a reply to:
Spider879
Yes, in some ways worse than a slave. If his crops were wiped out, he went hungry despite working his butt off. Most slaves didn't go hungry. Sure, he
could walk away... to what? Starvation?
Before the War of Northern Aggression, the average cost of a slave, in today's dollars, was upwards of $40,000. That's not a typo.
Fourty Thousand
Dollars. That's the price of a very nice new car. Now, I don't know about other places, but around here if someone manages to get a new high-end
Buick, they typically don't go around ramming it into trees for the fun of it. One couldn't finance a slave like folks do that car either... the
slave-traders demanded cash. How many people would go ramming their new cars into trees if they just paid cash for it?
You're claiming most of them. Please, what state are you in? only ask because I never want to drive through it if people there are that reckless. I
value my Buick.
You are repeating stories you have heard, exaggerated stories full of hyperbole, and trying to project them as the norm when that is simply not the
case. Try to stop and think for a moment... after the War of Northern Aggression, many, many returning soldiers lost their land to taxes because
there wasn't enough labor available to work it without slaves. Now, what person in their right mind... what person in
any mind... is
going to just go around beating up the very thing that allows them to survive?
And no, that's not defending slavery. You are correct in that the slaves were unable to make their own way through life, and that is unconditionally
wrong. Slavery needed to be abolished, was abolished, and rightfully is now a footnote in the annals of history (at least in the US... slavery is
still widespread across the globe, if you're serious about despising it so much).
Some slaves were beaten... typically for either trying to run away or for refusing to work. But that was a minority, not the majority. They didn't
sleep in five-star hotel rooms, but neither were they out in the weather without a roof. Not very far from me is an old pre-War plantation house that
still stands, the only one left in this area. In my youth, I used to visit it (was looking for ghosts; never found any). I have seen the slave
galleys... still there, still have the chains on the wall and the sleeping areas. It's dark and eerie down there in the basement... but think about it
and one should realize even the plantation owners didn't have electric lights then. It was dark
everywhere that wasn't outside!
All I am doing is injecting facts about life prior to 1860. None of my ancestors owned slaves; they couldn't afford them. I tire quickly of people who
think that, because of something that happened before their grandparents were probably born, which my ancestors didn't take part in, my skin color
somehow makes me less human. That's the exact same argument that was used to keep slavery going in the early days of the country, and it's as
unforgivable an argument today as it was then.
By the way, ever wonder why there wasn't anyone to work the land for pay instead of as a slave? Most of the freed slaves starved to death. The war
criminal William Tecumseh "Uncle Billy" Sherman made a habit of burning the bridges behind him to prevent the freed slaves from following (he didn't
like black folks... surprise!)... after he had killed and allowed his men to rape the white folks and burned all of the food to the ground. That's
right... the guy who you probably remember as the great liberator of your people was the one who personally killed more of them in one trek across the
South than the entire South probably did in its history.
Get a clue. We're not discussing your fantasies here.
TheRedneck