Thread: Virginia apologizes for role in slavery

Shek, I'm not going to let you divert me away from my original main point on this issue. You can take those roads if you want, I'm not going to follow.

Again, my main point is the amount of blame southerners have taken for slavery is incredible. I will continue to support that slavery was shipped in by the North, practiced by the North, and intentionally kept it alive for the love of tariff monies received by the North from the South. As to the moral issue, the North hugely preferred the blacks to remain in the south.

The slave trade totals were higher in the U.S. in the period 1790-1810 than during any other 20-year period. And the trade at this time was entirely in the hands of Northern merchants. States that had banned the import of slaves into their own borders, for reasons of economics and morality, had no qualms about flooding them into other states.

The North rarely matched its anti-slavery words with deeds when picking up the emancipation issue, considered the abolition petitions given to Congress by Philadelphia Quakers in 1790. The House voted 85-1 to not even accept the petition.

The North found it convenient to not push too hard for a definitive end to slavery in the United States. In part, it did so out of fear. “A general emancipation, northerners had reason to believe, would bring free blacks churning northward in search of economic opportunity and some measure of social justice.” Anthony Benezet, the Pennsylvania Quaker abolitionist and the least prejudiced of men, in his 1767 pamphlet, listed among the evils of slavery. "

Then in 1793 came the cotton gin, which brought a 50-fold increase in the average daily output of short-staple cotton, promoted the rapid expansion of a "cotton kingdom" across the Deep South, and made large-scale slavery profitable again. U.S. cotton production had been 3,000 bales in 1790; in 1810 it was 178,000 bales.

“Slavery would remain a national problem, not a southern problem, but northerners, with few exceptions, acknowledged no responsibility for solving the problem.” In such a nation, disunion or civil war was inevitable. Jefferson, by the end, realized it. He wrote that, “if something is not done, and done soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children.” But they rested, and hoped for the long-term death of American slavery by natural causes, and did nothing. It was a grand missed opportunity. And much of the responsibility for missing it can be laid to the blame of the Northern leadership.

By today's standards Abraham Lincoln was an uncompromising white supremacist

He made it clear on many occasions that he abhorred the very thought of social or political equality for blacks, and that although he considered slavery an evil, he saw no future in America for free blacks. He thought that the races should be separated, and until the very end of his life he did everything within his power to remove blacks from the territory of the United States.

On September 18, 1858, he made his position clear, in words that sound quite shocking today: “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor intermarry with white people.”

Again, on February 27, 1860, in the famous Cooper Union. He endorsed Thomas Jefferson's view that slavery should neither be extended into new territories nor abolished in those regions where it was already practiced:

“As those [founding] fathers marked it, so let it again be marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection necessary.” Speaking for his party, he said, “this is all Republicans ask—all Republicans desire—in relation to slavery.”

The offices from which blacks were to be barred presumably included the presidency. Lincoln went on to say:

“I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality…. A separation of the races is the only prevention of amalgamation . . .Such separation must be effected by colonization . . . Let us be brought to believe it is morally right to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”

“My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it; and if I could save it be freeing some and leaving others alone I would do that.”

On September 19, 1862, the Washington representative of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras denounced the attempt to cast upon Central America “a plague of which the United States desired to rid themselves.” The diplomat hinted that the territories he represented would use force to repel any colonizing expedition. Lincoln was forced to set aside his plans for colonization.

December 1, 1862, “That portion of the earth's surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family; and it is not well adapted for two, or more. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal . . . We cannot attain the ideal union our Fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible or desirable.”

April, 1865, General Benjamin Butler reported a conversation with the President, by which time the war had been won and Lincoln's assassination was only a few days away. Lincoln said to him, “But what shall we do with the Negroes after they are free? I can scarcely believe that the South and the North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the Negroes.” Lincoln then spoke of Butler's experience in moving large numbers of men by sea, and mentioned that the United States had a large navy. He asked Butler to draw on his wartime experience and devise a plan to send blacks overseas.

It is only by means of the most willful disregard for the historical evidence that Lincoln can be viewed as a champion of racial equality. In his mind, emancipation was linked to colonization, and he might well have opposed it if he had thought that free blacks would remain in the United States.