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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I’m not sure you are correct here, with such generalised statements. Slavery may have begun to end, but each state, I believe, had it’s own laws as to slavery. I’ve seen statistical reports, saying that by the time the Civil War had started, there were nearly 4 million slaves in the whole country, of which about 1/6th were in the North. Also there were many black free men, somewhere between 2500 and 3000, who
owned slaves themselves, And that most of Southerners didn’t own slaves. And slavery was mainly concentrated in the Large Cotton Plantation States. I have several books about “The Underground Railroad”. Also I have Mary Chestnut’s Diary. This was the most interesting to me. How ordinary and normal the people were then.
That being said, what you post is true and I knew the details.
I always found it a sad, but interesting story. I have a few books of reminiscences by freed slaves including one by a slave who was owned (more or less) by 2 Jewish brothers, who had him trained as a carpenter, and sent him out to earn his own money, by which he could buy himself free. I’ve mentioned this on israpundit before.
Another story I have in which I was personally involved. Around 1960-62, I was looking around an area in Surrey B.C.Canada, for some cheap property. Walking along a back lane I saw a seemingly very old woman digging in her vegetable patch. There was no fence so I began chatting with her. Almost as soon as I had begun, she began attacking the Civil Rights movement in the US. “Them Damned Nigger lovers” was only a part of her diatribe. She emphasised every expletive with a strong push at her shovel.which she kept going all during the chat. She looked about 85, but vigourous, and her attack startled me because I was sure she was at least part black, having a darkish brown skin, but maybe it was just deeply sun-tanned . She went on and on about the “Reconstruction” days, which she said ruined her family more than the War did. She had to have had those stories from her family, because she could not have been born before about 1875.
In fact she looked and dressed almost exactly like the TV “Granny McCoy”.
I’ve aso mentioned this anecdote before, but a few years ago.
Afterwards, I thought about it deeply, marvelling that such hatred, caused by family stories, could last so long. It reminded me of the Irish-Americans, who though never having been in Ireland, heard such stories from their parents etc. that they always hated England for ever.
It was like a generationally transferred Jew-Hate.
@ Edgar G.:
I actually met some people from old Southern families at a party once. These people, incredibly could trace their ancestry back as far as Charlemagne.
https://thepalmierireport.com/voters-under-40-thought-trump-won-first-debate/?fbclid=IwAR3VjibM92r9umjQqSVRiAlwvh8MTk82jEpbaHmPcwDTCq-2mfgxEqkyrCo
@ Edgar G.:
Slavery in the North was mostly of the domestic variety, it is true, but it was ended during or shortly after the American Revolution. Slavery in the South began as indentured servitude for Whites, and later was replaced by the labor of purchased Black slaves, initially from Africa, though the British outlawed the international slave trade in 1800 because Whites could run away to Philadelphia and blend in and so were harder to recover. Indentured servitude was indistinguishable from slavery in practice because indentures rarely survived to see their freedom as conditions were harsh. In the 19th century, after the revival of slavery thanks to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the discovery of bat guano for fertilizer – it was almost abolished legally in the late 1800s before that – slavery was more or less harsh and slaves were more or less independent depending on the type of crop. The South actually had a mono-crop capitalist system but the pretensions of the planter class were consciously emulative of feudal Europe and they aped their customs and mannerisms, notably chivalry and the art of the duel.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Many of the plantation owners were actually descended from feudal lords. One could almost believe that the Southern gentry were actually a different race from the Northerners, very many of whom were comparatively recent immigrants from Impoverished European populations.. And of course plantations could have been run by free labour. We know that now, but then, they were continuing a custom that was already centuries old. And slaves were expensive to buy, and for the most part, I believe were well treated and looked after. Because of the climate they worked at a languorous pace. “Simon Legrees” had to have been few. Stowe’s book, which had a great effect in urging on the war, was a caricature of the average Plantation owner. And “Uncle Tom” was an unbelievable character, although in those hasty, hot-tempered, duelling times, anything was a reason for dispute.
I had a reason for mentioning that it was not in owning slaves, but that they had plantations which needed to be worked. My reason for separating the two was because there were slaves in the North as well. Slavery was not outlawed in the North until after the Civil War. I mean no insult to your intelligence as you also know this. But I’m just using it to level-off the discussion.
Unfortunately the many books I have in which this subject is covered, are packed away in storage, as I’ve mentioned before. I cast my memory back just yesterday in fact, and realised that it’s wll over 30 years, since I’ve even seen them (in boxes), and another few since I’d packed them up, and brought them all back from Israel. My Israeli apartment had plenty of wall space for shelves, but my just bought Canadian house has/had very little. So they were never unpacked..
I was going to take a rest from posting, ….beginning……..NOW….!!
@ Edgar G.:
Plantations are workable with free labor. But, in the South, capital was mainly in the form of people. In fact, the threat that slave labor posed to free labor was actually the issue that galvanized public opinion against the South more than anything in the North. That being said, the prevalence of violence between politicians is a whole other kettle of fish unless you posit that the planters thought of themselves as feudal lords and therefore embraced feudal traditions.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I think it had to do more than “with Southerners owning slaves”. It was to do with Southerners owning Plantations which required slaves, to be workable..
@ Michael S:
This one got stuck in moderation>“JUL 24, 2019
Violence in Congress Before the Civil War: From Canings and Stabbings to Murder
19th century congressman went to work carrying pistols and bowie knives—and sometimes used them on colleagues.
BECKY LITTLE
Interim Archives/Getty Images
The Senate had just adjourned on May 22, 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks entered its chamber carrying a cane. The pro-slavery southerner walked over to Senator Charles Sumner, whacked him in the head with the cane and then proceeded to beat the anti-slavery northerner unconscious. Afterward, Brooks walked out of the chamber without anyone stopping him.
The caning of Charles Sumner is probably the most famous violent attack in Congress, but it is far from the only one. In the three decades leading up to the Civil War, there were more than 70 violent incidents between congressmen, writes Yale history professor Joanne B. Freeman in The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War. It was a time of heightened tensions, especially over slavery—itself a violent institution that would drive the nation to a bloody war.
Carolina Representative Preston Brooks beating abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner
The famous political cartoon illustrating South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks beating abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the United States Senate chamber, 1856.
New York Historical Society/Getty Images
Congressmen during this period commonly carried pistols or bowie knives when they stepped onto the congressional floor. In fact, by the late 1850s, some constituents actually sent their congressmen guns. The fights that broke out among congressmen didn’t usually make it into newspapers (which themselves faced mob attacks for abolitionist sentiments); but there were some exceptions, especially in the decade before the Civil War. Brooks’ attack on Sumner, immortalized in a famous political cartoon, was one of those exceptions. Another was the only instance in which a congressman has ever killed another congressman.
That murder happened in 1838, when Congress was fiercely divided between the Whigs and the Democrats. At the time, many members considered an insult against a congressman to be an insult against his entire party. Challenging someone to a duel was therefore not just about a congressman’s own honor, it was also about defending the honor of his party. These were the circumstances under which representatives Jonathan Cilley and William Graves, who didn’t have any personal disagreement with each other, entered a duel that neither wanted.
It all started when Cilley, a Democrat from Maine, said something on the House floor that ticked off a prominent Whig newspaper editor. The editor asked Graves, a Whig from Kentucky, to hand-deliver a letter to Cilley asking if he wanted to take back what he’d said. But Cilley refused to accept the letter from the editor, who had a reputation for physically attacking congressmen, and Graves’ colleagues in the Whig party perceived this refusal as a slight. They advised Graves to challenge Cilley to a duel in order to maintain his political standing within his party. When Graves sent Cilley a letter challenging him to this duel, Cilley’s fellow Democrats told him he had to accept it for political reasons, too.
On February 24, 1838, the two representatives and several other men met for a duel with rifles in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Neither congressman was very good with a rifle, and both missed each other or misfired on the first two rounds. On the third round, Graves shot and killed his colleague, Cilley.
This culture of violence also extended to state legislatures. The year before Graves killed Cilley, a representative in the Arkansas House insulted the Speaker during debate, and the Speaker responded by murdering him with a bowie knife right there on the House floor. “Expelled and tried for murder,” Freeman writes, “he was acquitted for excusable homicide and reelected, only to pull his knife on another legislator during debate, though this time the sound of colleagues cocking pistols stopped him cold.”
William Graves and Jonathan Cilley
William Graves (left) of Kentucky, who shot and killed Jonathan Cilley (right) of Maine.
Library of Congress
Congress responded to Cilley’s murder with an anti-dueling law in 1839, but the violence in Congress continued as its members led the U.S. into the Mexican-American War and fought over whether slavery should exist in new western territories. Brooks’ brutal attack on Sumner in 1856 was prompted by Sumner’s “Crime Against Kansas” speech that decried the South’s “Slave oligarchy” and demanded the U.S. admit Kansas as a free state. Brooks chose to beat Sumner rather than risk breaking the anti-dueling law because, he argued, dueling “would subject me to legal penalties more severe than would be imposed for a simple assault and battery.”
In 1858, partisan tensions over slavery erupted into a “full-fledged sectional combat on the floor,” Freeman writes. This was one year after the U.S. Supreme Court enraged abolitionists by ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that black people couldn’t be citizens and the federal government couldn’t ban slavery in western territories. The brawl started around 2:00 a.m. during an overnight session when a southern representative grabbed a northern representative by the throat and said he would teach the “black republican puppy” a lesson. As the two white men struggled, their colleagues ran over and a fistfight broke out.
“The end result was a free fight in the open space in front of the Speaker’s platform featuring roughly thirty sweaty, disheveled, mostly middle-aged congressmen in a no-holds-barred brawl, North against South,” Freeman writes.
Acts of violence like this showed how intensely southern congressmen wanted to preserve the economic, political and social power that they and their constituents held through owning slaves. They also presaged the larger fight between North and South that broke out three years later, when southern states seceded and declared war on the Union. After all, civil wars don’t just come out of nowhere”
https://www.history.com/news/charles-sumner-caning-cilley-duel-congressional-violence
@ Sebastien Zorn:
A little too close to hom, Sebastian!
In the US today, House members are being shot at baseball games, a US Senator had several ribs broken, and the Senate majority leader was harangued in a restaurant where he was eating with his wife. “Dueling” still happens, but it is unprovoked and executed without respect to any rules — and in every case that I notice, the assailants are in cahoots with the Democrats.
@ Michael S:
https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1800-1850/A-fatal-duel-between-Members-in-1838/
I didn’t realize Wallace was a Moderator. I thought he was Biden’s “Second”.