Of course, someone that didn't like it tried to drag slavery and the usual cheap shot pile of crap into the argument to make my niece look small.
First of all, Southern Pride is generally about heritage, not hate. There are a number of things I like about the south. I am a Yankee by birth but enjoy grits once in a while and a lot more southern cusine than simple grits, too.
I'd generally rather have some southern dishes than a New England boiled dinner which requires no skill to prepare and has the taste and texture of mush.
There's a lot of other things I like about the south, too. They have a heritage of military service and generally provide the nation with more service people per capita than the north does. Don't believe it? Look it up.
Another thing I like about the south is that in general, the people are a little more mannerly than their northern counterparts.
Anyway, the person that tried to make my niece look bad and dragged slavery into the equation likely doesn't know a whole lot and likely can't think very well.
While slavery in itself is today and back then was wrong, there are an awful lot of misnomers about it. For one thing by the time the Civil War got started, slavery was a dying institution. Likely it would not have made it to the beginning of the 20th century as it was actually inefficient and costly.
It's also pretty likely that slavery would have taken firmer roots in the north if the north had been based on more of an agricultiral economy instead of manufacturing as at the time agriculture was more labor intensive than manufacturing was.
You have to look at the way technology was starting to take off with the beginnings of steam powered machines, some of which are still around today.
Keeping a bunch of people around the plantation to do agricultural work is a lot more expensive than meets the eye. Expense is the enemy of the profit margin.
First of all, slaves were not cheap. A good field hand was pretty expensive to buy and was pretty costly to maintain. A field hand needed to be fed three times a day to keep him in good health and if he got injured he required medical attention. All of this costs money and you can't just stop feeding, clothing and sheltering a human being just because the planting or harvesting time is over.
A slave requires 365 days a year worth of care to keep him healthy.
When you look at the amount of work you can get out of one human being, it really isn't that much. This holds true especially when you compare the amount of work you can get out of something like a tractor, which can do in a day what would take s whole slew of people a couple of weeks to do.
When you are done with a tractor you put it in the barn to sit where it costs you nothing. Not so with a human slave. The slave still needs to be fed and taken care of.
As far as beating a slave, it was a rare plantation owner that was stupid enough to do anything to put the health of a field hand in jeopardy. If the plantation owner had no sense of humanity, he could sure realize that hurting a field hand wasn't good for his wallet because an injured field hand can't work as well and a healthy one can.
Accusations of slavery being genocidal just do not make sense, either. You don't kill off your workers. If you do you go broke pretty fast.
Truth is, this isn't all that hard to figure out. Simply follow the money.
I didn't make this post to defend slavery. It was truly wrong and has no place in a free country. I simply wanted to put it in it's proper place.
I just get sick and tired of seeing a pretty good part of the country get raked over the coals for something that involved a minuscule part of the population that took ended about 150 years ago.
Incidentally, looking back on the Confederacy, they had a reasonable cause (States rights) and a better army than the North did. The reason they lost was because the North had a stronger industrial base.
With all of the industrial base that has moved down south over the past 50 or so years things could be a lot different id they decided to rise again.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html
I'm a little bit behind in reading your blog. Things have been busy.
ReplyDeleteI'm from the south. I've volunteered for the NPS. My Eagle Scout project involved clearing earthworks. I've had a job with a private organization that managed earthworks and a museum.
Suffice it to say I love U. S. History and I take it as a personal affront when some d*mn yankee boils the American Civil War down to "it was over slavery." There were many reasons, such as congress passing taxes on many of the staples imported to the south, social differences, restricted immigration, et al. Arguing that the civil war was about slavery has as much correlation as arguing that Operation Desert Storm was about oil.
However, I would like to take issue with your statement that slavery was on the way out. That argument has been raised many times. Even with the rise of industrial power, slavery may have existed for another generation. Like it or not slavery existed in 1861 and a peaceful end was not yet in sight.
The Confederacy really did not have a better army, they just had more effective leadership and had more heart in the fight. (They were fighting a defensive battle in their backyards; those defending their homes had a little bit more to fight about.) When Gen. Grant was promoted over the U.S. armies, he used the superior manpower to his vantage. While McClellan would pull back to reduce casualties, Grant would push ahead irregardless of the cost. Also there were a lot of advancements in military technology during this time. The north took full advantage of repeating rifles in the summer of 1864.
Eh, this post seems to be a little bit negative. Sorry, didn't want it to come out that way. I did enjoy your perspective, and I wanted to add to the conversation. Keep writing!