When would slavery in the Southern States have ended...

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Ostend Manifesto, anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostend_Manifesto

I guess having gone to law school, I'm a stickler for historical accuracy. I also obviously read a lot more than you do. But then again, I have always maintained that TV dulls the mind. I take it you watch more TV than read?

Longshanks

The Ostend Manifesto was created during the Pierce administration and dealt with during the Buchanan administration was was considered a moot issue by 1859. No one in the Confederacy had any thought of reviving it due to the fact of Britain's military might in the area - and again Britain had out lawed slavery long before we did.

Longshanks

1) I've often observed that the Biblical model for regulating slave practices (in the ancient world) is preferable to recent models. From a theological perspective, ancient slavery was a result of evil human tendencies and not part of the original plan. The Biblical model was intended to make it livable rather than eradicate what had become the foundation of regional economic systems. With such a high dependence on it, total cessation would have been disastrous, and NT Christians were even advised to keep quiet about it since it would have provoked the Romans. Freedom has always been the preferred state over slavery, and most places that have seen a prevailing Christian influence have abandoned slavery as an institutionalized practice. IF you MUST have institutionalized slavery, you HAVE to also institute equal justice for slaves. The ability to jump from one master to another, for example, has to be a feature or the institution will fail. But, of course, if you were to strictly follow all of the Biblical laws regarding slavery, the laws themselves would likely eventually end slavery anyway.

The problem of religion and slavery in the US stems from the competition between the Anglicans and the Baptists in the South. The Anglicans were mostly gentry (including slave-owners) while the Baptists were more "common." Back then the Baptists were predominantly abolitionists. Once slavery became a politicized issue, the Baptists made efforts to "steal" more Anglicans to grow their congregations. And that meant catering to slave-owners. So the Bible was re-interpreted so as to endorse slavery and that was preached as "the gospel truth." And that led to the first big split in the Baptist church. Of course, they should have read their Bibles a little more carefully.

2) Read the article, but I don't see how this applies to the issue we're discussing. Slavery no longer exists as a legalized institution.

There ARE work programs that get criminals out of county lockup or prison. But that also follows the Biblical model of allowing criminals to incur a "debt to society" for which they can pay and earn their freedom. The idea is that if someone commits a criminal act, they can pay damages and avoid incarceration. Which is well and good if you have the money. But the poor don't have the luxury of buying their way out of everything. So rather than treat the poor harshly because they are at a disadvantage, they can be allowed to work off what they owe. That system is preferable because it avoids incarceration, which means that the criminal is unable to act in any productive role in society for his prison term, and because the criminal is granted a modest amount of freedom.

Whether they are "slaves" or not is a matter of definition. But involuntary servitude as restitution, done right, would help in keeping the criminal from becoming institutionalized. The American corrections system is largely flawed not because it fails to provide justice, not because it removes dangerous criminals from society, not because it fails at reform, but because criminals remain so sequestered from society they are unable to function within society when they are returned to it. The easiest way to exist is to continue committing crimes which either they'll be smarter about avoiding getting caught and re-prosecuted, or they'll expedite their own return to prison. American incarceration largely rewards bad behavior, whereas involuntary servitude helps in learning job skills, keeps the criminal productive, and may even help them secure gainful employment upon release.

In fact, the Biblical model (which also includes the treatment of criminals, not merely chattel) gives the servant the option of becoming permanently enjoined to a master for life. Given that incarceration institutionalizes the criminals such that they'll eventually return after serving a prison term, involuntary servitude would ultimately have the same effect. Once a "societal debt" is paid by working it off, the servant likely has gained some skills and experience that would make him valuable to the person he worked for OR to someone else who might desire those abilities. If he is successful and WANTS to, he ought to be allowed to continue in that capacity and paid fair wages for his work. He's still institutionalized, but really no more or less than anyone else in any other line of work. And he's PRODUCTIVE. You can't say that about people spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Incidentally, there are prison work programs that attempt to provide those options to inmates. Some are more successful than others, but I'm not convinced that they are effective enough to safely return ex-cons to society; nor am I convinced that society even wants them back. VOLUNTARY servitude in the same capacity as the involuntary state would be preferable to these people. It's at least compassionate.

The point is that involuntary servitude DOES exist as a component of criminal justice, but even here criminals usually have the option of paying a fine, community service/work programs, or just staying behind bars. It's not entirely involuntary, but the choices they do have are limited. I once got a speeding ticket. It turns out I had a few connections with local lawyers and happen to sleep regularly with a paralegal. So I'm connected with a few judges in the area. I was unable to just make my traffic citation "go away," but I did work out a deal where I didn't have to go to court but did promise to volunteer my services to a local nursing home. It was a free piano solo gig that otherwise would have earned me $250--which was more than the citation but I didn't even have half that to pay to the court. It was a good deal and even got me a little community exposure. Extend that principle to more serious crimes and you should have a more effective deterrent to criminal activity and have an easier time of transitioning ex-cons back to productive roles. If it is a regulated practice and we can ensure that it is handled compassionately and fairly, I doubt anyone would really have any objection to it.

Now see there you go again, you obviously read more than me. How could you possibly know that. If you put I probably read more than you it would be fine. But you are assuming, I am a stickler for people that assume stuff about me. If you read 5 hours a day sure, you probably read more than me. But you don't want to go assuming stuff about me, seeing as how you got bothered when I did it about you.

I even provided a reasonable name that he could have used instead of civil war, war between the states.

Oh and nice job with sliding in the "I have gone to law school" and you probably haven't so I care more about historical accuracy.

My username has to do with a book character, so yes I like to read. Which you have assumed twice I do not do very much.

Well the fight was about the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Lincoln was going to stop it as that remained federal land until they applied for statehood. That would be tipping the future balance between slave and non-slave states. The Southern leaders knew that would be the end and immediately quit when Lincoln won the Presidency

So I would say that without the war the schedule would follow western statehood. I don't know the dates offhand. Or the number that would be needed for an amendment to pass.

Lincoln did sneak through the 13th Amendment, which was ratified when the Southern States were still in rebellion, and which ended both slavery and involuntary servitude once and for all in the USA. I'm sure that it would not have been ratified had the Southern States been asked.

That's the pont. The western territories were key. Bleeding Kansas and all that.

The South wanted them to be slave states to balance the political math. Lincoln did not. And Lincoln was going to tilt the balance against slavery through federal policy on federal land. I don't even know if they could predict how many states were left to forge in the west at that time. But the South saw bad math coming.

If the west went anti-slave over time, the power in DC would be anti-slave. Even without an amendment they could regulate the sh*t out of it and let the courts figure it out.

Last edited by simon_says on 11 Jun 2012, 11:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

Certainly the CSA was too busy getting licked by the Yankees to think a whole lot about annexing Cuba. But, was Britain really interested in defending Spain's claim to Cuba?

The definition of slavery also means economic slavery. If a bank can foreclose on your house forever it means we do not live in a free society. That's why the Jubilee laws not only addressed the issues of emancipation from physical slavery but also the emancipation from the economic slavery of debt and emancipation from landlord tyrants who love to foreclose on peoples homes. Emancipation on the Jubilee year means land reform and release from the bondage of debt.

I think the end was already shaping up for the economy of the CSA well before secession.

The South's near monopoly on cotton was not particularly effective--they were unable to persuade the British or the French to intervene in the war. Lacking much other export product, the South would have been confined to trying to maintain market share on that single commodity. The CSA's attempts at cotton diplomacy really only served to increase the value of existing stockpiles in Europe, and to reendow domestic wool and linen industries.

Britain had abolished slavery in all of her possessions in 1833. France had done the same in 1848. To have permitted the CSA to continue with an economy based on the slave-plantation production of a commodity would have been ultimately anti-competitive, and Britain and France would likely have acted to protect their respective imperial and commercial interests through tarriff measures, had belligerence not rendered the subject moot.

Any move by the CSA towards the Carribean would, however, most certainly have brought the European powers into the War--on the side of the Union. Territorial aggression against British, French and Spanish possessions would have been a suicidal move.

Both sides used Biblically-formed arguments, either to support or to oppose emancipation.

Only recently have Southern Baptists sought to apologize for their roles in both slavery and discrimination:

http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amresolution.asp?id=899

The problem with emancipation is that the former slaves were left as landless peasants who had to resort to share cropping in order to eek out a living. The Jubilee laws not only address slave emancipation but incorporate land reform which if practiced in them U.S would have meant that every former slave can get 40 acres of land. Of course no slave ever got his 40 acres because the religious right teaches that this is communism.

You make a serious assumption when you talk about CSA aggression in regards to their colonization plans. With Britain and France as primary trade partners, war with them over their territories would be extremely unwise, and unlikely. Financial acquisition would have been the method of annexation, not brute force. Though the CSA would have had muscles to flex and no shortage of hardened troops. Jefferson Davis among other politicians of the CSA made provisions for eventual Confederate expansion, indeed sending emissaries to the Mexican border states with the intention of bribing officials and leading to full annexation

Britain did not want war with the US, or the CS. They got around the whole problem by seeking their cotton elsewhere. Gladstone (you are speaking of W.E. Gladstone?) at one point came out in favor of the Confederacy, which he later retracted. The British invading the CSA and USA simultaneously is simply a laughable proposition. The US had the largest army in the world by the end of the war, with the Confederates having the second largest, or close