Well this is awkward. I didn’t mean to start a fight here, I was just explaining something that I was taught, not on Wikipedia, but in my AP United States History course. Look, the fact of the matter is that slaves were the southerner’s livelihood. They couldn’t have their huge plantations without the slaves and without their plantations they had no way of standing up against the booming north. This carried over into national government and the southerners were quickly losing a voice because of smaller population and less money. Why do you think slaves got counted as people/property at all? Furthermore, the north was just as racist as the south. If they hadn’t been that way, African-Americans would not have had to bring their fights for civil rights into the twentieth century.
Oh! Those poor Southerners! They couldn’t have their huge plantations without those lovely slaves! The end of slavery would take away their likelihoods! That evil North!
Look, while it is unfortunate (heavy sarcasm) that the entire Southern economy was primarily built upon the legacy of slavery, southerners should really take that issue up with the Founding Fathers who allowed that shit to get out of hand in the first place. See also: the VP of the Confederacy:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
…Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [of the United States’ Constitution]; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
- The Cornerstone Speech, delivered by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America
Where’s the economics in that? Did they teach you THAT in your AP US History class, eh?
More from the Cornerstone Speech, unless there’s any fucking confusion:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal...
Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator…
In other words, the entire defense of the institution of slavery was not one of economics but one of belief that God had created white men superior to black men, and that as such, black men should be enslaved for their own good. In other words: it’s white supremacy bottom to top.
I’m a Southerner, and quite proud, but how anyone could defend the Confederacy or its positions on slavery from any standpoint is completely beyond me. To argue that the justifications for slavery were primarily economic, when in fact there was a prevailing social belief in the South, which did not exist to the same extent in the North, that black people deserved to be enslaved because they were subhuman barbarians is unbelievable. Did you never read this speech in your fancy pants history class? Were you never taught its importance if you did?
Every single time this argument comes up, it makes me completely disgusted with the state of American education. How can people be so utterly ignorant of our history? Fuck your AP history class. Putting “AP” in the title obviously doesn’t mean very much.