The slave system in America. Interesting things on the web
Original taken from oper_1974 c From slavery to slavery. (43 photos)
The Virginia Slave Code, adopted in 1705, stated: “All negro, mulatto and Indian slaves in the dominion ... are considered real property. If a slave resists his master ... applying corrective measures to such slave, and if in the course of correction the slave turns out to be killed... the owner is freed from all punishment... as if nothing of the kind had happened at all."
This code also prohibited slaves from leaving plantations without written permission. He sanctioned flogging, branding and mutilation as punishment for even minor offenses.
Some codes prohibited teaching slaves to read and write. In Georgia, the crime was punishable by a fine and/or flogging if the offender was a "negro slave or free person of color."
Although the fate of American slaves was difficult, material conditions the conditions in which they labored were in many ways comparable to those experienced by many European workers and peasants at the same time. But there was also a difference. Slaves were deprived of their freedom.
The first blacks were brought to America as indentured laborers, but very soon the indenture system was officially replaced by the more profitable system of slavery. In 1641, in Massachusetts, the term of service for slaves was changed to life, and a law in 1661 in Virginia made the slavery of a mother hereditary for children.
Similar laws enshrining slavery were passed in Maryland (1663), New York (1665), South (1682) and North Carolina (1715), etc. So blacks became slaves.
Until the end of the 17th century. the slave trade in the English colonies in America was a monopoly of the Royal African Company, but in 1698 this monopoly was eliminated, and the colonies received the right to independently engage in the slave trade.
The slave trade took on even wider dimensions after 1713, when England achieved the right of asiento - the exclusive right to trade in black slaves. Blacks were caught, bought, goods were exchanged for them, they were loaded into the stinking holds of ships and taken to America.
Slaves died in droves in the barracks of trading posts and during transportation. But although for every Negro who survived, there were often five who died on the road - suffocated from lack of air, died from illness, went crazy, or simply threw themselves into the sea, preferring death to slavery - slave traders received fabulous profits: the demand for Negroes was so great , and slaves were so cheap and paid for themselves so quickly.
Negroes were so cheap that planters got better prices. short term to torture a slave through backbreaking work rather than exploit him longer, but more carefully. Average duration The life of a slave on plantations in some areas of the South did not exceed six or seven years.
Despite the ban on the import of slaves in 1808, the slave trade did not stop. It existed in a hidden form until the official emancipation of blacks during the Civil War of 1861-1865. Blacks were now smuggled, which further increased the mortality rate during transportation.
It is estimated that between 1808 and 1860, approximately half a million slaves were smuggled into the United States. In addition, blacks specially raised for sale in some slave states of the South (especially South Carolina and Virginia) became the subject of trade.
Negroes were made slaves, but they were never submissive slaves. Often blacks started uprisings on ships. This is evidenced by special kind insurance for shipowners to cover losses specifically in the event of a slave rebellion on the ship.
But also on the plantations where blacks brought from different parts Africa, representatives of various tribes who spoke different languages, the slaves managed to overcome inter-tribal strife and unite in the fight against their common enemy - the planters. So, already in 1663 and 1687. were revealed major conspiracies blacks in Virginia, and in 1712 the garrison of New York with great difficulty managed to prevent the capture of the city by rebel slaves - blacks.
During the period from 1663 to 1863, when Negro slavery was abolished, over 250 Negro uprisings and conspiracies were recorded, including such large ones as the uprisings led by Cato (1739) in Stono (South Carolina), Gabriel, sometimes called by his name master Gabriel Prosser (1800), in Henrico (Virginia), Denmark Vesey (1822) in Charleston (South Carolina), and Nat Turner (1831) in Southampton (Virginia).
Black uprisings were brutally suppressed. But even these isolated outbursts of despair among the oppressed slaves made the planters tremble with fear. Almost every plantation had its own weapons depot, and groups of planters maintained security detachments that prowled the roads at night. “The entire social system in the southern states,” notes F. Foner, “was based on the direct suppression of blacks by force of arms.”
Negro slaves expressed their protest in other forms, such as damage to tools, murder of overseers and owners, suicide, escape, etc. Escape required great courage and courage from the Negro, because if a runaway slave was caught, his ears were cut off , and sometimes, if he offered armed resistance, their hands or branded him with a hot iron.
Escapes of slaves from plantations became especially widespread during the revolution of 1774-1783. Blacks played an important role in the struggle of the American colonies against English rule.
George Washington, for a long time hesitant to recruit blacks as soldiers, in 1776 he was forced to resort to this measure due to the advance of the British and the general difficult situation in the country. According to some estimates, there were at least 5 thousand blacks in Washington's army.
The invention of the cotton gin (gin), which greatly accelerated the cleaning of cotton, caused the rise of cotton growing and significantly increased the demand for slaves, and the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe, and then in the United States, further increased the demand for both cotton and slaves.
The price of a slave rose from $300 in 1795 to $900 in 1849 and to $1,500 to $2,000 on the eve of the Civil War. The intensification of slave labor and the exploitation of slaves increased sharply.
All this led to a new aggravation and a new rise liberation movement blacks. The wave of black uprisings that swept through the first half of the 19th century. the entire south of the United States, was also associated with the revolutionary movement of blacks in the West Indies at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century.
TO mid-19th V. slavery has become obsolete. The invention of spinning machines and the introduction of various technical improvements increased labor productivity in industry and sharply increased the need for cotton. The labor of slaves, even under conditions of the most severe exploitation, remained unproductive; its productivity did not meet the new requirements of industry.
However, the planters were not going to voluntarily give up power. In 1820, as a result of the Missouri Compromise, they achieved the establishment of the boundary of slavery at 36°30" north latitude. In 1850, under pressure from the planters, Congress passed a new fugitive slave law, much more severe than the law of 1793.
The precursor to the Civil War in the United States was the Kansas Civil War, followed by John Brown's Rebellion (1859). Brown (1800-1859), a white farmer from Richmond (Ohio), a prominent abolitionist and leader of the "secret road", planned to march into Virginia, raise a general uprising of slaves and form a free state in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia as a base for the struggle for the liberation of all slaves
On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown with a small detachment of 22 people (five of them blacks) moved to Harpers Ferry and captured the arsenal. However, John Brown's campaign turned out to be insufficiently prepared. Left without support, Brown's detachment was surrounded and defeated after a fierce battle.
John Brown, severely wounded, was captured, charged with treason and inciting slaves to revolt, and sentenced to hang. In his last speech at the trial, Brown denied all the charges against him and pleaded guilty to only one charge - intending to free slaves.
The execution of John Brown caused an explosion of indignation throughout the world, and brought closer the crisis that erupted in 1861. The first blow was dealt by the planters: in 1860, after the election of President A. Lincoln, a representative of the North, they announced the secession of a number of southern states from the Union , and at the beginning of 1861 they attacked the northern troops at Fort Sumter. Thus began the civil war between North and South.
After the victory of the northerners and the liberation of the blacks the most important issue There was a question about the restructuring of all political and economic life in the South, the question about the reconstruction of the South. In March 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freed Negroes and Abandoned Lands was established.
However, the blacks were released without ransom, but also without land and without means of subsistence. Large plantation landholdings were not destroyed political power slave owners was only shaken for a while, but not broken.
And although the blacks themselves took part in the struggle for their liberation with arms in hand, although over 200 thousand blacks fought in the army of the northerners and 37 thousand of them died in this war, the blacks received neither real freedom, nor, moreover, equality.
Having freed themselves from slavery to the planters, they fell into bondage to the same planters and were forced to work under enslaving conditions for their former masters as hired workers or tenants. “Slavery is abolished, long live slavery!” - this is how one of the reactionary figures of that era defined the situation.
After the assassination of Lincoln on April 14, 1865 and the coming to power of E. Johnson, who pursued a policy of concessions towards the planters, reaction in the southern states again raised its head. In 1865-1866, the so-called “Black codes” were introduced in various states of the South, essentially restoring the slavery of blacks.
According to the Apprentice law, all blacks - teenagers under 18 years of age, without parents, or children of poor parents (poor minors), were given into the service of whites, who could forcibly keep them in service, return them in case of escape in court and subject to corporal punishment.
Blacks were allowed only to the most difficult and dirty jobs. Many states had Vagrant laws, according to which blacks not employed permanent job, were declared vagabonds, imprisoned and sent to convict brigades, or forcibly returned to work for the former planters.
Vagrancy laws were applied extremely widely, and they were always given an interpretation that suited the planters. In the southern states, a system of indentured servitude flourished, the use of convict labor, who were often chained and had to perform road-building or other hard work carried out in a particular state.
In 1867-1868 Congress passed the Southern Reconstruction Acts, which southern states were divided into five military districts and a military dictatorship was introduced there, carried out by northern troops. The states elected their provisional authorities on the basis of universal suffrage (including blacks), and the Confederates, former active participants rebellion, were deprived of the right to vote.
Blacks found themselves elected to legislative bodies in a number of states. Thus, G. Epteker points out that in the state of Mississippi after the elections of 1870 there were 30 blacks in the House of Representatives, and five in the Senate.
But the main task of the revolution - the redistribution of land, the destruction of the plantation economy, and thereby the political and economic power and dominance of slave owners - was not solved. This made it possible for the reaction in the southern states to gather forces and go on the offensive.
Numerous terrorist groups began to be created, committing murders, beatings and other acts of violence against blacks and their white allies and inciting racial hatred.
Having achieved their goals and fearing a further deepening of the revolution, the bourgeoisie of the North made a deal with slave owners to organize a united front against the labor and farmer movement and the national liberation struggle of the black people.
By the 80s of the XIX century. a conspiracy took shape between the large capitalists of the North and the planters of the South, which in history is called the compromise, or betrayal, by Hayes - Tilden (1877).
Hayes - presidential candidate Republican Party, the party of the northern bourgeoisie, received the support of the planters and was elected president after promising to withdraw northern troops from the South. This compromise ended the reconstruction period.
Most blacks continued to work as sharecroppers in the cotton fields and on farms, often owned by their previous owners or their children. The sharecropping system that developed in the Southern states after the Civil War left the tenant completely at the mercy of the landowner.
The sharecropper had no property, no land, no means of production, no livestock, no money, nothing except labor. Sharecroppers lived in deep poverty, paying the planter half and sometimes two-thirds of the harvest for the right to use the land.
1 August 1619 to the British Colonies North America delivered the first batch of dark-skinned slaves: the British recaptured them from the Portuguese. Slavery would be “inherited” to the United States, and would be abolished only in 1863.
The photo shows white slaves in the fields of Barbados.
They were brought as slaves. English ships transported a lot of human goods to the Americas. They were transported in hundreds of thousands: men, women and even small children.
When they rebelled or simply disobeyed orders, they were severely punished. Slave owners hung them up by their arms and set their legs on fire as punishment. They were burned alive, and the remaining heads were placed on pikes that stood around the markets as a warning to other captives.
We don't need to list everything bloody details, is not it? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.
But are we talking about African slaves now? Kings James the Second and Charles the First also put a lot of effort into promoting slavery - by enslaving the Irish. The famous Englishman Oliver Cromwell developed the practice of dehumanizing his closest neighbors.
The Irish trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners into American slavery. His proclamation of 1625 called for Irish political prisoners to be sent abroad and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, Irish slaves were the most trafficked slaves in Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland soon became the largest source of human goods for English businessmen. Most of the first slaves in the New World were white.
From 1641 to 1652 The British killed more than 500 thousand Irish and sold another 300 thousand into slavery. During this decade alone, the population of Ireland decreased from 1,500 thousand to 600 thousand people. Families were separated because the British did not allow Irish men to take their wives and children with them to America. This left the population of homeless women and children helpless. But the British also sold them through slave auctions.
During the 1650s, more than 100,000 Irish children aged 10-14 were taken from their parents and sold into slavery in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. During the same decade, 52,000 Irish men and women were trafficked to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30 thousand Irish were sold at auction to other places. In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2,000 Irish children to be sent to Jamaica and sold into slavery to English conquistadors.
Today, many avoid calling Irish slaves by the true term - "slaves". The term “indentured servants” is used in their relation. However, in most cases, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Irish were sold as slaves, like common cattle.
At this time, the trade in African slaves was just beginning. There is documentary evidence that African slaves, untainted by the hated Catholic faith and more expensive, were treated much better than the Irish.
In the late 1600s, African slaves fetched a very high price of 50 sterling. Irish slaves were cheaper - no more than 5 sterling. If a planter whipped, branded and beat an Irish slave to death, it was not considered a crime. Death was an expense item, but less significant than the murder of a dear black man. English slave owners used Irish women for their pleasure and profit. Children of slaves were slaves who increased the wealth of their master. Even if an Irish woman somehow gained her freedom, her children remained slaves to the master. Therefore, Irish mothers, even after receiving freedom, rarely left their children and remained in slavery.
The British thought about the best ways using these women (often just girls about 12 years old) to increase profits. Settlers began interbreeding Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves of different skin colors. These new mulattoes were worth more than Irish slaves and allowed settlers to save money by not purchasing more African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish women with blacks continued for several decades and became so widespread that in 1681 a law was passed “prohibiting the practice of mating Irish female slaves with African male slaves for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it prevented slave trading companies from making a profit.
England continued to transport tens of thousands of Irish slaves for over a century. History says that after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to the Americas and Australia. Both African and Irish slaves were treated horribly. One English ship threw 1,302 live slaves into the Atlantic Ocean because there was little food on board.
Few doubt that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery to the fullest extent - on a par with blacks (and in the 17th century - even more so). And also, few doubt that brown mulattoes in the West Indies were mainly the fruits of African-Irish crossbreeding. Only in 1839 did England decide to turn off the satanic road and stop the slave trade. Although this thought did not stop the English pirates from continuing to do this. The new law was the first step in ending this chapter of terrible Irish suffering.
But if anyone, black or white, thinks that slavery only affected Africans, he is completely wrong.
Irish slavery must be remembered and cannot be erased from our memories.
But why isn’t this taught in our public and private schools?! Why isn't this in the history books? Why is this rarely talked about in the media?
The memory of the hundreds of thousands of Irish victims deserves more than a mere mention by an unknown writer.
Their history was rewritten by English pirates. Irish history is almost completely forgotten, as if it never existed.
None of the Irish slaves returned to their homeland and were unable to talk about their ordeals. These are the forgotten slaves. Popular history books avoid mentioning them.
From the book by A.V. Efimov “Essays on the History of the United States. 1492-1870."
Uchpedgiz, Moscow, 1958
The first slaves in America were white slaves, or indentured or indentured servants as they were called. If someone wanted to move to America, and he did not have 6-10 pounds sterling needed to pay for travel, he signed a contract with the entrepreneur in duplicate and agreed to work for five years as a servant-slave to reimburse the costs of transportation overseas . It was brought to America and sold at auction. It was believed that after serving for five years he should receive freedom, but sometimes such people ran away earlier. In other cases, due to new debt, the indentured servant remained in slavery for a second and third term. Convicted criminals were often brought from Europe. They were also sold. This category of indentured servants usually had to work not 5, but 7 years, in order to receive freedom after this period.
Regular trade in indentured servants took place during the 17th and 18th centuries. But in the 18th century. its importance gradually began to decline due to the development of black slavery. The main layer of indentured servants were English and Irish poor peasants and artisans, ruined and deprived of the means of production during the enclosures and industrial revolution in England. Poverty, hunger, and sometimes religious persecution drove these people to a distant overseas country, the living and working conditions in which they could hardly imagine.
Recruiting agents of American landowners and entrepreneurs scoured Europe and lured poor peasants or the unemployed with stories about the “free” life overseas. Kidnappings have become widespread. Recruiters drugged adults and lured children. The poor were then rounded up in the port cities of England and transported to America under the same conditions as cattle were transported. The ships were cramped, the food was scanty; in addition, it often deteriorated, and the settlers during long journey to America were doomed to starvation.
“The horror of what is happening on these ships,” says one of his contemporaries, who himself experienced such a journey, “the stench, fumes, vomiting, various stages of seasickness, fever, dysentery, fever, abscesses, scurvy. Many die horribly."
In colonial newspapers one could often find the following advertisements: “A party of young, healthy workers has just arrived from London, consisting of weavers, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, masons, sawmills, tailors, carriage makers, butchers, furniture makers and other craftsmen. They are sold at a similar price. It can also be exchanged for wheat, bread, flour.” Sometimes slave traders and commission agents conducted a brisk trade simultaneously in black slaves, captured Indians, and indentured servants brought from Europe.
One of the Boston newspapers reported in 1714 that the wealthy merchant Samuel Sewall "is selling several Irish maids, most of them for a period of five years, one Irish servant - a good hairdresser, and four or five handsome negro boys." A few days later, the following advertisement appeared in the same newspaper: “An Indian boy, about 16 years old, a black man, about 20 years old, is for sale. Both speak good English and are suitable for any job.”
There were many cases where indentured servants were beaten to death. The owner lost only the labor of the slave for the period of the contract. The laws of the colonies only in certain cases provided that the owner was obliged to release the servant if he disfigured or disfigured him. Runaways of white slaves were a widespread phenomenon in the colonies. Servants who were caught were severely punished, they were branded, the term of their contract was increased, and sometimes they were sentenced to death. However, some white slaves managed to escape to border settlements in the West. Here they joined the ranks of poor squatters who seized lands that belonged to large landowners or land speculators. The squatters cleared a plot of forest, raised virgin soil, built a log cabin, and repeatedly took up arms against the colonial authorities when they tried to drive them away from the occupied plots. Sometimes indentured servants rebelled. In some cases, white slaves conspired with blacks and jointly opposed their masters and slave owners.
Gradually, black slavery replaced the indentured labor system. A Negro slave was more profitable. Maintaining a slave cost half as much. The slave owner could exploit the slave throughout the entire life of the latter, and not just during the period of time stipulated by the contract. The slave's children also became the property of the owner. It was also discovered that the use of black slave labor was more profitable for the colonialists than the enslavement of Indians or poor whites. Indians enslaved received assistance from free Indian tribes. It was more difficult to turn into slaves Indians who did not know exploitation and were not accustomed to forced labor, or poor whites brought from Europe, where slavery had long ceased to exist, than to use the labor of Negro slaves who were imported from Africa, where among the Negro peoples agriculture became widespread, and the development public relations led to the emergence of slavery among many tribes, where entire slave states existed. In addition, the blacks were stronger and more resilient than the Indians.
Although during the colonial period the plantation economy was partially subsistence, serving the needs of the plantation itself, providing it with food, homemade fabrics, etc., but even then, in the 17th–18th centuries, the plantation produced for the foreign market; tobacco, for example, was largely exported to England, and through it reached other European countries. Slaves for the plantation were, of course, also bought at foreign market, and some were “bred” on the plantation itself. Slave owners said, for example, that it was more profitable to buy a woman than a man, “since in a couple of years the woman can be sold “with offspring”...
Slaves were imported mainly for the tobacco plantations of the southern states. They were sent to work in batches; they worked up to 18–19 hours a day, driven by the overseer's whip. At night the slaves were locked up and the dogs were let loose. It is believed that the average life expectancy of a Negro slave on plantations was 10 years, and in the 19th century. even 7 years...
The role of Jews in the slave trade. Shocking truth. Part 1
In 1992, the American Muslim Mission published a book, Secret Relations Between Blacks and Jews, which caused an uproar. It quoted prominent Jewish historians who argued that the basis of the African slave trade, and indeed the entire slave trade over the past 2 thousand years in the Western world, lay Jewish roots...
The role of Jews in the slave trade. Shocking truth. Part 2
Among all modern interracial problems, the most famous are the problems of relations between blacks and whites in the United States of America. On many right-wing websites you can find discussions of this situation and attempts to answer the questions: how did Americans end up living like this and who is to blame. In search of answers, authors usually plunge into the history of the 20th century, or, at most, until the end Civil War in USA. In fact, according to the author, such an approach, in principle, cannot provide a complete answer. To really understand some of the roots of the problem, we need to delve even deeper into history.
It should be noted that all black issues, fortunately, are not directly related to modern Russian politics, but a correct understanding of the history of the African-American issue allows us to better understand some of the dangers of modern government policy.
Let's start with mathematics
Slavery
North and South
White and black
A harbinger of a storm
War
Alternative South Victory
Morality
Let's start with mathematics
But let's get back to our sheep. Currently, more than 35 million blacks live in the United States, representing more than 12% of the country's population. It is known from history that this percentage was not constant and varied greatly. According to the first census of 1790, there were 750 thousand blacks in the United States, which accounted for more than 19% of the population. The percentage of blacks in society did not change much until 1840, after which it began to decline markedly. Before the Civil War, blacks numbered 4,440 thousand, or about 14% of the population. After the Civil War, the percentage of blacks in society fell for almost a hundred years! Falling by 50 to less than 10%. After which a slight relative growth began and in our time, as already mentioned, blacks in the United States are more than 12%.
At the same time, during 70 years of slavery the number of blacks increased almost 6 times! From 750 to 4440 thousand. Over the 70 years since the end of the civil war, their number has increased a little more than 2.5 times!
This may seem paradoxical, but in reality everything is simple. The increase in the number of blacks during the years of slavery was mainly not due to natural growth, but due to the importation of new slaves. It is obvious that the influx of blacks into the United States will stop immediately. They will not go there voluntarily, and no one will be taken by force, because... no one will buy them. In this case, the entire increase in blacks will occur due to natural reproduction, as happened after the Civil War. (By the end of the 20th century, black immigration began to play a small role, but it is not very significant and we will ignore it for simplicity). So, if we assume that the increase will be approximately the same as it was after the abolition of slavery, then by 1860 there would have been about 2 million, i.e. more than two times less than in real history. And it is quite possible that there would have been even fewer of them, since those generations were poorly adapted to the US climate and had a significant bias towards men. If the trend continues in our time, the modern United States would have more than two times fewer blacks than now, and would make up no more than 6% of the population. Obviously, under such conditions, there would be much fewer racial problems in the United States. Moreover, in some periods of the history of the 20th century, their number could have been less than 4%, which generally could have sent the history of relations between blacks and whites in a different direction. There are small groups of Indians in the USA that do not cause any serious problems and collisions.
Slavery
But history turned out differently. In 1784, T. Jefferson's proposal to abolish slavery was rejected in Congress by a majority of one vote. Perhaps today's American haters of blacks should have portraits of all those who voted for slavery on hand so that they could spit on them whenever interracial problems escalate. But they don't.
Maybe the abolition of slavery was impossible in principle? It's hard to judge now, but many states abolished slavery and only benefited from it. In the early 19th century, slavery was gradually banned in various European colonies. The slave trade was prohibited (although it was carried out smuggled for a long time). The blacks of Haiti themselves abolished slavery, and when the French began to resist this, they slaughtered every single white person. This did not bring much happiness to the black Haitians, but it should have made everyone think smart people. Is it worth it? In general, the chances of a ban on slavery soon after US independence were quite real. But it didn’t work out. The American South became slave-owning.
Maybe the benefits of slavery in the south were so great that they paid for all the existing problems? Well. Let's consider what happened in the South and North of the United States during that era. Some fans of southerners believe that life there was happy, and a state system almost ideal for whites was created. But one only needs to look at US immigration statistics to doubt this. As you know, the number of immigrants from Europe was huge. However, almost all of them, specifically 7 out of every 8, went to the northern states. Whites traveled to the South very rarely. Moreover, many white Southerners went in search of better life
on North.
North and South In fact, two different socio-political systems have developed in the United States, The North managed to create the fourth economy in the world!
There was a huge number of industrial enterprises there for those times, railways were built, machine tools and steamships were produced. All laws were designed to help businesses, including small and medium-sized ones. It was the North that created America as it became. It was the North, and the colonization of the West by white farmers, that created the idea of America as a land of incredible opportunity for the common man. This is what attracted masses of Europeans to the country: workers, inventors, entrepreneurs. Capital was created there, economic life was in full swing, new inventions were introduced, and industry developed. What about the South? The South has become a typical "raw materials superpower." One of the flagships of the Industrial Revolution was the textile industry, which required huge quantities of cotton. AND most of This cotton was supplied to Europe from the American South. The entire life of the southern states was subordinated to the cultivation and sale of cotton. The transport system of the South was purely colonial, aimed primarily at ensuring the export of cotton abroad.
Naturally, there were many conflicts between the two parts of the United States. The North sought to develop its industry, and demanded laws that would allow it to develop. The South, on the contrary, wanted only freedom of trade in cotton, and free access of goods from abroad. Back in the first half of the century, things almost came to an attempt to secede South Carolina from the Union. Then the current US President, a southerner and himself a native of this state, solemnly swore that he himself would lead troops there and outweigh the rebels. The matter was resolved.
White and black
But who received these main dividends, from King Cotton, and why did whites not really take root in the South?
The main beneficiaries were plantation families. If you count all slave owners and members of their families, there were approximately 2 million of the South's 9 million population. This is the case if we take into account those who owned at least one slave. Approximately 8,000 families owned more than 50 slaves. They owned approximately 75% of all slaves. They were the ones who received the main dividends from the existing system.
What did the rest of the whites who didn’t have slaves do? Farming was once developed in the South, but by the time of the Civil War, it had largely lost competition to slave plantations and there were relatively few of them left. Whites had the opportunity to go and work as overseers on plantations, which some did. But this provided a rather limited number of places, less than 20 thousand. Industrial enterprises
there was very little. At the same time, white artisans experienced serious competition from blacks. Some slave owners managed to support their slaves on 2 cents a day. This was, however, somewhat extreme, usually blacks were more expensive, for example, in factories in Mississippi, a black cost 12 cents a day, but a white worked for 30 cents. Therefore, the whites had to be left without work. Besides. in cases where workers tried to achieve higher wages and better working conditions, they could well be demonstratively kicked out and replaced with black slaves. For example, the Navy Department, without a shadow of a doubt, replaced white workers with slaves when building a dock in Norfolk when it turned out that it was cheaper. Whites wrote complaints and protested, but no one cared. Therefore, an enterprising person could try to create some kind of business, rightly expecting that he would find a significant number of solvent buyers. But this was not the case in the South. How could you create a small business there? The planter, the most paying client, orders goods from Paris and uses slaves for services. Negroes and slaves do not have money and do not create demand. And the relatively small number of the white middle class did not provide the opportunity to develop as in the North. So white southerners, who had no advantages from slavery, went to the North. For good luck and happiness.
It is necessary to pay attention to some more features of such an economy. Since on various works set slaves, then people formed a belief about many types of work as something unworthy white man, who should be a "gentleman". Contempt for work develops. Such a person would rather commit any meanness and crime than stoop to “undignified” work.
But morality suffered not only from this. Racial mixing in the South was quite noticeable. By 1860, about 10% of slaves were actually mulattoes, descendants of whites and blacks. There is nothing surprising. Slave owners always used their slaves for sexual pleasure. Some of them released their children, but there were many who, without a twinge of conscience, kept them in slavery, and even sold their own children. Some authors claim that concubines were even specially bred for sale, which were obtained from numerous crossings of blacks and whites. Done correctly, they were anthropologically white enough, but had enough black blood to be legally held as slaves.
The social system of the South naturally had its own scientific and ideological justification. Books like “The Negro’s Place in Nature” and “Cannibals are All!” were published, and studies were conducted that proved the racial inferiority of blacks. However, the system failed at times. Some authors even agreed that not only blacks could be inferior, and that it would be “fair” to make some whites slaves as well. Besides. there were a certain number of mulatto and even black slaveholders.
What about the blacks? How did they react to what was happening? They reacted as expected. There was not a single year without a serious conspiracy or attempted rebellion. Moreover, problems could arise without any particular reason, simply in the routine of life. In 1831, six blacks simply killed their masters with scythes and axes. Within a few hours there were several dozen of them. Despite the fact that the Whites soon managed to suppress this uprising, the panic was such that even guns were brought to Washington for defense. And there were many such cases. It is quite natural that whites had to live in conditions of constant combat readiness. Everyone had weapons. Police raids, patrols, etc. were carried out regularly. Interestingly, even those whites who did not own a single slave participated in this.
We can say that the slave owners managed to implement the principle - "privatization of profits, socialization of costs." Since they personally had the main dividends from slavery, but the whole world had to fight the problems. In general, slave owners did well. According to the laws of that time, slaves also had a vote, only less than 3/5 of the white one. In other words, 50 slaves had 30 votes. True, their owner controlled these voices. Is it any wonder that slave owners, who made up a not particularly large percentage of the population, reigned supreme in politics.
A harbinger of a storm
This is how we lived. By the beginning of the Civil War, only 10% of American industry was located in the South. And 12 million people (4 million blacks and over 8 million whites) out of a US population of over 30 million. (Moreover, not all states of the South joined the Confederacy, so the real ratio during the war was even worse.) In fact, it was two states in one. What we are accustomed to associate with the United States was in the North. And the South, according to many historians, was more like states Latin America, like Brazil, Mexico, etc.
Except that the language was English, and closer to the North of the United States. Within the United States itself, contradictions grew more and more. White southerners who despised work called northerners “dirty mechanics, vile operators, crooked farmers,” etc. The northerners apparently did not lag behind. In this state, two waves of settlers clashed, white northern farmers and southern slave owners. It came to a local war. Both sides formed combat detachments, attacked enemy settlements, and carried out real military operations. The important thing is that both sides considered compromise impossible. Or slave owners will come to the state, populate it with blacks, and there will be no place for the mass of white farmers and workers. Or the state will become free, with agriculture based on free farming, and then slave owners will not be able to establish their hegemony in it. The coexistence of free farmers and slave plantations was considered impossible by everyone. White won, i.e. farmers. The state became free.
But the slave owners struck again. A new law was passed. If previously a slave who fled to the North was comparatively safe, then according to this law he had to be returned to the South. Moreover, the law was formulated in a very interesting way. It said nothing about slavery, but it did say that “it is unconstitutional to limit the ability to own property.” Since slaves were property, it turned out that slavery was now possible anywhere in the United States. This caused a lot of problems and made the North incredibly angry.
When slave owners in the city of Boston decided to capture a runaway slave, it almost resulted in fighting. To bring one black man out of the city, the marines, artillery, and other auxiliary forces had to be called in. Just don't think that Boston was populated by black friends. Just a few years before these events, abolitionists in this city could simply be killed without trial. And all sorts of beatings of blacks and opponents of slavery, smearing them with tar and pogroms of newspapers were quite commonplace. Well, the residents didn’t like blacks. But after they adopted the new law, the northerners realized that they could all be at the mercy of a slave-owning oligarchy, and the mood changed dramatically. In the very places where supporters of blacks had previously been beaten and killed, supporters of slavery began to be beaten and killed. These were last years
before the Civil War.
It became clear that the North and South in the old form would no longer get along. Someone must impose their will on another. Lincoln was elected president and southerners began preparing for war. They carried it out to the highest level. For some time, important government posts remained in their hands. As a result, almost all the weapons stockpiles ended up in the South. The bulk of the gold reserves and currency also ended up there. Many military units were located so that after the outbreak of the rebellion they had to either go over to the Confederate side or capitulate. Some of the warships ended up in the South, albeit a small one; here the southerners could do little. The southern police were much better prepared than the northern ones. There was good moral and ideological preparation for the fight. A powerful spy network has been spread in the North. Perhaps even an ideal strategist would hardly have been able to prepare better.
From the point of view of the southerners, the political and economic situation was also well taken into account. Cotton was the most important raw material of the then economy; its shortage led to a powerful industrial crisis in the North and Europe. In addition, for European countries it was advantageous to deal with an independent South rather than part of the United States. All this was supposed to force Europe to recognize the Confederation and help it in the fight. The North had to be defeated.
But as it turned out, there was a mistake in all their plans in DNA The Civil War caused a very serious industrial crisis in Great Britain, but by the time it became clear to everyone that, bad as the lack of cotton was for them, interference in American affairs could lead to an intercontinental war with completely unclear consequences. Therefore, Europe chose not to provide assistance to the Confederation.
Faith in the power of the raw cotton superpower turned out to be nothing. On the fronts of the war, the southerners, thanks to their training and better fighting qualities, initially won victories, but it turned out that no one-time powerful military strike could destroy a populated and powerful state. But the South was unable to organize a series of powerful attacks and attacks. The North outnumbered the South in white population by 4 times, 9 times! Interestingly, even Lincoln was elected only by Northern votes. They were quite enough for victory. The North had a more developed transport network that met the needs of the war; it produced more food, weapons and ammunition. During the war, the southerners tried to establish the production of weapons and food, but the results were not satisfactory; the army of the South always experienced a shortage. The North easily recruited armies superior to the southerners; they were well supplied with food and weapons. Not in the first stages of the war, which were generally favorable for the southerners, the northerners occupied important strategic points that allowed them to strangle the South in a blockade. Soon the transport system of the South was paralyzed, and when the law on the freedom of slaves was announced, the southerners had no chance at all. The question may arise: why did the North, despite its superiority, defeat the South in only 4 years? This was the time during which the North slowly realized its superiority. After all, we should not forget that for the southerners the war was a matter of life and death, they threw ALL their resources, all their strength into it. The North also dealt with other matters during the war. In particular, at the height of hostilities, construction of the first transcontinental railroad began. Industry and the economy continued to develop. Only part of the North's energy was spent on war. The rest, as before, was directed to development.
The Civil War showed that serious distortions in social, political and economic development cannot be corrected by any heroism, no skill, no mastery.
Alternative South Victory
What if the South still won? It should be noted that the complete defeat of the North was impossible under any circumstances. The southerners themselves understood this in those rare moments when they invaded the territory of the Union. The attitude of the northerners towards the war immediately changed, they began to take it more seriously, and the southerners had to retreat. After which the usual discord reigned in the North again. But it is quite possible to imagine that the South managed to defend its borders, and the Confederacy became truly independent. In this case, the southerners would try not to change anything in their lives, return to their estates and houses, hang their guns on the wall and tell their children about their heroism. It is possible that they would continue to import slaves from Africa and soon their number would exceed the number of whites. At the same time, poor white people, not finding themselves in the Confederacy, would emigrate to the USA. To understand their further history, you can look at Brazil, which is very similar to the world described. It is not for nothing that some of the southern planters left for Brazil after the Civil War. Some sources put the number of southerners who went there at 20,000! At present, Brazil is a country of strong racial mixing and enormous social problems and contrasts. By the way, the area where most Americans settled is called Americana.
However, as in Brazil, most likely it would not have happened. In real history, just a few decades after the Civil War, the United States began expanding into Latin American countries, without encountering serious resistance anywhere. In our alternative reality, a country for expansion (the Confederation) would be nearby. It is unlikely that the southerners would have developed their own industry. But over time, Confederate cotton would no longer be such an important raw material, and the South's importance in the world trading system would decline markedly. And the northerners would develop their industry and accept immigrants, just like in real history. It would start after a while new conflict. But this time the contrast would be higher. Difference in population size and level industrial development would be even higher. Northerners would invade the South with repeating rifles, machine guns, long-range artillery, armored trains, field telegraphs, and new types of canned foods. What could the southerners be able to oppose to them?
Morality
The article turned out to be too long and the author considers it necessary to clearly derive a moral from everything described above. Or rather, quite a lot of morals can be drawn. The simplest conclusion confirms the well-known thesis - “No blacks - no racism!” If the Americans from the south had not forcibly brought blacks into their country, then there would not have been many modern problems. There would simply be a lot fewer blacks. And after blacks were brought in in such numbers, many of the subsequent events became predetermined.
In addition, importing incomplete workers will not bring long-term benefits modern state. He can enrich a relatively small group that is usually in power. This only causes harm to all other citizens. The presence of such workers collapses the labor market, preventing workers from fighting for their rights and improving their lives. This instills in citizens contempt for many types of work and a decline in morality. In addition, the presence of such free, or almost free, workers undermines domestic effective demand and does not allow domestic business to develop. Only entrepreneurship related to the exploitation of blacks/chocks is developing, as well as business aimed at export. As a result, all the prerequisites arise for the impoverishment of citizens and for the creation of a semi-colonial type economy. No innovation, no technical development is possible with such workers. A country that relies on such workers is heading towards industrial and political collapse. At the same time, all this helps in the best possible way to create an oligarchy with all the ensuing consequences.
I would especially like to highlight all the poverty and futility of the resource superpowers. Long-term development along this path can seem very effective. But this is only the external shine. In any serious foreign policy clash, all the bets of its politicians will be beaten, and the country will suffer defeat.
For long term and promising development, the country must have its own capacious domestic market, which is possible only if it has its own developed industry, its own small and medium-sized businesses, the freedom of citizens and the absence of the possibility of free exploitation.
PS. All images from Wikipedia
On February 1, 1865, the process that abolished slavery began in the United States. Today, when issues of tolerance and racial tolerance are relevant throughout the world, it is useful to remember how slavery was destroyed in the United States.
Thirteenth Amendment
For American slaves, thirteen turned out to be a lucky number. According to the text of the amendment, slavery and forced labor were prohibited in the United States and places under its jurisdiction. Interestingly, this did not apply to criminals, who could be “turned” into slaves as punishment. The Thirteenth Amendment was adopted by the American Congress during the Civil War on January 31, 1865. It then went through the stages of ratification and entry into force. Amendments were also made to the second section of Section 4 of the article, which dealt with facilitating the escape of slaves.
A year ago
With the entry into force of the Thirteenth Amendment to the American Constitution in December 1865, the beginning of the destruction of the system that had existed in Britain's American colonies since 1619 was laid. During 1865, 27 states adopted the amendment, enough to make it lawful. However, some states ratified the document much later: Kentucky only in 1976, and Mississippi in 2013. So, in fact, slavery in all states of America officially ceased to exist only in February last year.
Thanks Spielberg
Some Southern states refused to accept the amendment outright. In Mississippi, a vote to ratify the amendment was held only in 1995, but the matter was not completed. The reasons why authorities did not file official documents with the Archivist of the United States are still unknown. The “error” was discovered by accident by Professor Ranjan Batra, who, after watching Spielberg’s film “Lincoln,” decided to check when each state adopted the amendment. And I discovered such a paradoxical thing: the Mississippi authorities ratified the amendment, but did not properly complete the documentation.
Lincoln
Lincoln is the liberator of American slaves. This saying is well known to everyone school days. However, the most important thing for Lincoln was not the abolition of slavery, but the salvation of the Union. He wrote: “If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it, and if I had to free all the slaves to save it, I would do it too.” During the course of a protracted war, full of failures, there was a change in presidential views: from the gradual emancipation of slaves on a compensatory basis to the complete abolition of slavery. The amendment not only changed the nature of the war, which now became “liberation,” but also allowed the army to be fed with new blood: by the end of the war, there were 180 thousand former slaves.
Supply and demand"
The main “supplier” of slaves was Africa. In total, from 1500 to 1900, a total of different estimates up to 16.5 million people; in total, the African continent has lost 80 million people in its history. The top “leaders” included Central Africa, Bights of Benin and Biafra. IN late XVII centuries, every fourth ship under the British flag carried slaves on board. Of the five slaves, only one made it "safely" to his new "home", dying during a "man hunt" or as a result of the appalling conditions of transportation. The leading market players were the British - they transported 2.5 million people to America, followed by the French (1.2 million) and the Dutch (500 thousand). But the most active were the Portuguese - their “catch” amounted to 4.5 million people.
We are not slaves! Slaves are not us!
In the early 90s of the last century Nobel laureate in economics, Robert William Fogel proved that in the first half of the 19th century, the labor of slaves in the United States was more effective than the labor of free people. His research demonstrated that in 1860 Agriculture The South, using slave labor, was 35% more efficient than the agriculture of the North, which was based on free labor. Vogel also concluded that the cause of the Civil War was not the economic inefficiency of slavery, but the attitude of freedom-loving Americans who were unwilling to accept slavery as a system. By the middle of the 19th century, the abolitionist movement for the abolition of slavery, which had previously used mainly “peaceful” methods, began to resort to more radical steps.
"Freedom Trains"
In the 50s of the 19th century, the name of the former slave Frederick Douglass was known to every slave who dreamed of freedom. The underground leader Douglas and his supporters organized an illegal channel through which slaves were transported from the South to Canada or the Northern states: through safe houses, fugitive slaves were “transferred” on the “hand to hand” principle. Safehouses were called “stations,” and those who accompanied runaway slaves were called “conductors.” The most famous "conductor" Harriet Tubman, a former slave, saved 300 people. If the “thieves” were arrested, they would face an inevitable death penalty. It is not known what appeared first: the railway terminology that the underground used for the code, or the legend of the “freedom train”, which allegedly moved through a tunnel built by abolitionists and transported fugitives. Historians claim that the “subway” transported about 60 thousand slaves before the start of the Civil War.
AND The history of the American slave trade is a dirty and vile affair.
African slaves began to be imported into the territory of the modern United States of America in the 17th century. The first permanent settlement of English colonists in America, James Town, was founded in 1607.
The importation of blacks and the introduction of slavery were a consequence of the need for labor in the south of North America, where large agricultural enterprises were established - tobacco, rice and other plantations. In the North, where the plantation economy, due to special economic and climatic conditions, was less common, slavery was never used on such a scale as in the South.
Black slaves were mostly from the west coast of Africa. Among them were blacks of the Fulbe, Wolof, Yoruba, Ibo, Ashanti, Fanti, Hausa, Dahomey, Bantu and others tribes.
The slave trade took on its widest dimensions after 1713, when England achieved the right of asiento - the exclusive right to trade in black slaves. After this, English warships checked other sailing ships. American slave traders and smugglers threw slaves overboard and drowned them as British warships approached. How many people died this way - alas, no one will know.
When a ship arrived for “live goods,” the agents began to negotiate with the captains. Each black man was shown personally. The captains forced the blacks to move his fingers, arms, legs and whole body to make sure that he had no fractures. Even the teeth were checked. If there were not enough teeth, then a lower price was given for the black man. Each black cost approximately 100 gallons of rum, 100 pounds of gunpowder, or 18-20 dollars. Women under 25, pregnant or not, were worth full price, but after 25 they lost a quarter of the price.
Then the slaves began to be transported in boats, 4-6 blacks at a time, onto ships. On board the ship, the blacks were divided into three groups. Men, women and children. Everyone was loaded into different compartments. Children were often left on deck. At least 600 slaves were loaded onto the ship with a displacement of 120 tons. As the slave traders themselves said, “ a Negro should not take up more space in the hold than in a coffin" The ships were built specifically to transport slaves.
General scheme placement of slaves in the holds of a slave ship called "Brookes", (1789).
The ships were on the road for 3-4 months. All this time the slaves were in terrible conditions. The holds were very crowded, the blacks were shackled. There was very little water and food. There was no thought of taking the slaves out of the hold to relieve themselves.
Young black women were often picked up and raped. One black in five reached his destination in the United States. The rest died on the road.
Punishment of an African slave on board a ship for disobedience (1792).
Upon arrival in America, slaves were first fed, treated, and then sold.
Slave prices varied over time. For example, in 1795 the price was $300, by 1849 it had risen to $900, and on the eve of the Civil War it reached $1,500-2,000 per slave. Sometimes they were moved to other cities and sold at auction. Often children who were already grown up were sold separately from their mother. Children began working on plantations at the age of 4.
Blacks worked up to 18-19 hours a day. At night they were locked up and the dogs were let out. The average life expectancy of a black slave on plantations was 10 years, and in the 19th century it was 7 years. For poor work of a slave, the hands and feet of his children were cut off.
Conditions were slightly better for those slaves who served as servants, cooks, and nannies. This was happiness for the slave.
Slaves had no rights and freedoms and were considered the property of the owner, with whom the owner could do whatever he wanted. They were branded like cattle. Brands used in the 19th century to mark the skin of slaves by burning.
The Virginia Slave Code, adopted in 1705, prohibited slaves from leaving plantations without written permission.
The ears of a slave who escaped and was caught were cut off. Slaves were prohibited from traveling in groups of more than 7 people unless accompanied by whites. Any white man who met a black man outside the plantation had to demand a ticket from him, and if he did not have one, he could give him 20 lashes.
If a black man tried to defend himself or respond to a blow, he was subject to execution. For being outside the house after 9 pm, blacks in Virginia were quartered.
The newspapers gave a lot of good advice. For example, advice was published on the reproduction of slaves in order to increase the welfare of slave owners. recommended the use of forced sex between slaves, sexual relations with a master and slaves, to get as many children as possible. Slaves who constantly gave birth were encouraged in every possible way. The main goal is to produce new slaves without unnecessary expenses on buying new slaves.
There were many Irish slaves in the USA. African slaves, untainted by adherence to the hated Catholic doctrine, were often treated even better than their white Irish fellow sufferers.
African slaves were highly valued, but Irish slaves were much cheaper. The practice of mating Irish female slaves with African males continued for several decades and became so widespread that in 1681 a law was passed "prohibiting the mating of Irish females and African males for the purpose of producing slaves for sale." This ban was introduced solely because it harmed the profits of the English slave transport company.
There were blacks in the USA who owned slaves and Indian tribes who owned slaves. If a white man married an Indian girl, he automatically received slaves according to the laws of some tribes. There were also white slaves in the USA. Among the “white slaves”, the majority were Irish, captured by the British during the conquest of Ireland in 1649-1651.
During the period from 1663 to 1863, over 250 black uprisings and conspiracies were recorded. Black uprisings were brutally suppressed.
The war between the North and South did not occur because of a desire to free the country from slavery. It was simply expensive to buy slaves for the factories of the North, but to get cheap “free” ones labor for a penny it was much more profitable for the North...
Slavery was abolished after the end of the Civil War (1861–1865) and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in December 1865. The last state to ratify this amendment was Mississippi in 2013!!! year.
Info and photos (C) Internet. Basic information:
Efimov A.V. Essays on the history of the United States. 1492—1870 Uchpedgiz, Moscow, 1958
