His Soul Is Marching On

October 15, 2009 9:46 PM

Today is the 150th anniversary of John Brown's abolitionist raid on Harper's Ferry, and the commemorations are underway.
posted by Pope Guilty (121 comments total)

It's a shame how it's only kosher to be an uppity revolutionary in this country once you're dead.
posted by dunkadunc at 9:53 PM on October 15, 2009 [2 favorites]

I dunno that I'd call it "kosher"- Brown is hardly an uncontroversial figure even today.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:02 PM on October 15, 2009

This is where I note that West Virginia is West Virginia, it's own state in its own right, because they were abolitionist, and dead-set against secession. Virginia is Confederacy - West Virginia is a solid, stout bulwark of the Union, as anti-slavery and pro-industrial as states come.

This is where I also note that West Virginia was destroyed by Virginia in a courtroom sympathetic to Johnny Reb for their commitment to the Union. Funds and revenues that should have modernized and developed the state were stolen, and instead left it deep in the 19th century, while other Northern states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, etc, were able to capitalize and profit on the 20th century's manufacturing boom.

This is why West Virginia is a "joke", when it should be a beacon of American pride - they are poor and backwards, because they were fucked over by racist redneck suckups. This is why West Virginia is a borderline third-world culture, instead of a solid, contributing member of the American Rust Belt.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:03 PM on October 15, 2009 [40 favorites]

John Brown was a religious nut and a terrorist. As much as we are for the abolition of slavery, the treatment of Abolition (with the capital "A") exclusively as a moral problem rather than as a moral, political, and economic problem caused a war and arguably lead to the twin problems of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

Notice that of all the nations that practiced slavery, from Britain to Brazil to the United States, only the United States required a civil war to achieve abolition. While the reasons for this are complex, and much blame can be laid at the feet of intransigent defenders of the "peculiar institution", probably the greatest blame attaches to those who saw Abolition as an almost religious cause.

Yes, we should be horrified by the evils of slavery, but not so horrified that we desire, as the radical Abolitionists did, to expiate the national sin by washing in the blood of the lamb, in Bloody Kansas and later Antietam.
posted by orthogonality at 10:09 PM on October 15, 2009 [6 favorites]

was just reading about this last night, not sure if the first article goes into this at all (will read it later), but there is a good argument that Harper's Ferry lead to Lincoln (an underdog) winning the election. The reaction to Harper's Ferry split the Democrat party, and threw the leadership of the Republicans into turmoil, Lincoln he was seen as a moderate at the time, and won with something like 40% of the popular vote from a field of four candidates. If the election had been a straight traditional two party race I wouldn't have bet a plugged nickle on Lincoln's chance.

I have conflicted feelings about Brown, on one hand I greatly admire his passion and all out commitment. Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass both considered Brown as a close kin and the only white person who truly understood their plight, but neither of them would have anything to do with Brown's plans for Harper's Ferry- on the other hand I can't condone much of his actions (e.q hacking 5 pro-slavery men to death with hatchets in the wilds of Eastern Kansas)... I think I understand why he did the things he did but just can't make the leap to defending the actions as much as I laud the sentiments behind them, and sympathize with the feeling that provoked the actions. Hell, in 1856 Senator and outspoken abolitionist Charles Summer was beaten senseless on the floor of the senate by a congressman from South Carolina!

It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists...
posted by edgeways at 10:12 PM on October 15, 2009

A book that's very interesting - not so much historically, but contextually is Russell Banks Cloudsplitter. It's about Brown and his family. Banks toys with timelines etc. but in my opinion does an admirable (and interesting) job of illustrating the complexities of Brown and the political and social situation of the milieu.
posted by smoke at 10:19 PM on October 15, 2009

I only know about Brown via Russel Banks' fabulous novel, Cloudsplitter, so I'm not sure what is truth and what is pure invention. But clearly he was a driven and compelling person, not someone I might wish to have as a neighbor (or heaven forbid, a father), but at the same time maybe a necessary person in history. He someone went from the moral clarity of anti-slavery to the less morally-clear step of violent insurrection; I'm not sure I agree but I'm also not sure I disagree.
posted by Forktine at 10:19 PM on October 15, 2009

oh PS, one thing that Banks really does highlight is how many anti-slavery people believed that if things continued as they did that "free" states would disappear entirely. They were basically fighting a war before it was declared. Whether that was prescient or precursor is another question.
posted by smoke at 10:21 PM on October 15, 2009

John Brown in song:

John Brown's Body (Wikipedia)

PBS feature (with audiofile) (from "The American Experience")
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:30 PM on October 15, 2009

Yes, we should be horrified by the evils of slavery, but not so horrified that we desire, as the radical Abolitionists did, to expiate the national sin by washing in the blood of the lamb, in Bloody Kansas and later Antietam.

The south started the war, not the Abolitionists, so I'm not sure what you're point is.

As in aside, if you're ever in the DC area, Harper's Ferry is well worth a day trip. Bring a picnic basket and lots of bug spray.
posted by empath at 11:25 PM on October 15, 2009 [2 favorites]

But I do agree that there's not much difference between John Brown and the folks that kill abortion doctors.
posted by empath at 11:26 PM on October 15, 2009

Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists

Can you fill me in on how Debs fits in? I don't know that much about him but I thought he was a pacifist. Not snarking, genuinely curious.
posted by naoko at 11:41 PM on October 15, 2009 [2 favorites]

The problem with lauding John Brown is that, even if it's technically possible to separate and compartmentalize in our minds his abolitionism from the violent means he employed — means which are well into terrorism by any reasonable definition — there are lots of other figures in the abolitionist movement who didn't venture down that particularly slippery slope.

There is no reason to remember him except as a cautionary tale, of what sort of monster even the best of intentions can make you.

And that's assuming we give him the benefit of the doubt in retrospect, and assume that his methods and violence were a result of his fervor for his cause, and not the other way around; a possibility that strikes me as far more likely, given the number of very committed abolitionists who did not hack anyone to death with swords.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:22 AM on October 16, 2009 [5 favorites]

"Notice that of all the nations that practiced slavery, from Britain to Brazil to the United States, only the United States required a civil war to achieve abolition."

Oh please. Slavery in America was different than in other nations because of the unquenchable thirst of southern plantation owners for it. And sure, the Civil War was about economics. But guess what the proverbial engine of the southern economy was? Slave labor.

Not that working in a 19th century factory is my idea of paradise either, but you can't separate the question of slavery from the economic fundamentals of the 19th century south. You can try and deny slavery was the foremost issue that led to the Civil War, but you wind up smacking your face into the fact of its dominance over all aspects of southern life, culture, and economics.

And none of this is was the fault of abolitionists.
posted by bardic at 12:24 AM on October 16, 2009 [15 favorites]

It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists...

It is interesting how Johnny-Fucking-Reb tries to control the terms of the debate. To this, I add my reasoned and logical reply: Shuddup, slaver.

We died by the thousands to see you and yours tossed onto the slagheap of history, and if for a minute you think I'm gonna let you and your little reb friends slander my Great-Greats as tools of some industrial conspiracy instead of honoring them as sacrifice-the-farm Patriots, well, welcome to the new school of Civil War enthusiast. I'd take my kicks now, but the surviving relatives of the Iron Brigade get first dibs on your slaver ass.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:25 AM on October 16, 2009 [12 favorites]

You can try and deny slavery was the foremost issue that led to the Civil War, but you wind up smacking your face into the fact of its dominance over all aspects of southern life, culture, and economics.

Well, and that the Articles of Secession all pretty much come right out and say that it's about slavery.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:27 AM on October 16, 2009 [5 favorites]

Also Eugene Debs was one of the greatest American figures of the first part of the last century and if you have a problem with him it's because you are either speaking of things you do not know about or your opinions are seriously deleterious to human wellbeing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:29 AM on October 16, 2009 [7 favorites]

Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass both considered Brown as a close kin and the only white person who truly understood their plight, but neither of them would have anything to do with Brown's plans for Harper's Ferry

I believe it's the first link in my post that mentions that Tubman planned to join the raid but was sick.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:30 AM on October 16, 2009

Hey, bardic, way to catch up.

All you wrote I assume was a foregone conclusion.
posted by sourwookie at 12:48 AM on October 16, 2009

No, I agree the war was about slavery.

Though for most Northerners, about the "Slave Power" ("Slave Power Conspiracy") than about the morality of slavery. That is, if we don't oppose the South, the South will enslave us. (And certainly, the South had been imposing its will for years, as demonstrated by the various Compromises and the Fugitive Slave Act.)

But for the Abolitionists, it was about morality, and all the more so for the Radical Abolitionists (as opposed to the Gradualists). For them, it wasn't just a matter of ending slavery; it had to be ended now, and moreover, the sin had to be expiated, redeemed, in blood.

And while most Northerners were not Abolitionists, the Abolitionists managed to frame the argument, to people the Northern image of the South with evil Simon Legrees and saintly Uncle Toms, and the pathetic Eliza Crossing the Ice. Which imagery, while it didn't convince the North to go to war to save the slaves, convinced them that Southerners were amoral evil brrutes, and that the Slave Power Conspiracy of these evil Southerners was real, and a real threat.

There's a parallel, I think, with the Cold War imagery -- we didn't go to Vietnam for the freedom of the Vietnamese -- we went to oppose the "threat" of Communism to ourselves. While Soviet Communism was evil, that's not why we fought it -- but it was the ideologues who thought it was so evil, who framed the problem and convinced us that contained evil was really expansionist threat.

But ultimately we didn't go to war with the Soviets. We didn't go to war over enslaved Hungary in '56, or enslaved Czechoslovakia in '68, or Polish martial law in the '80s. By treating the Soviet threat as a problem in realpolitik rather than as a moral problem, we achieved our ends without (direct) war.

As Brazil, with its massive plantations (which killed many more slaves than died on plantations in the US South), managed to end slavery: without war, but with gradual emancipation.

Something that arguably could have happened in the US too, if the Abolitionists hadn't framed slavery as a (purely) moral problem. Which would have avoided the 600,000 casualties of the CivilWar, and may have avoided the backlash in the South against blacks after Reconstruction, and the years of Jim Crow, and the continuing animosity between North and South that plays out in our politics to this day. We'll never know, of course. But no, I don't think John Brown's terrorism was the right answer to the (political, economic, or moral) problem of slavery.
posted by orthogonality at 1:07 AM on October 16, 2009 [3 favorites]

Hey, anything to take at least some portion of the blame for owning human beings as chattel property off of the people who did it and those who supported them.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:33 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

It strikes me as pretty intellectually dishonest to reject an otherwise-valid line of argument solely because it happens to in some minor way exonerate someone (or a group of people) that you find repugnant.

Also, it's pretty low to immediately assume maximum bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees with you. I think we can pretty safely take on premise that everyone here thinks that chattel slavery was a bad thing, unless someone steps out and explicitly claims that particular position for themselves.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:03 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Yes, we should be horrified by the evils of slavery, but not so horrified that we desire, as the radical Abolitionists did, to expiate the national sin by washing in the blood of the lamb, in Bloody Kansas and later Antietam.

Sorry, ortho, much as I like you, I can't agree.

Brown was a hero. A revolting, reviling, but necessary hero. He saw injustice and further, saw everyone looking on, clucking their tongues impotently… "Oh, how sad! Whatever shall we do about all these slaving murderers?"

The times leading up to the American Civil War are like a sick, national bystander effect. All these wrongs committed against blacks… hundreds of years of murdering, kidnapping, rape, torture, all ignored for bloody profit. Doing nothing in the face of such inhumanity is an offering of tacit approval. If you saw a man being beaten to death on the street, would you stand by and argue with you fellow bystanders about how you should deal with it? What if the guy doing the beating gave you a cut of whatever he found in his wallet? Perhaps you should call the police, or round up more people, or… or would you jump into the fray, meet violence with violence because for some people reason is not a weapon that can be wielded to any effect?

Of course, this isn't to say that Brown was perfect—I'd say he took too long to do anything, but then I can fully understand. It wasn't until he was at the point where he felt he had nothing to lose that he finally committed.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:41 AM on October 16, 2009 [11 favorites]

WHITE SOUTHERNER CLAIMS CIVIL WAR FAULT OF ABOLITIONISTS: FILM AT ELEVEN!

Something that arguably could have happened in the US too, if the Abolitionists hadn't framed slavery as a (purely) moral problem. Which would have avoided the 600,000 casualties of the CivilWar, and may have avoided the backlash in the South against blacks after Reconstruction, and the years of Jim Crow, and the continuing animosity between North and South that plays out in our politics to this day. We'll never know, of course.

That's a hell of a lot of "arguably", "may", "maybe", and "we'll never know". Maybe, maybe, maybe.

On the other hand, we do know that every day that went by with slavery notended meant millions of human beings laboring under the yoke, women repeatedly raped, men flogged, beaten, and killed, infants stolen from their mothers, and an entire people kept as subhuman chattel.

The Antebellum South was evil to its core. The women in their beautiful dresses, stately plantations, men in mornings coats, cotillions, and all the rest of it was a thin veneer over one of the most brutal, repressive, and sick societies in modern history. The only comparable example is Nazi Germany; the parallels are obvious.

I can't believe you have the gall to sit there talking about how, if only those nigger-lovers and damn Yankees had been more understanding about our peculiar institution, well, maybe the Late Unpleasantness could have been completely avoided! All that blood is actually on their hands, and pay no attention to the pile of skulls and charnel ash we've built our grand Southern culture upon.

A very many good men died in the Civil War, on both sides. A very many bad ones as well, again on both sides. But there is no equivalency, and I won't shed a single tear for the actual slavers. It was a cancerous tumor that had to be excised, yes, by any means necessary.
posted by Justinian at 4:24 AM on October 16, 2009 [11 favorites]

Slavery in America was different than in other nations because of the unquenchable thirst of southern plantation owners for it


And the insatiable demand for southern cotton by other nations. Britain who had, you know, burned Washington D.C a few decades before, was waiting to see who came out on top with the general feeling that would be easier to cut deal with two smaller, waring states than one huge one ..which was straight out of the British Colonial handbook for dealing with Places That Have Stuff You Want.
posted by The Whelk at 4:28 AM on October 16, 2009 [4 favorites]

Oh, and to point out your shoddy facts as well as your poisonous logic, slavery in the British Isles lasted for almost two thousand years, from before the Roman Occupation until 1833. At which point it had become mostly economically pointless. To which I add that, proving the point, they made exceptions for the East India Company and some possessions where slavery still did turn a healthy profit.

The U.K. didn't abolish slavery despite it being economically profitable, they wrung every last drop of sweat and blood that they could out of it and then, once slavery didn't much advantage them nymore, decided to take the great moral position of ending it. Hallelujah, let freedom ring!

It's rather like if I stole your elderly parent's life savings, spent all of it, and then once they died in illness and poverty came to Jesus and repented but, oh hey, sorry about that money and all but its water under the bridge what-ho, no point in dwelling on it.
posted by Justinian at 4:34 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Something that arguably could have happened in the US too, if the Abolitionists hadn't framed slavery as a (purely) moral problem.

as opposed to southerners who try to frame it as a purely political and economic problem?

Which would have avoided the 600,000 casualties of the CivilWar, and may have avoided the backlash in the South against blacks after Reconstruction, and the years of Jim Crow, and the continuing animosity between North and South that plays out in our politics to this day.

if we were going to have a unified country, the war was inevitable - and we were not going to have a unified country with the institution of slavery intact - the south made sure of that

they were the ones who withdrew from the nation and said there was no compromise with lincoln, who, at that time, was not someone who was taking a purely moral stance in regard to slavery, or was even planning on eliminating it in the areas it existed by simple fiat - there was actually a chance that the problem could have been solved the way it had been in other countries by a set of economic and political compromises - yes, there were abolishionists who did not want to compensate slave owners for their "property" or see any other compromises done, but they were not in power in 1860 - it was the south that decided it could not talk this through and walked away - and then it was the south that fired the first shots

as far as the backlash being avoided and all the consequences following, it was our failure to thoroughly scour and change the south's culture like we did with nazi germany in ww2 that resulted in the failure of reconstruction, the institution of jim crow and our current southern problem - of course, that would have meant we yankees would have had to change some things, too, and we would have had to keep an occupation force active for a few years - it turned out to be politically impossible
posted by pyramid termite at 4:49 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

"Notice that of all the nations that practiced slavery, from Britain to Brazil to the United States, only the United States required a civil war to achieve abolition."

Well, sort of. Haiti's independence was born of a (quite bloody) slave revolt; the French formally ended slavery there before independence, in response to the revolts, but wikipedia says that they were planning to reinstate it. I don't know if you want to call that "civil war," but without it slavery would likely have continued on the island much longer.

And Brazil and Jamaica (among other places) both had a long series of slave uprisings and battles with free Maroons that made slavery a lot more expensive to sustain. Not civil war, no, but not exactly free of strife and bloodshed, either.

Slavery was structured differently in the US, more embedded and with much more care about preventing uprisings. It's hard for me to imagine an alternative history where the south voluntarily gave up slavery within the 1860s or '70s, and if we are to imagine some kind of decades-long gradual emancipation, then you have to weigh the human cost of continuing slavery against the human cost of the Civil War.
posted by Forktine at 5:14 AM on October 16, 2009 [4 favorites]

As Brazil, with its massive plantations (which killed many more slaves than died on plantations in the US South), managed to end slavery: without war, but with gradual emancipation.

Something that arguably could have happened in the US too, if the Abolitionists hadn't framed slavery as a (purely) moral problem.

Or, more relevant, if the pro-enslavement side had not been intent on expanding ownership of human chattel into every new territory possible and legally covering the entire nation. Given how long Manifest Destiny took to be formally concluded, when would the imaginary clock for the countdown to the nonexistent Southern version of "gradual emancipation" start ticking? How many fellow Americans' individual liberties would be an acceptable sacrifice to counterfactual history? One generation's? Two? Three?

Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry took the ongoing guerrilla war from Kansas (beginning with the pro-slavery forces' Sack of Lawrence, numerous incursions by "Border Ruffians" from the slave-state Missouri - who menaced Brown's family while he was still living in New York - and Brown's own Massacre at Pottawatomie Creek) into one of the oldest slave states in the Union. Unsurprisingly, the Virginia slavers were so used to their peculiar institution that they thought Brown a madman and religious fanatic for carrying over a fight they thought they'd already won.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:34 AM on October 16, 2009 [3 favorites]

The was fought because of slavery, but the end of slavery didn't really become a top rallying cry for the Union until well into the war. For many, the preservation of the Union was an important motivation at the beginning. That's not to say there weren't many soldiers who felt passionately about ending slavery in 1861. It irritates me to no end when someone tries to get around slavery as a root cause of the war, as every argument made in its place, ultimately leads directly back to slavery.


With regard to Brown, I was brought up in Virginia, where it was instilled intentionally or not in me that there was something negative about him. To this day, I certainly don't have warm fuzzy feelings for him, though I applaud what he tried to do that day in Harper's Ferry. On a secondary note, my grandfather's grandfather was named John Brown, too. (That John Brown was about 4 or 5 when the other went and got himself executed). My granddad used to say as a boy, he got very upset by the song, "John Brown Rolling In His Grave" because he thought people were singing about his grandpa.
posted by Atreides at 5:47 AM on October 16, 2009

His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine...
Mine was as the taper light;
his was as the burning sun.
I could live for the slave;
John Brown could die for him.

-Fredrick Douglass
posted by shothotbot at 5:59 AM on October 16, 2009 [7 favorites]

Britain who had, you know, burned Washington D.C a few decades before, was waiting to see who came out on top
Interestingly, Britain had also sent 10,000 troops to Canada. I am sure the government was conflicted given the strong anti-slavery sentiment in the UK, but I think they were also ready to put their thumb on the scale if they thought it would be effective.

I will make another plug for Steven Blight's lecture series which covers 1845-1877, his lectures on the coming of the civil war are especially strong. Here is the one which covers John Brown
posted by shothotbot at 6:09 AM on October 16, 2009 [3 favorites]

The Civil War was a wild melee among bearded, kill-crazy lunatics, the sole purpose of which was to sate a frenzied blood lust whipped up by intransigent politicos, religious fanatics, and self-righteous murderers (Brown). God help 'em if they'd had talk radio, as in the Congo in the 1990s: They'd all have been hacking each other's arms off. We can also thank heaven that our current nasty left-right politics isn't linked to any clear cut regional interests, or we'd be going down the same road again, because there's nothing the human race enjoys more than a good slaughter fest.

But about those beards... No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me the efflorescence of baroque facial tonsure that erupted so suddenly on the eve of the Civil War and lasted pretty much up to the turn of the century. What was going on there, culturally? What did it signify? When you look at murderin' maniacs like Jackson, Burnside, Hooker, etc., you have trouble seeing the man underneath. Of course, the coldest killers, Grant and Lee, kept it simple, with plain, grizzled, wall-to-wall jaw carpeting. I suspect that John Brown's Moses-like beard added to the moral authority he hoped to gain for his insane, Columbine-like murder party. How good it is that in later years, such a beard came more to be associated with the peace-loving Whitman.
posted by Faze at 6:11 AM on October 16, 2009 [4 favorites]

Thank you for your contribution.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:13 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

only the United States required a civil war to achieve abolition."

First French Republic abolished slavery in 1794 - after the revolution, which was in effect a civil war. (Napoleon restored it in the colonies in 1804 - hard man, Napoleon.)
posted by IndigoJones at 6:14 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

But about those beards... No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me the efflorescence of baroque facial tonsure that erupted so suddenly on the eve of the Civil War and lasted pretty much up to the turn of the century.

Men (who in power) got lazy shaving at the beginning of the war. By the end of the war, those individuals who had beards represented virtually every successful general on either side of the conflict. Coincidentally, the officers who had beards, many participated in politics and other leadership positions and apparently decided to keep their beards. Other men wanted to imitate these men and either kept their beards or grew their own. When that generation of leadership died off, that was essentially the end of beards in politics.
posted by Atreides at 6:33 AM on October 16, 2009

The only Bible pope guilty will approve of: Beecher's Bibles.
posted by boo_radley at 6:43 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

I suspect that John Brown's Moses-like beard added to the moral authority he hoped to gain for his insane, Columbine-like murder party.
posted by Faze at 6:11 AM on October 16

Let it be known from here on that Faze has equated Abolition with Columbine. Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America is dead. All hail Faze, King of the Trolls, Keeper of the Sacred Flamewar.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:50 AM on October 16, 2009 [5 favorites]

It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists...

Malcom X compared with Timothy fucking McVeiegh and abortionist murderers??? WTF? Are you just trying to be controversial or do you really not have any idea what you are talking about? Please elucidate for me the violent thing that Malcolm X was responsible for . . . what, talking to stridently?? Being uppity??
posted by anansi at 6:53 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh, and blaming the Civil War on those damn, dirty, carpet-bagging abolitionists is up there with proclaiming that Obama is a secret muslim. You can say it as much as you want but that doesn't make it true.
posted by anansi at 6:58 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Or, more relevant, if the pro-enslavement side had not been intent on expanding ownership of human chattel into every new territory possible and legally covering the entire nation.

There were also attempts to invade Nicaragua, Cuba and Mexico to set up slave territories in order to tip the balance of slave states to the pro-slavery side.
posted by electroboy at 6:58 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

The war was not the abolitionists' fault, it was Eli Whitney's fault.
posted by caddis at 6:59 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Come on, that's unfair. The southern states just needed room to breathe. Kansas was clearly their last territorial demand.
posted by Justinian at 7:00 AM on October 16, 2009 [4 favorites]

Clarification, William Walker did seize control of Nicaragua, but was double-crossed by Cornelius Vanderbilt who pulled some political strings that led to his government being deposed.
posted by electroboy at 7:04 AM on October 16, 2009

I was thinking earlier this month about doing a post on this. A couple links I had gathered:

Transcriptions of primary documents.

I love old time style headlines.

This painting freaked me out as a kid, and still kinda does today.

I also found a transcription of the initial telegram that got the news of the raid to the outside world:

Express train bound east, under my charge, was stopped this morning at Harper's Ferry by armed abolitionists. They have possession of the bridge and the arms and armory of the United States. Myself and Baggage Master have been fired at, and Hayward, the colored porter, is wounded very severely, being shot through the body, the ball entering the body below the left shoulder blade and coming out under the left side.

And the supervisor's response: Your despatch is evidently exaggerated and written under excitement. Why should our trains be stopped by Abolitionists, and how do you know they are such and that they number one hundred or more?

And...Civil War Memory has a good post about the SCV trying to turn Heyward Shepherd into some neo-Confederate hero. Shepherd was an African-American baggage handler and the first casualty of the raid.

Oh, and the American Civil War was about slavery. That is why the south frickin' seceded.
posted by marxchivist at 7:51 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

marxchivist just beat me by moments to link to this painting, which is called 'Tragic Prelude' by American regionalist painter John Stuert Curry, and really is kinda overwhelming. I was just chatting about it a few weeks ago, but regarding tornadoes.
posted by ovvl at 8:21 AM on October 16, 2009

It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists...


Malcom X compared with Timothy fucking McVeiegh and abortionist murderers??? WTF? Are you just trying to be controversial or do you really not have any idea what you are talking about? Please elucidate for me the violent thing that Malcolm X was responsible for . . . what, talking to stridently?? Being uppity??

Have people failed reading comprehension or something? Jesus Christ already.
[for reference I wrote the first paragraph]

I am not comparing Malcom X to Timothy fucking McVeiegh and abortionist murderers in any way EXCEPT in that Timothy fucking McVeiegh and abortionist murderers have THEMSELVES invoked John Brown as inspiration, you will see that what I wrote was "It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown". which is nothing like "Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists are like John Brown".

But, I guess I should write in short sentences? Here are some relevant quotes, none of whice I've written.

"Timothy McVeigh explicitly cast himself as a modern-day John Brown shortly before his execution"

"Hell, even Malcolm X loved John Brown"

"John Brown: History’s Greatest Hero" written by Eugene Debs

"Paul Hill, convicted of murdering abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard in 1994, considered himself to be a twentieth-century John Brown. Brown"
---------

I believe it's the first link in my post that mentions that Tubman planned to join the raid but was sick.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:30 AM on October 16 [+] [!]

I have also read that Tubman was fearful that the Harper's Ferry raid would jeopardize the underground railroad infrastructure, and that she was starting to share Fredrick Douglass' doubts, upon review there is no definite answer why Tubman herself was not at Harper's Ferry, but a bunch of good guesses, some of which conflict with one another.

-------
Also Eugene Debs was one of the greatest American figures of the first part of the last century and if you have a problem with him it's because you are either speaking of things you do not know about or your opinions are seriously deleterious to human wellbeing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:29 AM on October 16 [3 favorites +] [!]

Care to show me where anyone suggested otherwise? Or are you grandstanding?
posted by edgeways at 8:31 AM on October 16, 2009

Wow that painting is something else.
posted by meta87 at 8:33 AM on October 16, 2009

and then there's the album
posted by pyramid termite at 8:42 AM on October 16, 2009

I love this Far Side also.

Re: the blog post it is featured in, I don't know what needs explaining. Just a play on words and a funny drawing of John Brown.
posted by marxchivist at 8:54 AM on October 16, 2009

Yes, we should be horrified by the evils of slavery, but not so horrified that we desire, as the radical Abolitionists did, to expiate the national sin by washing in the blood of the lamb

Nope, I'm gonna side with Abe on this one:

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:07 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Something that arguably could have happened in the US too, if the Abolitionists hadn't framed slavery as a (purely) moral problem. Which would have avoided the 600,000 casualties of the CivilWar

...and kept millions of people toiling in forced-labor camps, suffering and dying under the lash of the overseer.

How many slaves died in bondage in Brazil between 1861 and 1888?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:13 AM on October 16, 2009

The Brooks Museum in Memphis just finished up an exhibition of Jacob Lawrence's art in which they included his sequence on John Brown. (Here are the pics themselves.) We had just moved into town from central Illinois, and this became my 7-yr-old son's introduction to the concept of slavery. Pretty powerful stuff, but a week later, I think my son had a pretty good grasp on not only the evils of slavery but also the complexity of the issue.
posted by zeugitai_guy at 9:14 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Shorter Orthogonality: The only thing worse than slavery is ending slavery.
posted by Justinian at 9:23 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Does nobody read Du Bois's John Brown anymore?

One is welcome to disagree with it of course, but at least then you would just be wrong, not ignorant.
posted by birdie birdington at 9:32 AM on October 16, 2009

There's a nice little pub in Lawrence what brews John Brown Ale. I think I will go have a pint or two today and celebrate.
posted by TypographicalError at 9:35 AM on October 16, 2009

Re: the blog post it is featured in, I don't know what needs explaining. Just a play on words and a funny drawing of John Brown.

Check the blog roll on the right. I think it'll be pretty clear why neither the author or anyone s/he knows has a basic level of historical knowledge.
posted by stet at 9:42 AM on October 16, 2009

edgeways, I think part of the issue was the punctuation didn't help you out. No, really. See:

"It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists"

This makes it look like all the items on the list are similar, and I was one of the people who read that and thought "Tim McVeigh is like Malcolm X how exactly?"

Whereas:

"It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown: Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists"

explicitly refers each individual back to Brown. It might've helped further clarify your point to have said "how many different people", but I think the substantial difficulty was the punctuation.

/punctuation pedantry
posted by EvaDestruction at 9:46 AM on October 16, 2009 [5 favorites]

It had been family lore that my great-great-great-grandfather was John Brown of Harper's Ferry. I did some research and discovered to my dismay that my great-great-great-grandfather was actually a different fella.

and Slap*Happy if you have the PayPal address for contributions to the "Clone John Brown/General Sherman Fund" or the "Reconstruction 2: The Destruction of Jared-Syn PAC" then plz memail me
posted by jtron at 9:47 AM on October 16, 2009

How many slaves died in bondage in Brazil between 1861 and 1888?

How many slaves would have died in bondage in the US if the Civil War had never been fought? Probably not 600,000, which is the approximate number of lives lost in the war. Does anyone think that without the war, slavery would have still existed in the US in 1900? It would have gone, one way or the other. It was not a good tradeoff. Six hundred thousand people did not have to die to end slavery. To believe otherwise, is to position the war as a kind of human sacrifice ("God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword...") that is blasphemous to the Christian God.
posted by Faze at 9:56 AM on October 16, 2009

Let it be known from here on that Faze has equated Abolition with Columbine.

Let it be known that Faze has equated John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid with Columbine. I'm not sure that Abolition has any contemporary counterpart in the sociopolitical sphere, unless it's the anti-abortion movement.
posted by Faze at 10:01 AM on October 16, 2009

It is interesting how many people claim solidarity with Brown, Eugine Debs, Tim McVeigh, Malcolm X, violent anti-abortionists...

You clearly know nothing about Malcolm X. I suggest learning the entire story. Two good documentaries on him are the 1972 "Malcolm X" and the American Experience piece "Make it Plain." Sad that in 2009 people still lump him in with McVeigh and violent anti-abortionists. Actually, sad, pathetic and infuriating.
posted by antihostile at 10:06 AM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

EvaDestruction already covered it antihostile. I put a "," in where a ":" should have gone.
posted by edgeways at 10:19 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

I actually think the Civil War needed to happen for a variety of reasons, but I'm not a fan of vigilante justice of any kind.

I don't see any logical way to that John Brown can be considered a hero while condemning abortion doctor murderers, so I'll just go ahead and condemn them both.
posted by empath at 10:22 AM on October 16, 2009

It was not a good tradeoff.

I suppose that depends on whether you identify with the slavers or the slaves. It's pretty clear which one you're going with.
posted by Justinian at 10:23 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

God, this thread is getting to me. How can you look at ending slavery like some sort of actuarial table? If 580,000 slaves died in bondage then the war was not justified but if 620,000 slaves died in bondage then the war is okay? How many lives is a rape worth? How about a flogging? How many lives the complete dehumanization of millions of people?

I suspect if your sister was the one being raped, you were one the being beaten, and your son was the one stolen from you to be raised elsewhere, forbidden an education, and worked until he died in the cotton fields you might feel that the sacrifice was worth it. But they're probably white, so its different.
posted by Justinian at 10:27 AM on October 16, 2009 [5 favorites]

obSF: The epilogue to Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks.
posted by Justinian at 10:28 AM on October 16, 2009

I'm with you Justinian. I'm not against John Brown's tactics because I give a shit about slave owners, I just think it was counterproductive. Terrorism is terrorism no matter how just the cause.
posted by empath at 10:32 AM on October 16, 2009

EvaDestruction already covered it antihostile. I put a "," in where a ":" should have gone.

Yeah, that's what was confusing me. Apologies.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:34 AM on October 16, 2009

I don't see any logical way to that John Brown can be considered a hero while condemning abortion doctor murderers

Fortunately, I don't believe in moral relativism, so I don't have this problem.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:34 AM on October 16, 2009

Sure is /b/ in here.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:36 AM on October 16, 2009

Also, I think it's disingenuous to imply that if there was no Civil War slavery would have ended.

How would you have proposed that the north have ended it? The South seceded, the south fired the first shots, precisely BECAUSE they feared that the north would ban slavery through democratic means. It's not as if Lincoln was imposed upon the country by force. He was voted into office, and had not the south started the war, slavery probably would have ended in a decade or so anyway. But it's not the North that invaded the south to impose Abolition by force, it was the south that attacked the North to prevent abolition through legal, democratic means.
posted by empath at 10:38 AM on October 16, 2009 [4 favorites]

To put it more succinctly, the Civil War was started by the south to prevent abolition not by the north to end slavery
posted by empath at 10:39 AM on October 16, 2009 [2 favorites]

Yes, we should be horrified by the evils of slavery, but not so horrified that we desire, as the radical Abolitionists did, to expiate the national sin by washing in the blood of the lamb, in Bloody Kansas and later Antietam.

I totally agree. A peaceful solution would have been much preferred over arguably the bloodiest war in our nation's history. Unfortunately, a bunch of damn fools in South Carolina lacked patience.
posted by caddis at 10:59 AM on October 16, 2009

My introduction to John Brown was in the photograph held in reverence by the abolitionist Tallman family at what is now an historic house museum. (The family also once hosted then-Sen. Lincoln -- 150 years ago last month -- so he could make an anti-slavery speech here.) My memory is that it was this one, but it may have been one from later in life when he was bearded. The family kept it in a private place of honor, almost like a religious icon.

As such, I have a much more sympathetic view towards the man, and readily accepted that of the Whitman paper in the first link.
posted by dhartung at 11:06 AM on October 16, 2009

The idea that John Brown was insane was relentlessly promoted by advocates of the Lost Cause (the idea that the Confederacy was a noble effort) from the late 19th century right to the present. Lost Cause advocates and apologists came to dominate the national memory of the Civil War by the early 1900s (Birth of a Nation, anyone?) and they shaped all of our popular memories of John Brown--from the crazed, bloodthirsty, Old Testament prophet of the Curry painting to the crazed, bloodthirsty, Old Testament prophet of the 1940 film Santa Fe Trail.

But Brown was not crazy. He was a 19th century American Calvinist who believed his life on earth was but a test to see where he would spend eternity. And getting the right answer on the test was more important than stretching it out. The great moral question was slavery, and therefore God required him to act.
posted by LarryC at 11:09 AM on October 16, 2009 [6 favorites]

I'm with you Justinian. I'm not against John Brown's tactics because I give a shit about slave owners, I just think it was counterproductive.

That might well be; I don't have a strong opinion either way. I'm strictly responding to the whole "slavery would have gone away by itself, so the war was the fault of the damn Yankees" thing.
posted by Justinian at 11:10 AM on October 16, 2009

I think this article is an important read.

An examination of the Confederate Constitution shows that--irrespective of the actual objective moment that caused the secession and subsequently the war--the South's self-understanding was justified through appeal to what we might think of as radically libertarian concerns.

This is important, I think, because our historical rhetoric about the Civil War has so convinced us that the principle motive was the now oh-so-obvious-how-did-they-miss-it EVIL NATURE of slavery. The problem with that simplistic understanding is it harms our capacity to see the perception of nuance at that time. People actually debated this. Believing that might help us to understand the debates we have today that future generations will be shocked by. I imagine few walked around the CSA saying "Let's perpetuate the obvious evil of treating blacks like chattle!" They justified themselves through appeals to property rights, business interests and--ironic to our ears--individual freedoms. They believed this self-justification so fully that they enshrined it in a constitution that is largely our own, but with added caveats that radically protected individual property rights and opposed government bailouts of Northern industrial interests.

Slavery was an unmitigated evil. But if we could take a few moments to step into the shoes of the people who were actually debating that question--however foolish we presently find the debate--we might learn something about self-justification of moral travesties that could help prevent us from running down similar roads in the future.

If Texas does ever secede and pull the rest of Dixie out of the union with it--as many like to jokingly predict these days--I would not be surprised if the original Confederate Constitution were precisely the model for a new United States of Dixie.
posted by jefficator at 11:35 AM on October 16, 2009

My first introduction to Brown was visiting Harper's Ferry by train out of pure curiosity, once I learned that you could get all the way out there. It is an utterly gorgeous little town, especially in the autumn.

As to Brown himself, my visceral reaction to what transpired is to feel that yes, it was an act of violence. My stronger visceral reaction is it's hard for me to feel especially outraged by this particular act of violence, seeing how he was trying to free slaves and all.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:38 AM on October 16, 2009

Unfortunately, the federal government was not willing to let them give their system a try.

Seriously, jefficator, that's the nuance we're supposed to be learning from?
posted by Wood at 11:58 AM on October 16, 2009

How many slaves would have died in bondage in the US if the Civil War had never been fought? Probably not 600,000, which is the approximate number of lives lost in the war.

Given that there were almost four million Americans held in slavery in 1860, where does the confidence come from that fewer than 15% would have died before an entirely theoretical nonviolent emancipation could be brought about? There's no indication whatsoever in antebellum political landscape to suggest wouldn't have taken decades at the soonest. Life expectancy in slavery being less than the average population's, the "bondage casualty rate" gradually eclipses even as bloody a conflict as the Civil War. But I'm torturing the actuarial figures here only to underscore just how morally callous it is for latter-day defenders of slavery to try to trade off the numbers of the dead like so much bookkeeping.

But why not look at what the Confederate States themselves said about secession instead of inventing defenses for them? Texas's declaration reads:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.{emphasis in the original}

Brown was not, after all, the only party to claim religious justification for their side prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:08 PM on October 16, 2009 [7 favorites]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that jefficator is another southern white dude.

(clicks on profile)

This is my surprised face.
posted by Justinian at 12:26 PM on October 16, 2009 [3 favorites]

we might learn something about self-justification of moral travesties that could help prevent us from running down similar roads in the future

It doesn't really change anything though. People justify all sorts of fucked up shit. Southern aristocrats wanted to keep slavery by any means necessary, including fighting a war that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of nonslaveowning Southerners to maintain the fortunes of a select few.
posted by electroboy at 12:38 PM on October 16, 2009

An examination of the Confederate Constitution shows that--irrespective of the actual objective moment that caused the secession and subsequently the war--the South's self-understanding was justified through appeal to what we might think of as radically libertarian concerns.

Or they realized that they needed to appeal to England who had banned slavery decades prior. You're just rationalizing.
posted by empath at 1:16 PM on October 16, 2009

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that jefficator is another southern white dude.

(clicks on profile)

This is my surprised face.
posted by Justinian at 2:26 PM on October 16 [+] [!]


What precisely are you trying to say Justinian?
posted by edgeways at 1:19 PM on October 16, 2009

The Confederacy was certainly setup to avoid Federalism, i.e., allowing one government to control everyone, versus everyone having a say on the one government. As a result of this arrangement, the government was a wonderful display of logjams, inaction, and selfish action by the states. It exasperated Jefferson Davis to no end and likely helped spiral the Confederacy quicker toward its defeat.
posted by Atreides at 1:26 PM on October 16, 2009

that southern white guys going out of their way to make easily refuted defenses for the slave holding south is utterly predictable.
posted by empath at 1:26 PM on October 16, 2009

Justinian: Shorter Orthogonality: The only thing worse than slavery is ending slavery.

How about we not be complete fucking dicks and put words we know for a fact someone else doesn't mean into their mouths?

I don't agree with the argument that radical (at the time) abolitionists made a peaceful end to slavery possible, but I also don't agree that arguments equals thinking the end of slavery is worse than slavery. And neither do you, so stop it.

This is nearly as bad as when a few people were calling others Nazi sympathizers because they thought Hitler was still a member of Homo sapiens.

But no, let's assume maximum bad faith at all times. I bet Ortho enslaves baby seals too.
posted by spaltavian at 1:41 PM on October 16, 2009

Typo; that should read: I don't agree with the argument that radical (at the time) abolitionists made a peaceful end to slavery impossible.
posted by spaltavian at 1:43 PM on October 16, 2009

I bet Ortho enslaves baby seals too.

Don't be ridiculous.

He clubs them for their fur.
posted by empath at 2:01 PM on October 16, 2009

Seriously, jefficator, that's the nuance we're supposed to be learning from?

Wood, I think you misunderstood my intent. The article is important precisely because it exposes folly.

Southern white aristocrats seem to have been unconcerned about the morality slavery. They seem to have been concerned about profitability of a business enterprise. The business enterprise was fundamentally dehumanizing, but it was lucrative. For this reason, they sought any number of justifications to perpetuate a system that lined their own pockets.

My point is this: there are more than a few dehumanizing enterprises that we tolerate in our society. We tolerate them because someone, somewhere is protecting his or her lucrative business interest by interjecting morally ambiguous arguments into a conversation and creating "debate" where ostensibly there should be none.

But because in hindsight a "debate" seems so utterly unfounded and one-sided, we forfeit the tools to confront the "debates" that presently exist. We take historical evils as read and ignore the processes that first justified and later overturned the evils. Because we don't engage the process, we don't learn from it.

Looking back and saying simply, "Slavery was bad" means that anyone who was not opposed to slavery was some other-wordly evil creature capable of perpetuating obvious ills on society. This predisposes us to regard people who are perpetuating obvious ills on society today as similarly other-worldy evil creatures. We never learn to actually engage and correct errors, and so we either have to hope the tide turns against them, or we have to fight wars to eliminate them.

The Confederate Constitution gives us insight into the self-deception orchestrated by the Southern white aristocrats. Do you think you could have shaken them until they admitted, "Okay, okay. It is just about slavery. I make too much money off slaves to set them free." Maybe. But much more likely, disagreement would have been meant by objection about property rights, individual liberties, etc. I imagine they even would have fought a war to defend their self-justification.

If we try to wrap our brains around that justification of an obvious ill, then we might gain insight into how to combat present justifications of other social ills. That's my only point here.

And Justinian, lumping someone into a category in order to express displeasure with the individual and the category is not generally regarded as enlightened behavior.
posted by jefficator at 2:06 PM on October 16, 2009

Given that there were almost four million Americans held in slavery in 1860, where does the confidence come from that fewer than 15% would have died before an entirely theoretical nonviolent emancipation could be brought about?

What good is a dead slave? A slave was worth a lot of money. A lot more than a poor Southern white man. Robert E. Lee thought nothing of sending thousands of poor whites to their deaths. But there would have been hell to pay if he'd killed an equivalent number of slaves. In fact, comparatively few slaves died in the war. As property, they were sheltered.

But come on, do you really think that if the Civil War hadn't been fought, that slavery would have persisted in America until 2009 and beyond? You don't think that economic changes or changes in social attitudes, demographics, industrialization wouldn't have gradually worn the slave system down over the next 50 years? Especially since the flower of American youth, north and south, would not have been slaughtered in the war, and we would have had that many more minds alive to work on the problem in their own generation, or have it solved by their genetic heirs? The idea that people have to die en masse to solve a social problem is magical thinking at its worst.
posted by Faze at 2:14 PM on October 16, 2009

But come on, do you really think that if the Civil War hadn't been fought, that slavery would have persisted in America until 2009 and beyond? You don't think that economic changes or changes in social attitudes, demographics, industrialization wouldn't have gradually worn the slave system down over the next 50 years?
posted by Faze at 2:14 PM on October 16

No one thinks that and you know it; your dishonesty is palpable.

You said, quote "How many slaves would have died in bondage in the US if the Civil War had never been fought? Probably not 600,000, which is the approximate number of lives lost in the war." I submit that many more than 600,000 slaves would die in bondage if the war had not been fought.

As Doktor Zed noted, four million people were slaves in 1860. Are you really saying with a straight face that fewer than 600,000 of them died by 1910?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:20 PM on October 16, 2009

Slavery and the Civil Ware make for important historical reflection precisely because you have a small group of people who benefit enormously, a small group of people who suffer unimaginably, and a large group of people who are relatively-unaffected-but-in-certain-intangible-ways-harmed. The small group who benefits from the practice manipulates the large group that is relatively unaffected through appeal to ideas that would affect them in order to perpetuate the harm against the small group who suffers.

Can you really say that studying this important dynamic is not of paramount importance given what history tells us happens when we allow it to run its course?

Does it not ring any bells to anyone?
posted by jefficator at 2:30 PM on October 16, 2009

An examination of the Confederate Constitution shows that--irrespective of the actual objective moment that caused the secession and subsequently the war--the South's self-understanding was justified through appeal to what we might think of as radically libertarian concerns.

it also explains why they didn't have the railroads, the ports and the general infrastructure they needed to win a war with an industrial state that did - they actually thought they could remain an agrarian state in a time where everyone else was modernizing

---

Looking back and saying simply, "Slavery was bad" means that anyone who was not opposed to slavery was some other-wordly evil creature capable of perpetuating obvious ills on society. This predisposes us to regard people who are perpetuating obvious ills on society today as similarly other-worldy evil creatures. We never learn to actually engage and correct errors, and so we either have to hope the tide turns against them, or we have to fight wars to eliminate them.

i'm not sure that wanting an economically libertarian state isn't some kind of evil - if one can count delusionary thinking as an evil - but, more importantly, it's really not a matter of other worldly evil creatures, but a matter of choice - were they willing to discuss and compromise - or did they insist on a fight?

the south insisted on a fight - the south seceded and then they fired the first shot - and thereby caused 600,000 american deaths because, basically, they wanted a society where slavery would never be abolished and wanted to fight for it, long before their adversaries had elected a government that was willing to go that far

it's not just "slavery is bad" - it's also "aggressive war is bad"
posted by pyramid termite at 2:33 PM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

Does it not ring any bells to anyone?

why don't you just explain to us what you think the significance is instead of dancing around it?
posted by pyramid termite at 2:36 PM on October 16, 2009

Given the motivations, some of which have been quoted above, stated in the various acts of secession put forth by the southern states, how is the answer to "how many slaves would have died in bondage..." not "all of them?"
posted by feloniousmonk at 3:00 PM on October 16, 2009

Are you really saying with a straight face that fewer than 600,000 of them died by 1910?

I say, with a steel-rule countenance, that this speculative figure is irrelevant to the argument, unless you are willing to suggest that 600,000 slaves would have been murdered by 1910. But I suspect you are counting deaths from all causes, and going further to suggest that all causes would, under the circumstances, be aggravated by the condition of slavery. It's not to the point at all. People will die over the course of 60 years, that's obvious. Nothing will prevent that.
posted by Faze at 3:34 PM on October 16, 2009

Faze: You are arguing a straw man. There are awful things besides death.
posted by Justinian at 3:40 PM on October 16, 2009 [1 favorite]

I say, with a steel-rule countenance, that this speculative figure is irrelevant to the argument

So then why did you bring it up in the first place?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:24 PM on October 16, 2009

Southern white aristocrats seem to have been unconcerned about the morality slavery.

This is a somewhat disingenuous statement. Maybe not all of them were concerned about the morality, but some where. The fact that slave owners considered and executed manumission of their slaves indicates that they believed that they weren't just chattel property to be sold or invested in (you don't just let your cattle loose to wander away do you?). A number of the elite southerners believed that slavery was bad, but it was the best solution at the time for a people they felt would be unable to cope with sudden freedom.

If anything, I'd perceive the push toward defending property rights as a better means to help draw in all the middle and lower class whites. If the government was willing to take the property of the class of people they aspired to be, then whats to stop them from taking property from themselves?
posted by Atreides at 4:39 PM on October 16, 2009

If Texas does ever secede and pull the rest of Dixie out of the union with it--as many like to jokingly predict these days--I would not be surprised if the original Confederate Constitution were precisely the model for a new United States of Dixie.

Good riddance. The south is still just an economic drain on the country. They take more of our tax money than they pay and they bitch about the taxes more than anyone. I propose a constitutional amendment that ensures that all of our tax money gets redistributed to the states based upon what they contribute. We will take back all the money from those slacker southerners. ;)

Really, if that is what it comes down to then the South would just be selfish pigs and hence my modest proposal in counter. I don't think the South is that selfish. They are not treasonous anymore.
posted by caddis at 5:55 PM on October 16, 2009

The Confederacy was certainly setup to avoid Federalism, i.e., allowing one government to control everyone, versus everyone having a say on the one government.

See, we tried that already with the Articles of Confederation, the US system of government from 1781 until it was replaced by a more perfect union in 1789. A stronger federal government was one of the things that made the Constitution more perfect.

If Texas does ever secede and pull the rest of Dixie out of the union with it

They can't. According to Texas v. White, states have an "indissoluble relation" with the United States.

The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

posted by kirkaracha at 7:24 PM on October 16, 2009

Faze writes "As property, they were sheltered."

Yes, just like the Jews in Dachau who needn't worry themselves with getting drafted into the Reich and fighting dirty Soviets. Three square meals a day, lots of exercise, all mod cons. They were happy, they were.

My god, you're a despicable person.
posted by bardic at 1:16 AM on October 17, 2009 [3 favorites]

How can you look at ending slavery like some sort of actuarial table?

As a game theorist or a sociopath.
posted by Ndwright at 1:40 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't agree with the argument that radical (at the time) abolitionists made a peaceful end to slavery possible, but I also don't agree that arguments equals thinking the end of slavery is worse than slavery. And neither do you, so stop it.

You're right that I don't think an argument that abolitionists made a peaceful end of slavery impossible is the same as saying ending slavery is worse than slavery. But that wasn't the argument orthoganality made. He was pretty clearly making the case that a chance to end slavery peacefully over the course of additional decades was morally superior to a bloody war to end slavery now

That is, that the cost of ending slavery now was higher than the cost of allowing millions of slaves to suffer under the yoke for decades more. I think "the price of ending slavery was worse than slavery" is pretty close to that sentiment. More accurate would be "the price of ending slavery was worse than allowing slavery to continue for perhaps 50 more years" but that's not as pithy.

I'd agree that freeing the slaves peacefully immediately would be better than freeing the slaves violently immediately, but that very much wasn't the argument being made earlier in the thread. It was absolutely, without question, that freeing the slaves violently in the early 1860s was morally unjustified if there was a chance of them being freed peacefully over many decades.
posted by Justinian at 6:43 PM on October 17, 2009

What precisely are you trying to say Justinian?

That it always seems to be southern white guys taking the so-called "nuanced" positions with regard to slavery, the civil war, and so on. I don't think this is a coincidence.
posted by Justinian at 6:45 PM on October 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

That it always seems to be southern white guys taking the so-called "nuanced" positions with regard to slavery, the civil war, and so on. I don't think this is a coincidence.

Sorry, but "always seems to be" just isn't quite scientific enough for me. Do you have some statistics, here at Mefi or elsewhere, to back up your sweeping generalization? Can you point to this pattern you discern here at Mefi? Cause, right offhand, if we're talking Metafilter, I can't recall any apologies for slavery that've come from white southern guys like BitterOldPunk, or nola, or Ynoxas, or ohwhydididoit, or cinemafiend, or myself.

From some of the comments he's made in this thread, I can see where you might put Faze in your category of those with "the so-called nuanced positions", so perhaps he's a southern white guy. Or perhaps not. At any rate, you might consider that your generalization might just be stupid, inaccurate and ill-thought.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:06 PM on October 17, 2009

flapjax: Err, how does "southern white guys make apologies for xxx" follow from "apologies for xxx seem to come from southern white guys"? Just because guys who play pro basketball are usually tall doesn't mean that tall people usually play pro basketball.
posted by Justinian at 8:10 PM on October 17, 2009

Fair enough, Justinian. But... still just wondering, any cites you can make, from anywhere, to back up your impression that "it always seems to be southern white guys"? I reckon probably not, right? Well, to be fair, you did say "seems". I just tend to not care for lazy generalizations, as I don't think they help anyone.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:17 PM on October 17, 2009

I reckon probably not, right?

Besides this thread? Unless the profiles are lying, jefficator and orthogonality (the two guys I've mostly been arguing with) are in Mobile and Montgomery.

What kind of cites are you looking for? How do I even cite an impression? Find some blogs I've read somewhere written by southerners?
posted by Justinian at 11:21 PM on October 17, 2009

I should point out that this seems like an extremely minor part of the points I was trying to make, which was refuting orthogonolity's comments that the real crime here was the Civil War.
posted by Justinian at 11:27 PM on October 17, 2009

How do I even cite an impression? Find some blogs I've read somewhere written by southerners?

Yeah, that sounds good. That'd be a start. That way you could perhaps illustrate why you made your generalization, why you said what you did. That'd be very helpful! The "always" (kind of a big word, really) part of your comment would imply, after all, that you've got a fair amount of experience with encountering this particular type of southern white guy. I shouldn't think it'd be too hard, then, to provide a reasonable amount of links that would establish that this white-southern-guy-apologist-for-slavery demographic exists. Or perhaps your IRL experience has somehow been full of encounters with such types. If so, perhaps you could elucidate. And please be aware that I'm not necessarily even disagreeing with you. But your statement is exactly the kind that demands backing up, IMO. For example, let's just say you'd come into a Mefi thread writing "it always seems to be New York jews who defend every action of the Israeli government" or, say, "it always seems to be the Pakistani cab drivers who try to rip you off on the fare". You'd be called out on that. Loudly. And asked to support your statement. So, yeah, Justinian, I'm calling you out on your "impression". You need to convince me that it's not just good old fashioned, knee-jerk bias on your part that would bring you to make the kind of statement you did.

I should point out that this seems like an extremely minor part of the points I was trying to make...

"Seems like", eh? Hey, "it always seems to be southern white guys" is something you said, man. Right there on its own, in its own little comment slot, wrapped up with your name on it. "Seems" minor to you? Fine. Didn't seem minor to me, but perhaps that's just because I'm a "southern white guy". You'll pardon me, no doubt, if it doesn't seem to me the way it "seems" to you.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:56 AM on October 18, 2009

Bite me. The difference is that Jews, Pakistanis, etc are minorities at the wrong end of a power differential. Southern white guys, until 3 years ago, had a stranglehold on power in the United States and even now wield incredibly disproportionate influence. Trying to make some sort of analogy to anti-semitism or racism from your position at the top of the pyramid is insulting. I have no doubt that you don't see it; fish don't notice the sea.

I didn't understand where you were coming from at first; now that I do, I'm not jumping through your hoops. Own your privilege.
posted by Justinian at 1:25 AM on October 18, 2009

That's a fine way to wriggle out of it, Justinian. And the "bite me", very classy. In point of fact, I expected much better of you. You turned out to be a real jerk!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:59 AM on October 18, 2009

Oh, and now that you've cast me as yet another blind-to-his-privilege southern white guy, why don't you just go all the way now and call me a racist scumbag? Go ahead, man, it'll be just what you need to keep confirming your world view.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:05 AM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Southern white guys, until 3 years ago, had a stranglehold on power in the United States

george w bush is not really a southern white guy - neither is dick cheney or condoleezza rice - and most of what's written about power relationships and privilege on this site is ad hominem bullshit anyway

your last post being a prime example of that
posted by pyramid termite at 5:50 AM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Thank you, pt, for making the above points. I would've made them as well (thought of them straightaway upon reading Justinian's stupid comment), but there was really only so much I felt was appropriate to say to someone who'd make a comment as ignorant and smug as his. But now that you've mentioned it, I'd just like to add: Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. Southern white guys.

I suppose we can only assume that Justinian comes from and/or resides in some bright and wonderful part of the country where there are no conservatives, no racists, no people who rely on easy and lazy characterizations and stereotypes to make themselves feel that there are easily identifiable sets of people (like, southern white guys, for example), that they can feel smugly superior to. In other words, people who hold biases based on race and/or region of habitation.

Oh, wait, though. Justinian, based on his comments here, appears to fall into the latter category. Sorry Justinian, you've just been kicked out of Enlightened Land.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:38 AM on October 18, 2009

And sorry Mr. Byzantine emperor, but, I gotta say... my "position at the top of the pyramid"? MY position?

You're a blinking idiot.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:42 AM on October 18, 2009

What a weird derailment. Having lived in the south, I find quite unremarkable the assertion that southern whites often present "nuanced" opinions on race, as a cover for what we might think of as less nuanced views. But that's not the same as saying that any particular southerner has those antediluvian views -- which is why the extreme defensiveness and harshness in a few posts above strikes me as odd.

Honestly, I think this is part of why John Brown is such a compelling figure. On the one hand he cuts through the bullshit -- slavery was bad, and he was willing to take direct and personal action to (he hoped) begin a grand revolt against it. And at the same time, his methods were themselves immoral, and his attempt failed, and in doing so perhaps hurt those pushing for emancipation through peaceful paths.

All that said, though, I think it's a huge mistake to try and calculate the "worth" of the civil war on deaths alone. You have to add in the human cost of keeping four million people in bondage -- with all the affront to basic human dignity that that encompasses -- for even one extra day, much less the four or five decades that a negotiated emancipation might have taken.
posted by Forktine at 7:15 AM on October 18, 2009

What a weird derailment.

Apologies. Guy just ticked me off.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:19 AM on October 18, 2009