Month: June 2026

Categories
History

The South was Racist, but the North Wasn’t

 

black and white figures on wall

That doesn’t fit the facts.

There are numerous written documents referring to northern states as being much more racist. Here are some examples:

1818-1822: South Carolina Senator Robert Young Hayne described his personal observation of the fate of Southern blacks who fled north: “…there does not exist on the face of the whole earth, a population so poor, so retched, so vile, so loathsome, so utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of life, as the unfortunate blacks of Philadelphia, and New York and Boston.”

1831: French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.”

1837-1841: English writer James Silk Buckingham toured the United States and Canada, visiting all but two states. He wrote, “the prejudice of colour is not nearly so strong in the South as in the North.”

1841: English Quaker Joseph Sturge wrote, “In the course of conversation, the Governor [of Illinois] spoke of the prejudice against colour prevailing here than in the slave States. I may add, from my own observation, and much concurring testimony, that Philadelphia appears to be the metropolis of this odious prejudice, and that there is probably no city in the known world, where dislike, amounting to hatred of the coloured population, prevails more than in the city of brotherly love!”

Early 1853: Connecticut landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted wrote, “The railroad company advertise to take colored people in second class but servants seem to go with their masters everywhere. Once, to-day, seeing a lady entering the car at a way-station…I offered my seat which had several vacancies round it. She accepted it, without thanking me and immediately installed in it a stout negro woman; took the adjoining seat herself, and seated the rest of her party before her…They all talked and laughed together; the girls munched confectionary out of the same paper, with a familiarity and closeness of intimacy that would have been noticed with astonishment, if not with manifest displeasure, in almost any chance company at the North.”

1862: Massachusetts justice of the peace John S. Rock wrote, “We are colonized in Boston. It is five times as difficult to get a house in a good location in Boston as it is in Philadelphia, and it is ten times more difficult for a colored mechanic to get employment than in Charleston.”

1862: English writer Edward Dicey wrote, “I hardly ever remember seeing a black employed as a shopman, or placed in any post of responsibility. As a rule, the blacks you meet in the Free States are shabbily, if not squalidly  dressed; and, as far as I could learn, the instances of black men having made money by trade in the North, are very few in number.”

There you have opinions stated by black and white, north and south, foreigner and citizen. They all say the same thing: northern states were decidedly more racist than southern ones.

 

 

 

Categories
History

The South Wasn’t Serious about Emancipating Their Slaves

 

Combine: developed from the McCormick Reaper
Combine: developed from the McCormick Reaper

This was a point of view that was represented without data.

Here are the facts:

  1. The South had led early emancipation efforts, especially in Virginia.
  2. The South’s money crops were cotton and tobacco.
  3. Crop rotation was known and practiced at least to a limited extent because plantations were self-sufficient, growing food for people and livestock.
  4. The cotton gin made slaves’s lives easier, and fewer were required.
  5. Now, in 1831, the first practical reaper was invented by Cyrus McCormick, who was born in Virginia. This cut time and slave effort for standing crops, such as wheat.
  6. Few people owned slaves.
  7. The South was markedly less racist than the north, as noted by many travelers, both foreign and domestic, throughout the years.

Against the facts were these issues:

  1. Although the South was less racist, it was difficult for free blacks to make a living. This had to do with paying blacks less for equal work and certain work not being available to blacks—just as in the North. Southerners felt responsible for the slaves and knew that they lacked the understanding of the enormity of the task of complete self-care. They needed to be taught these things and to be allowed to increase self-care gradually—as was being done by Northern states even into the Civil War.
  2. The plantations, where almost all slaves lived, looked rich, but the wealth was not in cash: it was in land, livestock, and slaves. Many struggled with cash flow, even taking severe economies when not extending hospitality (when it didn’t show). The plantations would not continue to exist with simultaneous loss of slave wealth plus wages required for replacing them—even with the former slaves. In that case, everyone was out of a job. Where would they go to make a living?

The answer, of course, was mechanization. But this was a slow evolution.

  1. The planter had to find money to buy a cotton gin—impossible on plantations that were already mortgaged.
  2. The workforce had to be carefully reduced. The slaves knew the hard times of free blacks. Many, especially house slaves, prided themselves on the plantation to which they belonged. So, after eliminating some positions with the cotton gin (unless the owner bought more land), it would be field hands who were sold. The positions could also be eliminated by the natural attrition of deaths.
  3. The reaper would vacate fewer positions because those crops were grown on fewer acres, but there would be some sales.
  4. But the final emancipations would need to be slaves who paid for their own freedom but chose to stay as paid employees.

That was the only way the plantations would survive. The South was willing, but it wanted to do it its own way and in its own timing—just as Northern states were doing.

All the South wanted was the state independence already allowed to the North.

 

 

Categories
History

Compensated Emancipation Was Never Tested in the Americas

pile of currency

Well, not in the United States. And not on continental North America.

In 1833, the British Parliament passed the Abolition of Slavery Act, abolishing slavery in British colonies, such as those on Caribbean islands.

It pleased no one except some hardcore abolitionists.

1. Slave owners complained that the compensation was so low that it was a bad joke. Compensation was especially inadequate to cover mortgaged estates and did not cover the costs of owners as employers of laborers during the adjustment period. This included continued costs for food, clothing, lodging, and medicine.
2. Slaves did not like that they were not immediately emancipated. Slaves more than six years of age were to work as apprentice laborers without pay as a transition to freedom in 1838. They remained tied to estates, although they could buy their freedom even over the opposition of their employer.
3. British subjects were furious that they were responsible for compensation costs of $20 million: 40% of the national budget! The debt would not be paid off until 2015!

No wonder U.S. Southerners were leery of compensated emancipation!
By the way, Britain also began factory inspections in 1833.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/