On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 15:35:56 -0600, rbowman wrote:

On 08/08/2020 02:12 PM, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
On Saturday, August 8, 2020 at 3:20:12 PM UTC-4, Rod Speed wrote:
wrote

Let's be honest.

Tad radical.

The people with money and influence created
laws that repress blacks through out history.

Could have sworn that they actually freed the slaves.

They did both.

I've been rereading Charles Beard's history of the US. Beard fell oit of
favor some time ago and certainly isn't woke enough for today. He made
the observation that the preliminary drafts of the 13th Amendment
actually guaranteed slavery in perpetuity in those states where it was
legal, the Emancipation Proclamation only pertaining to the states in
rebellion. Charles Sumner from MA led the fight to abolish slavery
altogether.

He's also famous for almost getting beaten to death by Brooks in the
Senate. Senate was a lot more amusing in those days. That made him sort
of a martyr.

Lincoln was lukewarm since he didn't want a hot potato on his hands, and
Congress wasn't entirely enthusiastic. Eventually the abolitionists got
the present text ratified.

That was Beard's cardinal sin as a historian. He focused more on the
power plays and economics that the high minded ideals that are the
popular interpretation today. The truth is the abolitionists were the
BLM and Antifa radials of the day as far as their contemporaries were
concerned.

I suspect capitalists north and south were worried that the US
agricultural and hence raw material industry would collapse without
slavery. The reality is, the economics did not change that much. A
large number of blacks just transitioned from being indentured slaves
to wage slaves and their life did not change that much. It is why I
think slavery itself could have withered on the vine and died from
it's own weight if rich northerners and europeans simply demanded it
by way of boycotting slave grown goods. Who knows what the south and
the plight of black people would have evolved to being without that
war.
In the 19th century the entire western world eliminated slavery and
the US was the only country that thought they needed to do it with a
war. We are the one with the problems. I don't think that is a
coincidence.