What REALLY Caused the Civil War?

This is going to be a very long blog, longer than most of my already notoriously long blogs, so buckle up for the ride. Feel free to return to finish reading it when you have time, or read it in bits and pieces, whatever makes you happy. But, by all means, please read it in its entirety.

I've been challenged to clarify my stance, and called some very vicious names, regarding a comment about slavery and servitude I recently made in a blog about immigration reform, and how I didn't believe slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War. In our correspondence, I also stated that Americans have already paid all the reparations we ever need to pay, and that the descendants of many Europeans and Native Americans must be included if it is to be raised again as an issue. Before I begin my explanation, allow me to state that I have never believed in slavery, or servitude, and that it has been practiced on my people, both Lakotah and white. I abhor the practice in any form, and recognize that we still have instances of it that exist in modern society, predominately in Africa and the Middle East, among Muslim societies. As well, I object to any form of racism or bigotry, no matter how subtle or masked, or from any race or ethnic group toward another, having been subjected to it personally. However, the question remains why, today, is the entire Southern culture condemned, and Southerners continually criticized, for the practice of slavery? After all, slavery was only practiced by a small percentage of the Southern population. Only about 7% of the population of the South owned slaves at the outbreak of the Civil War, yet 100% of the people who lived in that era, and their descendants, are continually labeled as racists, evil, white devils, Klan, rednecks and other inflammatory names and adjectives.

So let's look at the facts, and see why this phenomenon continues today by presenting a capsule of the history of slavery in America, conceptions of society regarding slavery, slaves and Africans prior to the war, and laws regarding slavery of the time. First of all, slavery was legally protected by the US Constitution until 1865, and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. (Keep in mind that Native Americans were not citizens until 1924.) Scholars of the time, while now considered racist, presented their "facts" to society in many textbooks and studies that helped shape beliefs of the day by the populous. Volumes have been written about the slave trade and slavery in America, but there are a few facts that are often forgotten, ignored or simply cast off. To properly understand the mentality present in those days, we must look at the writings of the "educated" of the day. Among those was Horace Greeley, a noted abolitionist of the time, considered an articulate and proper Northern citizen. In his book, The American Conflict, he states, "The Negroes, uncouth and repulsive, could speak no word intelligible to British or Colonial ears . . . Some time in the middle of the Seventeenth Century, a British Attorney-General, having the question formally submitted to him, gave his official opinion, that Negroes, being pagans, might justly be held in slavery, even in England itself." This speaks of what was considered fact among the elite and educated people of the time.

Thus it is apparent that attitudes and laws about right and wrong, whether regarding the raising of children, practice of medicine, personal health and hygiene, nutrition or the use of slave labor, was different in the first 100 years in America than they are now. Africans captured other Africans for the slave trade and since slavery can still be found there, the African Continent and her people, rather than the Confederate States and her people, have a much better claim to be the symbol of the institution of slavery. The vilification of the Southern people by the hypocritical revisionist historians and politicians over slavery has been used as justification for elimination of all things Confederate. Reparations have been paid, and no one who ever lived under slavery still lives, yet the simple idea of a Confederate flag waving as the symbol of a school or group or a rebel as a mascot raise cries of bigotry and racism despite its relevance to our history. The same people who scream bigotry and racism won't raise a finger to aid Native Americans in having what some see as derogatory symbols or references removed from society, thus they practice a double standard that defies logic or explanation. What is correct for one should be correct for all, or, in my opinion, not an issue for anyone. Therefore, I ask that you approach the following information with an open mind, basing opinions on facts gathered and presented, rather than emotional, and often erroneous, politically correct propaganda supplied in revisionist historical tomes or by those with an agenda of their own.

When did slavery or servitude begin in America, and who were the first to serve under masters? In 1607 three English ships arrived safely at Jamestown, Virginia, to found the first permanent English colony in the New World. Most of the passengers, other than the officers and gentlemen, were indentured to work for the Virginia Company for seven years. At the end of that period they could either return to England or take up land for themselves in Virginia and work for the company as free laborers. The Virginia Company devised this system of indentured servitude to finance the recruitment and transport of workers from England to the colony. Those unable to afford an Atlantic passage borrowed the needed funds, and paid in return for their passage, maintenance during their service, and certain freedom dues at the end of the term, by signing contracts, or indentures, to work for their masters for a fixed number of years. Servitude played a major role in the settlement of the colonies. During the colonial era, some 200,000 to 300,000 servants came to British North America, accounting for one-half to two-thirds of all European immigrants. On the new continent, were land was cheap and plentiful and resources abundant, the primary need was for a large labor supply. Consequently, a system was adopted whereby people coming from Europe could be indentured to individuals as well as a company. As an inducement to the colonists in the early years, for each indentured servant they brought in, they were granted a "head-right" of fifty acres of land free. Although the practice of granting fifty acres to the importer, and generally to the servant at the end of his period of indenture, was quite popular, it eventually and gradually died out. Indentured servants each signed a contract to work for a master for a specified number of years, usually three to seven, in return for his passage and room and board in the New World. After successful service of his term, he would be given a certain amount of clothes and other provisions to help him begin life on his own, along with various amounts of land if he so desired.

To better explain "indentured servitude", sometimes thought of as an adaptation of apprenticeship, it more closely resembled service in husbandry, a major source of agricultural labor in early modern England. Typically, farm servants in England and Europe were boys and girls from poor families who left home in their early teens to work for more prosperous farmers until they married. They usually lived in their master's household, agreed to annual contracts for wages, food, and lodging, and changed places frequently, often every year. Given the pervasiveness of this form of life-cycle service, it is a likely antecedent for the indenture system and was a major source of recruits for American plantations. But indentured servitude was harsher and more restrictive than apprenticeship or service in husbandry. Servants entered into their labor contracts voluntarily, although arguments could be raised that there were no other alternatives. They could not marry without their master's consent, and they had little control over the terms or conditions of their labor and living standards, although custom and local law did set limits and provide for certain minimums. Terms varied substantially, from four years for skilled adults to a decade or more for unskilled minors. And all could find their terms extended if they ran away or became pregnant. Servants could be sold without their consent, a necessity given the distance and terms involved. In addition to these voluntary systems, penal servitude became an important source of labor in the eighteenth century when some fifty thousand convicts were shipped to the colonies.

It would be an understatement to say that indentured servants played an important role in the British colonial economy. They worked in all regions in a variety of tasks throughout the colonial period. Initially, servants were concentrated in the staple-producing colonies, working as field hands to produce labor intensive crops. As demand for labor grew and servant prices rose, planters found that they could employ African slaves more profitably in their fields but continued to use servants as plantation craftsmen and domestics and in supervisory positions. As slaves learned English and plantation work routines, they eventually displaced servants in those positions as well. The establishment of the Royal African Company in 1662 with its encouragement and official support of slavery, doomed the indentured servant system in the Southern colonies. The tobacco and cotton crops demanded a huge supply of cheap labor which the indenture system could not supply. Slavery also had other major economic advantages for entrepreneurs of the era. The slave was owned for life, not just a few years, so he would not have to be continually replaced. Consequently, by 1800 there were virtually no indentured servants in the South. Not so in the North. In the Middle and New England colonies, however, where slavery was not economically feasible, there was a strong demand for indentured servants, particularly during the first half of the 18th century. Massachusetts in 1710 passed an act offering 40 shillings a head to any captain who brought in a male servant from age 8 to 25. Particularly needed were skilled workers such as experienced seamen, carpenters, blacksmiths, silversmiths, coopers, weavers, and bricklayers. Consequently Europeans came by the thousands, particularly Germans, who freely bonded themselves for a number of years in return for learning a trade of even just the language and customs of the new country.

Between 1737 and 1746 sixty-seven ships landed 15,000 Germans at Philadelphia alone. It was remarkable that any of them survived the crossing. Packed into unsafe and unsanitary ships "like so many herrings," they died by the score. The horrible conditions of these floating hells equaled those of the infamous "middle passage" for the African slave trade. Food was inadequate and often so rotten as to be inedible. In many instances the immigrants fought for the bodies of rats and mice in order to stay alive. On at least one ship cannibalism was reported and the bodies of six dead humans were consumed before another vessel brought relief to the maddened passengers. Disease and sickness were rife in the filthy holds of the ships as dysentery, smallpox, and typhus swept through them. Statistics indicate that in 1711, for example, only one out of three survived the crossing. This high mortality often caused extra hardship for many of the survivors, as all passengers, living and dead, had to be paid for before the ship's captains would release the immigrants. Thus it was not unusual to see a widow sold to pay for her husband's passage as well as her own, meaning she would have to serve double the normal time of indenture. Children were sold to pay for deceased or unwell parents. Consequently, families were often broken up, just as in the slave trade, never to meet again.

By the early eighteenth century, indentured servants played only a marginal role in the plantation districts. Thereafter, they were concentrated in a few industries in the Mid-Atlantic region demanding particular skills such as iron making, shipbuilding, and construction and in colonial towns where they worked in various service trades or at artistic crafts. In the northern colonies, where the indentured immigrants served mostly as house servants and apprentices, they were usually treated fairly. After becoming freemen, they usually had every opportunity to succeed. A good example was Paul Revere, whose father had come to Massachusetts as an indentured servant. By 1770 the colonies found it cheaper to hire native-born youngsters as apprentices, rather than pay the passage for indentured servants. As a result, and particularly after the Revolution, with its emphasis on equality, this style of servitude gradually died out and by the early 19th century had virtually ceased to exist in the North. Isolated cases of this form of indentured servitude among European immigrants appear as late as the 1830s, but eventually it resurfaced, being replaced there with a form far more like complete slavery than its predecessor.

Now to examine slavery, its beginnings, and its growth on this continent. Even before the settling of America, as early as 1444, Spain was engaged in selling African slaves in Europe. Christopher Columbus is credited as being the first slaver to land in the Western Hemisphere in the 1492. In 1513, King Ferdinand declared: "the servitude of the Indians (Native Americans) was warranted by the laws of God and man." The slave trade was so large that European merchants, entrepreneurs and aristocrats often would speculate in it, and profit by it, without ever seeing a single slave, the same as the trade of commodities of sugar, gold, and coffee today. Such distinguished authors as John Locke, Edward Gibbon, and Voltaire drew income from it. Voltaire was especially hypocritical. His view was that it is less immoral for a European to buy Africans than it is for other Africans to sell them. He even delighted in having a slave ship named after himself. It has been documented that more than 11,000,000 Africans were brought to the New World, while about 2,000,000 died of miserable conditions in the overcrowded ships en route. Fewer than 5% about 500,000 Africans were brought to America. Some 4,000,000 were taken to Brazil by the Portuguese, 2,500,000 to Spanish possessions, 2,000,000 to the British West Indies, and 1,600,000 to the French West Indies. All this puts something of a damper on the assumption that slavery was a sin specific or peculiar to the Southern States. The slaves were Africans sold to European merchants by other Africans who had enslaved them in the first place. Several of Africa's empires were built on the slave trade. For centuries Africa's chief export was human captured and sold into slavery. Slavery was an African institution long before it spread to the South, and there was no abolition movement to question it. When Europe finally banned the slave trade, African economies reeled. The African Continent rather than the Southern States and the Confederacy has a much better claim to be such a symbol of the institution of slavery as slavery still exists there, in Sudan and Mauritania and elsewhere.

In 1619 when a British ship flying a Dutch flag landed off the coast of Jamestown, Virginia and unloaded twenty Negroes. The Virginians accepted these people not as slaves, but as indentured servants. One of this number was a man known as Anthony Johnson. In 1623 Anthony Johnson served four years as an indentured servant and was now a free man. Through his own diligence and hard work he became a prosperous land owner in seventeenth century Virginia. He imported servants of his own. In 1658, one of his servants, a Negro named John Castor, complained to the authorities that Mr. Johnson had kept him past his servitude release date, an act which was a serious offense. (Johnson vs. Parker, Northampton County) Johnson, frightened by the threat of censure, released all claims on Castor. Johnson then found out that Castor had bound himself to a Mr. Parker who had helped Castor gain his freedom from Johnson. Johnson filed a lawsuit against Parker claiming that he (Johnson), was entitled to lifetime service from Castor. Johnson won the case and set the precedent for lifetime Negro slavery in the British Colony of Virginia in North America. Slavery, therefore was established in 1654, when Anthony Johnson, a negro himself, convinced the court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Castor. This was the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Johnson later started a colony of free Negroes in Virginia, some time after 1660. Blacks as well as whites practiced slavery. Blacks and whites both were enslaved as well. Indentured servitude was a major method of people obtaining transportation to the colonies from Europe.

Slavery actually began in the North, Africans were brought by Northern slave traders to be used in northern industry, long before the antebellum South or the Confederacy ever existed. The first American colony to legalize slavery was Massachusetts in 1641, only 17 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. The slave trade became very profitable to the shipping colonies such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire. They financed many ships in the triangular trade scheme. A moral argument against slavery arose early in the New England shipping colonies but it could not withstand the profits of the trade and soon died out. The first legislation of slavery occurred in 1642 in the colony of Massachusetts. Many of the Puritans there argued that it was "God's will" that they bring the slaves to the colonies from Africa because of the heinous conditions in which they were "rescuing" them from. There were no slave ships ever chartered from a Southern port. The charters came from London, Seville, Lisbon, Boston, and New York just to name a few. The Assiento Treaty of 1714 created a company for the promotion of the "African Slave Trade". Twenty-five percent of the stock went to King Philip of Spain. Queen Anne took twenty-five percent for herself and the rest went to the nobility of England. Quoting Bancroft: "thus did the sovereigns of England and Spain become the largest slave-merchants in the world."

In the South, when the original colony of Georgia ceded the lands that now form the states of Alabama and Mississippi, she stipulated in the agreement that the new states enter the Union of States as a free states with no slaves. Thomas Jefferson condemned the slave trade in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but the New England slave traders lobbied to have the clause stricken. In a short eleven year period form 1755 to 1766, no fewer than 23,000 slaves landed in Massachusetts. By 1787, Rhode Island had taken first place in the slave trade to be unseated later by New York. Before long, millions of slaves would be brought to America by way of Northern slave ships. There were no Southern slave ships involved in the triangular trade of slaves. The New England Yankee who brought slaves to America were interested in getting money, not in helping their cargo make a fresh start in the New World. New Englanders not only sold blacks to Southern planters but also kept slaves for themselves as well as enslaving the local Native American population. Slavery did not appear in the South until Northern settlers began to migrate South, bringing with them their slaves. It was soon discovered that while slaves were not suited to the harsh climate and working conditions of the north, they were ideal sources of cheap labor for the newly flourishing economy of Southern agricultural. Of the 9.5 million slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere from 1500-1870, less than 6% were brought to the United States. This means that Spanish, British and French neighbors to the south owned over 94% of the slaves brought to the New World. In the South, less than 7% of the total population ever owned a slave. In other words, over 93% of Southerners did not own any slaves.

The motive for slavery was Northern profits. Most of what the North did was motivated by profit, regardless of the cost to others. Whether it was officially encouraged, as in New York and New Jersey, or not, as in Pennsylvania, the slave trade flourished in colonial Northern ports. New England, by far, was the leading slave merchant of the American colonies. The first attempted venture from New England to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders, who sent three ships in quest of gold dust and black slaves. One vessel returned the following year with a cargo of wine, salt, sugar, and tobacco, which it had picked up in Barbados in exchange for slaves. The other two ran into European warships off the African coast and narrowly escaped. Their fate was an example of why American traders stayed out of the slave trade in the 17th century. Then, around 1700, the picture changed. The British got the upper hand on the Dutch and drove them from many of their New World colonies, weakening their demand for slaves and their power to control the trade in Africa. Then the Royal African Company's monopoly on African coastal slave trade was revoked by Parliament in 1696. Finally, the Assiento and the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 gave the British a contract to supply Spanish America with 4,800 slaves a year. This combination of events was a great incentive to the New England slave traders, and they responded aggressively. Within a few years, the famous "Triangle Trade", and its notorious "Middle Passage" were in place. Rhode Islanders began including slaves among their cargo in a small way as far back as 1709. But the trade began in earnest in the 1730s. Despite a late start, Rhode Island soon surpassed Massachusetts as the chief colonial carrier.

The colonial governments of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all, at various times, derived money from the slave trade by levying duties on black imports. Tariffs on slave import in Rhode Island in 1717 and 1729 were used to repair roads and bridges. After the 1750 revocation of the Assiento, the complexion of the slave trade changed dramatically. The system that had been set up to provide thousands of slaves to Spanish America now needed another market, and colonial slave ships began to steer northward. From 1750 to 1770, African slaves flooded the Northern docks. Merchants from began to ship large lots (100 or more) in a single trip. Wholesale prices of slaves in New York fell 50% in six years. On the eve of the Revolution, the slave trade formed the very basis of the economic life of New England. When the British proposed a tax on sugar and molasses, Massachusetts merchants pointed out that these were staples of the slave trade, and the loss of that would throw 5,000 seamen out of work in the colony and idle almost 700 ships. Even non-shipping industries fed into the trade. So now we also know that it wasn't just "taxation without representation" that brought about the Revolution, but, among other tariffs, taxation on the staples required to maintain the slave trade. The slave trade was so entrenched in the finances and industries of New England that a list of the leading slave merchants is almost identical with a list of the region's prominent families: the Fanueils, Royalls, and Cabots of Massachusetts; the Wantons, Browns, and Champlins of Rhode Island; the Whipples of New Hampshire; the Eastons of Connecticut. To this day, it's difficult to find a New England institution of any antiquity that wasn't financially involved with slavery. That's a great embarrassment to modern, progressive New Englanders. "The effects of the New England slave trade were momentous," according to a pioneer historian of New England history (Lorenzo Johnston Greene, "The Negro in Colonial New England", 1620-1776, p.319). "It was one of the foundations of New England's economic structure; it created a wealthy class of slave-trading merchants, while the profits derived from this commerce stimulated cultural development and philanthropy."

As the spirit of Yankee thrift discovered that the slave ships were most economical with only 3 feet 3 inches of vertical space to a deck and 13 inches of surface area per slave, the human cargo was laid in carefully like spoons in a silverware case. Even after slavery was outlawed in the North, ships out of New England continued to carry thousands of Africans to the U.S. South. Some 156,000 slaves were brought to the United States in the period 1801-08, almost all of them on ships that sailed from New England ports that had recently outlawed slavery. Rhode Island slavers alone imported an average of 6,400 slaves into America in the years 1805 and 1806. Attempts to outlaw the slave trade in the North only increased the profits of smuggling. In 1858, only two years prior to the birth of the Confederacy, Stephen Douglas noted that over 15,000 slaves had been smuggled into New York alone, with over 85 vessels sailing from New York in 1859 to smuggle even more slaves. Perhaps it was their own guilt that drove the abolitionists of the day to point an accusing finger at the South, while closing their eyes to the slavery and the slave trade taking place in their own back yards. Most, but not all, Northern states had abolished slavery by the mid-1800's. The Northern states had done away with slavery because they found it was not profitable in their new industrial society. When they did away with slavery, there was not a mass emancipation of the slaves. Instead most of the slaves were simply sold southward. This allowed the Northern slave-owner to recuperate his financial investment in the slave and use that capital for further development of his enterprises. Economics, not morality fueled the major "de-slaving" of the North. One of the dirty little secrets that Northerners don't like to have mentioned is that laws freeing slaves in Northern states during the period 1780-1860 almost universally allowed the owners to sell their slaves to slave-owners in Southern states, rather than freeing their slaves outright. Some of those state laws also forbade freed slaves from living in that same state.

To get around the anti-slavery laws, those in the North found it more profitable to import European immigrants on labor contracts and to tap into these families children to work in the fields, mines and immerging factories. These immigrants were forced work 16 hour days and more, for pennies a day. They would live in poverty in company housing and could only afford to buy goods, most often on credit, from the company store. There were no safety laws, or personal or health protection. There are many writings of this period that enumerate the impoverished conditions in which these immigrants lived. Under these situations the immigrant worker was forced to fend for himself and his family. Their lives belonged to the company in which they worked. Many of these immigrants were obligated under a labor contract to these factories before they even left the shores of Europe. The cheap labor supply, continually fed from Europe, was a great boon for Northern industrialism.

Immigrants proved better than slaves for the industrialists greed. Immigrants came without the investment nor an obligation to care for needs of food, clothing, housing, medical care. In Robert Whyte's "The Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship 1847", the conditions suffered by immigrants in the passage from Europe to North America and the prejudice and poor treatment by the sponsors, the northern industrialist is fingered as the real culprit. On most occasions, these immigrants were conned onto signing documents similar to the old "indentured servitude" contracts, as many were too illiterate to understand the subtle changes in wording, ands were familiar with the system from centuries of its propagation throughout Europe and England. Northern interests, taking advantage of those facts, included statements that all indebtedness must be paid in full prior to one being released from their contract. But with high rents in horrible housing (Shanty Towns), inflated prices at the "company store" or bar, and receiving only pennies a day for their labor, nearly 85% never earned enough to achieve a release from their contract. And if one under indebtedness were to die, his heirs would then assume the debt, and further enslave the next generation to a point that freedom remained only a dream, or a promise lost and broken.

Another motivating factor behind the North's abolition of slavery is that many Northerners did not want black people living amongst them. Northern racial sentiment is often glossed over by absolutist prose. Many Northern states passed laws prohibiting blacks from entering their states. Massachusetts once passed a law that stated that if a Negro, Native American or mulatto entered their state and stayed for more than two months they would be publicly flogged. One Northern state after another stigmatized the free Negroes by excluding them from its borders. The states of Illinois and Ohio banned the legal entry of slaves as well as freemen into their states. Ohio also required newcomers to post a prohibitively high financial bond to keep out the unwanted. When Illinois drew up its constitution in 1848 it contained a clause prohibiting the entry of black people, and the legislature five years later not only made it a misdemeanor for any Negro to enter with the purpose of settling, but provided that the offender might be fined and his time sold for a sufficient period to pay the penalty. Iowa, in 1851, severely penalized any free Negro who set foot upon her soil. Indiana placed a Negro-exclusion article in her constitution of 1851, which the people approved it by a landslide vote of more than five to one. Oregon adopted a constitution in 1857 stipulating that no free colored people should enter, that those who came should be forcibly removed, and that anybody who harbored or employed them should be punished. It also forbade the Negroes already there to hold real estate, make contracts, or prosecute suits. Proposals for a general expulsion of free blacks were frequent in the border states, and by no means unknown farther north. The general public assumption in the North was that Negroes were inferior creatures who naturally fell into degradation and whom it was hopeless to assist. Many Northerners protested that whites in their states were competing with blacks for jobs. Thus, the Northerners removed most slaves by 1840 to the South, recouping their capital and eliminating competition for jobs, had they been emancipated.

The census of 1850 listed only eleven persons who owned five hundred or more slaves, and only 254 who owned two hundred or more each. Indeed, in all the vast range of the slave states from Delaware to Florida and from North Carolina to Texas, there were not eight thousand men who owned fifty or more slaves apiece. Among those who owned or hired slaves, the vast majority possessed fewer than ten apiece, and a clear majority fewer than five apiece. The "big-wigs" of whom Frederick Law Olmstead heard so much while traveling in the lower Mississippi Valley, the wealthy planters who figured so largely in the eyes of the North, constituted a very restricted number indeed. Of the 6,184,477 white people in the slave states, only 347,525 were listed by the census of 1850 as slave-owners, and even this number gave an exaggerated impression of the facts. When a single person owned slaves in different counties, or in different states, he was entered in the returns more than once. Moreover, the census included slave-hirers as well as slave-owners, and unquestionably there were tens of thousands of hirers. Hinton Rowan Helper estimated the true number of slaveholders as "certainly less than two hundred thousand." The immediate families of these owners represented, at an average of five persons each, about 1,500,000 people; and if a generous allowance is made for overseer's families and other white employees on large estates, still those directly concerned with the ownership and management of slaves probably did not exceed 2,000,000. Not one-third of the population of the South and border states had any direct interest in slavery as a form of property. This is a fact of great importance when we attempt to estimate the effect of slaveholding upon the culture and outlook of the Southern people. If not one-third of the people had any direct interest in slaveholding in 1850, not one-fourth had such an interest in 1860.

The slavery issue began to grow as time went on. Many Southerners felt that the North was simply trying to antagonize the South with this issue. The fact was that more than 90% of Southerners never owned slaves. Several plantations in the South were actually owned by citizens of northern states and some Northerners owned slave operated plantations on Caribbean islands. According to the census of 1850, the total number of fugitive slaves was 1,011. According to the census of 1860 the total number was 803. These numbers were out of a slave population of 3,200,000 in 1850 and 3,950,500 in 1860. As westward expansion continued, the slavery issue was brought up as each new state entered into the union. The abolitionists of the North representing an extremely small number of people, said that slavery should not be allowed in the new Western states. The South felt that the decision should be left up to the people of those states, once again referring to the belief of state sovereignty as expressed in the Constitution (Tenth Amendment).

The South was in favor of gradual emancipation of the slaves whereas northern abolitionists demanded immediate emancipation. The South knew that a sudden emancipation of several million slaves could not be possible without a disastrous impact on the region economically. This impact would affect both the white and black populations. The South also favored gradual emancipation so that the slaves themselves would be prepared to support themselves once freed. Southerners knew that as the South became more mechanized slavery would die a natural death. At that point, slavery in the South would become a financial liability as had become earlier in the North, as new technologies were introduced. Late in the struggle for its independence, the Confederacy expressed its willingness to abolish slavery in exchange for recognition by European powers, and the South adopted its own emancipation plans.

There are those who will tell you the War Between the States had everything to do with slavery and those who will say it had nothing to do with slavery. Issues of slavery were involved, but were certainly not the only reason for hostilities. Many of the large Southern plantation owners did not favor secession. Under the existing U.S. Constitution slavery was protected and could not be infringed upon unless a 2/3'rds majority vote could be reached, which would have been extremely difficult to achieve. The Supreme Court had ruled favorably on the legality and constitutionality of slavery. Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln both promised many times, that they would not interfere with the practice of slavery. New laws were recently put on the books protecting slave owners from loss of slave property due to theft or runaways. Add to that, the fact that the Confederate states constituted the fifth wealthiest region in the world. The slave owning states had all of these things and more. So why on earth would Southern states secede from the United States? Surely, no one believes that the South would have left the security of the Union and gone to fight a war for something they already had! Countries do not fight wars for the things they have, they fight wars to obtain the things they do not have, or to provide what they have to those who do not have them.

What the South did not have was financial freedom. Southerners were economic and political slaves to the industrial demands of the north, just as blacks were slaves to the agricultural demands of the South. Growth potential was severely limited in the South, so long as the north continued to levy heavy tariffs on things that Southerners needed to purchase and heavy taxes on those things that Southerners produced. In the words of South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun in 1850, "The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue." So, as much as anything else, unfair taxation drove Americans to war with Britain in 1775 and against each other in 1861. But slavery was not an exclusively Southern institution. Almost 400,000 slaves lived in Northern states at the start of the war. Many of those slaves were not freed until the 13th Amendment was passed. In fact, it is commonly accepted that the last slaves freed were in Delaware, a staunchly Union state. The 13th Amendment, passed after the war ended, was approved by Southern states who had already seen their capital assets stripped away without compensation and who were considered occupied enemy territory by the Northern States at that time. The North had slavery after the war at least until 1866 due to some holdouts, and, as already discussed, it maintained "servitude" until as late as 1903, though there are some undocumented claims that it continued on until the 1920's.

Even the Union General Ulysses S. Grant was a slaveholder of record. He refused to give up his slaves until the passage of the 13th Amendment. Grant's wife Julia confirms having slaves through 1863 as she wrote in her "Personal Memoirs", that: "Eliza, Dan, Julia, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. When I visited the General during the war, I nearly always had Julia with me a nurse. She came near being captured at Holly Springs." One of Grant's slave's was William Jones. In 1858, while attempting to make a go in civilian life as a farmer near St. Louis, Missouri, Grant bought the slave, William Jones, from his brother-in-law. Grant's also became the owner of record of his wife's inheritance of four slaves, but as was the case at the time, women could not actually own slaves, so they were under the control of Grant. No record has been found of these slaves having been freed prior to emancipation in Missouri in 1865.

On the other hand, Confederate General Robert E. Lee personally owned only one slave, an elderly house servant that he inherited from his mother. It is said that Lee continued to hold the slave as a kindness, since he was too feeble to have made his way as a free man. Although it is commonly believed that Lee owned the Arlington Plantation and the associated slaves, these and two other plantations totaling over 1,000 slaves were the property of Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis. Upon Mr. Custis's death in 1858, Lee did not personally inherit either the plantations or slaves, but was named the executor of the estate. Mr. Custis willed that his slaves should be freed within 5 years. Legal problems with the fulfillment of other terms of the will led Lee to delay in the execution of the terms of manumission until the latest specified date. On 29 Dec 1862, Lee executed a deed of manumission for all the slaves of the Custis estate who were still behind Confederate lines. Arlington was in Union hands by that time in history. Lee declared that slavery was "a moral and political evil, , and the best men in the South oppose this system." He is also quoted as saying "the mild and melting influences of Christianity, rather than war, would solve the problem."

It is the aforementioned facts of history that cause me to draw the following conclusions, after having studied this subject for years and doing an inordinate amount of research along the way. I've learned that European Christians and their descendants in America had some conscientious concerns about slavery. They wrestled with and debated the question of whether Africans had immortal souls and natural rights. Even those who justified slavery as a positive good felt that it needed some kind of justification in society. Pagans from Africa had no, nor have, such qualms. They no more feel now they needed to justify owning slaves than owning livestock than they did 160 years ago. Slavery is a fact of life for them and their culture, and always has been. Slaves can be killed, mutilated, and even eaten without a concern of conscience, just as they have been for over eight centuries, or longer. Therefore, it is my belief that slavery was a world-wide institution whose days were numbered in Western civilizations, but will continue in Middle Eastern and African cultures. If the South had won the War, slavery would have disappeared anyway. More than anything, the rise, decline and fall of slavery in the US must be viewed in terms of economics. Slavery existed in the US, just as it had in other nations, for economic reasons. It would have disappeared for the same reason, even without a war among the citizens of this country. Unfairly the South and her people frequently receive the blame for slavery in America. Slavery continued for decades after the War in other parts of the world and is alive and well in parts of the world today. And the North was as much, if not more, responsible for slavery on this continent as any group of people anywhere in the world. The major cause of the Civil War was not slavery, but taxation, and the desire to control the economics of Southerners by Northerners, though slavery was also a contributing factor, more because of the economics than because of morality among Northerners. So the next time someone wants to refer to we Southerners as any of the many derogatory terms associated with slave owners, you can refer them to me, or to this blog.

There is much more to the story as it exists today, so let me leave you with a few more facts about today's slavery, and it's different forms. There are three types of modern slavery that are common enough to have their own names. Chattel slavery is closest to the old form of slavery. A person is captured, born, or sold into slavery, and ownership is often asserted. The slave's children are normally treated as property as well. Most often found in North and West Africa and some Arab countries, chattel slaves are now relatively few in number. In Sudan, a radical ruling regime has revived a racially-based slave trade, arming militia forces to raid civilian villages for slaves. In Mauritania, slave raids 800 years ago began a system of chattel slavery that continues to this day, with Arab-Berber masters holding as many as one million black Africans as inheritable property. Debt bondage is the most common form of slavery in the modern world. A person pledges himself/herself against a loan, but the length and nature of their work is not defined, nor does their work reduce the debt. The debt can be passed down, enslaving offspring. Ownership is not normally asserted, but there is complete control over the slave. Debt bondage is most common on the Indian sub-continent. Contract slavery occurs when a contract is offered for employment, perhaps in a workshop or factory, but the worker is then enslaved. The contract tricks them into slavery. The slave is under threat of violence, has no freedom and is paid nothing. This is the most rapidly growing form of slavery and probably the second largest form today. Contract slavery is often found in South-east Asia, Africa, some Arab states and some parts of India. Sex slavery is a form of slavery most common in South Asia where girls forced into prostitution by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers earn money for the men in the family to pay back local-money lenders. Others are lured by offers of good jobs and then beaten and forced to work in brothels. Other types of slavery exist that account for a smaller number of slaves, for example war-related slavery, domestic slavery and Religious slavery. According to a National Geographic Magazine (September 2003) article by Andrew Cockburn, "There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach-and in the destruction of lives." For further information on modern slavery and what action you can take contact Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves/Anti-Slavery International, or the United States Department of State.

Resources include, but are not limited to:
"The Lincoln Reader", by Paul Angle
"Story of the Confederacy", by Joseph T. Derry, Part 2 Chapter 3
"Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government", by Jefferson Davis
"The South Under Siege 1830-2000" by Frank Conner, Chapter 5
"Lee & Grant", by Gene Smith
"The Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts", by Burke Davis
"Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and Politics of War and Reconstruction", by Brooks D. Simpson
"Hildreth's History of the United States"
"Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War on the South 1861-1865", by George Edmonds
"A True Estimate of Abraham Lincoln and Vindication of the South", by Mildred Lewis Rutherford
"The Slave Trade", by Hugh Thomas
"Truths of History", by Mildred Lewis Rutherford Chapter 4
"War for What", by Francis W. Springer Chapters 2-12
"The South Was Right", by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy Chapter 2
"A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States", by Samuel A. Ashe, Chapter 1-2
"Facts the Historians Leave Out", by John S. Tilley, pages 7-23
"The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776", by Lorenzo Johnston Greene
"For Good and Evil: the Impact of taxes on the Course of Civilization", by Charles Adams
"The Lost Cause: The Standard Southern History of the War of the Confederates" by Edward A. Pollard, Chapters 2 & 4
Anti-Slavery International, Thomas Clarkson House, The Stableyard, Broomgrove Road, London SW9 9TL
Free the Slaves/Anti-Slavery International, 1326 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20005
United States Department of State, 2201 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20520

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