Confederate Flag

[adamark]

Originally Posted by Witness1

I think it is worth mentioning that there is a big misconception about slavery in the Southern States.

Today when you think about slavery, you picture a plantation owned by a Colonel Sanders like figure. With dozens of slaves working in a field watched by hick like Overseerers who whip anybody who doesnt work at a exhausting pace.

Although this scene did happen, it proably was not the norm. Not every farmer in the South was rich enough to have there own plantation and many farmers worked along side and lived in the same house with there slaves. It is also counter procotive to abuse your laborers so it is likely that many slaves where treated decently.

In fact, many slaves had a better standard of living then factory workers in the north.

I am not saying that slavery was right, but that we have a hollywood protreyed verson of slavery in the south.

Everything you just wrote is a regurgitation of 140 year old southern propaganda. one out of four whites owned slaves in the southern region. slaves were treated like shit. they had it much worse off than factory workers of nothern textile mills, and that's saying a lot.

[P-Sleazy]

i have to go with Witness on this. Every book I read that had facts based on the truth says that just about ALL farmers in the south had atleast one slave. And yes the farmers did work in the fields with their slaves.

I know what youre going to say "what about them slaves that ran away? what do you have to say about that?" well heres what i say. MOST slaves ran away because they longed for freedom not because they were mistreated but because they longed for freedom. It was AFTER they tried to run away that the owner would punish the slave severly and inhumanely.

[Witness1]

Originally Posted by adamark

Everything you just wrote is a regurgitation of 140 year old southern propaganda. one out of four whites owned slaves in the southern region. slaves were treated like shit. they had it much worse off than factory workers of nothern textile mills, and that's saying a lot.

Its not propaganda, its common sense.

Say you live you on a farm and you buy a horse to plow your fields. Now you can drive this horse to exhaustaion, but that treatment will kill it and you will need to buy a new horse.

But if you take care of that horse, give it food, water, shelter, medical treatment and work it at a resonable pace, the animal will live longer.

Instead of buying a horse every 1 year (or less) you have a horse that will last you 10 years or longer. On a farm you dont have the resorces avaliable to buy a horse every year.

About the workers in the north, read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" Its a about 30 years after the Civil War, but its a strong statement.

[Silly Kitty]

Originally Posted by adamark

Everything you just wrote is a regurgitation of 140 year old southern propaganda. one out of four whites owned slaves in the southern region. slaves were treated like shit. they had it much worse off than factory workers of nothern textile mills, and that's saying a lot.

All slaves were not treated badly. Alot of slaves were mistreated. When slavery was abolished some slaves didn't even leave the farms they were on. House slaves were often treated better then field slaves(whatever you want to call them). Like it was mentioned before, every white person in the south had at least one slave.

[Jagos]

I've always been tempted to wear a flag to show it only has power over those ignorant enough to feel a flag is prejudiced against a race...

And whether or not my grandmother worked on a cotton field in her youth, a flag didn't help nor hinder that. The fact was that she needed the money. Being the (2nd) oldest of 11 kids is a huge responsibility. $1.65 doesn't cover that.

[adamark]

Originally Posted by Witness1

Its not propaganda, its common sense.

Say you live you on a farm and you buy a horse to plow your fields. Now you can drive this horse to exhaustaion, but that treatment will kill it and you will need to buy a new horse.

But if you take care of that horse, give it food, water, shelter, medical treatment and work it at a resonable pace, the animal will live longer.

Instead of buying a horse every 1 year (or less) you have a horse that will last you 10 years or longer. On a farm you dont have the resorces avaliable to buy a horse every year.

About the workers in the north, read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" Its a about 30 years after the Civil War, but its a strong statement.

I can't believe I am reading this. Your statements are ignorant and infuriating.

The "logic" you present doesn't fit the situation. Slaves were not animals like horses or sheep or cows. I know you weren't implying they were but you haven't taken into account the psychology behind slavery. White masters HAD TO BE CRUEL to their slaves to impose their authority and create psychologically terrified victims so that their 20 or 30 slaves on smaller plantations wouldn't kill a family of maybe 12 whites living in the house led by one adult male.

ALL SLAVES WERE MISTREATED. The very fact that they are in slavery MEANS that they are being mistreated as human beings. Slavery is an immoral and horrible institution. There is no such thing as a slave that is treated well or decently or properly. Their status as a slave makes that an impossibility.

Rethink your beliefs about slavery.

[Staizer]

adamark, I agree that psycology is inherent in the problem, however the example used IS a good one for the slave OWNERS. Morals are 20/20 hindsight, based on the times that create them.

Morals of the time (being controlled by the very few elite) said that slaves WERE like horses, whether they were in fact human, or just back-hos in human form is irrelivent to the thinking of the slave owners.

With that being said the case being used, of a horse, is still applicable. Because whites in that time viewed slaves much like they would a horse, they would treat them similarly. Do you own a horse? If you did own a horse, would you beat it, or would you treat it kindly?

To say that ALL white slave owners in the south beat their slaves because they had to have control isn't only naive, it is a fallicy. Not all slave owners actually viewed their slaves as horses. Some viewed their slaves as people, some even had intimate relationships with their so-called "slaves."

Lincoln had slaves, and us northerners certainly don't think he was a bad man, HE didn't beat his slaves, so why should ALL southerners do the same thing?

Please try not to make close-minded statements just because it is hard to view the logic of others.

[Osterbaum]

It is indeed hard to view the logic of others in this case, no offense.

I'll give you people a bit of backgroung on slaving in general. To be more specific,slaves brought from Africa.

First of all, slaves were indeed brought from Africa to America by Europeans; English, Spanish, Portugues etc. But even before this there was slavery in Africa. Local tribe chief's captures slaves for themselves and then later on sold them to the Europeans when they arrived.

Slavery was very wrong! No matter what you might have to say. And as for the confederate flag: It represents slaving in many ways through southern soverenioty because the main reason the southern states parted from the rest of the Union was because they were not happy with the new presidents views on slavery specially!

By DB:
"The point is, human beings were given rulership over eachother simply on the basis of color. It doesn't matter whether or not they beat their slaves, simply that they could do so without reprecussions

Why don't you ask if slaves were denied their basic rights as human beings, make them give a firm answer! Ask if the South was responsible, ask them these things."

[Bob The Mercenary]

Dragonsbane is not arguing that all slaves were beaten. He's saying that slavery as a whole was a beating in itself. He's saying that it doesn't matter if slaveowners beat their slaves or not. They were slaves. That's the whole point.

Also, who's trying to lay the blame on the U.S. Didn't we start this thread talking about the confederate flag and what it stands for? And now we're arguing about who started slavery first.

It's one person's opinion that all slaveowners beat their slaves. It's your opinion that they did not. No one has shown me facts leading me to presume either way yet. If you can have opinions then anyone else can as well.

And it's "indentured servants".

[Witness1]

What I am trying to say is that why'll slavery was wrong and immoral, there where other people who where mistreated worse then slaves.

Again, I urge those who disagree with me to read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" or atlest Google 'The Great Upheaval".

I have nothing more to say in this discussion, I will leave with a quote:

Originally Posted by Upton Sinclair

The workers in the packing houses had cause to envy the animals whose torments their knives put an end to. Animal blood-which often carried dangerous diseases-covered the slaughterers' arms and faces. In thier various task the workers faced, not "occupational hazards," but a hidous attrition-nerves severed in routine accidents with butcher knives, figernails worn off from pulling hides, rheumatism from the "chilling rooms," curvature of the spine from ducking under beams. The presence of excrement both animal and human (there were no toilets) was a special source of degradation as well as another source of disease. In the pandemnium that followed a steer breaking loose, a worker could easily intercept a bullet or stumble into a knife. And for all this suffering and risk, the company offered no job security: a slump might mean an hour's work in a day, and long unpaid waiting for that hour to arrive. Even more Cynical was the gambit of using well-paid and carefully instructed "pacemakers," who speeded up the line and were replaced at the first sign of tiring.