Why was Antebellum Southern Slavery Immoral?

[hoosier88]

It should be noted slaves were purchased from BLACKS who'd captured them in the african bush....so the slave trade wasn't considered "racist" from it's origins. Southern plantation owners considered them little more than livestock to be worked. So it wasn't a lack of conscience on their part....most southerners had little reason to mistreat their slaves; they were too valuable.

(My bold)

Except that as the Black slave population outnumbered the masters, the fear of riot, rebellion, etc. led to forbidding teaching slaves literacy. & breaking up Black families, stripping new slaves of their language, culture, leadership. Branding, whipping ... yah, other than that, it was a lot like summer camp.

 

[JoeBlam]

It wasn't. That was the problem. Once the cotton gin became available, slavery became very efficient.

A slave will only work hard enough not to be beaten.

.

Just a thought here... How hard do you think a slave will work for his child not to be beaten?

Only a rented mule gets beaten. My great-great-grandfather owned a cotton plantation. After emancipation, his slaves stayed on for a wage and took the family name as their own. The only slaves who were mistreated were the ones fomenting trouble and trying to escape and the beating was usually done by the overseer, not the owner. They didn't have a good life by any means, but they weren't under the lash like northern history portrays. Those on plantations destroyed during the war were left destitute and lost. Lincoln might well have considered shipping them all back to the dark continent as a do-over. Think what a different country we'd be if he had.

 

[JoeBlam]

Except that as the Black slave population outnumbered the masters, the fear of riot, rebellion, etc. led to forbidding teaching slaves literacy. & breaking up Black families, stripping new slaves of their language, culture, leadership. Branding, whipping ... yah, other than that, it was a lot like summer camp.

Your smug moral-superiority is noted....did you know the Klan was very popular in Indiana....stick that up your hoosier and smoke it.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

It wasn't immoral at the time.

Of course it was. Just because it was legal didn't make it moral.

 

[Pogo]

Except that as the Black slave population outnumbered the masters, the fear of riot, rebellion, etc. led to forbidding teaching slaves literacy. & breaking up Black families, stripping new slaves of their language, culture, leadership. Branding, whipping ... yah, other than that, it was a lot like summer camp.

Your smug moral-superiority is noted....did you know the Klan was very popular in Indiana....stick that up your hoosier and smoke it.

Sooooooooo, let's see... the KKK made inroads in Indiana...
The poster is from Indiana....

Ergo the poster is with the KKK. Blam-Blam stone age logic.

I never knew that about Dan Quayle...

 

[JakeStarkey]

JoeBlam clearly needs to read up on slave plantation life and violence against slaves, particularly against slave women.

 

[Pogo]

A slave will only work hard enough not to be beaten.

.

Just a thought here... How hard do you think a slave will work for his child not to be beaten?

Only a rented mule gets beaten. My great-great-grandfather owned a cotton plantation. After emancipation, his slaves stayed on for a wage and took the family name as their own. The only slaves who were mistreated were the ones fomenting trouble and trying to escape and the beating was usually done by the overseer, not the owner. They didn't have a good life by any means, but they weren't under the lash like northern history portrays. Those on plantations destroyed during the war were left destitute and lost. Lincoln might well have considered shipping them all back to the dark continent as a do-over. Think what a different country we'd be if he had.

The "dark continent"? WTF is the "dark continent"?

Lincoln did consider that. He was a supporter of the ACS - the movement that created Liberia.

"Dark continent"? Don't they get sunlight?

 

[Crackerjaxon]

It is essentially wrong for one human being to own another.

 

[DGS49]

Even if you suppose, for the sake of argument, that a certain slave owner treated his slaves as well as - or better than - they could have lived on their own resources in the prevailing economy, slavery as practiced in the U.S. south was immoral.

This is not subject to change due to changing circumstances and economics; it is a constant.

"Slavery" in biblical times was usually not the same as the involuntary servitude of American slaves. They were slaves for a period of time, or until a debt was discharged, and not the property of their owners. Further, mistreating slaves was prohibited and could result in sanctions from the religious authorities.

Slavery, as an institution, was doing just fine in the 1860's, as evidenced by the market price of slaves, which was often equivalent to many years wages for a typical white farm worker or domestic. The idea that it was dying out is fatuous and not supported by the evidence.

The WBS was initiated on the basis that the confederate states did not have the power to secede from the Union, which was merely the opinion of Lincoln and others. There is nothing in the Constituiton preventing secession, and indeed, if the states came into the Union voluntarily, and if we believe what the Declaration of Independence says, they had every right to secede. The war was fought because, without an income tax, the Federal government was largely financed by excise taxes on cotton and other Southern exports. The Federal government would literally have gone bankrupt without the revenues generated by the Confederate states.

Note that Jefferson Davis lived for many years in the U.S. after the war and was never indicted for treason. The reason is because the Feds did NOT want to litigate the legitimacy of the WBS - they were not certain the USSC would agree with Lincoln.

If they had had a war to end slavery, nobody from the North would have attended; they simply would not have been able to raise an army. Most working-class northerners understood that an army of freed blacks coming up from the South after emancipation would ruin their economic prospects for generations.

And why didn't Lincoln free all the slaves? The slaves in the Border States were unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation (and WTF is a "proclamation"?).

Slavery is an ugly blot on the reputation of this fine country, that will never be erased.

I personally favor reparations. For the slave owners whose property was taken from them without due process of law.

Just kidding.

 

[Crackerjaxon]

I know why I believe it was, but I would like to compare notes.

Why was the slavery of the pre-Civil War Southern US immoral?

Depending on your own personal values, it may or may not be immoral. Yet, for the sake of discussion, it was immoral for reasons that no human being should be allowed by a state that claims to value liberty to own other human beings.

^^ Best answer. "Morality" is relative, unquantifiable and evolves through the ages, but the practice of slavery, whether before, after or during the civil war, is abjectly hypocritical in a nation that builds itself on the premise that "all men are created equal" and are endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery directly contradicted that as starkly as contradiction can be, so to the extent that hypocrisy is immoral, there you are.

By the way ----- how is this a "Current Event"??

The fact that people, particularly liberals who abuse the privilege, have an almost endless capacity for rationalization does not make morality relative.

 

[JoeBlam]

JoeBlam clearly needs to read up on slave plantation life and violence against slaves, particularly against slave women.

If you direct it at me, address it to me, sonny. You have no idea what you don't know about the subject. It's easy to demonize a way of life 150 years later...PBS continues bringing out new crapumentaries to infuriate blacks and heap a load of self-loathing on easily duped whites like yourself....keeping you and them under the yoke of "progressive" myths, locking in your vote to the most racist group of phonies in our nation's history....the modern democRAT party.

 

[Pogo]

Depending on your own personal values, it may or may not be immoral. Yet, for the sake of discussion, it was immoral for reasons that no human being should be allowed by a state that claims to value liberty to own other human beings.

^^ Best answer. "Morality" is relative, unquantifiable and evolves through the ages, but the practice of slavery, whether before, after or during the civil war, is abjectly hypocritical in a nation that builds itself on the premise that "all men are created equal" and are endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Slavery directly contradicted that as starkly as contradiction can be, so to the extent that hypocrisy is immoral, there you are.

By the way ----- how is this a "Current Event"??

The fact that people, particularly liberals who abuse the privilege, have an almost endless capacity for rationalization does not make morality relative.

You really really need to break down and buy a fucking dictionary. "Morality" is a qualitative term, which means it's subjective to the person and the time and place in which they live, which means it is not a fixed frozen value. It has nothing to do with the political.

When you've looked that stuff up, look up the word "idiot".

 

[JoeBlam]

The "dark continent"? WTF is the "dark continent"?

Lincoln did consider that. He was a supporter of the ACS - the movement that created Liberia.

"Dark continent"? Don't they get sunlight?

You ever read anything but a comic book?


Dark Continent
A former name for Africa, so used because its hinterland was largely unknown and therefore mysterious to Europeans until the 19th century. Henry M. Stanley was probably the first to use the term in his 1878 account Through the Dark Continent.

 

[MisterBeale]

I know why I believe it was, but I would like to compare notes.

Why was the slavery of the pre-Civil War Southern US immoral?

You know, the difference between the past, and today, is that in the past, the chattel at least were aware of their own bondage. At least their involuntary servitude to their masters was there, in front of their own eyes, and they knew they were not free. There is a certain morality in that, for a person to know what his destiny is in life, his station and what his choices, or lack thereof may be.

But when you take a man's mind away for the sake of economic efficiency, I think that is when the real evil in humanity is revealed. The civil war was not fought to bring freedom to the black American. It was fought to repudiate the encroaching international banking cartel which took advantage of the issue to separate and divide people to make a profit. They are still doing the same thing today. Take your pick. Cold War, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, War on Terror, ad infinitum forever and ever. . .

Black Americans might be free of their chains, but Lincoln was killed for attempting to free everyone of their bondage. Funny how close his political beliefs were to those of Ron Paul. I guess we know what would have happened to Mr. Paul had he ever been elected. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Kennedy were killed for doing the same thing Mr. Paul advocated. Freeing the slaves.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCl7Sxb4Ybw]Abraham Lincoln and the Greenback - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Pogo]

The "dark continent"? WTF is the "dark continent"?

Lincoln did consider that. He was a supporter of the ACS - the movement that created Liberia.

"Dark continent"? Don't they get sunlight?

You ever read anything but a comic book?


Dark Continent
A former name for Africa, so used because its hinterland was largely unknown and therefore mysterious to Europeans until the 19th century. Henry M. Stanley was probably the first to use the term in his 1878 account Through the Dark Continent.

Yeah- last commonly used in the 19th century... how exactly old are you?
Do you still call them "colored people" too?

Sheesh.

 

[JoeBlam]

"Mr. Kennedy" was killed because he sent Bobby after Sam Giancana after Sam had delivered the Illinois vote to him and because he left hundreds of Cuban liberators stranded on beaches to be butchered by Fidel and Che at the Bay of Pigs. And if "Mr. Kennedy" was interested in freeing the slaves, why did he have Martin Luther King wiretapped, suspecting him of being a communist?

 

[JoeBlam]

Yeah- last commonly used in the 19th century... how exactly old are you?
Do you still call them "colored people" too?

Sheesh.

 

[Pogo]

"Mr. Kennedy" was killed because he sent Bobby after Sam Giancana after Sam had delivered the Illinois vote to him and because he left hundreds of Cuban liberators stranded on beaches to be butchered by Fidel and Che at the Bay of Pigs. And if "Mr. Kennedy" was interested in freeing the slaves, why did he have Martin Luther King wiretapped, suspecting him of being a communist?

That was J. Edgar Suckermaster, dumbass.

 

[JoeBlam]

"Mr. Kennedy" was killed because he sent Bobby after Sam Giancana after Sam had delivered the Illinois vote to him and because he left hundreds of Cuban liberators stranded on beaches to be butchered by Fidel and Che at the Bay of Pigs. And if "Mr. Kennedy" was interested in freeing the slaves, why did he have Martin Luther King wiretapped, suspecting him of being a communist?

That was J. Edgar Suckermaster, dumbass.

AT the direction of the Attorney General aka RFK....dumbass.

 

[Pogo]

"Mr. Kennedy" was killed because he sent Bobby after Sam Giancana after Sam had delivered the Illinois vote to him and because he left hundreds of Cuban liberators stranded on beaches to be butchered by Fidel and Che at the Bay of Pigs. And if "Mr. Kennedy" was interested in freeing the slaves, why did he have Martin Luther King wiretapped, suspecting him of being a communist?

That was J. Edgar Suckermaster, dumbass.

AT the direction of the Attorney General aka RFK....dumbass.

So "Mr. Kennedy" refers to RFK? Bobby sent himself after Giancana?
Could he have refused his own order then? Or would he have asked himself for his own resignation?



As to the "why", there is a backstory, and it's got nothing in the world to do with "freeing slaves".