As Donald Trump completes his
nomination for the Republican party, a common consensus among pundits
is that this is the death of the party of Lincoln. These five
articles are dedicated to the idea that the Republican party in 2015,
or even in 1960, had long abandoned the principles of Lincoln's
Presidency. Though I admit this last one, number five, has very
little to do with Lincoln.
The first
article examined the transforming Republican
Party Platform from 1860 to 1944.
The second
article considered three crucial components of
Lincoln's political philosophy, only hinted at in the 1860 party
platform.
The third
article briefly investigated the true
inheritors of Lincoln's ideas, with a focus on Theodore Roosevelt.
The fourth
article, returned to the era of the Civil War to evaluate the
successes and failures of the Radical Republicans.
This fifth and final article in the
series will look at the Southern Democrats and slavery.
In the Southern States of 1860, owning
slaves was a fact of life, just as a family owning two cars is today.
Of course, that doesn't mean that one-hundred percent of southerners
owned a slave, just as not all American families own two cars.
To clarify, in the States of the
Confederacy, (SC,
GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL, VA, NC, TN, AR ), nearly one third of
households owned at least one slave. This is, admittedly, only about
half the amount of families in the United States that own two cars
(57%), but both are (or were) important in their time.
While
two thirds of white southerners did not own slaves, those who did
were often the elite members of society. Slavery brought comfort,
prestige, and greater economic opportunity for the master and his
family. To own a slave was to expand ones production at a minimal
cost. For this reason, slavery was a more efficient investment than
almost any other, including railway bonds. Economists estimate that
each slave generated a roughly thirteen percent return, which
surpasses railway investment in 1860 (six percent). If slavery still
existed, one would have made a larger profit in it, than investing in
the United States stock market from 1950 to 2009. In those years an
average investor earned roughly seven percent including inflation.
Owning
a slave demonstrated to the community the owner's wealth and
increased their standing. To own a slave, for those who meant to
take full value of their investment by providing proper clothing,
shelter, and sustenance, meant that one had to be able to provide for
the slave. Once the owning and the maintaining were begun, then the
master would have access to economic advancement, and if successful
and ambitious, an expanding workforce of slaves. This would then
require land, if land was not already owned, and the owning of more
land would further expand the prestige of the owner.
But
of course, the horror of enslaving a person and the atrocities beyond
merely owning, convinced enough citizens to bring slavery to an end.
Today, except for a small collection of fanatics (whose numbers
seemed to have swelled in parallel to Donald Trump's success in the
Republican Primary) the citizens of the United States view the
history of slavery with disgust. More than disgust, it is seen as a
terrible aberration, a horrible mistake that couldn't be repeated by
a more civilized people.
In
reviewing slavery, there are quite a few different ways to approach
the numbers. As mentioned about almost one third of families in
rebellion owned slaves, but since the white population of the South
was five million, and the Northern population was twenty-three
million (including slave owners in the border states), the total of
slave owners was only about five to eight percent of all families.
This does not even approach the amount of families in 2016 that own
two cars (fifty-seven percent), a computer (probably high eighties,
low nineties), but is near to the percent of adults that fly in a
year (thirty-nine).
These
numbers are relevant, because just as the people of 2016 look back on
the 1860's with the profound disbelief that people could justify
owning other people, the people of fifty or a hundred years from now
may well look back on the early 2000's and be horrified of the
enslavement that we enacted. Perhaps you're surprised. On
consideration it may be possible to remember something from the news.
But, this isn't about the lack of proper wages in the United States,
or the near-slavery of Asian manufacturing from which Americans buy
their consumer goods, or even sexual exploitation by illegal
industries around the globe.
It's
about how humanity has decided that the Earth is an object to
conquer, subdue, and consume. Perhaps someone out there is rolling
their eyes. Everyone's heard it before, but it is true. In the
pursuit of the same prestige, wealth, and comfort of the Southern
slave owner, most of the members of our society (myself included),
are part of the conquest of the world. This isn't about some
emotional nostalgia, some attempt to protect some cute chimpanzee in
some distant forest, but about how we perceive the world, and also
how future generations will evaluate us.
The
human race is currently dedicated to one proposition. All the land
is ours, and we'll use it for three purposes: to house people, to
produce food, and to create gadgets and energy to power them. Almost
all human use of land fits into these three categories. The first
two are obviously intertwined. There needs to be space for humanity
to live, and food for those people to eat. If land is not being used
for either of these purposes, it is because it is unsuitable for them
or people haven't gotten to it yet. As soon as a solution if found,
a method by which to transform unproductive soil to a garden, it will
happen. Since the ancient agricultural revolution began, humanity
has never failed to expand, and to produce more food to support
expansion. In the same manner, since the Industrial Revolution,
humanity has never failed to produce more goods and enough energy to
power them.
In
its tri-part effort, humanity has devoured resources, destroyed
habitats, and altered entire global systems of regulation that have
kept the biosphere functioning for a few billion years.
Future
generations will rightly judge us to be as societally selfish as the
slave owner of 1860, but they will wrongly indict us as individually
callous and wanton. We see about us all the incredible advancements
of the last hundred years (we often forget how amazing they are), and
are surrounded by them. How, we ask, can we deny them to ourselves,
especially when the destructive effects are so individually minuscule
and distant?
The
question was the same for the men and women of the Confederacy in
1860. How could they deny themselves the benefits of slavery, when
everywhere their society embraced it?
The
answer is to propel the United States out of its destructive culture
and into a sustainable future. But this requires a new, unlooked for
solution.
And
if we don't discover this solution in time, though there may still be
many years, the failure may make the Civil War look reasonable in
comparison.
I hope you have enjoyed this series.
The series on the Republicans is over, but if you are just joining us
- you're looking for the exit - but short of that you can read the
previous four articles below.
The Republicans
Series:
Sources:
Great series, and very thoughtful. I think you did a nice job tying together historical and present day themes, it was well researched and written.
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