Grand View's History of the Civil War Era

What is your “Nationalism” stance and where do you place your heart?

I believe that our Nationalism comes from our multiple sources of identity. My reference to 9/11 and all that were good and bad, this was a time of recognition as a country and of oneself. Many Americans were called to service and many more volunteered their service to anyone of need. This was a calling that many were falling astray from believing in our country. What percentage of our class could stand and say the “Pledge of Allegiance”?

As Cook stated in Chapter 1, the intention of the Founding Fathers was to create a balanced federal system in which power was diffused, firstly, between Washington and the States, and secondly, between executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. The above is an amazing statement but is also tainted with the 2/3 of the Founding Fathers being slave holders.

See attached list from Britannica.

Slaveholders among prominent Founding Fathers

slaveholders¹		non-slaveholders
Founding Father	state	Founding Father	state
Charles Carroll	Maryland	John Adams	Massachusetts
Samuel Chase	Maryland	Samuel Adams	Massachusetts
Benjamin Franklin	Pennsylvania	Oliver Ellsworth	Connecticut
Button Gwinnett	Georgia	Alexander Hamilton	New York
John Hancock	Massachusetts	Robert Treat Paine	Massachusetts
Patrick Henry	Virginia	Thomas Paine	Pennsylvania
John Jay	New York	Roger Sherman	Connecticut
Thomas Jefferson	Virginia
Richard Henry Lee	Virginia
James Madison	Virginia
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney	South Carolina
Benjamin Rush	Pennsylvania
Edward Rutledge	South Carolina
George Washington	Virginia
¹Held slaves at some point in time.

Is this where the phrase Doughface politics started? Or was slavery just part of our bedrock institution or just a necessary evil of progression? Read more of Conlin’s Isms and Ists.

There will also be many ideas of abolitionist whom would free all from slavery but would vote to make them and equal man or woman.

The question posed at the end of class Tuesday, why would so many men fight for slavery when 90% of them had never owned a slave?

In a VFW posting of The Thin Gray Line by Kolb, Reasons for risking life and limb varied, but they usually came down to four fundamentals: uphold state sovereignty, regional duty, group solidarity and protection of home and family.

The notion that the average Confederate waged war to preserve slavery is a tenuous one at best. Only 6 percent of Southerners owned slaves, and 3 percent of those owned the majority. Recruits themselves referred to the war as "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

Slavery affected all aspects of the South’s economic

In Thomas and Ayers – The Difference Slavery Made there was a comparison of two counties only 200 miles apart. The first being Franklin Co, PA and later being Augusta Co, VA.

Both counties were highly profitable during the 1860’s and both exploited agriculture, whites were wealthier in Augusta Virginia, for they owned more property and had larger farms than whites in Franklin Pennsylvania. Franklin's towns were more densely settled than Augusta's and more populated by lower classes and Augusta's towns were the preferred locations for the residences of the county's wealthiest planters.

One of many shocking quotes or excerpts is that, Franklin County's papers spent more ink--almost all of it negative--on its nearly two thousand free blacks than Augusta did on its five thousand enslaved people. So the main idea wasn’t the belief of slavery but the dehumanization of a complete race of humans. Case in point, the Abolition act or the Slave trade act wasn’t about the act of owning and exploiting slaves, it was the idea of making importing slaves illegal, sign and sealed by Pres. Thomas Jefferson in 1807, who was a slave owner.

Slavery dates back to the early 1600’s in the North American Colonies. Was slavery important to the development of the United States as an economic power and as an industrial developed and recognized nation? Slavery has been discovered in the earliest historical recording of man, was this a necessary evil in the development of the world we live in today?

2 comments:

UnknownSeptember 9, 2014 at 8:31 PM
It is a very interesting point how most of the founding fathers also had slaves. Kind of reminds of what today's politicians say, "Do as I say, not as I do." The founding fathers wanted freedom for everyone except for those needed to work on their farms. Is this really any different than how those with political and financial power behave today?

It seems most people wanted slavery protected because they did not want the government to tell the people how to run their lives. This was the case even though the majority of people did not have slaves. Those of lower economic stature liked slavery because it meant there was a class of people lower than them.

You asked the question whether "slavery was important to the development of the United States as an economic power." I believe that is the case. Without slavery, the southern states would not have been able to produce the large amounts of cotton that they exported to other countries. According to Cook, cotton exports to Great Britain made up close to two-thirds of America's exports. So without the large amount of labor that slaves provided, I really don't think America could have grown into a power as fast as it did.

It is an interesting point that slavery has been around throughout history. Some people act as if America was the first nation to have slavery, but there are several examples throughout history of people being enslaved by others. Without slavery many things would not have taken place. That is evident every time someone looks at the great monuments in Egypt. But are those great accomplishments that important when it means taking away the dignity of a man? I say no.
Blake WilkinsonSeptember 10, 2014 at 8:27 AM
I also find it interesting that most of the founding fathers owned slaves, I also heard that some of the founding fathers treated their slaves better than just your average plantation owner. i find it interesting how Sean said people liked slavery just because it meant there was someone lower than them. Slavery wasn't important to the United States it was important to the souther economy, when you're entire economy is based on agriculture and you lose your source of labor, there goes your economy. I think the north would prosper while the south declined, the north was industrialized and didn't rely on one source of money. if the country would have stayed divided in my opinion, the south would go into a great depression, while the north prospered.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

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