Slavery

1. The Problem of Slavery in Christian America, Dr. Joel McDurmon, 2016.
2. American Slavery, American Freedom, Edmund S. Morgan, 2003. Morgan was called “great” by Dr. Gary North.
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4. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Robert William Fogel, 1994.
5. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South, Michael Tadman, 1989.
6. Slavery in Brazil and the United States: An Essay in Comparative History, Carl N. Degler, The American Historical Review, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Apr. 1970), pp. 1004-1028. [You can sign up for a free subscription, letting you get up to 3 articles.]
7. Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, Anne Farrow, 2005. I found Ms. Farrow being featured on the Tony Brown Journal.

Tony Brown’s Journal. Quite the prolific man.

Tony Brown’s Journal is an American talk show hosted by journalist Tony Brown.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] The program, which began on PBS in 1978, was the successor to the series Black Journal, which had aired on the television network’s NET and then PBS since 1968 and was produced and hosted by Brown from 1970.^[5]

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On Slavery, Dr. North points out that

The ones who abolished slavery were the Quakers. Trinitarian churches fought abolition for decades. Only after 1780 did a few Christians get on board.

12. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel. Why did the South secede, and why did the North prevent them? “Union” was sold as “Freedom.”

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proc. framed as a wartime measure to justify it, and did afford a large number of blacks as recruits to the Northern army. Slaves grew in number AFTER the U.S. Constitution. Even without the Constitution, slaves would have increased in number. reproduced itself through natural increase, rather than through additional captures. Am. Revolution sparked the first emancipation feelings, most significantly felt in the northern states. High rates of manumission in Virginia. By the time their constitution was adopted, there was a cooling of emancipation–S. Carolina, Georgia, etc.

Upper South, particularly Virginia, wanted to maintain the value of their slaves so they could sell them to the South.

Lincoln got the war started. As a Republican, he was not committed to the abolition of slavery, but only to limit the number of slave states. 1860 in a 4-way race. In the north, Lincoln run against Douglas. In the south, southern democrats running against the rump whig party. In the deep south, Lincoln didn’t win a single state. Why didn’t Lincoln get the votes in the Deep South? Southern slaveholders dominated the state and national governments. Republicans referred to it as the Slave Power, a powerful special interest. Supreme Court Justices owned slaves. Presidents owned slaves.

National gov’t hostile to slavery. Rebuild republican party in slave states, like Missouri. Lincoln hadn’t advocated it, but there were more radical members in his cabinet. A long-term decline of slavery. Needed protection of the federal gov’t to preserve slavery.

Once Lincoln calls out troops, that solidified the South. Once he announces troops to keep states in the unions, slaveholders become more unified against the union.

Ending slavery was an unintended consequence of the civil war. The reason the North fought the civil war was to keep the union, not to end slavery. The North suppressed Southern secession was because they wanted to maintain the union and not to stop slavery. The ending of slavery was an unintended consequence of the war. Ending slavery was unintended in the beginning.

Why did the support of the union in the North gain momentum?

Southerners were concerned about tariff advantages for the North.

The primary factor was ideological, identifying union with liberty. Lincoln’s phrase “last and best hope of the world.” Splitting of the U.S. would be perceived as a failure of democracy for the rest of the world. Southerners weren’t playing by the rules, and Lincoln said that permitting secession is an argument for anarchy.

Peaceful secession might have hastened slavery.

Lincoln’s gov’t was subsidizing slavery. It has to have the power of gov’t behind it. Fugitive Slave Law. The Achilles heel of slavery is the runaway slave. Diminishes the value of the slave and the slave system. A threat to the maintenance of the slave system. Slave patrols. National gov’t, it was the Fugitive Slave Law. If Northerners had been interested in ending slavery, there were a set of policies that they could have implemented, like repealing the Fugitive Slave Law. Slavery was economical moribund? Not true. As long as slavery had gov’t support, then . . . . Slavery provided large economic rewards. Slavery had been declining in the border states prior to the civil war. 95% of slaves in Delaware prior to Lincoln had been freed. 50% of the Maryland slaves had been freed prior to Lincoln.

The most radical abolitionist was William Lloyd Garrison, advocated immediate compensated emancipation. A radical wedge of the much broader anti-slavery movement. Garrison called for Northern secession. Mainstream historians have a hard time dealing with Garrison’s position. Frederick Douglas also held this position. A moral perfectionism . . . ? Never fully popular in the North. Northerners wanted anti-slavery AND disunion. Can’t have both. When S. Carolina secedes, Garrison believes that they’re bluffing. Once underway, Garrison and other radical abolitionists saw the war as a way of bringing an end to slavery. Garrison, part of a small minority, was almost lynched in Boston by a mob.

The one prominent abolitionist who remained an anti-war abolitionist was Lysander Spooner.

Call for the kidnapping of Governor . . . big debates were whether the Constitution was pro-slavery or anti-slavery. Garrison took the position that the Constitution with its Fugitive Slave Law was a pro-slavery document. John Brown’s raid to facilitate a slave revolt. Spooner had a plan to hold the governor of Virginia hostage in ransom for John Brown’s life.

After the war, Spooner says that the

American Indians were less desirable than black slaves because Indians could run away. slaves were major assets. S. Carolina is hiring local Indian tribes where they’ selling to west indies to pay for the importation of black slaves. West Indies slaves were difficult to run away from because of the islands.

The title comes from a Lincoln quote.

The war resulted in an expansion of gov’t in the north and the south–increased taxation, conscription, repeal of civil liberties, that make war the health of the states. After the war, there’s the post-war ratchet effect. Gov’t invention. Civil War was the great watershed of gov’t expansion. The long-term trend for gov’t power to recede, restrained, limited, and less intrusive. The civil war reverses this trend. The long-run trend starts going in the opposite direction.

How much of this do we blame on Lincoln versus the other 3 that ran against him? Mystical identification of liberty with the union. Breckenridge, southern democrat who went with the Confederacy. South isn’t going to secede

National gov’t did not have the authority to prevent secession. Buchannan would not have been able to prevent the Civil War either.

Bogus jobs created to prevent conscription.

Robert Wenzel of EconomicPolicyJournal interviews Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, author of the book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Wenzel guides a great interview. Looking forward to reading Hummel’s book.

13. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, Allen C. Guelzo, 2006.
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Stefan Molyneux.

1619 Project

“The 1619 Project Unrepentantly Pushes Junk History,” Phil Magness, Reason Magazine, May 2022.

Nikole Hannah-Jones’ new book sidesteps scholarly critics while quietly deleting previous factual errors.

SLAVERY
1. Slavery in Brazil & the United States, An Essay in Comparative History, Carl N. Degler. The American Historical Review, Apr. 1970.
2. Not all slave owners were bad guys. In fact, slaves owned by John McDonogh worked for him with joy because he provided his slaves a work ethic and an incentive for earning their freedom.
3. “Why the War Was Not About Slavery,” Clyde N. Wilson, March 9, 2016.
4. “Did the Declaration and Constitution Enshrine Slavery?” Thanks to Steve Bartin.

Posted Saturday, February 18, 2023.