I Have a Few Questions

[Bill Richter]

All right, Kate, this is a nickel and dime look at Am Hist before the Civil War. Most historian will not agree with it. Read my book, Sic Semper Tyrannis, and the intro to my book Historical Dictionary of the Old South.

Slavery was confined to the South for 2 reasons: There was large scale agriculture in the South in raising staple crops which called for a lot of black laborers, and slavery in the South was more than a mere labor system. It was also a social system and offered a quick manner in which to control and "civilize" a large black population while keeping them "in their place." This is why it was replaced by Jim Crow first in the North as they freed their slaves and the South after the Civil War when slavery was eradicated, to keep blacks in a secondary place in Am Society because they were different from whites.

Slavery in the North was called "free labor" and was slave-like in that the wages were low and working conditions substandard. Read Richard Hofstadter, Marx of the Master Class" on the theories of John C Calhoun and George Fitzhugh's essays on how slaves were treated better than Northern laborers.

The fight between the North and South was based on constitutional issues, namely the extraterritorial rights of slavery as defined in Art iv sect 2 of the Constitution of 1787, read Arthur Bestor, Paul Finkleman, William Cooper, among others. This is why Squatter Sovereignty was unconstitutional and Popular Sovereignty was constitutional. The North refused to see this problem and it caused the war. Remember that the N was willing to swallow slavery in the S in 1787 but their grandchildren were unwilling to keep the bargain. Read numerous essays in several books by M. E. Bradford.

There was a critical difference between N and S over resources. The N had few, the S had many, and this is why the British gave up on the N colonies during the Am Revolution and hoped to maintain the S colonies in the empire. It is also why men like John Adams supported Geo Washington as the commander of the Continental Army and Jefferson to write the Dec of Indep--ie, to keep the S in the Revol. Read Eugene Genovese, "the World the Slaveholders Made."