generic North/south confederate thread

[Ned]

Back on the slavery issue for a moment, could the plantation system have succeeded by any other means? According the MtG, white workers died off at the rate of up to 80% a year. Obviously, the work was hard and the living conditions were harsh.

[SlowwHand]

80%.
Was a source cited, because I don't believe that.

[Ned]

Slowwhand, the stats suggest that workers would quit or flee if they could. This is why slavery was used so that they could not flee. This also explains why they were black - because they would have no place to go where they could mix in.

But still, why was the work so hard and deadly? Or was it the lack of proper housing and food?

[Nubclear]

[SlowwHand]

Let me tell you again, Ned.
Indians were used as slaves as prevalently than Blacks.
They were cheaper and easier to come by.
They didn't come by boat after being sold by another tribe, dying all the way.
The biggest difference is that generations of Indians haven't stampeded to the EEOC to seek restitution for their great grandfather's trials and tribulations.


And Tassadar, your various flag-burning is getting pathetic.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
80%.
Was a source cited, because I don't believe that.

The specifics are in a print article of the American Institute of Archaeology from a few years back. It's not on the web. Data is based on church records, extant plantation records, archaeological finds of common graves, etc.

This extreme number didn't apply to all bonded or indentured servants, but to those worked as fieldhands in the 17th Century, prior to the really big increase in slaveholdings.

Factors affecting mortality rate included generally poor health and nutrition with many coming out of debtor's prison, then going on a long sea journey for the first and last time in their lives (great nutrition and sanitation there), and a lack of immunity to indigenous subtropical diseases from malaria to yellow fever, scarlet feaver, diptheria, etc. The well-known acclimatization of limeys to heat and sun was also a factor, since these people would work in the sun during the summer all day every day.

In contrast, African slaves were picked for their physical condition among a larger number of candidates, and they were as a group better adapted to physical labor in hot climates, plus they had better resistance to a lot of the diseases in the SE US, particularly malaria.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
But still, why was the work so hard and deadly? Or was it the lack of proper housing and food?

Flea, tick and skeeter-borne diseases, 90-100 degree heat, and working your ass in the sun from early light to sundown, then after dark . Plus the occasional pissed off Indian.

Keep in mind that the original agricultural areas mostly had to be carved by hand out of hardwood forests, and the south has (and used to have much more) nasty swampland full of swamp-critters and disease.

[Ned]

Well, MtG, you make a good case for the pratical necessity of slavery to for plantation work in that era.

What happened in 1865 when the slaves were freed?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well the former slaves had to work. Most of them, I suspect, became very low paid farmers on the plantation owners' land.

[SlowwHand]

Not all of them even wanted to leave, and didn't.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
And what does this passage of the Constitution imply to the argument that States lost no sovereignty and had no allegience to Union? How could a member of a State government not betray a solemn oath to support the Constitution if he or she votes to seceed?

That's more of a problem for the so-called neutral states, which is where the sovereignty question is most interesting. If the state remained a part of the United States, and did not terminate it's association, then state officers are bound to follow the Constitution. They are not bound to follow any exercise of Federal power, but only those exercises of power proper under the Constitution, and therein the distinction lies.

By seceding, the states dissolved their bonds and released themselves from the obligations, and rights, conferred by the Constitution. Only if secession itself is clearly prohibited are they violating their oaths.

"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

The Supremacy Clause has long been held to be limited to only those matters addressed by the Constitution - that is, if a Federal law, addressing an issue which the Federal government is permitted to address, conflicts with a state law, then the state officers are bound to follow the Federal law as controlling. Examples of this include things like return of slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Alabama Supreme Court's overriding Judge Moore's order to disregard the valid Writ of Injunction issued by the Federal District Court.

An example of the limitations of the Supremacy Clause can be found in the short-lived Federal law (enacted under Clinton and the last Dem Congress, IIRC) regulating possession of firearms within 1000 feet of a school. SCOTUS invalidated the law, as the Federal government could not demonstrate any authority under the Constitution for such regulations - although states were certainly free to do so. Thus state officers who contended the law was not constitutional were not bound to support Federal law or Federal action - only the Constititution and laws made under it. There is no oath to support, carry out, or abide by any extraconstitutional act.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
Well, MtG, you make a good case for the pratical necessity of slavery to for plantation work in that era.

What happened in 1865 when the slaves were freed?

When my dad was a kid growing up on the Kentucky - West Va. border area, one of his uncles, Lafayette Wellman (known as Lafe (rhymes with safe) to everyone), had a spread along the Big Sandy river, and they'd had slaves up to the 13th Amendment. There was one old ex-slave, widowered, still around when my dad and his siblings were kids. He'd stuck around (there hadn't been many slaves, but they all moved off to the cities except him, and later his wife), ended up being given 40 acres and helped to build a house, then ended up the rest of his life as the paid caretaker and de facto manager of the Wellman farm, because the Wellman family all basically moved into town.

Some ex-slaves got lucky like that, some got city jobs up north, some ended up sharecropping, some ended up in the ghettos - with millions of people, you had millions of outcomes, although for most the outcomes weren't particularly good.