river, the Delta.
Your ignorance is outweighed only by your arrogance. Typical Boston
bullshit.
Ray O'Hara
====================================================================
Copperhead,,, BUSTED!
Hugh Lawson
[ snip ]
There aren't any slaves in any of these places, because slavery was
abolished long ago. If you thought you saw some slaves, you were
mistaken.
HL
hla...@triad.rr.com
Despite Copperhead's personal impressions, the black belt has changed.
First, by the outmigration of many born there. No doubt, some who don't
move can't move, but this is not the result of a culture that makes
everybody stationary. We know the culture doesn't do that, because so
many have in fact moved out. If the culture forced folk to be
stationary, then this out-migration would not have happened.
Second, by the end of the sharecropping system, the old one-party
Democratic political system.
Third by the results of the civil rights laws. If whites in the black
belt don't like going to black-majority schools, they do what Yankees
do, move somewhere else or send their kids to private schools. If they
can't afford it, they send their kids to public schools: this is about
what Howard Zinn predicted fifty years ago in his essay "The Southern
Mystique".
Thus, the present social condition of the black-belt is not the simple
continuation of the old plantation economy.
Moreover, the black belt is no more typical of "the South" than are the
nearly all-white mountain area, the growing cities, the majority-white
piney woods areas, Texas, Oklahoma, or northern Virginia.
But many are ready to believe there is a stationary South, a place that
lives in the past and doesn't change, that is what it is because of a
peculiar culture that somehow defies the forces of change.
HL
Wiregrass Willie
>"Ray O'Hara" <raymon...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> "copperhead" <copper...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:35ecb33e-74f7-4863...@q3g2000yqi.googlegroups.com...
>> On Aug 17, 3:39 pm, "Ray O'Hara" <raymond-oh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> =======================================================================
>>>
>>> Generally the Delta {capital D}refers to that part of northern Mississippi
>>> that lies between the Yazoo R and Mississippi R, the home of the Blues.
>>> that little gaffe renders the rest of your claims suspect.
>>>
>>> thanks for playing.
>>
>>
>>
>> Generally I visit the region anywhere from ten to twenty times per
>> year, as it starts about an hour from where I live. It;'s no gaffe.
>> We who actually live around here refer to almost everything south of
>> Blytheville on either side of the river, the Delta.
>>
>> Your ignorance is outweighed only by your arrogance. Typical Boston
>> bullshit.
>>
>>
>> ====================================================================
>>
>> Copperhead,,, BUSTED!
>
>Despite Copperhead's personal impressions, the black belt has changed.
>
>First, by the outmigration of many born there. No doubt, some who don't
>move can't move, but this is not the result of a culture that makes
>everybody stationary. We know the culture doesn't do that, because so
>many have in fact moved out. If the culture forced folk to be
>stationary, then this out-migration would not have happened.
This may be off-subject, but I thought it might fit in with a
discussion of Southern culture -- as seen by Yankees.
I think people in the North make a mistake when they think Southern
culture and attitudes are any different than those of other Americans.
Under the same conditions. I'd suggest that had the Northern
settlers been exposed to the institution of slavery, they would have
developed the same outlook and attitudes as the people of the South
did.
I'm reading a book called "The Tifts of Georgia -- Connecticut Yankees
in King Cotton's Court".
Nelson Tift was a Yankee who came south in the 1830s and founded a
town (Albany GA) that is home to some of my relatives.
This book is trying to explain why the Northerner who moved South
found it so easy to adapt.
"In Rome he not only does as the Romans do; he may even come to admire
their customs."
The author quotes another source for support:
-----------------------------------------------
Quote --
"It is one of the larger ironies of the northern emigration movement
that predilections toward the southern point of view formed the
quickest in those areas where Yankee immigrants were, chiefly among
their own kind. Along the lower Mississippi River and the South
Atlantic seaboard the newcomers were so heavily concentrated that they
could take their personal security for granted. ...It was as though
the freedom of not having to worry constantly about southern enmity
had permitted these newcomers to indulge fully their spite toward the
freedmen and to feel, therefore, a certain amount of sympathy for the
white southerners' determination to keep the South a white man's
country."
Source --
Lawrence N. Powell -- "New Masters, Northern Planters during the
Civil War and Reconstruction" -- 1980 135
Hugh Lawson
[ snip ]
> This may be off-subject, but I thought it might fit in with a
> discussion of Southern culture -- as seen by Yankees.
>
> I think people in the North make a mistake when they think Southern
> culture and attitudes are any different than those of other Americans.
> Under the same conditions. I'd suggest that had the Northern
> settlers been exposed to the institution of slavery, they would have
> developed the same outlook and attitudes as the people of the South
> did.
[ snip ]
Interesting point.
HL