I Have a Few Questions

[Mark MacKenzie]

I don't know how to put quotes here...

"Lincoln was in favor of the government buying the slaves (cheaper than the cost of continuing the war) and then colonizing them to central america. It wasn't a well received idea. "

Wasn't this an evolving process with Lincoln? Didn't he come to the conclusion that freed slaves should be given the right to vote, even before women were? So to say Lincoln was an advocate of colonization is true but only in a limited time period.

To say that the North did not want black people integrated again is not true. We tend to speculate how people felt beyond actually proof. The proof is the legislation. Slavery was not legal in the North. Not legal.

I am ignorant of the story about Thomas Jefferson's slave mentioned above. You said she bore him children. Nathan Bedford Forrest had a black slave with whom he had sexual relations. My instinct tells me it was not consensual. Imagine the number of times rape and other abhorrent atrocities were committed against slaves.

Of course, there were many very good people who owned slaves. History of the slaves of the Belle Meade Mansion in Nashville is documented in few of the only written letters from slaves known to exist. A female slave lovingly writes to her owner who is imprisoned up North.

There are a great many atrocities documented in the South. Legal atrocities. And we're not talking polite Richmond south. Memphis, Atlanta, Natchez, Vicksburg. Nashville, Columbia, Pulaski. The south was in a fix. Their entire wealth, down heah, was based on the exploitation of forced labor. The remarkable antebellum wealth was doomed without slavery. So much so that it was worth fighting for.

Elizabeth Keckley's book is a good read about the reality of slavery. Her mother was so ashamed that she told Elizabeth that her father was one man, when on her death bed she revealed her father was actually the white owner forced upon her. Forced. Yet, Elizabeth bought her freedom only because she was allowed to; she could have been denied.

There is no argument anywhere that slavery was anything more than an inhuman atrocity.

Hows that for a first post?

Greetings and Happy Holidays!