Clint Johnson on slavery, the Confederate Flag, Moon Pies, and Southern women.
"It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented."
– Mark Twain
To be sure, Southerners are special. They have that special somethin'. Give me Mark Twain over a thousand antiseptic Hollywood movies.
And, the Old North? The Washington Post Magazine's Henry Allen puts it this way: "New England likes to think it has a civilization based on character. The South likes to think it has a character based on civilization. A big difference."
In The Politically Incorrect Guide to The South (and Why It Will Rise Again) too, history buff Clint Johnson writes, "Even though liberals are moving to the South and turning some parts of it 'bluer,' overall it appears that the South is winning more converts to conservatism than liberals are winning over Southerners. That's just because in the South conservatism is not just a collection of opinions that can easily change. It's rooted in who we are, in faith and family and tradition." Indeed, even Florida's bluer folks are happy to vote out gay marriages – and Oklahoma is America's reddest state (McCain 66%).
Recently, Clint Johnson, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to The South (and Why It Will Rise Again) was happy to answer my nine questions. Here they are:
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1: There are some great quotes in your book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to The South (and Why It Will Rise Again). Where do you find these gems? I suspect they grow on trees in the South.
A. The quotes come from a variety of places. I bought two-three books with quotes about the South that came mostly from literary people or politicians.
2. Speaking of which, I love what William Ferris said: "The Moon Pie is a bedrock of the country store and rural tradition. It is more than a snack. It is a cultural tradition." Do you have a personal favorite?
A. The best quote about The South that I have encountered is actually not in the book (well, maybe it is). Anyway, it comes from James Webb's Born Fighting – A History of the Scots-Irish in America. He quoted his father as saying: "Up North, they didn't care how powerful blacks got as long as they didn't have to live next to them. Down South, we didn't care how close we lived to blacks, as long as they didn't get power."
That quote explains segregation, racial violence, and the Civil Rights movement. One thing Yankees still don't understand is that Southern blacks and whites have lived in close proximity to each other since the days when slave cabins were built on the front lawn of the owner's house so he could keep track of them. Segregation in the South came AFTER the war when Southerners were told that freeing the blacks was the cause of the war. White Southerners did not want to be reminded of that reason, so segregation started.
3. Confession: I respect the Confederate flag, but some people feel that because some racists flew the flag that it is the source of all "evil" messages. (And, oh yes, the United Kingdom's flag is spotless. No problems there.) As you say, the "rebel flag never flew over a slave ship" but why do you think people "forget" this truth?
A. Most people like to think "simple" – not "complicated." So, it is a lot easier to think of symbols so . . . the Confederacy flew the battle flag – The South still had slaves – ergo the Confederate flag must symbolize slavery.
What is interesting is the total denial that most Northerners have about their role in slavery. There would not be any slaves in the USA if Northern ship owners had not brought them to this country. The South had no tradition of ship building, but every little port in the North had a ship builder who made ships for whaling, trade, etc. New York City was the second largest slave port in the USA in the 18th century after Charleston, but few New Yorkers know that.
4. No one seriously believes slavery is good, and I admire America's abolitionists, but why do so many elites associate the South – and the South alone – with the slave trade?
Here's a quote from an Australian study guide: "From the 1500s to the 1800s [flag-loving] Europeans shipped about 10 million black slaves to the Western Hemisphere, the majority (about 65%) to West Indian colonies and South American countries, and some 5% to the United States and Canada."
A. The quote is probably accurate. About 500,000 slaves were off-loaded in the USA. Their number grew to 4 million in The South by the time of the war. Few, almost approaching none, of those 500,000 slaves got here by means of Southerners bringing them here. It was a Yankee slave trade.
In effect, the South got addicted to slaves because the Yankee (and early on European) slave traders made them so cheap, compared to indentured servants who paid their way from Europe. What Southern slave owners never figured up, however, was the long term cost of slavery (food, clothes, medicine, retirement of slaves who no longer could work, etc.).
I ran across an account of a slave owner who figured up his profits over 40 years and those profits were only 5 percent – hardly a good return on all of the problems associated with keeping slaves. The South would have been better off had it freed its slaves in the early 19th century and hired them back for wages.
5. I'm happy to tell snobs that your Southern Baptists belong to a "religion of peace" without sky terrorists and that your buttermilk biscuit-baking Southern Catholics don't have time for jihad. Why do you think it is important to use humor when sharing facts?
A. I am glad you see the tongue-in-cheek humor in some of the passages. The best humor always has a grain of truth to it so it is just one way to tell a story. Humor can be subtle or absurd – but still get the point across. I don't really try to think about humor, but sometimes it just pops up and works.
6. As an Australian, I'm scratching my head here. If your part of the world is so "mean" (according to Hollywood) then why are African Americans in the North and Hispanics from Mexico, choosing to move to the South?
A. Very astute to recognize that The South is the most popular region for blacks to move to after leaving the North. Hollywood still has the mindset of the 1920s-1960s when The South could be a dangerous place for blacks.
Hollywood needs villains to sell movies and it is a lot easier to show villains with that symbol of the Confederate flag, than it is to explain that the voters who put Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer (both from New York) are more responsible for slavery than I am. Hollywood and the northern elite need someone to look down on . . . We don't care what Yankees think of us, but New Yorkers are very sensitive to what people think of them.
7. On a lighter note, how can I sue the South for my addiction to Southern Comfort and Coca-Cola? Also, Tabasco sauce from Avery Island, Louisiana.
A. Order some Texas Pete hot sauce from Garner Foods in Winston-Salem, N.C. (about 90 miles from here). It is a hot sauce with a different flavor from Tabasco. They are both good, but give Texas Pete a try. I buy it by the gallon in plastic jugs. And, no, you can't sue us if you get addicted to boiled peanuts, grits, hot sauce, Moon Pies, pork barbecue, collard greens, and good moonshine.
8. As a male I wonder: Why are Southern women prettier than those Northern pie wagons? I'm sure you have a few theories.
A. On the question of women, we might have to give some slack. There really is no way for the pretty gene to make a distinction between North and South. However, Yankee women's accents can be grating on the ear and that never happens with Southern women – unless they are uneducated and say "you-uns." (That one word drives me nuts. It is the sign of a woman — or man – who did not get much education. I have heard some women with voices so grating that it will take the skin off your arm.)
9. Sir, thanks for your time. Just one final question: No disrespect, but is it true that every Southern dad owns at least two guns? (One for hunting. One to protect his daughter.)
A. No self-respecting Southerner owns only two guns. A Southerner who does not own any guns or only two is not self-respecting.
In fact, I can't think of anyone I know who does not own at least a half-dozen. (And I won't tell you how many I own. It is kind of like asking a Texas cattleman how many cows he has. He doesn't want to take the time to count them and then he has to wonder if you are counting calves as a full grown cow, etc.) We were talking about that very thing at a Civil War reenactment the other night and our sergeant major said he was cleaning his guns and he stopped counting after getting past 50.
You got your hunting shotguns, hunting rifles, concealed carry pistol, your hunting pistol, your hunting pistol you want if you encounter a bear, your home defense shotgun . . . etc. etc.
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* Side note: According to Wikipedia, "Oklahoma is sometimes considered Southern because the area of Oklahoma, then known as Indian Territory, was allied with the Confederacy." I consider it Southern.
Ben-Peter
You don’t mention cornbread and it’s Doctor Pepper not Coke.
This is the most ridiculous peice of revisionist garbage I’ve read since…well, since anything Ivan Eland ever wrote. Let me get this straight: Northern Republicans are responsible for slavery because the ships carrying slaves to America prior to Emancipation landed at Northern ports? That’s like saying Texas is responsible for the drug trade since most cocaine is smuggled across the Rio Grande!
The slave market existed in America for one reason only: because Southerers (not Northerners) A) wanted cheap labor; and B) saw nothing morally wrong about it. Thus the south created a market for slaves which otherwise did not exist on the continent: people in the north not only did not own slaves, but 99.9999% of them had nothing whatsoever to do with the slave trade. The only reason slaves were shipped to the south through northern ports is because your southern ancestors hadn’t any shipping industry of their own. This is one the reasons the south lost the war: theirs was a non-diversified slave-labor-based agricultural economy. The diverse northern economy, on the other hand had robust tade, shipping, and manufacturing sectors as well as agriculture.
I’d also like an explaination for why a person who lives in NY in the 21st century is more responsible for slavery than a man who just wrote a book defending it.
Thank you for your feedback Ivan. First, you are right to remind readers that cornbread is a great Southern food. There are hundreds of great Southern drinks and snacks one can write about, but I’ll hand that over to the food critics.
You are also right to remind readers that Dr. Pepper is Southern. No arguments there.
Still, the “first Coca-Cola recipe was invented in Columbus, Georgia at a drugstore by John Pemberton, originally as a cocawine called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca in 1885,” according to Wikipedia. Thus, we can thank the South for Dr. Pepper, Coca-Cola, and my dental bills. (I do believe Georgia is in the South.) Again, thanks for your feedback Ivan,and one day I will try and find the time to write about the joys of cornbread.
Yes, I know Coke was invented in Georgia. It’s just that by the time I was growing up it was common in the north, while Dr. Pepper was still popular in the south. But enough on that. While you are at it with cornbread you might mention Pecan Pie, Biscuts and Gravy, Red Eye gravy, Peach Cobbler, and Sugar or Salt cured ham.
You were right to ignore Jeff. As you say “it was complicated” Having seen the Scot/Irish name from my family on the back of a black NFL player I realized that my ansestors were part of the slave business. So what! That was more than a hundred years ago. Besides, that would as silly as worrying about how my grandfather was born 5 months after his mother was married and then she married again a year later. It was a different world then.
My criticism was not aimed at the article’s author, but at the subject of the interview. As the proud owner of several “Politically Incorrect Guide’s” I think it is important that that franchise understand that being politically incorrect is not synonymous with being factually incorrect and philosophically abhorent.
For Mr. Johnson to place the blame for the slave trade on the North – the very people who lost several hundred thousand men in the war to end slavery – for the grotesque institution, while giving the South – those who lost several hundred thousand men defending it – a free pass is not very complicated at all. It is asinine.
And ignoring my important point, while engaging in a spirited debate about soft drinks is not judicious, it’s cowardly.
Abhorent (sic), asinine, cowardly?
Take a pill and clam down. Coke and Moon Pies are more important than the drivel you spew.
As usual Ivan, you said nothing intelligent, thoughtful, or relevant. But then again I shouldn’t expect any more from the offspring of slaver holders.
Jeff,
I think you may possibly have treated this article with more seriousness than was intended. Judging you by your own criteria, everything you’ve posted has been reactionary, angry, perhaps superficially thoughtful, but not particularly relevant to the article. With all due respect, you oughtta have a nice slave-state-produced Coke and smile. When you’re finished, put your humor cap on and read the article over again.
To address your points though, the African slave trade, like all the slave trades for the previous 5,000 years before it, existed because of global demand and because European, Arab, and African slave traders (yes, Virginia, Africans routinely sold each other into slavery once upon a time on the dark continent) created supply. When there’s demand and supply, a market will naturally arise. It wasn’t just the evil American South that profited from the slave trade. Additionally, to say that the Civil War was fought entirely for the eradication or preservation of slavery is a gross oversimplification. An interesting discussion could be had on the topic if an article were posted that was intended to address slavery, the Civil War, or Civil War era politics. This just doesn’t happen to be one.
Very interesting observations, Patrick. Especially the one about this article not being about slavery or the civil war considering the articles subtitle: “Clint Johnson on slavery, the Confederate flag…”
About a third of the interview dealt with Johnson’s contention that “their would not be any slaves in the USA if Northern ship owners had not brought them into this country” and “The South got so addicted to slaves because the Yankee ship owners made them so cheap” and that voters who put Hillary and Schumer (meaning New Yorkers) into office are more responsible for slavery than” he is. But this article had nothing to do with slavery? Right.
The rest of what you wrote in your post (#8) about slavery is entirely true and beyond dipute, but irrelevant to Johnson’s ridiculous contention that Northerners were more responsible for slavery than Southerners. As a New Yorker (or as Johnson calls me, a Yankee) and a Republican (not to mention the husband, son, father, and brother of “Northern pie wagons” I take exception to this revisionist crap.
And it’s completely gutless of BPT to respond to a comment about carbonated beverages, then ignore one about the main thrust of the article: slavery.
I’ve gotta agree with Jeff, Patrick.
The Politically Correct Guide to the South engages in such revisionism, it makes Dred Scott spin in his grave:
1/3 of the book is boring and irrelevant. 1/3 blames everyone but slave owners for slavery. And 1/3 blames the North for the civil war, even though the author admits the South started it by shooting first.
Jeff,
“About a third of the interview” is a meager three questions, asked lightheartedly by an author who identifies himself as a satirist. Perhaps my phrasing was off. I didn’t mean to say that the article “was not about slavery” in the sense that it made no mention of slavery, but rather that the intention of the article was not to engage in a serious discussion or debate about slavery or the Civil War. Hence the references throughout the article and comments to soft drinks and moon pies, and the failure of the author to address your criticism. Given the context, I’m surprised you would treat the article with such seriousness. Think of this more like an interview administered by Jay Leno rather than William F. Buckley. The author isn’t taking you seriously because you’re taking this too seriously.
WB,
I haven’t read the book, so I couldn’t speak to the veracity of anything in it, nor was that my intention. I was just making the point I’ve tried to clarify above, that a serious critique of the historical accuracy of the book or point-by-point argument about the interview responses is a bit overreaching given the nature of the source.
Jeff, &c,
I have not yet read this particular book, but I can guess the misinterpretation of what was said. From this article alone, I can see neither Terpstra nor Johnson are claiming southern whites were guiltless, what they said is the guilt is not the South’s alone; and northerners need to take ownership of their fair share. They also said it is a guilt belonging to another generation (i.e., don’t visit the sins of the father on the sons). As a Marylander, I have been both subjected to this cultural snobbery coming from those further north and hear it from locals denigrating those still further south. As someone with roots in both the North and South, I have to say you are wrong in absolving 99.9999% of Northerners (clearly a fictitious number). Worse, I was born and raised in Washington, D.C.; which has a chameleon like character depending who is in power; where you are apt to find the cultural bias shifted northward overnight. Most contemporary white-northerner’s ancestors, indeed, landed here only after slavery was abolished (though I would dispute the 99.9999% figure). However, the same can be said of many contemporary southerners (and, with so many northerners now migrating south, any distinction by proportion will soon be negligible).
Johnson is absolutely correct northerners fully participated in both the slave trade and in slavery itself. In fact, until shortly before the American Revolution, there was little to distinguish between the practice of slavery north and south. Both northerners and southerners owned slaves, and any distinctions we make have more to do with numbers than substance. In the 1740s, the use of slaves in the north began to decline while southern slavery continued to grow slowly. It was only after cotton became a major commodity that slavery became non-negotiable to southern planters, a commerce most southerners had no direct share but which, nonetheless, became the lifeblood of the South (I would dispute Clinton’s contention slavery only figures in 5% of southern profits, at least for the period 1830-1860; Robert Ransom gives excellent reasons for thinking slavery profitable, at least for some, in his counter-factual history “The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been” ). In the early colonial period, when the number of blacks was low, there was a tendency to free both slaves and bondsmen after a period of service. A number of slave revolts in the Caribbean and seaboard colonies resulted in the brutish treatment and denial of protections commonly associated with slavery in the latter colonial period and early republic. Most of these were in the south, but two occurred in New York. Numerous slave revolts in Mexico, Haiti, Columbia-Panama, Jamaica, Suriname, Guyana, Cuba, Curaçao, Brazil, Venezuela, Barbados, and Virgin Islands in this same period testify this level of oppression of black-Africans was not confined to the South and to whites. Even Canada had its small share of slaves until outlawed in 1803. In the colonial era and early republic, a few freed blacks owned slaves of their own (north and south), as did Indians (both Europeanized and savage). When the Cherokee (a tribe almost completely converted to European ways and customs) were force-marched to Oklahoma, they were allowed to take black slaves with them. In Louisiana, it was common for slaves to own slaves. Despite the favorable historical treatment given Brazil (i.e., that Brazil’s enslavement lacks our racist component; which is false), there are people in Brazil today still treated as slaves. In north-central Africa, raids continue in which indigenous people are abducted and sold as slaves; and in Saudi Arabia you can still find people born to slavery. The reduction in slavery worldwide is a direct consequence of our political revolution and the post-Enlightenment anti-slavery movement culminating in a clash of cultures; each, in its own way, espousing freedom.
There were voices against slavery in the south just as there were in the north, even if there are fewer recorded in your history books. A significant number of southerners fought on the union side in the war, not least because they opposed slavery un-persuaded by Confederate protestations of ‘States’ Rights’. [States’ Rights was (and remains) an important and valid issue, unfortunately rendered moot by the Civil War and subsequent federal expansion.] Likewise, many northerners and westerners fighting to save the Union had slaves they had no intention of freeing as part of the deal. So, at least some southerners gave their lives in freeing black-Americans. Looked at another way, both those who died fighting to end slavery and those dying to preserve it (and/or the union) sacrificed lives deciding the question of slavery. Lincoln venerates both, as should we. Theirs was the first generation in human history to even consider, comprehensively, whether slavery is or is not a tolerable institution. Many southerners were forced by that war into facing the enormity of shared guilt; and, so, it can be said the South, long ago, came to terms with it in ways the North has yet to confront. If we condemn those who upheld it, we must also condemn all humankind of every race who, at one time or another, indulged in the practice (there are no shades of guilt). If we absolve all those in the north who stood silent in the face of slavery, then, certainly, we must absolve all southerners now living who had no part in it whatsoever and never gave it the least support; and stop this mindless bashing of all things Southern.
You would be correct to say most white-northerners had no part in slavery. However, the distinction you fail to make is which white northerners; those of today, of 1860, or 1790? In 1787 (the year of ratification), slavery and the slave-trade were still practiced in New York, Albany, Boston, Providence, Trenton, Philadelphia, York PA, and Pittsburg. Most northerners had no direct participation in this trade, yet the profits of the trade surely filtered down to them in the form of provisioning slave ships and slavers (just as they profited from the whaling trade). They also profited from a division of labor in which they were freed from drudge labor to pursue crafts and start industries. In 1835, prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was attacked by an anti-abolition mob in Boston. In the aftermath of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Garrison hailed Brown as a martyr; to which a number of other New York publications took exception condemning Garrison as an insurrectionist. If mob incitement and condemnation of abolition are any measure, then there was certainly strong support of slavery north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Northerners of today are self-congratulatory they had no part in slavery. Well, neither have we contemporary Southerners.
Bob,
In defending something, it is advisible that you have read it, as otherwize you have no clue what you are talking about.
The worst quote of his in the PIG is that the south truly cared about slaves, which is why they were against the 3/5ths law, while the North didn’t like black people and were happy to say they were only 60% of a real person.
That’s a pretty gross distortion of the record of what the 3/5ths law was and why the South was against it.
WolvenBear,
Agreed, which is why I limited my comments to remarks made in the article. Yet, I think it also fair to comment on the basis of background knowledge I have of the subject generally. Using your example, it is true I don’t know Mr. Johnson’s opinion of slave mistreatment from Terpstra’s article, but I know enough of the opinion held by many southerners (and a few northerners) fantasizing this mistreatment is overstated and using it as a defense of ancestry. I make no bones slavery was wrong and no excuse for it. Somehow, I doubt Johnson does either. What I am saying, and what both Johnson and Terpstra have said, is the stain of slavery is not something Southerners should be singled out and punished long after the actual miscreants are dead. Northerners got a head start freeing their slaves, which is commendable – but only for those generations that did the freeing. Neither the generations preceding them nor following get any share in that credit, and ought not use it as a cudgel with which to everlastingly punish southerners for something our great-great-grandparents did and your great-great-great-great-grandparents probably did too, and for which we are no more blameworthy than you.
You and Ivan both conclude Johnson is defending slavery. Not having read the book, I don’t know if he does or doesn’t, but would be very surprised if he did; and, if he did, probably would not commit such an opinion to book form. The fact a great many southerners resort to this ‘benign oppression’ argument is in seriously bad taste, but is not usually an attempt to actually defend slavery. Rather, it is a weak attempt at deflecting anti-southern bias. It isn’t they are wrong, it is just they’re grasping the wrong argument with which to blunt that bias.
As for the ‘southerners cared for their slaves’ nonsense, there is an element of truth in it, but only just. Pre-civil war slave-owners pretty much ran the gamut from brutal to genteel in their treatment of slaves. [In his “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Samuel Clemmons gives a scathing account of southern attitudes of the period. He contrasts the relatively benign (despite she has Jim locked up) treatment of the Widow Douglas and that of the scheming Duke and King to that of the men hunting Jim on the river and likely to beat or hang him if caught. He also gives you a fair dose of the inverted logic of slavery in the form of Huck’s soul-searching.]
Bottom line, though, is: slaves are always treated as property rather than human beings. You may treat your dog kindly, but that does not necessarily mean you treat him appropriately or fairly. How much worse, then, when you treat your human chattel with no more regard than you might your dog, keep him/her on a still tighter leash, sell their children, and deny them dignity. We have far too much evidence of brutality for the ‘benign oppression’ argument to hold. But, even if every southern master were that gentle in his treatment of every slave, still, how does that justify the enslavement of one human being by another? It doesn’t. Because it did not and because southerners knew it did not, they had to torture logic to defend a practice they knew to be wrong. The slave had to be de-humanized, denied a soul worthy of redemption, sold and resold at any instance of rebellion or impudence, hunted and shackled, kept at a distance even when petted or humored, berated as brainless and sinful, and relegated to the status of property as ultimate negation of his humanity.
Jews, more than two-thousand years ago, developed one of the few legal codes guaranteeing rights to slaves. It was an attempt at humanizing slavery to salve conscience. Their code was drawn from scripture making every master morally and legally accountable for mistreatment. The code and Jewish respect for it arose out of the annualized recital (Passover) of our own mistreatment as slaves and miraculous release. This, arguably, was the best treatment received by slaves in any culture or time. Jews could not arbitrarily lynch slaves the way Americans masters did. The Jew had to have ‘just cause’ for disciplining a slave, with slaves sometimes bringing charges against harsh masters. The slaves of ancient Jews had property rights and could make pleas against a thieving master. Theoretically, they could not be forced into having sex (though that did happen far too often). In many ways, the relation was more like that of master and bondsman, but without a time limit. Even so, this codified ‘fairness’ is not something we are proud of because it did not go far enough. At least we can claim it a huge step forward, though.
I did not defend slavery, as you suggest. I tried to restate Terpstra’s comment less ambiguously and less confusingly. What I defend is Johnson’s contention the guilt is not ours (southerners of this generation) to bear; or, if it is, then it is yours too and that of every other human on the planet because we all have ancestors who participated in enslavement. Slavery has been practiced since prehistoric times, making it impossible to know how long it has been going on. Yet, I, personally, have never owned a slave and never materially or philosophically supported slavery; and I am in no way unusual in this. If, then, my guilt is no less than yours, it is also no more.
Bob writes
“You and Ivan both conclude Johnson is defending slavery.”
Where did I do that? It seems to me that my only mistake was to mention Dr. Pepper without addressing slavery.
Bob,
I never suggested you defended slavery.
I suggested you defended a book, and a concept, of which you had no clue what the hell you were talking about.
The appropriate response is “OH, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was defending.” Instead of this long, assinine defense of something you STILL don’t know what you’re talking about.
Read the book or shut up.
WolvenBear
Please retract those last two words. I defend everyone’s right to write what they like. This blog is the best place to have discussions of this sort and if Bob gets a little verbose then let it be.
Ivan,
No. It’s downright stupid to defend a book, a movie, an argument, etc., that one hasn’t read, seen, etc. It’s even more ridiculous to get huffy when someone tells you you have no clue what you’re talking about and go into tantrums about where slaves were owned.
I don’t know how to put it more clearly. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And when confronted with that, he claims he’s being attacked.
Clint Johnson writes:
I’ve been reading some complaints about my book The Politically Incorrect Guide To The South and noticed some basic, factual errors in the complaints. Seems like not everyone has really read my book or the 80 some odd books that I used as sources. What seems to be Ivan’s problem is that he is under the impression that The North is and was The Great Emancipator Of All Creatures Great and Small, and The South is and was The Great Evil of All Creatures Great and Small:
It was Massachusetts that was the first colony to legalize slavery in order to get rid of an Indian tribe that the ancestors of the voters of Ted Kennedy wanted out of the way. They sold the Indians in the Caribbean, bought black slaves and then sold them in Massachusetts. Harvard and Yale still have buildings that were named after slave owners and importers.
Tiny Rhode Island imported more than one third of all slaves into the NATION. Their largest slave importer was so successful and grew so wealthy that he created a college and named it after his family – Brown University. Yes, it is true. The most liberal university in the USA is built on the backs of slaves.
New York City was the second largest port for slaves after Charleston, S.C. There were two major slave revolts in New York City decades before there was one in The South. There was a huge market for slaves in New York. The largest American graveyard for slaves is in Manhattan – more than 25,000 worked-to-death young slaves who were dumped into pits in the 18th century. Note that they were young WORKED TO DEATH slaves (as proven by historically black college Howard University). The South never worked its slaves to death. The South saw slaves as a work force. The North saw slaves as a disposable commodity.
The reason a 21st Century New Yorker is more responsible for slavery than I, a 21st century Southerner, is because it was New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania ship captains who brought virtually all of the slaves to this country. The South had no way of importing slaves at all. If modern day Northerners want to blame modern day Southerners for the ills of racism, then they have to at least admit that they were as much to blame as Southerners.
And, I do not defend slavery in my book; I condemn it (Ivan, did you read the book? I think not.) I make plain and clear that the worst thing The South ever did in his history was allowing The North to addict it to slavery and then not starting an emancipation process immediately after the slave trade was made illegal. The South should have switched to work for wages as did the North. With that in place, The South could have thrown out into the street anyone who was injured on the job – as they did in The North – instead of taking care of their workers into their old age as The South’s laws required of slave owners when slaves became too old to work.
As to the North losing several hundred thousands of its people freeing the slaves, Ivan, you should know that more than half of the Union army was made up of immigrants who were forced to fight in order to get citizenship. 97 percent of the Southern army was native to the South. The entire 11th Corps of the Union army was made up of German immigrants who needed bilingual officers just to give orders.
Question that has always bothered me: Why didn’t the Northern army take the freed 4 million slaves back with it when they freed them? Why not take those 4 million Freedman back to the North where there were millions of jobs – instead of leaving them in a devastated South where the economy, the buildings, the land, the ports, the crops, the livestock were all destroyed?
Well, actually, the question never has bothered me, but it bothers the Hell out of anyone who tries to maintain that The North fought the war to free slaves. If the war was for humanitarian purposes, then they would have taken those freed slaves back North with them. The reason they didn’t take the slaves back North was because the poor whites they were employing in their factories would have been out of jobs.
The fact of the matter is this: Southerners created the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Northerners thought up the idea of secession and tried it three times before the South actually did it. Southerners fought a noble and honorable war even though The North refused to do so and destroyed the land on which they fought.
BPT
I’m terribly confused. Comment #19 from you starts with Clint Johnson writes: and then goes on to mention “Ivan” twice. Are we to assume that he has written to you and you are forwarding this to the comments? If so, is he referring to me (Ivan Ivanovich)? I never said any of those things. I know it’s hard to follow the thread here, but I would like to protect my good name, even if it is a nom de plume. It’s bad enough to be blamed for things I say:>)
Ivan,
I’m pretty sure the author was responding to my comments, but just got a little confused with the names (kinda like he did with the facts).
BPT,
You continue your full-throated defense of those who defended slavery while blaming those who opposed it. I repeat: The only reason slaves were shipped to the New World by the mid-nineteenth century was because there was a Southern market for them; and the only reason they came here via ports in the North is because the Southern economy was based almost entirely on slave-labor agriculture: they made so much money off it they saw no need to build their own modern port facilities in the South.
Blaming the North for slavery is nothing short of a psycholoigical salve for a Southerner who is ashamed of his regions past, yet can’t admit his ancestors’ guilt. Nice try but as a Northern Republican, I aint going to let you get away with it. I do not blame modern-day Southerners for slavery as you suggest – I blame pre-Civil War Southerners – I am simply responding to your absurd placing of the balme on the North.
Northerners didn’t “take the slaves back north with them” for a very simple reason: after the war the former slaves were free men, and as such were left alone. It would have been just as incompatible with the doctrine of God-given individual rights to forcibly round up millions of human beings and march them from their ancestral homes in the South as it was for the African slavers who rounded them up and sold them to Westerners in the first place. The fact that you don’t see that is troubling evidence of your own biases.
I’d still like to know how Lincoln’s descendants are more responsible for slavery than those of Jefferson Davis. By the way, my ancestors emigrated to America in the latter half of the 19th century, so my family is off the hook. How about yours?
Johnson adds:
Okay, Jeff, it is, rather than Ivan. I guess we will continue to talk in circles here, so here we go again:
Jeff, the reason the North didn’t take the slaves back north with them IS NOT because the blacks were now free men and the North wanted to honor free men; it was because the North didn’t want these 4 million suddenly freed slaves up there competing for the same jobs they were trying to get when they returned from the war! It is that simple. The Northern army had just literally destroyed The South and it literally left 4 million freed blacks right there in the same situation with all of the defeated white Southerners – no food, no crops, no jobs, no cities, no hope. That was shameful – not honorable.
How can you just “blip” right over the fact that New York City was the second largest slave importing port for slaves in the USA in the late 18th century? What…do you think the slaves were given subway tokens and told when to get off at the first Southern station and that is how Northern-imported slaves found their way South? Northerners used slaves for decades. That is the whole point of what is wrong with the “blame the South” reasoning for slavery/race relations/racism etc. It was the fault of white Northerners and Southerners that slavery existed anywhere in the nation. That is all I have ever maintained. Everyone has to share the blame for slavery – not just The South.
Elements of my family first arrived in America in 1722. They wanted to be here early to wave at Jeff’s folks.
In the interest of clarity, it should be noted that B.P.T (Ben Peter Terpstra), the interviewer in the original article, is posting comments on behalf of Clint Johnson, the interviewee, and author of the book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South”.
Ivan Ivanovich was the poster who was making light about Dr. Pepper and moon pies until the discussion took a more serious tone with the introduction of the debate on who in America was/is/or may in the future be responsible for the institution of slavery.
Jeff Osonitsch was the poster who originally started the discussion portion of this article onto the topic of slavery, accusing Clint Johnson, the interviewee and author of the book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South”, of historical revisionism and other falsehoods.
I was the poster who tried to bridge the gap between Ivan Ivanovich and Jeff Osonitsch by pointing out that Mr. Osonitsch was probably treating the original article with more seriousness than was intended.
Bob Stapler was the poster who freely admitted that he had not read the book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South”, but nevertheless wished to address certain arguments and assumptions made by Jeff Osonitsch in his refutation of Clint Johnson, the interviewee and author of the book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South”.
WolvenBear appears to be the only poster who has read “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South”. He did not enjoy the book. He feels that anyone who has not read the book is not qualified to make comment in this very serious discussion. Unless they are in agreement with his assessment of the author.
This will make it easier from this poitn forward to figure out who should be called a racist, and who should be called an ignorant historical revisionist.
Pat, Thanks for the very concise synopsis. I was getting a little confused.
Mr. Johnson,
I do not doubt that there were some in the North who held slaves prior to the Civil War era or that New Yorks shipping industry participated in the flow of what was at the time, a “legal product” (that is human slaves). My problem is not with your mentioning these things to set straight the historical record but with your assigning to these things much greater weight than they deserve.
The fact is Northern Republican Abolitionists fought against slavery for decades from the pulpit, in the editorial pages, in the streets, and ultimately in Congress before the South seceded and attacked Fort Sumpter. The North subsequently coalesced around the idea of emancipation and fought for it (and to save the Union), while the South rejected emancipation and fought against it.
To your point about Southern blacks, I’ll respond that I reject your premise that the North had some moral obligation to round up all freedmen, ship them North, and set them up in homesteads with cushy jobs. This is not how war works. Did the Coalition round up all the persecuted Shiite’s in Iraq after toppling Hussein and ship them to Jersey?
And one of the reasons the Reconstruction period was so brutal was the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. The President had every intention of extending his hand to the South in reconciliation after the war. After he was murdered by Confederate dead-enders (and in the wake of hundreds of thousands dead in the war), the political climate changed and Northerners took a less charitable view of their Southern cousins. This is an historical shame (albeit an understandable one) not the fact that the North failed to round up blacks and ship them north.
I highly doubt that the hand gesture my German and Austrian ancestors received from yours at Ellis Island was a wave. (Just a little Yankee humor, there.)
Clint Johnson writes:
Jeff, not sure what a “Confederate dead-ender” is, but there is no evidence that Lincoln was killed by any Confederate. If Lincoln’s death would have been ordered by any Confederate official, I am pretty sure the Confederate government would have found a better crew to do it than a drunk actor, a drunk wagon maker, a half-wit druggist, and a guy who shows up in the middle of the night at a house surrounded by D.C. detectives offering to dig a ditch for them. Davis was accused of Lincoln’s murder (mentioned 72 times in the opening statement of the Lincoln assassins’ trial), but all of those charges were dropped when the government realized that their “star witnesses” were caught in a web of lies.
I totally agree that Lincoln’s death was a huge blow to the South. He did want to bring the South back into the nation without any punishment. What a great gesture and healing gesture that would have been, but that gesture flew in the face of what the Radical Republicans (Hmmmm…all of these seem to be from the North….hmmmm) wanted – which was punishment, confiscation of Southern property, total control of government, etc. Well, now, wait a minute……that makes it sound like the Radical Republicans (let me check….yup….still Northerners) realized that Lincoln would make a better dead martyr than a live president. Huh. Imagine that…..Northern men benefited more from Lincoln’s death than any Southerner did. Well, certainly, Southerners would have killed him had they had the chance, you say. Well, let’s see……Huh. President Lincoln walked the streets of Richmond less than 12 hours after the Confederate cabinet had vacated it escorted by just 20 lightly armed sailors and he wasn’t killed. Yet…yet…less than two weeks later, he was killed in downtown Washington surrounded by tens of thousands of Union garrison troops….huh. Imagine that.
Actually, Jeff, my ancestors would have waved vigorously at your ancestors. Southerners have always welcomed the Irish, the Jews, the blacks, the Scots-Irish, the Texicans, the Mexicans….The mayor of Richmond was an Irishman when signs in New York said “No Irish need apply.” The first Jew to hold a cabinet office was a Confederate. The first two Jews to be elected to the U.S. Senate were from Florida and Louisiana. The first Jew to be named quartermaster general of the army was a Southerner who was married to a Catholic. The first integrated army in the USA was the Confederate. The first black governor was Doug Wilder of Virginia.
Jeff, all this exercise is about – all the Politically Incorrect Guide To The South – is all about is trying to point out that history is complicated, not simple. The North is not all good and the South all bad. Neither is The South all good and the North All bad. Too many people want there to be just good guys and bad guys to make it easier to sort out. You can’t do that in American history. You have to accept history as history.
Clint,
I guess the term “Confederate dead-ender” isn’t a technical one, but I thought its meaning was more or less self-evident. It is a person sympathetic with the Southern cause who could not accept defeat honorably. The opposite of a “dead-ender” would be Robert E. Lee, a gentleman who recognized a lost cause and surrendered with dignity, saving many lives in the process.
I’m not usually the kind of person who deals in conspiracy theories but, since you’ve insinuated that the North assassinated its own president without a shred of evidence, I’ll play along for a moment: It is common knowledge that the assassin, John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate sympathizer. What is less commonly known is that in late 1864 and early 1865 he travelled to Montreal Canada and was in contact there with agents of the Confederate Secret Service. Hmmm.
I agree with you that history is more complex than most allow, however I think you go to far in the other direction. Certain truths are undeniable no matter how much you twist or inflate minor points. The simple truth here is that the North was not responsible for the Souths dependance on slavery or the war they waged to defend it.
Patrick,
That is an extremely cartoonish summary of what I said.
It find it boring that anyone objects to the idea that you should actually read the book before they comment on it. And I find it assinine that anyone actually has the audacity to defend commenting on a book they haven’t read.
I don’t object to dissent. I object to people who are dissenting just to sound smart when they haven’t read the damned book. If you have read it and wish to discuss it, sweet, we’ll do that. If you wish to make broad sweeping generalizations about what I’m objecting to, without any knowledge to back it up (a la Bob), then I’ll dismiss you too.
Hell, the dude could defend the KKK in there and you wouldn’t know…yet you defend the book anyway. Ridiculous.
BPT,
That’s very true. The history of the civil war and the slave trade is complicated and messy. Any honest person would admit that no one had clean hands. The PIG to American History did it quite nicely, without trying to white wash the South. The PIG to the South often comes across as apologetics, claiming that the Southern opposition to the 3/5th rule was out of benevolence, and the North wanted it because they believed blacks were only 60% of a person. This is beyond ridiculous, and it’s one of the reasons both Jeff and I have called it rivisionist history.
WB,
The summary was in keeping with the rather cartoonish discussion taking place. Bear in mind that we have two people here debating, in perfect seriousness, whether the Lincoln assassination was a conspiracy hatched by Jefferson Davis and the Confederate secret service…
I would point out again though that Bob freely admitted beforehand that he had not read the book, but rather took issue with some of the details and characterizations attached to the Civil War era South in Jeff’s comments. Or, to put it in different terms, you are arguing about the content of the book, whereas Bob was arguing about the content of a post in this discussion thread. I’d also note that you haven’t been in a hot hurry to dismiss Jeff Ostonitsch’s comments out of hand despite the fact that he apparently has not read the book either.
Johnson writes:
Jeff, did you ever consider that when John Wilkes Booth ended his life with the sentence: “I did it for my country” or something like that, he meant the United States of America? That sentence could work just as well as it does with “Confederate States of America” – which most people associate with Booth. The “evidence” that Booth had any contact with Confederate agents in Canada is slim and possibly manufactured – as was the evidence was that Davis approved of Lincoln’s assassination, which is why Davis was not brought up for trial (read my book on this subject Pursuit: The Chase, Capture, Persecution and Surprising Release of Confederate President Jefferson Davis). The Confederate Secret Service employed plenty of agents, but it seems unlikely that they would pick a drunken actor – however well known he was – to be its assassin.
However, there is ample evidence that Lincoln personally approved of the assassination attempt on Jefferson Davis in 1864 when Ulrich Dahlgren, a personal friend of Lincoln, was killed outside of Richmond with orders that specifically addressed his attempt to get into Richmond and kill the Confederate cabinet. Lincoln knew Dahlgren but Davis did not know Booth.
Jeff – We have exhausted the question about the causes of the war. Here is a modern day question. Supposed President Obama and Secretary of the Environment Al Gore come to you and say: “Jeff that $30,000 auto you are driving is killing the world. We will give you $10,000 for it. Take it and you can go. If you refuse, we will come to your home, take your car, and burn down your home. What is your answer? We need it right now. Soldiers are waiting.”
What would be your answer?
Clint,
Your hypothetical question is a non-sequitur on multiple levels. First, you cannot substitute a non-fuel-efficient automobile for the life and liberty of a human being. The human person has a God-given intrinsic value that does not transfer to a Buick. Second, the South was given no such ultimatum: Sherman’s use of brutal “total war” tactics to bring a swift end to a seemingly endless war was not threatened or even contemplated during the run-up to the war. And Third, the South fired the first shot in that war when they assaulted Fort Sumpter. Your question collapses under its own weight.
I don’t think a possible Lincoln plot to kill Davis during the war (whether true or not) is relevant to this particular discussion (about the Lincoln killing after the war) because I did not bring up the Lincoln assassination to judge its morality. I mentioned it for the sole purpose of explaining why the post-war period was so brutal for Southerners after you suggested that the presence of 4 million freed slaves were responsible for post-war suffering.
Patrick,
I was not seriously suggesting the Confederate government engineered the Lincoln assassination. I was responding to Clint’s insinuation that his death was a Northern plot by showing that unsupported conspiracy theories can cut both ways.
Clint Johnson writes:
Well, Jeff, I’ve grown tired of your attempts at being superior to me and Southerners while not being able to support your arguments so this is my last posting. I have work to do researching and writing history that cannot be refuted no matter how much people like you try. We Southerners have grown used to people like you calling us racists, bumpkins, revisionists, rednecks and all of the other names you throw out when you lose on your arguments because most of us live by the old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.” Jeff, do me a favor, when you visit New York City, go visit the African Burial Ground where 25,000 worked to death slaves are buried. When I go, I always leave a red rose in their memory. How about you leaving a yellow rose. That way, I will know you visited.
Thanks, Ben, for the opportunity to answer some critics. Oh….and Jeff?….You said that Sherman style total war was not even contemplated early in the war? Well, old Northern buddy of mine….read a little history about little, ole’ defenseless Winton, North Carolina. You could read about it in my Touring The Carolinas’ Civil War Sites, but you wouldn’t believe me, so here is a little history from another source I found on the Internet.
During the Civil war Winton suffered its greatest tragedy. On February 20, 1862 the town was invaded by Union troops and burned to the ground. This was the first burning of a town anywhere during the Civil War occurring nearly two years before Sherman’s march through the South. The Federals approached Winton in three gunboats which had come up the Chowan River. They first bombarded the town. Finding it poorly defended they poured ashore plundering and setting fire to the courthouse and to all of the county’s colonial records and then to every remaining structure in town except a church and one or two houses identified as belonging to northern sympathizers. The town was virtually completely destroyed. The savagery and brutality of the uncalled-for sacking and burning of Winton evoked protests in the north even in New York City from which the Federal troops came. The result for the invading regiment was denial of medals it had received for earlier action and disgrace for its leader.
Okay, this is Clint talking again. The commander of the unit that burned Winton was a brutal colonel named Rush. C. Hawkins, who had the unfortunate habit of killing black slaves he used as guides when he came under the impression that they were trying to misdirect him. He lived to be an old man who was run down by a car while crossing Broadway in New York City.
Clint Johnson writes:
Well, actually, Jeff, maybe this will be my last post as I realized you had misunderstood the question.
My question, Jeff, about if you would give up your $30,000 car in exchange for $10,000 from the federal government really had nothing to do with the firing on Fort Sumter or starting the war. It pertained to the federal government’s pre-war offer to pay each slave holder $300 for every $1,000 slave the South held.
So, forgetting that there ever was a war, would you sell your $30,000 car to the federal government for $10,000? Forget that I said soldiers, even. If confronted by the federal government that your $30,000 car was an environmental hazard, would you sell it to them for $10,000?
I thought the war started in April, 1861. I don’t know how February, 1862 qualifies as “the run-up to the war”.
Incidentally, since you continue to condemn Northern brutality while being blind to Southern excesses, I’ll remind you that 13,000 Union men died in Andersonville prison (fully 1 of 3 imprisoned there.) Our GI’s and Marines held by the Japanese on Bataan had a better chance of survival than an American soldier in Confederate hands in that death camp.
And since you are so sensitive about what we in the North think of you, maybe you (and BPT) should refrain from referring to us as Yankees and elitists, stop calling our women “pie wagons” (whatever the hell that means), and quit whining and blaming all of your problems on us.
Let me get this straight: 600,000 men died and a nation was torn apart because the US government, in an effort at peaceful reconciliation with Southern slave holders offered only 30 cents on the dollar for every human being held in bondage? You expect me to sympathize with that? Would 50 cents on the dollar been worth avoiding war? How about 75 cents? And can you still not see the difference between a human being and a car?
Clint Johnson writes:
Jeff, apparently you have not read my book where I, speaking for The South, take full blame for the huge mistake of continuing the practice of slavery that was practiced by all of the civilizations of the world, including The North. Greece practiced slavery and made it acceptable to western civilizations – and was the “guest of honor” at the Atlanta Olympics where the playing of the black-woman-written Dixie was banned. Slavery is mentioned favorably in the Koran yet we are told that Islam is a super swell religion that is just misunderstood by us racist Christians. Egypt enslaved the Jews and other people to build its civilization, but we can’t mention that because it would insult Africans. No, only The Southern United States can be condemned for practicing slavery – we all being rednecks, don’t you know, so we deserve being condemned while the rest of the world gets off Scot-free.
Yet, it is only The South that has taken responsibility for slavery, and only me – counting you and me as a universe of two – who has taken responsibility for it in this discussion. You, speaking for the North, refuse to take responsibility for it. Well, I can’t force you. I can only hope that when and if you ever visit the African Burial Ground in New York City you can see for yourself that slavery existed there and not only in The South. Hey, here is a project for you! See if you can figure out where in downtown Manhattan those slaves falsely accused of leading a slave revolt were burned alive. I’ve never been able to nail it down myself, but maybe you can find it.
As to prison camps, you are apparently unaware that the percentage of Southerners who died in Northern prison camps was higher than the percentage of Northerners who died in Southern prison camps. Elmira, N.Y., Camp Douglas, Ill., Fort Delaware, Point Lookout, Maryland all were as bad as Andersonville, but the history books only tell us about it because it would look bad to describe how Northern prison camps were much more horrible by design. The prison commander at Elmira returned money to the U.S. Treasury because he said the Confederates did not need blankets. I guess it does not get cold in the winter in Elmira.
As to the sacking of Winton, N.C. being early in the war (which I am taking when you say “run up to the war”, which I can’t easily find in my mentions) it was early in the war. The only major battle in 1861 was First Manassas. The North did invade North Carolina’s Outer Banks in August and Beaufort, S.C. in Oct. but those were really minor engagements. Not much happened in the war until 1862.
Well, Ben-Peter, thanks for giving me the chance to answer my critics. I think Jeff thought he would thump me one and I think he will admit privately – but not on this forum- that he got thumped, which probably surprised him. Us good ole’ gun-toting, ‘shine-drinkin’, church-goin’ Southerners can still whip our weight in Yankees when they don’t know their own slave-trading/slave-owning history. That’s all I asked Jeff to do – own up that The North had a role in slavery – but he does not want to do that.
And just to show we Southerners are still hospitable – despite unwarranted but answered attacks – y’all come on down and visit us. Take your shoes off and sit a spell. Shooootttt, we’ll even let you buy land down here. Just don’t come down telling us “This is how we did it up North.” The first thing you learn in The South is we don’t care how you did it up North. We do it better down here.
The way the “you”‘s and “we”‘s are getting tossed around, you’d think the southern and northern states were spaced on separate sides of an ocean. It’s been a hundred and fifty years already. Get over it. Slavery is no longer practiced, state rights were cast aside a good century ago, there’s really not a whole lot besides local politics that differentiates the various states anymore. This discussion is to the point where it’s about as constructive as a state-to-state penis measuring contest.
Clint writes that all he asked me to do is own up to the fact that “The North had a role in slavery – but he does not want to do that” In post 24 Jeff said “I do not doubt that there were some in the North who held slaves prior to the Civil War era or that New York’s shipping industry played a role in it…” I then wrote “My problem is not with your mentioning these things to set straight the historical record but with your assigning to these things much greater weight than they deserve.”
I responded to this article not because you pointed out some interesting historical facts about the North’s involvement with the pre-war slave trade, but rather because you blamed the North entirely for the South’s role: “There would not be any slaves in the USA if Northern ship owners had not brought them into the country” and “the South got addicted to slaves because the North made them so cheap.” These are absolute statements. You did not qualify them. You blamed the North entirely for the slave trade. This is not setting the record straight. It is revisionism.
As for the African burial grounds in New York you keep mentioning, I work a few blocks away from one. What’s your point? I allowed from the very beginning that Northerners had some role prior to the war. The difference was in scale and in the fact that during the war the North fought to end the practice while the South fought to retain it. You can twist the facts and my words all you want, Clint but your effort to rewrite history will ultimately fail.
Next time your up here in New York Look me up and this gun-toting, church-going, beer-swilling Yankee will show you some of the sights here that don’t involve graveyards.
First of all, I must apologize to Ivan for confusing him with Jeff in the rush to respond; and to everyone else for muddying the waters. Thank you, Patrick, for clarifying and Ivan for so noting.
I agree with WolvenBear to the degree setting the record straight should not be misconstrued as whitewashing (no pun intended) the South’s part in slavery. Wrong is wrong, no matter how shiny the gloss. Yet, I still read some denial of facts and outright hostility toward southerners out of all proportion to reality. I, for one, am tired of being endlessly punished for the actions of people to whom my sole connection is roughly one-sixteenth of my genetic makeup. I take some not inconsiderable interest in my genetic makeup, but only as a curiosity regarding the improbability of my existence.
Douglas Harper, historian, author, journalist and lecturer based in Pennsylvania has been researching northern slavery since 2000 due to the lack of available information online and in print. He compiled his own information from a large number of sources (referenced in his works and website), and partially corroborates northern participation and shared culpability in the slave trade; even after it was outlawed. He notes one reason for this lack of information is “… the Confederacy was intensely interesting to historians, while the inner workings of the North were less appealing, and thus less visible in scholarship” (to which we might add ‘victors write history, losers forever after complain of the bias’). Another reason he gives is he kept running into people in ‘free-states’ with no notion there’d ever been slaves in the North, yet brimming with information regarding the South. Harper has no apparent axe to grind in the South’s favor, so his testimony ought to be regarded as relatively unbiased.
Harper is a graduate of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., with a degree in history and English. He has been featured in a BBC production on the Welsh settlements in America, and has been interviewed as a source for historical articles by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post and many magazines.
Harper writes of the north (see http://www.slavenorth.com/profits.htm ):
“Even after slavery was outlawed in the North, ships out of New England continued to carry thousands of Africans to the American South. Some 156,000 slaves were brought to the United States in the period 1801-08, almost all of them on ships that sailed from New England ports that had recently outlawed slavery. Rhode Island slavers alone imported an average of 6,400 Africans annually into the U.S. in the years 1805 and 1806. The financial base of New England’s antebellum manufacturing boom was money it had made in shipping. And that shipping money was largely acquired directly or indirectly from slavery, whether by importing Africans to the Americas, transporting slave-grown cotton to England, or hauling Pennsylvania wheat and Rhode Island rum to the slave-labor colonies of the Caribbean.
Northerners profited from slavery in many ways, right up to the eve of the Civil War. The decline of slavery in the upper South is well documented, as is the sale of slaves from Virginia and Maryland to the cotton plantations of the Deep South. But someone had to get them there, and the U.S. coastal trade was firmly in Northern hands. William Lloyd Garrison made his first mark as an anti-slavery man by printing attacks on New England merchants who shipped slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans.
Long after the U.S. slave trade officially ended, the more extensive movement of Africans to Brazil and Cuba continued. The U.S. Navy never was assiduous in hunting down slave traders. The much larger British Navy was more aggressive, and it attempted a blockade of the slave coast of Africa, but the U.S. was one of the few nations that did not permit British patrols to search its vessels, so slave traders continuing to bring human cargo to Brazil and Cuba generally did so under the U.S. flag. They also did so in ships built for the purpose by Northern shipyards, in ventures financed by Northern manufacturers.
In a notorious case, the famous schooner-yacht Wanderer, pride of the New York Yacht Club, put in to Port Jefferson Harbor in April 1858 to be fitted out for the slave trade. Everyone looked the other way — which suggests this kind of thing was not unusual — except the surveyor of the port, who reported his suspicions to the federal officials. The ship was seized and towed to New York, but her captain talked (and possibly bought) his way out and was allowed to sail for Charleston, S.C. Fitting out was completed there, the Wanderer was cleared by Customs, and she sailed to Africa where she took aboard some 600 blacks. On Nov. 28, 1858, she reached Jekyll Island, Georgia, where she illegally unloaded the 465 survivors of what is generally called the last shipment of slaves to arrive in the United States.”
There is a lot more information on northern behaviors at Harper’s site, all worth reading; including the persistence of slavery in the north and gradual decline from 1804 (year northern states began passing gradual manumission laws) to 1860, the sale and relocation of northern slaves to the South, resentment among northern laborers toward free-negroes, northern schemes to get rid of negroes by shipping them back to Africa or South America, revisionist slave fantasies (“… slaves in Massachusetts were treated with almost parental kindness”), blaming the South for the mistreatment of blacks in the North (“Garrison: The toleration of slavery in the South is the chief cause of the unfortunate situation of free colored persons in the North.”), several ways ordinary northerners profited from slavery and its traffic, race riots in which free-negroes were lynched, beaten and burned, the open refusal of northerners to aide fugitives, antipathy toward abolitionists and empathy with southern planters, northern demands U.S. Marshalls be used to apprehend runaways, capture by private citizens, the processing and disciplining of slaves in northern courts, the unequal legal status and treatment of free-negroes v. whites, work & trade exclusions and the denial of self-protection, restrictions on movement and where they could live, &c. All in all, a very balanced account, and hardly an attempt at assuaging or fixing guilt.
Hopefully, this will, at least, put to rest the notion the North had no part in slavery, both before and after the Constitution. If you still have doubts, please read Harper’s material and check out his sources before going further.
Bob
I accept, and agree with most of what you said in #38.