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1. 1 Comment by Rob on 16 December 2008:

   Weldon Edwards was on the scene in 1861? Goodness, I always think of him as a Congressman from the Monroe years and even something of a Jacksonian.

2. 2 Comment by robert m. peters on 16 December 2008:

   Macon left a legacy which was embraced and acted upon as a heritage by his son-in-law thirty years later. Is there, today, a legacy to be left; and is there a generation with the will and the courage to embrace and act on it as a heritage of their own? In the wasteland of modernity’s anticulture – self-indulgent pursuit of complusions and desires rather than the subjugation and denial of self through the restraint of compulsions – it is difficult to piece together the meaningful traditions amidst the flotsam and cobble together wreckage of old institutions in the jetsam. That which is ultimately pieced and cobbled together bears only a dim resemblance of its fuller antecedent. Yet, we soldier on: writing, talking and living out with the hope, and not a vain one, that Good Providence will add, in His sovereignty, increase and clarity which we who struggle through this present age cannot apprehend. The main reason that I come to this forum is to experience the handiwork of the intellectual craftsmen busy about retrieving and restoring that which was thought lost. I share it and pass it on as best as I can.

3. 3 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 16 December 2008:

   Dr Wilson,

   Your historical sketches are always engrossing and often cause me to question the version of history I was taught long ago, yes, in New England. (Truth be told, I’ve questioned it long since, but you lead me to question it in new ways).

   You’ve alluded to it from time to time on this blog, and for all I know, written about it elsewhere. Can you point me to an account of your views on chattel slavery as practiced in the ante-bellum South? Men iike Washington, Jefferson, and Macon, men of many and great virtues surely, kept slaves.

   How does Clyde Wilson, learned historian and Southern patriot, look on this circumstance, and how does if affect your view of men like Macon? If you have written on this question elsewhere, a link or two may well suffice.

4. 4 Comment by C Bowen on 16 December 2008:

   How about a couple of comments on his position regarding the Louisiana Purchase and Mr. Madison’s War for an even sketch, warts and all?

   Where did he fit in with the Southern War Hawks?

5. 5 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 16 December 2008:

   Re: #3 Grumpy Old Man

   There is a bit of a canard practiced with the history of slavery in the US – that it was a Southern practice only, with ‘the north’ ending it at some early, unspecified time. Let us not forget that slavery was practiced in several northern states in some cases into the 1840s and 1850s. My own northern relatives owned slaves in Indiana.

   But what exactly do you expect ? Would you prefer any laudatory essay on Southerner who also happened to be a slaveholder end with (best said in a low, solemn voice), “…but, he was also a slave holder”, as so many court historians cannot resist with Mr. Jefferson.

   Mr. Macon, one of the greatest of the ‘quid’ republicans, is an example of what a statesman should be like. His kind is unfortunately, with only the exception of perhaps Ron Paul, extinct.

6. 6 Comment by PcH on 16 December 2008:

   Whoopee! You still got it, Dr. Wilson!

   I read this, and I though to myself, he’s summed up his life’s work in one straightforward essay! This short piece could prove to be a classic, and I’ve read dozens of others by you much like it. This is great.

7. 7 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 16 December 2008:

   Dr Wilson

   Buck Spring Plantation is near Lake Gaston. From Warrenton NC head north on Eaton Ferry Road, turn left on Nathaniel Macon Drive — route 1348, and Google Earth shows it about half a mile on the right.

   If anybody wants to visit, you’d better go soon. It looks as though developers will be moving in the bulldozers to take advantage of the lakfront real estate.

   Thank you for making us realize what a skunk, snake, and chrome-plated, streamlined bounder John Adams was.

8. 8 Comment by PcH on 16 December 2008:

   Question for Dr. Wilson:

   When that Egyptian newspaperman threw his shoes at W, I laughed and applauded. What a circus these uptight leaders have made of our government. On the other hand, Adams would have done bad things to him, and in many other governments, that man would have disappeared and the film confiscated.

   So is the fact that he got away with shying shoes at the President just an example that the people can protest all they want, it’s blowing in the wind; life goes on as if nothing happened?

   Or is it a good sign inherited from the republican past?

9. 9 Comment by Allen Wilson on 16 December 2008:

   This is the reason I come here. No garbage, no cultural Marxism, no lip-service to it before we get down to the subject, and no fear of it; not even words devoted to debunking the cultural marxists unless it’s necessary to the subject at hand. Just straight, clear telling of things as they are, or as they were.

   I remember as a child reading through an old high school history book from the early or mid sixties, and seeing Macon mentioned as one of the founders. For years afterward, those old books, which had been tucked away in a closet in my grandparent’s house for years, were the only reason I knew his name, or that of the Swamp Fox, and many other colonial and founding-era leaders.

   Thank you for this article. It appears that I need to brush up more on my founding era history.

10. 10 Comment by MAP on 17 December 2008:

    Terrific essay, Dr. Wilson! It is difficult to believe this very same country ever produced men of such caliber. I’ve been lately studying a work you edited, St. George Tucker’s A View of the Constitution. It, like the present essay, is a most interesting and inspiring read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a time when this country actually produced men of real quality.

11. 11 Comment by Bruce on 17 December 2008:

    I’m ashamed to admit I never heard of him in (public) schools. No surprise. Thanks for this Professor Wilson.

12. 12 Comment by TJF on 17 December 2008:

    We need Clyde Wilson to do a piece like this every month and, once expanded and revised, to publish them in a book that can remind Americans of who they were and should be now.

13. 13 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    An excellent piece on an oft-overlooked Founding Father.

    That being said, I take issue with a few passages. First, I see a definite hypocrisy in glorifying the Southern aristocracy while condemning John Adams, a defender of the natural aristocracy against Southern egalitarian philosophes like Jefferson et al. Dr Wilson preens as a populist when discussing Northern defenders of the natural order, and as an aristocrat when discussing Southern defenders of the same.

    “Northern attacks on slavery were malicious, counter-productive, and driven by lust for power rather than benevolence.” Note that Dr Wilson is ever condemning the opponents of that grotesque institution, and always and ever defending the those who profited from it. Can anyone quote any passage, from any piece by Dr Wilson in his long life, in which he condemns the institution of slavery? I certainly cannot claim to have read everything he’s ever written, but I’ve seen nothing of the sort in what I have read, ever. Apart from the disturbing implications of the tendency of proponents of the myth of the Lost Cause to romanticize the old South and by extension slavery, this sweeping generalization is as sloppy as it is inaccurate and unfair. That the majority of abolitionists simply (and quite naturally, and rightly) found slavery to be repugnant, un-Christian and immoral, and neither sought nor gained any “power” through their involvement with the movement.

    As for this quote: “Remember, you belong to a meek state and a just people, who want nothing but to enjoy the fruits of their labour honestly and lay out the profits in their own way”, the rank hypocrisy and absurdity of it should need no explanation anywhere else, although here, and to fans of Dr Wilson, it apparently does. The fruits of *whose* labor, exactly? How does one “honestly” enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor, when that labor is not given freely, but cruelly compelled by the whip, by mutilation and murder? There are many terms one might use to describe the Southern aristocrat’s enjoyment of the fruits of someone else’s labor in this fashion – ‘barbarism’ is one. ‘Reverse-welfare’, to coin a phrase, might be another. But “honest” – never. Thievery is never honest, nor honorable.

14. 14 Comment by robert m. peters on 17 December 2008:

    From my earliest memory, I delighted in tagging along with my father. When I was naught but a liability in matters of the hunt, I could be found struggling along behind him, trying to mimic his gait as we trudged through swamp, across bottom land and over ridges. One of those instances, I do not remember which one, brought us to the banks of Bayou Macon, which was once the Arkansas River on which an ancient Indian city, now called Poverty Point, was built. Daddy, did, as he always did; he made the hunt more than the killing of squirrels or the slaying of a deer. He told me that Bayou Macon was likely named after Nathaniel Macon or one of his offspring. He then told me what he remembered from what he had learned about Macon from the books which he had read or from the eleven years of school (not twelve in those days), which was the only formal education he had ever received. I, of course, do not recall all that he said about Macon, save that he, my father, had not seen men like him in Louisiana in his time.

    This was an educational tactic of my father. When we would pass through Jackson Parish, for instance, he world endeavor to tell a story about Andrew Jackson, based on the facts which he knew. So it would go: Lincoln Parish, Madison Parish, Grant Parish (my home parish) and even the whistle stop of Roosevelt, so named because Teddy used to come by train to that point to hunt bear in the northeast Louisiana Delta.

    Now, that I again meet Macon in the article written by Dr. Wilson, I must conclude that Daddy was right, not only about his time but also about mine: I have not and do not see men like Macon in Louisiana in my time, or anywhere else for that matter.

15. 15 Comment by Josh Cooney on 17 December 2008:

    #13 “Note that Dr Wilson is ever condemning the opponents of that grotesque institution, and always and ever defending the those who profited from it.”

    This isn’t true. Dr. Wilson, to my knowledge, has never defended pompous, hypocritical New Englanders who accumulated their vast wealth and power through the slave trade.

16. 16 Comment by Josh Cooney on 17 December 2008:

    “A few words from Macon in Congress often stopped bills that proposed supposedly attractive measures. It might be nice to pay for everybody to go to college, or to build a fancy temple for the Supreme Court, or to issue bonds for rich people to invest in, or overturn a dictator 5,000 miles away. But the politicians had no right to take away the citizens’ earnings for whatever they thought was good. The Constitution told them what they could do.”

    Question: Were these actual proposals at the time or are you making a more general point about today’s politicians?

17. 17 Comment by Bruce on 17 December 2008:

    Didn’t Sam Francis point out that the Bible never condemns slavery?

18. 18 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    “Didn’t Sam Francis point out that the Bible never condemns slavery?”

    And?

19. 19 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 December 2008:

    Mr. Cooney, #16. I was making the comment relevant to today. The kinds of government dogooding with other people’s money in Macon’s time were a different sort—like paying lavish pensions to New England militiamen who had served three inactive months in the Revolution, establishing a national university, building lavish and lavishly furnished govt. buildings. etc.

20. 20 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 December 2008:

    TJF, #12. Chief, I would be game except, as you well know, getting a real book published these days is a tiresome and discouraging project. American publishing today specialises in nonbooks.

21. 21 Comment by robert on 17 December 2008:

    Robert E. Lee on slavery:

    “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil… How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day.”
    Letter dated December 27, 1856

22. 22 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 December 2008:

    Toddard. So you are opposed to slavery. Congratulations on your moral superiority.

23. 23 Comment by Michael Hill on 17 December 2008:

    #14 Mr. Peters: I may be wrong, but I thought that Bayou Macon (actually pronounced “Mason”) was named after a family named Mason that was prominent in NE Louisiana.

24. 24 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 17 December 2008:

    Most places in the New World managed to abolish slavery without mass slaughter. Some places, such as Trinidad and Guyana, replaced the slaves with indentured laborers from India, laying the basis for future ethnic conflict. The North, which had profited from the slave trade and where those of African descent were hardly welcome, developed industrial capitalism, at times most unpleasant for the underlings.

    Well and good. We live in a fallen world, and it’s pointless to cast stones at men long dead. Still, if we are to learn from their example, we can hardly ignore that they were born into and lived in a world where slavery was a given.

    Hence my question.

25. 25 Comment by robert on 17 December 2008:

    “Still, if we are to learn from their example, we can hardly ignore that they were born into and lived in a world where slavery was a given.

    Hence my question.”

    Grumpy,
    Our civilization has relied on the institution of slavery much longer than it has on the libertarian notion of freedom divorced from virtue, and appears to be heading back in that direction. I look forward to hearing Dr. Wilson’s response (as I am sure you do) and will defer to my betters but as a historical fact, slavery disappeared with the spread of our Holy Religion and seems to be reappearing with its demise. But in a way I hate to mention all of this because it is sure to detract or at least distract from this admirable essay about a great man from our old country.

26. 26 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    Wilson – it’s not slavery I’m opposing here, it’s the reduction, the simplification, of history into a Good Vs Evil narrative, always with the narrator’s side (shocker!) being The Good. Yours is a mirror, or a negative, of the now-standard Glorious And Noble Northern Liberators vs Evil Backward Slave-holding Rednecks narrative subscribed to by most public school graduates in America nowadays. Both equally fail to represent in any meaningful way the realities and complexities of antebellum life or the horrible, tragic war and equally tragic period that followed.

    Robert – I appreciate that quote. My point was only that most abolitionists *considered* slavery un-Christian, regardless of whether the practice was condemned specifically in the New Testament. Would that slavery had been allowed to die a natural death, and America avoided the War Between the States, the radical Republicans, the brutal, criminal Reconstruction and the decades of strife and brutality that resulted from the animosity created thereby. But it wasn’t, and reducing historical persons to caricatures and painting with a broad brush whole swaths of the country as either heroes or villains won’t change that.

27. 27 Comment by Edward on 17 December 2008:

    What an excellent and interesting piece!

    On a slightly related matter, I just completed a class on the evolution of the American Presidency. Generally, the class was about how the president’s power has evolved an expanded since its inception. What bothered me about the class, though, was how the professor essentially taught that the Constitution’s description of the executive was merely one way of looking at things. Then Lincoln, TR, Wilson, and FDR are elected and offer their equally valid and authoritative ideas of what the president should be allowed to do. At no time during the class was the Constitution treated as worth more than the actions of Lincoln or the historical and intellectual arrogance of Wilson.

    Reading this piece on Macon, Dr. Wilson, is both inspiring and saddening. It is inspiring because you demonstrate how men like this actually existed, but it is saddening that they existed so long ago.

28. 28 Comment by robert m. peters on 17 December 2008:

    Mr. Hill @ 23,

    You are likely correct. Some pronounce it “Mason” and some “Macon.” I doubt that my father himself knew the origins of the bayou’s name. Based on the knowledge which he had, it was his “hook” to talk about Nathaniel Macon, a man he had learned about at school and apparently admired. I am sure that with a “Google” we can find out the actual origins of the bayou’s name.

29. 29 Comment by Bruce on 17 December 2008:

    The war wasn’t “tragic” it was criminal.

30. 30 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    A crime cannot be a tragedy?

31. 31 Comment by TJF on 17 December 2008:

    No, a tragedy occurs when men of serious character and good intention overreach themselves and fall into disaster. Tragedy should never be used to mean misfortune or disaster.

    Here is a brutal fact of human nature and human history. Civilizations always rely on slavery: The Chinese, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Medieval Christians (Belloc was simply wrong about this). Modern American capitalism uses a form of industrial servitude that no Greek or Roman would have regarded as a condition of liberty. It hardly matters whether we approve of slavery or not any more than we approve of male dominance or war. When Yankees boasted in the Senate that up North they had abolished slavery, South Carolina’s W.H. Hammond replied, “Yes, the name but not the thing.”

32. 32 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 17 December 2008:

    “Remember, you belong to a meek state and a just people, who want nothing but to enjoy the fruits of their labour honestly and lay out the profits in their own way.” – I’m glad to see that there is someone else out there (Mr. Toddard) who can appreciate the irony of a slave-owner making such an audaciously hypocritical claim.

33. 33 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 December 2008:

    Toddard. Yes the history is complicated and one should be careful not to think too categorically of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.
    But surely Southerners, having been subjected to such treatment for so long, so pervasively, so unjustly, and so violently, are entitled to reply once or twice in a century. And unlike most of those who preach the Righteous North version of history these days, , I actually know something about 19th century America. Americans conveniently forget the most basic fact about The War, the North invaded and conquered their fellow citizens of the South in order to serve the interest of Northern whites. The violent abrogation of slavery was merely an expedient byproduct.

34. 34 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    I’m sorry but you’re wrong on both counts. “Tragedy” has more than one definition, and the one you reference as being the only proper one is correct only in the context of drama. Elsewhere “tragedy” is indeed synonymous with “disaster” or “grave misfortune”.

    And equating chattel slavery with any employer/employee arrangement in the U.S. today is so absurd as to be laughable regardless of what the ancient Romans would think (?), and the sort of thing one might expect to hear from a college freshman in a Che Guevara t-shirt, flush from his first brush with Marxist utopianism.

35. 35 Comment by Fred Fowler on 17 December 2008:

    Weren’t many if not most of the abolitionists Unitarians rather than Christians?

    Another question I have is what books about the Revolutionary War written in the 19th Century are worth reading. I’ve heard of the one by Mercy Oates Warren, and another book by a North Carolinian whose name I’ve forgotten, but I don’t know how good these are. Also, are there any books written by recent authors that are worth reading?

36. 36 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 December 2008:

    The irony is not that men who owned slaves proclaimed liberty, which is commonplace in history. The liberty, of course, belonged to those who had fought for it and their posterity, not to every warm body. The irony is that Southern slaveholders were the best and truest exponents of American liberty in all of American experience, when Northerners have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government. Surely, an aristocracy is far preferable, from the standpoint of liberty, to a plutocracy.

37. 37 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    Dr Wilson, I know you do. And I recognize that the South has been portrayed unfairly as the villain since the victors started writing the history of it. And I agree with you entirely as to the basic facts as you’ve just laid them out.

    If you find yourself with a spare moment, I’d like to know how you feel about Kirk’s take on John Adams in the Conservative Mind. Do you believe him entirely off-base? Kirk seemed to respect and admire the antebellum Southern aristocracy nearly as much as you yourself do, yet found in Adams much to admire as well. Is there nothing in that old Yankee you find worthy of admiration?

38. 38 Comment by Fred Fowler on 17 December 2008:

    Sorry, I should have written “Mercy Otis Warren”, not “Mercy Oates Warren”.

39. 39 Comment by robert on 17 December 2008:

    #30″ Belloc was simply wrong about this. ‘
    Belloc noticed as you say that “Civilizations always rely on slavery.” All except for a brief influence during the Christian
    Era. If you are going to say that a great historian like Belloc was simply wrong about this or that, I think we owe him a demonstration of where and when after a lifetime of reading everything he wrote and not just bits and pieces. It is the most popular of educated,catholic,prejudices today to bash Belloc for being a drunkard, for lacking footnotes, for being resentful
    of his rejection from Oxford, for being cantankerous when accomodation would have served his cause better, etc. etc.
    It is a criticism that I have never tolerated when directed at some of America’s finest defenders like Clyde Wilson and Tom Flemming and one that I deeply resent. Even when he was wrong he was more right than the damned fools teaching in most of our institutions today,where fools like me pay big books to enjoy the privilege of despising everything they teach my sons and daughters.

40. 40 Comment by Bruce on 17 December 2008:

    I suppose I think of a tragedy as involving a virtuous but flawed actor. I don’t think the North was acting out flawed benevolence.

    You seem to see the war as morally ambiguous and slavery as morally unambiguous. My inclination is the reverse.

41. 41 Comment by J Meng on 17 December 2008:

    @30: TJF: You said that Medieval Christians relied on slavery and that Belloc was wrong about this. In which of his histories did he assert this “wrongness”? Also, in whose history will I find that slavery was an institution during Medieval times? You have piqued my interest.

42. 42 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    “The irony is not that men who owned slaves proclaimed liberty, which is commonplace in history.”

    Of course it is – it was ironic when Dr Johnson asked why “the loudest yelps for liberty come from the drivers of slaves” in Colonial America, and it was no less so when the South seceded.

    “The irony is that Southern slaveholders were the best and truest exponents of American liberty in all of American experience, when Northerners have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government.”

    Here you make another false, sweeping generalization in place of a legitimate point. How were Northerners any less exponents of American liberty than Southern slaveholders? An argument could be made that the reverse is true based on natural rights theory, but how could yours be made in any context whatever? How was a Southern slaveholder a better representative of American liberty than, say, a New England farmer? And on what basis do you make the claim that “Northerners have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government”? What Northerners? The ones who left their farms and families and shops to fight the British under Washington, to come home to financial ruin and debtor’s prisons? I understand the polemical value of statements like these, and perhaps the urge to concoct outrageous, hyperbolic exaggerations to counter those traditionally peddled by Lincoln worshipers and detractors of the South but beyond that what value is there in statements like that – “Northerners have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government”?

    Preaching to the choir and replacing one false narrative for another is no way to correct a record.

43. 43 Comment by J Meng on 17 December 2008:

    #38, robert, it wasn’t just “a brief influence during the Christian era” apropos the institution of slavery in Europe. As Belloc tells it, the transformation of society from slavery to peasant (a freeholder) was a process of a thousand years. He says in his book, The Servile State, that “Slavery was of the very stuff of Europe for thousands upon thousands of years, until Europe engaged upon that considerable moral experiment called the Faith.” In other words, his argument is that through the influence of the Catholic Church, men were lifted up from the degraded level of slavery to the position of free men, who owned land and the tools for producing wealth.

44. 44 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 17 December 2008:

    #30 TJF

    Here is a brutal fact of human nature and human history. Civilizations always rely on slavery: The Chinese, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Medieval Christians . . .

    . If by slavery you mean inequality, you and Aristotle are, of course, correct. Attempts at some imagined utopian communal existence, except in small voluntary commiunities, lead inevitably to slaughter.

    There are, however, the thing can be arranged in many different ways, differences which are consequential. If we are to lionize a Macon for his work in Congress, and here Dr. Wilson is persuasive, oughtn’t we consider how things were back on the farm?

45. 45 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 17 December 2008:

    Sorry my incomplete edits garbled things. ‘Twill have to do for a combox.

46. 46 Comment by Robert on 17 December 2008:

    Meng @40
    Most folks who even know of Belloc will refer you to his book, the Servile State for his notions on slavery in the Western tradition but there he was really concerned with what has become the neo-conservative notion that socialsim with a human face is really the solution. His essay The Restoration of Property or his little book formed while tutoring one of his friend’s daughters called Economics for Helen or his biographies on the English Reformation are all relevant to what Dr. Wilson describes as the Northerner habit of making an easy buck off the governement. There are really two traditions in the West — one the Love of Money Making and the other the Love of Truth — or what in the perennial tradiition is called the incarnation of the spirit and the inspiration of the flesh. Your own traditions from the East will be familiar to the one and the recent invasion of your homeland in the other. But as I said in post#25 “But in a way I hate to mention all of this because it is sure to detract or at least distract from this admirable essay about a great man from our old country.” As it certainly has and always will when a strong truth confronts a denial of reality that folks are comfortable living with. My apology to all men of good will who frequent this site. Especialy to Dr. Wilson who wrote a beautiful essay about a fine citizen from the Southern States.

47. 47 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 17 December 2008:

    “The liberty, of course, belonged to those who had fought for it and their posterity”

    Having fought for it, and lost, by your logic it could be argued Southerners are no longer entitled to it, and were their victors in the North to impose upon them literal chattel slavery it would be just. No?

48. 48 Comment by Miles Gloriosus on 17 December 2008:

    FTA: “Remember, you belong to a meek state and a just people, who want nothing but to enjoy the fruits of their labour honestly and lay out the profits in their own way.”

    I wonder if our compassionate “conservative” President had ever read this. Heaven knows if he had, he never heeded it.

    In future all President’s en route to their inaugurations should have someone gently whispering in their ear the entire time, “Sic transit gloria mundi.”

49. 49 Comment by Robert on 17 December 2008:

    Meng@42

    Yes, and I agree with what Mr. Belloc observed. Slavery is an institution that the slow influence of the Incarnation eventually undermined but only for a brief time. As that faith disappears the institution creeps back in with equal fervor It is popular today to read history backwards. When our ancestors bought and sold other human beings as property transfers and brought the slave to his labor we act enraged and indignant yet we are often blinded by own desires today as we slowly revert to the support of similar institutions by either exporting the work to the slave or importing immigrants under servile conditions. It is much more advanced than any of us are willing to admit. But hysteria always takes over these conversations in the current climate, so I am leaving it to you to read as much or as little of what Mr. Belloc says on the subject as you desire. Thanks for your response and good posts.

50. 50 Comment by Josh Cooney on 17 December 2008:

    In case anyone is interested, here is a link to a brief article by Orestes Brownson on the relative merits of Southern slavery versus free labor under the Northern capitalist system. The link calls Brownson a “reformer, socialist, transcendentalist…,” conveniently forgetting to mention his conversion and subsequent life as an orthodox Catholic; though it appears this essay was written before his conversion.

    http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/His316/Brownson.html

51. 51 Comment by Rick on 17 December 2008:

    49 Thank you for the link very interesting read.

52. 52 Comment by Robert on 17 December 2008:

    Thanks Mr. Cooney for this link to Orestes Brownson. On another thread we had a great little debate( call it a debacle if you didn’t like it ) about the merits of certain popular American writers such asJ ohn Dewey and William James,. It always seems peculiar to me in such discussions why Santayana and Brownson are always and politely ignored. I look forward to hearing the response from S. L. Toddard conecerning this link who previously wrote that ” equating chattel slavery with any employer/employee arrangement in the U.S. today is so absurd as to be laughable regardless of what the ancient Romans would think (?), and the sort of thing one might expect to hear from a college freshman in a Che Guevara t-shirt, flush from his first brush with Marxist utopianism.” Well, pull yourself a little closer to the fire Mr. Toddard Brownson was no freshman at looking at things and join us all in that unusual human hobby; the habit of thinking things through.

53. 53 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 17 December 2008:

    Slavery was a wicked institution. Even many loyal Confederates thought so, as the quotation from Robert E. Lee indicates.

    But it does not follow that every wicked institution has to be destroyed precipitately in a shattering war. Slavery would have eventually been abolished in the United States in a peaceful manner, as happened in Brazil in the 1880s.

    The real point at issue here is the motivation of the northern abolitionists, and a certain kind of New England absolutist puritanism that just had to force the matter to a trial of arms. That sort of all-consuming crackpot idealism is the real culprit.

54. 54 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 17 December 2008:

    Massachusetts was, and still is, a very wierd state. For example: you can’t shop an Sundays, but you can put a child molester in the House of Representatives. They had no qualms about forcing integration of government schools on Mississippians, but when the hens came home to roost in Boston they whistled a different tune. Even Frederick Douglass commented that the racism of New England was worse than any he’d experienced in Maryland.

    And the Northeastern schoolmarms still flock down to the Old Dominion to show us rubes, hicks, rednecks, and yokels just exactly what’s what. They run for the school boards and the councils of suburbanizing counties in a strange effort to destroy our state just like they did their own. Yankee Go Home!

55. 55 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 17 December 2008:

    “Slavery was a wicked institution. Even many loyal Confederates thought so, as the quotation from Robert E. Lee indicates.”

    Yes, and looking upon what was going on in the years before the war, I do not see slavery in Virginia persisting beyond 1870. One by one, the same thing would have happened in the other states, with perhaps Florida being the final hold out.

    The trouble with the historiography of the war is it perpetuates the myth if something bad exists in the world, it requires the US Army to crush it.

56. 56 Comment by Jon I. on 17 December 2008:

    I have to agree with Mr. Wilson. The war was was fought because of economics and greed, period. North Eastern slums and sweatshops were a more horrible life for a human being than the fields of the South.

    I feel great sorrow for the Southerners who lost their lives due to war or scorched earth starvation. I also feel sorrow for the young Yankees who lost their lives, especially the Irish and German immigrants who were handed a rifle and forced to fight a war they had no knowledge about. What I don’t feel the need for is any more animosity on this tragedy unless it is directed against the old elite from New England.

    I might be serious or I might be trying to lighten the mood, even I don’t know. But doesn’t it seem like many of America’s problems became worse from wealthy New England women who loved sticking their noses into other people’s business? Slavery? They were rabid dogs about it, them and their “preachers.” Alcohol? Hmmmm, who were those original members of the temperance unions? (Along with their charlatan preachers). Drugs!? Where’s Nancy and Barb when you need them?

    I know these are not the class/creed of women who started the feminist insanity, but every movement has a foundation.

57. 57 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

    RE: 21. Lee on slavery with the “…” filled in ??

    “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.”

58. 58 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    “Slavery” is one name for an instution of domestic servitude which, in various forms, is nearly coterminous with civilisation. A great man of the North, John Adams, said it was self-evident that there was really no difference in the status of Southern slaves and the poorer class of Northern workers, especially New England fishermen. He also advised Northerners it would be unwise and unpatriotic to force any measure against the opinion of Southerners who had the responsibility for the matter.
    Another great man of the North, Webster, declared that abolitionists and their fanaticism that had retarded the South from gradual emancipation that had flourished before their appearance. No Yankee abolitionist (unlike Southern thinkers) ever made any reasonable, good-faith recommendation about ending slavery. They contented themselves with preaching unreasoning hatred of Southerners, such abuse being the real underlying cause of the war.

59. 59 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    I wrote in celebration of early republican statesmanship. One expects in any historical discussion to have leftists immediately respond with a scream of “slavery” as a result of their own obsessions and agenda. It is sad to see that irrelevance injected here. Those who insist on screaming “slavery” in every discussion of American history obviously prefer the French Revolution to the actual, real American one.

60. 60 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    Dr Wilson, when you say “great man of the North” do you mean it as “great man… for the North” or “someone the North considers ‘great’” or do you yourslef consider John Adams a great man – a patriot to admire?

    I only ask because I’d always considered myself a Jeffersonian and considered Adams a borderline monarchist and was always turned off by his association with Hamilton and his feud with Jefferson, whose side I took reflexively. Kirk’s book has given me a new outlook on Adams, and I’m extremely curious as to how you feel about the man, Yankee or no.

61. 61 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “One expects in any historical discussion to have leftists immediately respond with a scream of “slavery” as a result of their own obsessions and agenda. It is sad to see that irrelevance injected here. Those who insist on screaming “slavery” in every discussion of American history obviously prefer the French Revolution to the actual, real American one”

    That might be the case had you yourself not “injected” the “irrelevancy” into the discussion. Had you not maligned opponents of the institution and whole swaths of the country in the way you did – unfairly and inaccurately – there would have been no reason for me to correct you. Believe me, it’s not something I wanted to do, but it behooves all of us to address, amend and rectify half-truths and distortions wherever we find them, even when they are made by men we respect and with whom we mostly agree. Had you merely written to the merits of the man – and they were legion – I would have said nothing. Not a word. I respect and admire Nathaniel Macon and don’t believe his owning slaves need mitigate that admiration. I don’t believe any discussion of Jefferson, Madison or Washington need contain a condemnation of or apology for slavery. But a condemnation of the opponents of slavery, and of the states from which they came, if made unfairly and inaccurately – and I believe yours was – must be put right. There are legitimate condemnations to be made of the abolitionist movement, and had you made them I’d have agreed. We agree that secession was constitutional, that Lincoln was a de-facto dictator who did not “save the Union” but rather left a different – and worse – country entirely in its place, and that the WBTS, rather than alleviating the condition of the African population in America, compounded and extended their misery. But to say that all opponents of slavery were in it for “malicious” reasons and a “lust” for power, or to malign the patriotism of all Yankees and claim that they cared not for Liberty and only for “making a buck off the government” – these claims are unfair and simply incorrect. They are propagandistic and inaccurate, and no more legitimate or reflective of the truth than the claims that all Southerners were traitors who fought only to retain slavery and that sort of nonsense.

    Again, replacing one false narrative for another is no way to correct a record. Thank you for your time, sincerely. And I apologize if I’ve come off as disrespectful, but it’s a hard thing to have one’s ancestors unfairly maligned, as I’m sure you know.

62. 62 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

    “There are many terms one might use to describe the Southern aristocrat’s enjoyment of the fruits of someone else’s labor in this fashion – ‘barbarism’ is one.”

    No. The Romans owned slaves and were, by definition, not Barbarians.

63. 63 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “No. The Romans owned slaves and were, by definition, not Barbarians.”

    The Romans WERE barbarians “by definition” at one point, as “barbarian” – or “barbaros” – originally meant “non-Greek”.

64. 64 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

    OK. The ancient Greeks owned slaves and were, by definition, not Barbarians.

65. 65 Comment by TJF on 18 December 2008:

    The Romans of the late Republic and hte Empire were, at least by courtesy, regarded as civilized and not barbaros by their Greek subjects. So engrained was this notion that Medieval Italians took to describing the Germans and French as barbari–hence the frequently heard phrase, “Barbarians Out!”. All authentic human communities display inequalities of wealth, status, and power, but the higher one goes up the ladder, the more these inequalities turn into something like master and slave. Belloc (whom I greatly admire) argued, in the Servile State that while Christianity did not condemn slavery per se, the Church’s moral teachings so discouraged it that slavery was transformed into the more benign serfdom. Part of this is true, but tenant farmers and serfs were found, in the late empire, to be a more profitable form of labor exploitation. Besides, the history of any area or city in Europe will reveal the existence of household slaves often bought from the Muslims. On the other hand, the Venetian were well known slave dealers, selling Christian captives to Muslims!

    The reason we do not see vast numbers of Americans as slaves is twofold: The first and less important reason is that a large number of our slaves do no work: They are welfare slaves, servants of the government, street thugs who justify a police state, a parasitic drain on people who work. The second and more important reason is that we have lost our understanding of freedom, which is not simply the absence of physical coercion or a deed of sale, but an economic, moral, and spiritual condition. The man who fears to lose his job, watches TV in the evenings, and goes to Disneyworld on vacation is not a free man, by any understanding that obtained in other historical periods. The economic exploitation of man by man, the degradation people are willing to suffer so long as they have security–these are not pleasant realities to dwell upon, but if we fail to understand them, we shall fall into the suicidal cant of the abolitionists. One does not have to like or defend slavery to be disgusted by the dishonest propaganda that passes for history in these United States. As an emigre friend told me on the telephone yesterday, what a corrupt and cowardly people our (the baby boomers) generation is. Yes, but successive generations are even more pathetic and degraded. Our trouble is that while we have slavery–and plenty of it–we do not have civilization. That was destroyed before I was born. Read this little piece (“A Libido for the Ugly”) written by Mencken in 1927. http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/hlmlibidougly_2.htm

66. 66 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

    Thanks Dr. Fleming. I always relax when I see your silouette riding hard over the horizon towards the sound of guns — spreading peace, restoring order and healing the ignorant along the way especially during this season of expectation and Advent. Your loyal friend on the prairie.

67. 67 Comment by MAP on 18 December 2008:

    Good post Dr. Fleming. Our perception is warped, and so our lives. We over-emphasis the unimportant and ignore the important. Thus, from a discussion of a great and virtuous man we descend into a meaningless debate on slavery.

68. 68 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

    After reading Mencken’s article on ugliness I suggest the following essay on beauty. There is also a great photograph of the writer in his more venerable years. Enjoy. http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/bellocstreets.htm

69. 69 Comment by Josh Cooney on 18 December 2008:

    It is unfortunate that this discussion has become derailed. I hope this doesn’t prevent Dr. Wilson from writing more of these portraits in the future.

70. 70 Comment by C Bowen on 18 December 2008:

    I don’t mind the hyperbole so much, living near Bowdoin College who supplied some decent people and minds to the Liberia project–they are trying to forget that too, but I digress.

    The problem, if there is one in the narrative, is folks like Macon, when they had power, used it unwisely and with a certain lack of skill. Calling for an invasion of Canada (and Florida in Macon’s case), was proven foolhearty. Worse, Macon favored debt financing of the war that surrendered power, permanently, to the North–sealing the fate for us all in the Union: out of the slave and rum trade and into the opium trade.

    I’ll take a Hawthorne and Pierce who could see, to some degree, the nature of the nationalist project, doomed to fail, and did what they could to hold it together.

    Dr.Fleming,

    Is there any chance Mr. Trask could speak for the Old North?

71. 71 Comment by robert m. peters on 18 December 2008:

    There is another site, actually quite pedestrian when compared to this one, which I “visit” from time to time. On the 16th, I posted a quote from Dr. Wilson’s essay supra and provided a link to the essay. About a score read the quote and then followed the link and read the essay. Only one, an older gentleman had ever heard of Nathaniel Macon. Inevitably, one of the number denounced Macon because he was a slaveowner although that had not been mentioned by any other contributor. It would seem that slaveowning is, according to the anti-culture, the unpardonable sin. Being guilty thereof negates all of the good that one might have done or that one might show in character. Of course, in their economy of morality, one can be a liar, a glutton, a slanderer, a pedophile, an abuser of authority, etc. and still have standing as a figure and leader in public fora and public office.

    Ending my participating in the discussion on that site, I informed the gentleman who rejected Macon’s life and contributions on the grounds of his having owned slaves that there might well be a compelling moral argument against slavery but that he had not brought it.

    During the discourse, he held that slavery was evil because master’s had raped slave women. My retort was that fathers are known to rape daughters; do we then do away with the family? Pastors and priests are known to rape parishioners; do we then do away with the Church? Teachers are known to rape pupils and students; do we then do away with schools? Doctors are known, in the most devious ways, to assault and rape patients; do we then do away with hospitals and the practice of medicine? I pointed out that he had made an excellent case against against rape and abuse of authority but not against slavery.

    He then came back to say that slaves were not happy with being slaves. I did not go into the problem of his proving that on a slave-by-slave basis or even on a “majority” of slaves holding that “feeling” during the course of slavery in America. I did point out that “…not happy with being….” applies in many aspects of life: kids are not happy with the parents whom they have; pastor are not happy with the congregation which they are obliged to serve; physicians are not happy with many of the patients they are obliged to “manage;” many of us are not happy with the government which has authority over us; I am not happy that I am diabetic. So, I told him that “…not being happy with….” is not a moral argument against slavery.

    I suggested to him that if there is a compelling moral principle against slavery, it would not be found among the mantra of his Marxist pseudo-morality kit. He would need to look back beyond Marx; beyond the Jacobins; beyond Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke if he wanted to find such a principle. He was thereupon outraged because he considers himself a “conservative.” Nevertheless, I suppose that even now he is yet rummaging in that kit, not realizing that it is the same kit which the feminists use to deconstruct marriage and Planned Parenthood uses to deconstruct the family.

    Just now, in the 21st century, do I really begin to understand the ploy of the radical abolisionists: they loathed republican virtues and the men who struggled to hold and manifest them; their abolisionist mantra against slavery was disingenuous means to rid America of these men and the way of life which these men had and made possible. The heirs of the abolisionists are still at it.

72. 72 Comment by TJF on 18 December 2008:

    I think John Willson might do a defense of the Old North, though I should add that Clyde Wilson has always expressed great respect for Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne is still resented, by the way, for a censored essay he published-too critical of the President and his cabinet–after visiting Washington and an army camp during the War.

73. 73 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “Just now, in the 21st century, do I really begin to understand the ploy of the radical abolisionists: they loathed republican virtues and the men who struggled to hold and manifest them; their abolisionist mantra against slavery was disingenuous means to rid America of these men and the way of life which these men had and made possible”

    That is fascinating. Could you link me to any evidence of this massive conspiracy? Perhaps some diatribes by prominent abolitionists expressing their loathing of republicanism and the virtues thereof, and evidence – letters, perhaps, or secret plans – demonstrating that the abolition of slavery was not an end in and of itself, but a way for the abolitionists to destroy the American way of life, which they hated so. I find it surprising that this massive, pervasive conspiracy has never been uncovered before. You could very well win a Pulitzer for doing so.

    As for your debate with that poorly informed gentleman, kudos in your victory, however irrelevant it was to the actual point at hand. His inability to demonstrate the immorality of slavery speaks to nothing, really, other than his inadequacy in defending his own opinions. Morality, it could be argued, is in the eye of the beholder, unless one believes in a higher order, and even then it remains so to an extent. A Christian might argue more effectively that slavery violates the ethics of reciprocity, Matthew 7:12 to be precise, but to one who believes chattel slavery to be an inherently good, moral arrangement will not be persuaded by that or any other argument.

    You yourself, Robert, believe the chattel slavery of the antebellum South to have been a moral good? You see nothing immoral in the arrangement whatever? Do you reject the idea of natural rights in total? Whence comes the right of personal liberty – is there such a thing in your way of thinking, and is it natural, divinely ordained or entirely mundane?

74. 74 Comment by MAP on 18 December 2008:

    R. L. Dabney, among many others, long ago considered the slavery issue. Dabney’s In Defense of Virginia and the South is a great and informative read. More recently, Pastor John Weaver has done a lot of work on the topic. The following link is to a very valuable set of audio sermons (14) by him. As Mr. Roberts observes, the thoughts of the abolitionists have led to many of today’s chronic problems. Pastor Weaver does an excellent job of explaining this.

    http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?speakerWithinSource=&subsetCat=&subsetItem=&mediatype=&keyword=John%5EWeaver&keyworddesc=John+Weaver&currsection=sermonsspeaker&AudioOnly=false&SpeakerOnly=true&keywordwithin=where+we+are&x=13&y=8

75. 75 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

    Mr. Toddard,
    Please calm down. You are too talented and valuable to our conversations on this list to excommunicate yourself and others from honest attempts at understanding the War Between the States. Too many times these blogs become occasions of misunderstanding and personal insults between otherwise thoughtful and good people. I admire your posts, your tenacity and your willingness to stay in the arena. It wouldn’t matter to my dead ancestors what I think of the practice of slavery and it is them, and not us, that we are attempting to understand –So far as that can be done from this distance. Chronicles is a fearless and courageous site and must remain so in order to practice its virtues of speaking the truth when nobody else will. We can all appreciate that fact when it is about Iraq or about Wall Street hand outs, (I mean bailouts) or about Clinton, Bush or Obama. These threads are not for the purpose of closing down debates, but rather opening them up to civilized traditionalists, Christians and conservatives of good will who have been silenced by leftist terror or neo-conservative in–laws who have finally moved them out of their own homes and away from everything familiar and once dear. Don’t be affraid to come along. As America’s poet, Robert Frost, invited the public in all his collections except the last:
    We shan’t be gone long,
    You come too.

76. 76 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    I am perfectly calm. I do not, however, think it’s convincing or constructive to impugn an entire movement by claiming they had other, sinister motives than the ones they professed without any evidence cited whatever, however it might endear one to one’s audience. I see no reason to not believe most abolitionists merely thought slavery immoral and irreconcilable with American values – *regardless of whether we believe that belief well founded* – and you’ve not provided any. Does it exist?

    The last paragraph was a sincere inquiry. You argued against the idea that slavery is immoral – was that merely to expose that that particular man’s belief was baseless, or do you believe the belief he expressed was wrong independent of its proponent?

77. 77 Comment by TJF on 18 December 2008:

    Neither Scriptures nor the customs of the Jews nor the opinion of the Early Church condemned slavery. St. Paul, who condemns fornication, drunkenness, sodomy, and profit-seeking, nonetheless (like Peter) enjoins slaves to obey their masters and instructs a runaway to return. A strong Christian argument can be made against man’s exploitation of man, but that would include industrial capitalism in most forms, though it would not necessarily cover a philanthropic slave owner. If neither Scripture nor Tradition is to be our basis for forming a Christian judgment, I suppose we shall all have to turn Quaker and wait for the light to on. Alas, all too many Quakers engaged in the slave trade. In the case of Moses Brown, his conscience was awakened but only after he had made a good deal of money.

78. 78 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    The North considers Adams and Webster great men. I do not, but I respect their right to choose their own heroes. Webster occasionally rose to greatness. Read his speech on the Compromise and his funeral oration for Calhoun.
    Mr. “Toddard,” you are little too quick to accuse other people of incompetence and bad historianship. You sound a lot like my leftist colleagues whose understanding is so limited that they actually believe that people who do not agree with them are simply not as smart as they are.

79. 79 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    Yes, many Northerners have believed in and fought for liberty. That is why their rich elite had to suppress them in Shay’s Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion, etc., and why Lincoln put them in jail and they are now kept down with taxes and Deweyite education and state-encouraged crime. But it is obvious that the Southern aristocracy of Macon’s stamp made the longest and most consistent defense of liberty in American history. Indeed, Jefferson still inspires what little bit of true thirst for liberty that still exists.

80. 80 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    George Washington on New England soldiers during the War of Independence: “They are poor soldiers–inattentive to anything but their own interests. There is no nation under the sun that pays more adoration to money than they do.”

81. 81 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    After the War of Independence, New England writers very deliberately and dishonestly set out to claim their sole responsibility for American success and to pass along derogatory lies about the contributions of the other states. This can be proved chapter and verse. Macon (and Jefferson and many others) understood and said that New England was greatly over-represented in the glories of the Revolution and especially in the claims for pensions.

82. 82 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “If neither Scripture nor Tradition is to be our basis for forming a Christian judgment”

    Both are. I’ve already cited scripture, not to mention – for Catholics – the teachings of the Church and the Holy Father, as per Catholic Encyclopedia:

    “1462, Pius II declared slavery to be “a great crime” (magnum scelus); that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians; that Urban VIII forbade it in 1639, and Benedict XIV in 1741; that Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade and Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839; that, in the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the “supreme villainy” (summum nefas) of the slave traders.”

    Again, though, I understand that it’s possible for someone to believe chattel slavery of the sort practiced in pre-WBTS America, north and south, was a perfectly humane, morally good, Christian arrangement? Christ would approve? I don’t believe that’s the case, but you do, correct, TJF? Robert? Neither of you believe in natural or inalienable rights? Or do you? These are sincere questions asked without sarcasm.

    If one does not believe in natural rights, and one does not believe chattel slavery to be immoral, i don’t see how one could argue, then, that it would have been immoral for northerners to enslave Confederate soldiers, for instance, after the war, and grant former slaves ownership. That would have been morally good, Christian arrangement?

83. 83 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “Mr. “Toddard,” you are little too quick to accuse other people of incompetence and bad historianship”

    See – that’s just it. I know it’s not incompetence or bad historianship, and therefore it’s deliberate skewing of the truth. Why?

84. 84 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

    By the way, the North Carolina Constitution that Macon admired and defended allowed free black men to vote with the same qualifications as whites. At a time when this was unheard of in all but a few Northern states then and for decades later (especially Lincoln’s Illinois).

85. 85 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “Yes, many Northerners have believed in and fought for liberty. That is why their rich elite had to suppress them in Shay’s Rebellion”

    Now we are in agreement. But that statement is a far cry from this one: “Southern slaveholders were the best and truest exponents of American liberty in all of American experience, when Northerners have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government”, or the implication that Yankees merely stood around outside Boston and then demanded lavish pensions. Had that been the case – or the only case, or even exemplary of the greater story – Shay’s need never have happened.

    I merely object to painting all yankees – the elite, farmers, minutemen, layabouts, sincere and disingenuous – always with the same brush as scoundrels and liars and usurpers. There were and are enough of them (scoundrels and liars and usurpers) in real life to preclude any need to stuff everyone else into that same category.

    Also, I’d like to read your criticism of Kirk’s chapter on John Adams some day. And as for us in the North choosing our own heroes – we count Jefferson, Madison and Washington in their number.

86. 86 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    Hm. I contracted a paragraph above. It should have read:

    Again, though, I understand that it’s possible for someone to believe chattel slavery of the sort practiced in pre-WBTS America, north and south, was a perfectly humane, morally good, Christian arrangement. I don’t believe that’s the case, but you do, correct, TJF? Robert? Christ would approve? Neither of you believe in natural or inalienable rights? Or do you? These are sincere questions asked without sarcasm.

87. 87 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

    “I think John Willson might do a defense of the Old North, though I should add that Clyde Wilson has always expressed great respect for Franklin Pierce”

    Yes, I recall an essay of Dr. Wilson- a what if piece and a favorite of mine, where President Pierce is one of the good guys. To be sure, the north also produced many great men. I do not know how Dr. Wilson feels about him, but I have always considered Horatio Seymour another example of a fine northern statesman.

88. 88 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

    Dr Wilson @78

    Lest we forget though, that Light Horse Lee (a Federalist) and Washington himself had a hand in the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion.

89. 89 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “By the way, the North Carolina Constitution that Macon admired and defended allowed free black men to vote with the same qualifications as whites. At a time when this was unheard of in all but a few Northern states then and for decades later”

    If I have my facts correct, the legislature of North Carolina sought out none other than John Adams for suggestions on how to formulate a new government and draft a constitution.

90. 90 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “After the War of Independence, New England writers very deliberately and dishonestly set out to claim their sole responsibility for American success and to pass along derogatory lies about the contributions of the other states. This can be proved chapter and verse.”

    Perhaps it can, but I don’t think it worked. Who now undervalues the contributions of southern men in the birth of our country?

91. 91 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

    @89

    “Perhaps it can, but I don’t think it worked. Who now undervalues the contributions of southern men in the birth of our country?”

    You’re kidding, right? In public schools, much attention is paid to the delegations from Massachusetts and Pennsylvania during the Revolution – with almost none to those south of the Mason-Dixon line. Washington is revisioned into a yankee, since his role cannot be downplayed easily. Jefferson? Sure, he deserves credit for the declaration, but hes a slave holder. This sort of yankee history extends to an even earlier time, with practically no attention paid to Jamestown colony but much more on the puritans of Plymouth Rock. If that is not downplaying, I dont know what is.

92. 92 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    I grew up in Massachusetts and attended a public school and none of what you wrote is even remotely true, except for the constant reminders that this one and that one owned slaves. The only bias whatever was due to the Northern patriots having lived and fought nearby – we went to Lexington and Concord, for instance, and the Old North Church. Never, though, have I seen the contributions of the South downplayed (again, with the exception of apologies for slavery). It’s simply not possible to tell the story of the Revolution without giving the South its due. How does one “morph” Washington “into a Yankee”? Maybe Reconstruction left public schools in the South worse off than ours, but that sort of thing you describe seems to me to be a bugaboo often cited but never, by me at least, seen.

93. 93 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    Mr Maxwell – in the interest of full disclosure I should add, however, that the narrative we were given of the Civil War was completely wrongheaded, biased, one-sided, and false, and the sort you’d expect with Lincoln The Savior Of The Union and Liberator Of The Slaves vs Evil Whip-wielding Backward Redneck Racist Traitors.

94. 94 Comment by TJF on 18 December 2008:

    What Mr. Toddard says may well be true, since Americans today learn no history at all, but down to WW II American history books routinely ignored the South’s role in the Revolution. Such facts as Washington and Jefferson being Southern or that the majority of war deaths and major battles occurred in the South was hardly mentioned. More recent historians, not all of them Southern, have attempted to redress the balance, but in our popular culture films like the (pretty awful) The Patriot are all too rare.

    As for slavery being unChristian, the notion is simply not tenable. The ancient Jews practiced slavery–and by Our Lord’s time it was by Roman rules–and Christ said nothing against it. Paul and Peter, though they railed against fornication, sodomy, drunkenness, adultery, and the pursuit of wealth, told slaves to obey their masters. Unfortunately, modern American Christians seem too often to invent their own religion, a curious compound of Marx and Whig liberalism with a dash of “why can’t we just all get along.” The ruthless exploitation of other human beings is evil, but it is not an evil confined to slavery. I suppose one could be a Rhode Island Quaker and see the light of revelation condemning slavery. Too bad so few of those Quaker Yankee slave traders saw the light or, when (like Moses Brown), they did, it was after they had got rich off the trade in human beings.

    Finally as someone who has lived all over the country, I can testify firsthand to the ignorant bigotry toward the South that comes up in every conversation with Yankees and Midwesterners, whenever the subject of the War, Civil Rights, or the South comes up. Some of the remarks by Mr. Toddard and others are a perfect illustration.

95. 95 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    “Finally as someone who has lived all over the country, I can testify firsthand to the ignorant bigotry toward the South that comes up in every conversation with Yankees and Midwesterners, whenever the subject of the War, Civil Rights, or the South comes up. Some of the remarks by Mr. Toddard and others are a perfect illustration.”

    Which remarks, and ignorance of what? And did either Christ or the apostles ever condemn child molestation, or is that also a fine, moral, Christian activity?

96. 96 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

    To study something of great age until one grows familiar with it and almost to live in its time, ( As Dr Wilson has with the 19th century) is not merely to satisfy a curiosity or to establish aimless truths: it is rather a function whose appetite has always rendered History a necesity. By the recovery of the Past, stuff and being are added to us; our lives, which,lived in the present only, are a film or surface, take on body–are lifted into one dimension more. The soul is fed. Reverence and knowledge and security and the love of a good land –all these are increased or given by the pursuit of this kind of learning. Visions or intimations are confirmed… One may say that historical learning grants men glimpses of life completed and whole; and such a vision should be the chief solace of whatever is mortal and cut off imperfectly from fulfillment” Hilaire Belloc from The Old Road.
    What this discussion has accomplished for me is to illustrate the madness of men and the lengths they will go to win an argument or to defeat an adversary. Perhaps Mr. Bush should have suspended long standing procedural laws,( as he has ) invoked the patriot act (as he has) and used his role as Commander and Chief to roll tanks, deploy troops and kill a million of his country’s citizens to stomp out from those blue states such as Massachussetts, New York and California their ugly practice and the plague of our nation, abortion, from this country. Is abortion not evil ? Does Mr. Toddard not see the deplorable and inhuman side of the trading and buying of innocent, human, body parts ? Is not war simply the continuation and enforcement of the highest morals by other means ? Shouldn’t those who opposed such a civil war be considered traders to their Christian traditions and beliefs ? For heavens sake !! All of this from praising a great American and true patriot.

97. 97 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

    Honestly Robert I haven’t a clue what you’re trying to say. Are you under the impression that I believe slavery justified Lincoln’s war against the South? Because I don’t, and I’ve made that fact plain more than once in this discussion.

    And “all of this” is not “from praising a great American and true patriot”, it is from *maligning* and *defaming* other American patriots to aggrandize the subject of this piece.

98. 98 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

    “And did either Christ or the apostles ever condemn child molestation”

    Wasn’t a ubiquitous and generally accepted social institution in plain sight of the apostles and Christ. Wouldn’t expect them to address it.

99. 99 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

    Your writings are littered with suggestions that others here find slavery to be “good” and “fine” when I’ve seen no one here say that.

    Am I the only one who finds it strange that Mr. Toddard took Dr. Wilson to task for “reduction, the simplification”, ” Good Vs Evil narrative”, one-sidedness, etc. with resepct to the war but Mr. Toddard does the same thing wrt slavery?

100. 100 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     Pederasty wasn’t common in ancient Rome, which encompassed Palestine, Jerusalem and Nazareth?

     Quite frankly it’s neither here nor there. My point was merely that something need not be directly proscribed in the New Testament for it to be considered “un-Christian”, and honestly even THAT was besides the point.

     Originally my point was merely that *abolitionists* considered it un-Christian. Whether anyone here believes slavery to be un-Christian – whether it IS un-Christian or not – is absolutely immaterial to my original point, which was that the majority of abolitionists in good faith believed slavery an immoral, un-Christian institution, which I made to counter Dr Wilson’s claim that abolitionists’ true motivation was a malicious lust for power.

101. 101 Comment by J Meng on 18 December 2008:

     I think Mr. Toddard made not only an excellent point, but a relevant one in his #81 to the case of chattel slavery in the South, when he cited various popes condemning it from the 15th to the 19th centuries. If we take Belloc’s assertion that because of the influence of the Catholic Church over a great period of time, men were raised from slavery to free-holders in Europe, peaking in the late 15th century, then we can assume that distributive and commutative justice would have been the rule of European society if it had continued. His point was that more men were becoming economically free, because they either owned land and the means of producing wealth or they owned a business organized in guilds. He called this Distributism. He said that this form of economy is the only one wherein mankind finds himself most free. However, this process of transformation was stunted by man’s moral weakness, both in the Church and in the State as manifested during the Renaissance with its emphasis on secular humanism, quest for wealth, sensuality in the arts, and the aggrandizement of King and Nation as an end itself at the expense of distributive and commutative justice. It was during this social decline that Martin Luther thundered against Rome and the Protestant Revolt carried further many men down the path of naturalism. It was in this historical development that the British North American colonies were founded. Except for a brief moment in Maryland, they were not Catholic, in fact, they were anti-Catholic. It wasn’t long after the founding of Jamestown, that a Dutch slaver stopped by at Jamestown in 1619 and off-loaded slaves for sale. My point is that since the British colonies in North America were not Catholic and thus did not know or ignored the papal condemnations of chattel slavery, and since the slave trade was a very profitable enterprise (an example, in my opinion, of the already corrupt system of capitalism under the form called mercantilism), and since the prospective riches Southern plantation owners could make by slave labor would be huge, as it once did for the owners of Roman latifundia, slavery became a welcome practice in the colonies, but especially, in the South.

102. 102 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Your writings are littered with suggestions that others here find slavery to be “good” and “fine” when I’ve seen no one here say that”

     Those aren’t “suggestions” they’re QUESTIONS. So far nearly everyone here has argued against the idea that slavery as it existed in America was *not* immoral and *not* un-Christian. I have asked – repeatedly – whether these same people believe the institution of slavery (as it existed in America) to be morally good, to exemplify the values preached by Christ:

     “You yourself, Robert, believe the chattel slavery of the antebellum South to have been a moral good? You see nothing immoral in the arrangement whatever? Do you reject the idea of natural rights in total? Whence comes the right of personal liberty – is there such a thing in your way of thinking, and is it natural, divinely ordained or entirely mundane?”

     and

     “You argued against the idea that slavery is immoral – was that merely to expose that that particular man’s belief was baseless, or do you believe the belief he expressed was wrong independent of its proponent?”

     and

     “Again, though, I understand that it’s possible for someone to believe chattel slavery of the sort practiced in pre-WBTS America, north and south, was a perfectly humane, morally good, Christian arrangement. I don’t believe that’s the case, but you do, correct, TJF? Robert? Christ would approve? Neither of you believe in natural or inalienable rights? Or do you? These are sincere questions asked without sarcasm.”

103. 103 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

     Jesus used an umbrella term for sexual immorality. “Pornea” as I recall. Translated into fornication in KJV but more encompassing than what we think of.

     In making your initial point you indicated that they were self-evidently correct in seeing it as repugnant and un-Christian.

104. 104 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     Arrgh. That should read “So far nearly everyone here has argued that slavery as it existed in America was *not* immoral and *not* un-Christian.”

105. 105 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

     “And did either Christ or the apostles ever condemn child molestation, or is that also a fine, moral, Christian activity?”

     Your sacastic tone makes your intentions quite clear.

106. 106 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

     Re the Popes and the Catholic encyclopedia it might be noted that the slave owners weren’t Roman Catholics (although I know many around here are).

107. 107 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “In making your initial point you indicated that they were self-evidently correct in seeing it as repugnant and un-Christian.”

     You do not believe slavery as it existed in America to have been an immoral institution, is that correct or not? And would your opinion be different if Lincoln’s Union had enslaved their vanquished foes and gave them as property to freed slaves? Or is a man’s right to personal liberty more than a mundane arrangement?

108. 108 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

     Well Mr. Toddard, then you ask too much from your unworthy opponent. If you have your heroes then praise them, and leave others to praise their own in peace. You seem to desire a poem that would be too long to commit to memory, too nuanced to be of interest, too qualified to be true and written by a comittee that has never composed a poem let alone a song. As the great, great, grand daughter of Nathan Bedford Forest once said to a man desiring to see the sword carried by the last of the cavalier while at the same time praising certain qualities of President Lincoln, ” we just don’t think much of Mr. Lincoln down here.” I guess that type of honesty is just too impolite for most of us today.

109. 109 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     ““And did either Christ or the apostles ever condemn child molestation, or is that also a fine, moral, Christian activity?”

     Your sacastic tone makes your intentions quite clear.”

     I’m sorry but I’m a bit taken aback that we are debating whether chattel slavery is consistent with the teachings of Christ.

110. 110 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

     “You do not believe slavery as it existed in America to have been an immoral institution, is that correct or not?”

     Correct.

     “And would your opinion be different if Lincoln’s Union had enslaved their vanquished foes and gave them as property to freed slaves?”

     Correct.

     Hint, see the text of the Robert E. Lee quote I supplied above.

111. 111 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Well Mr. Toddard, then you ask too much from your unworthy opponent”

     I don’t think clarity, accuracy and truth are too much to ask from a historian.

112. 112 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     Finally! Thank you, Bruce.

     Bruce, do you believe that abolitionists by and large thought slavery was immoral and un-Christian?

113. 113 Comment by R. McCabe on 18 December 2008:

     I would like to thank Dr. Wilson for such a fine article. He has educated me (again) and has taken the time and pain to deliver real knowledge.

     I must confess, as neither a northerner nor southernor but a St. Louisan, I do believe I was subjected to pretty shoddy reconstructions of history that tended to leave the southerners in my mind as historical scapegoats. But I am a history lightweight to be sure.

     I must also acknowledge the difficulty we all face in separating the sin from the sinner; in learning important things from great men who otherwise participated — perhaps innocently — in a common cultural practice of their time. It is hard to strike that balance in observational prose.

     This seems to be a recurring thread around here, and it is not just because of the over-reactions from those of us who may be products of our overly sensitized culture. I thank Chronicles for enabling real debate among honest men and for helping to peel back the weak layers of political correctness spread upon me through my culture.

     I will challenge Dr. Flemming though, who normally leaves no room for challenge, as I will also express my respect for the vigorous albeit possibly sideways efforts of Mr. Toddard.

     To say there is nothing in tradition or scripture condemning slavery is some sort of honest mistake. There is clearly nothing in the Bible, either, condeming abortion, yet abortion and the kind of slavery we are talking about here are clearly as obviously anti-Christian as you can get, regardless if Christ himself ever spoke against it or how early Apostles treated it. Whereas slavery seems foreign to my generation, abortion impacts so many good people I know. For this reason, I believe to understand why Dr. Wilson and others defend the slave owners — the same way I defend honest and unkowning women who have had abortions. What good can come from the hardships of broad judgment?

     But, the more subtle point to me here is that this paleocon group has for awhile fought for its own empowerment so as to better influence our politics and culture. It has actively railed against the neocons in either party, especially the GOP. Now that the GOP is weak and nearly destroyed, is the opportunity not seen?

     To be embraced by or to influence a wider set, we must come to some sort of agreement here as to how to defend and represent the past without alienating the present through language and fine points.

114. 114 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “I must also acknowledge the difficulty we all face in separating the sin from the sinner; in learning important things from great men who otherwise participated — perhaps innocently — in a common cultural practice of their time.”

     Indeed – whether that practice was slavery or working to abolish it.

115. 115 Comment by Bruce on 18 December 2008:

     Don’t know as I haven’t studied their writings enough. That might have been your basic point, but I think it got lost in some other things you said.

     Have to go or I’ll miss my ride. Thanks.

116. 116 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard @91

     Well, that surprises me, although I doubt very much they did any less than downplay (or fail to mention) Jamestown colony. Yes sir, the yankee puritans of Plymouth rock tamed the new world alone, better than the backwards, Southern Jamestown colony.

     “How does one “morph” Washington “into a Yankee”

     This was simply an affect of popular culture. If you’d like me to get more specific, I will. But since the end of the civil war and especially with the growth of public schools (which I only briefly attended) it has been made out that the ‘odd’ ones are the Southerner, and the yankee of the deep north is the ‘true’ American.

     I think you’re taking this all a bit personally. Boston, Massachusetts and yankees in general are perhaps too easy a target. But we see this today with the smugness of not only Bostonians and New Engladers, but Californians as well. It is no accident that the most socialistic states are all well populated with yankees.

117. 117 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Boston, Massachusetts and yankees in general are perhaps too easy a target”

     They are as easy, and as unfair, a target for southern partisans as the southern-hillbilly-ignoramus stereotype is for left-wingers.

     “But since the end of the civil war and especially with the growth of public schools (which I only briefly attended) it has been made out that the ‘odd’ ones are the Southerner, and the yankee of the deep north is the ‘true’ American.”

     Well, I would say more accurately that the Southerner is made out to be the true American, but that they disparage and scoff at America itself – which they believe the Southerner to exemplify, and which they consider themselves apart from and better than.

     I understand this, and that it happens all the time, but I don’t see that dynamic projected backward in time and applied to Colonial America.

118. 118 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Well, that surprises me, although I doubt very much they did any less than downplay (or fail to mention) Jamestown colony. Yes sir, the yankee puritans of Plymouth rock tamed the new world alone, better than the backwards, Southern Jamestown colony.”

     Actually it was more about how the puritans of Plymouth Rock committed genocide against the Indians who so nobly saved them from starvation, if I recall correctly.

119. 119 Comment by Red Phillips on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard, wouldn’t a condemnation of fornication include child molestation?

     As someone currently residing in Macon, Georgia, I appreciate the reminder.

120. 120 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Don’t know as I haven’t studied their writings enough. That might have been your basic point, but I think it got lost in some other things you said.”

     I apologize if it did. And while I don’t believe it can be argued that slavery as it existed in America exemplified the values of Christ, I do not think that makes all slave-owners immoral, or slave-ownership itself inherently immoral – back then. It’s unfair, I think, to project our values backward in time onto people who lived centuries ago. I’m not convinced one can fault a man for living in his time, with the mores of his people and the knowledge available, and acting accordingly.

121. 121 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Mr. Toddard, wouldn’t a condemnation of fornication include child molestation?”

     Perhaps. Although I’m inclined to believe that refers specifically to intercourse, although whatever Greek word is used in the NT might encompass more than that. Again though, this is a sidetrack that I apologize for leading us down. I was only making the point that something need not be specifically proscribed in the NT for it to be considered “un-Christian”. If it violates Matthew 7:12, for instance, I think it can be argued that it is un-Christian.

122. 122 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

     “I’m sorry but I’m a bit taken aback that we are debating whether chattel slavery is consistent with the teachings of Christ.”

     These are dishonest assumptions. We are not debating this, you simply keep asking this question so as to put yourself in a positon to redeem certain aspects of your argument. It is the prevalent theory of interrogation to ask all the questions yet it has no relevance here. Hussein was evil, evil should be fought against, therefore …. or Slavery was evil, Macon owned slaves, therefore …. These questions are designed to engage a prejudice that is simply not relevant to make the case that Nathaniel Macon represented political sensibilities and human qualities that are so rare today as to be extinct. (And once upon a time deeply appreciated by ordinary citizens of North Carolina) I have enjoyed this Mr Toddard but must go and perform cold weather chores around the farm. You just can’t find good help anymore.

123. 123 Comment by Rick on 18 December 2008:

     Mr Toddard if I read you correctly you are taking Prof Wilson to task because he in your view disparaged those who are refered to as abolitionist. If you mean men like Dr Samuel Gridley Howe,Thomas Wentorth Higginson,Theodore Parker,Franklin Sanborn,George Smith and Gregory Luther Stearns I wholeheartly agree with the good Professor.

124. 124 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “These are dishonest assumptions. We are not debating this, you simply keep asking this question so as to put yourself in a positon to redeem certain aspects of your argument.”

     That’s really not the case. I’ve said multiple times that that whole line of discussion was not germane to the topic at hand.

     “It is the prevalent theory of interrogation to ask all the questions yet it has no relevance here. Hussein was evil, evil should be fought against, therefore …. or Slavery was evil, Macon owned slaves, therefore ….”

     But I’m not using slavery to make the case that Macon was anything less than a hero and patriot – I don’t believe he was less than a hero or patriot. You misconstrue my argument.

     “These questions are designed to engage a prejudice that is simply not relevant to make the case that Nathaniel Macon represented political sensibilities and human qualities that are so rare today as to be extinct.”

     In actuality they were not designed to engage any prejudice. They were part of a line of discussion that meandered off-topic and nothing more. The point I was making – and this is the last time I will state it – is that *most abolitionists* believed slavery to be immoral and un-Christian. Whether they were right or wrong is immaterial. Forget I said that I believe slavery to be immoral and un-Christian, barbarous, inhumane and grotesque.

125. 125 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Mr Toddard if I read you correctly you are taking Prof Wilson to task because he in your view disparaged those who are refered to as abolitionist. If you mean men like Dr Samuel Gridley Howe,Thomas Wentorth Higginson,Theodore Parker,Franklin Sanborn,George Smith and Gregory Luther Stearns I wholeheartly agree with the good Professor.”

     I’m not speaking to specific men – and certainly not to John Brown’s cabal. And I’m not bothered that he disparaged abolitionists – my issue was his claim that abolitionists were primarily motivated by maliciousness and a “lust for power” rather than moral indignation.

     Question: For those who believe that a legitimate complaint against abolitionists is that they were meddlesome, sticking their nose in other peoples’ business and interfering with the self-governance of the peoples of the other sovereign states, do you hold anti-abortion activists to that same standard? That is to say, abolitionists considered slavery a moral abomination, and sought not only to end the practice in their respective states but across the whole nation. Do you believe it is meddlesome, or morally wrong, or misguided, for abortion-abolitionists to seek anti-abortion amendments, i.e. to seek to make abortion illegal in states in which they do not reside?

126. 126 Comment by robert on 18 December 2008:

     “The point I was making – and this is the last time I will state it – is that *most abolitionists* believed slavery to be immoral and un-Christian.”
     Which ones are you talking about ? There were alot of frauds in the bunch and Mark Twain provided background relief in his story of Huck Finn by imitating their type in the pathetic figures of “Duke” and “Dauphin” roustabouts with whom Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi River. These scam-artists swindle by posing as enlightened speakers on temperance (to obtain the funds to get roaring drunk), as pious “saved” men seeking funds for far off evangelistic missions (to pirates on the high seas, no less), and as learned doctors of phrenology (who can barely spell).” Alot of the abolitionists were from the same bolt of cloth. They are still among us today in the form of Rev Hagee, Hinn and many, many others. I hope you are not one of their followers.

127. 127 Comment by Josh Cooney on 18 December 2008:

     “Question: For those who believe that a legitimate complaint against abolitionists is that they were meddlesome, sticking their nose in other peoples’ business and interfering with the self-governance of the peoples of the other sovereign states, do you hold anti-abortion activists to that same standard?”

     The connection between abolitionists and other dogooders with the anti-abortion activists has in fact been made at this site before. I think there is some truth in the charge. I don’t suggest that people become politically unconcious but it is usually a good idea to mind one’s own business.

128. 128 Comment by Mr. Stonehouse on 18 December 2008:

     I lurk on this website for educational purposes and this debate is bloody awesome! Dr. Wilson, by the quick research I have been able to do, is right on the facts. But Mr. Toddard is expressing something many non-southern readers of this website would immediately recognize, and that is the southern bias inherent in Dr. Wilson’s writings. What I find amazing is the number of commentators unwilling to read or try to understand Mr. Toddards comments before responding.
     I know I have no right to ask, but there are lots like me who come to learn and it would be nice is if questions were answered

129. 129 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

     The equation of abolitionists with anti-abortionists is often made but is wholllly untenable. The equation is with abolitionists and abortionists—both revolutionaries overthrowing long-settled social norms.

130. 130 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 December 2008:

     If I take Toddard at face value, his basic objection is to my style of historical discourse. I will have to refer you to my article called “Scratching the Fleas: American Historians and Their History” which appeared in Chronicles in late 2004 or early 2005 and in which I discuss the philosophy of these matters thoroughly. Historical discourse should be “balanced,” but historical knowledge actually advances (to the extent that it does) by debate over evidence and the presentation of differing perspectives. In the present day: four of the mostly highly regarded and rewarded historians in recent times are a Communist, a liar, and two plagiarists. Multiculturalism reigns almost unchallenged in the academy. The South has been subjected to relentless negative historical attack for almost two centuries. (After all, let’s remember who atacked and invaded who; and who only wanted to be let alone and had no ambition to attack the other). In such conditions it is a service to knowledge to present neglected information and perspectives from a non-establishment viewpoint. Balance. I have dealt with scholars who presented violent anti-Southern interpretations a dozen times, with no dissenting perspective acknowledged. When a dissenting perspective is presented it is accused of having no “balance.” I make no apology that I strive to tell the history of my people in the way they deserve to have it presented when it it so seldom is.

131. 131 Comment by TJF on 18 December 2008:

     Would Mr. Stonehouse be kind enough to enlighten us as to either the proof of bias in Prof. Wilson or one scintilla or historical evidence or logical argument offered by Mr. Toddard? I am reminded of the time I debated Lincoln at the University of Dallas. His defender–the University Provost and a Straussian–was full of pious rhetoric but could not produce, as I recall, a single fact to buttress his portrayal of Lincoln as a great leader, fine Christian, and ethical commander-in-chief. It is at that point that one begins to wonder if the USSA is any less an ideological regime than the old USSR. Why is it “Southern bias” to defend one’s own people, but not Northern bias when all the vast resources of the official culture are marshaled to attack them? Who is the last Southern apologist to be given a job in an Ivy League history department? Forrest McDonald, even though a Hamiltonian, was stuck in Alabama. The biggest professional success was probably a fine historian who managed to retire from William and Mary. The attempt to make a moral equation between Northern invaders and Southern defenders would be regarded as ludicrous in any parallel conflict. Ooh, those terrible Gauls who virtually forced Julius Caesar to invade and conquer and sell them into slavery. I have nothing against the Northeast and Midwest (where I have lived much of my life, but northern attitudes toward Southerners are a lot like Turkish attitudes toward Armenians: We never hurt them, no matter how much they deserved it.

132. 132 Comment by C Bowen on 18 December 2008:

     I certainly would agree that George Washington has little time for guerrilla soldiers, what with their lack of proper military dress, formality, and style of fighting unfit for a great leader–and they wouldn’t accept paper Continentals as payment?

     Of course, New England, well, Boston, manufacturers with war contracts produced shoddy goods like any MIC bubble, but that has little to do with the actual soldiers. Look at the Allen brothers, one taking cannons through the mountains, the other telling the Brits to the North, that everything was, in the current vernacular, cool. They had a fortune to protect, where Jefferson, amongst others, had debts to erase.

     The problem with Mr. Stoddard, is that he doesn’t want any part of the storytelling–he wants a nice whig consensus nationalist myth, a popular project from time to time in art, lit and history post the Unpleasantness, the kind Longfellow et al were at the min., competent at creating for youths and the lesser read.

     I certainly side with Poe’s reactionary take on what Longfellow was up to in creating an American literary tradition, but there is a certain Americanism to Longfellow that can’t be tossed unless one is ready to dump the whole set of nationalist myths.

     And there in lies the flaw of the Southern story–yes, great nationalists who nevertheless rejected Pat Henry’s position, and after that remarkable failure that doomed their people, all around the War of 1812, they became model American patriots and localists, where the North maintained a more liberal-European outlook–they were handed the keys to the machine from the Southern War Hawks afterall, who taught them well.

133. 133 Comment by Robert on 18 December 2008:

     #127 Mr. Stonehouse

     “I know I have no right to ask, but there are lots like me who come to learn and it would be nice is if questions were answered.”

     Dishonest questions do not deserve honest answers. It takes a long time for a man to decide which questions need answers and which ones do not. Afterall, any damn fool can ask more questions in a day than a wise man could answer in a lifetime. As a Father of a large family I am weary of dishonest questions such as those asked by strangers so often in public restaurants such as,” whether my wife and I have figured out what causes children?” or whether “we are LDS members or Catholics?” or whether “over population is a concern of ours?”and other such non-sense. My views on slavery are none of Mr. Toddards business unless I had asked for his views first, which I did not. In fact my great great grandfather’s family had freed their last slave and her child in 1820 but he still enlisted for the confederate cavalry because the federals had invaded his country. My family came to America from Kent County England as Pilgrims, settled in Virginia before the revoltuionary war, then North Carolina where at one time they cared for 52 slaves. Later some of the family moved to Kentucky; they were the worst sort of puritans and remained staunch Primitive Baptists until the end of the civil war having their barns burned, livestock confiscated and losing everything, they finally moved to Kansas to die on the prairie. My grandfather married a Catholic, converted to her Faith as did my Mother after falling in love with my Father who eventually moved to Oklahoma.I am pleased, no I am grateful, that their are still men like Dr. Wilson who have the guts to tell the story. Or as he says ” make no apology to strive to tell the history of his people in the way they deserve to have it presented when it it so seldom is.” And I make no excuses for refusing to answer every question posed by strangers I don’t even know. There were undoubtedly heroes on both sides of the war as there are in any war. My heroes were on the losing side but I make no apology for still admiring them or for the fact that they were mere men.

134. 134 Comment by Rick on 18 December 2008:

     Mr Toddard the abolitionist was a lot more than meddlesome,and nosy. They advocated the eradication of all people who lived in the southern states. If I recall correctly a New York City minister preached that it was better that all five millions of whites in the south perish so that slavery could be eradicated.

135. 135 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Would Mr. Stonehouse be kind enough to enlighten us as to either the proof of bias in Prof. Wilson or one scintilla or historical evidence or logical argument offered by Mr. Toddard?”

     The onus of proof is on he who asserts the positive. How that rudimentary rule of debate has escaped one who professes to participate in them is beyond me. In short, that means it is incumbent upon Dr Wilson to provide proof, or at least evidence, that abolitionists in general were motivated by “maliciousness” and “lust for power” rather than moral indignation. It is incumbent upon Dr. Wilson to provide proof, or at least evidence, that Northerners care nothing for liberty but instead “have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government”.

     It’s no hard thing to pop one’s head into a debate to cheer on the resident authority – really the celebrity here, as we are all fans of Dr Wilson – while taking potshots at the lone dissenting voice without backing those potshots up and then ducking back out to let others resume the debate. Would you care to point out where logic has failed me – or I it – and how? What historical evidence have I failed to provide, and to back up what claim?

     Cheerleaders are welcome at the game, TJF, but if they want to step off the sidelines they need to make plays, not cheap shots.

136. 136 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Would Mr. Stonehouse be kind enough to enlighten us as to either the proof of bias in Prof. Wilson”

     Do you think Dr Wilson would deny being biased in favor of the South? Is that even in question?

137. 137 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “The equation of abolitionists with anti-abortionists is often made but is wholllly untenable.”

     You overstate the case. Both are movements the partisans of which sought to end a practice they considered an immoral abomination outside the borders of their own state. They need not be perfectly analogous in every facet and component to be tenable.

138. 138 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Dr. Wilson, by the quick research I have been able to do, is right on the facts”

     What facts? I’ve seen no facts presented here that demonstrate that abolitionists in general were motivated by “maliciousness” and “lust for power” rather than moral indignation, or that Northerners care nothing for liberty but instead “have been mainly interested in making an easy buck out of the government”.

139. 139 Comment by Mr. Stonehouse on 18 December 2008:

     TJF, Dr. Wilson
     I apologize for my use of the work bias–of course Dr. Wilson has every right to offer a southern perspective; he is a very direct and blunt writer and it sometimes comes off a bit harsh for my tastes.
     This is a very good website and I usually avoid commentating because I have nothing of value to add.
     I was just curious about Mr. Toddard’s question about your views concerning the implied opposition to slavery in Christianity, if it exists, and where it came from if it does.
     No big deal

140. 140 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “If I take Toddard at face value, his basic objection is to my style of historical discourse. I will have to refer you to my article called “Scratching the Fleas: American Historians and Their History” which appeared in Chronicles in late 2004 or early 2005 and in which I discuss the philosophy of these matters thoroughly. Historical discourse should be “balanced,” but historical knowledge actually advances (to the extent that it does) by debate over evidence and the presentation of differing perspectives.”

     I’m not asking for balance so that you temper a piece on a Southerner you admire with a condemnation of slavery or by pointing out that the other side “had some good points too”. I don’t expect or believe it is incumbent upon you to show “both sides” in an admirable light. I object to the reduction of the history of the pre-WBTS and WBTS America to a Good Guy/Bad Guy narrative, where the blemish-free, wholly noble, innocent and valiant Heroes battled the wholly ignoble, dishonest, villanous Scoundrels. It is the exact same narrative put for by Lincoln worshippers and Union partisans with the roles reversed, and it is equally, in my opinion, representative of the truth. One cannot argue against the Liberating Lincoln vs Redneck Slavedrivers narrative by pointing out what a simplistic reduction of a profoundly complex period in our history that is when the most respected scholars of the opposition say the narrative itself is sound, only the roles are reversed. Had you said “many abolitionists” lusted for power or “some Northerners” cared not a whit for Liberty but only for the vulgar acquisition of wealth I would not have said a word.

     Perhaps you intended the piece as a provocative bit of polemics, but I read it as a work of scholarship, however brief, from a distinguished historian. If I was wrong (about the nature of the piece, not your standing as a historian) then the fault is wholly mine and I apologize.

141. 141 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard makes the connection between abolitionists and anti-abortion agitators on the rhetorical assumption that many persons in these discussions are traditionalist Roman Catholics or other conservative Christians who oppose abortion on principle. He hopes in that way to disarm or pre-empt criticism of the abolitionists for their moral indignation on the question fo slavery.

     Yes, abortion is an evil thing, just as slavery was. But the sin of abortion is chargeable to the individuals who procure one or consent to one or pay for one or perform one. It is not chargeable to anyone else. Therefore the sin is between the sinners and God.

     For that reason, Mr. Toddard, I’ll answer you in this way: Anyone who presumes to dictate to society at large on a disputed moral question is, ipso facto, an annoyance and a public nuisance. That goes for both abolitionists and anti-abortion crusaders.

     The abolitionists were consumed with moral conviction, and were willing to start an unnecessary Civil War to assuage their own sense of self-righteousness. How can you defend them?

     Many (not all) anti-abortion agitators are just as crazy and dangerous.

142. 142 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     Mr Stonehouse, I don’t think there’s a need to apologize. I wouldn’t presume to speak for Dr Wilson but I don’t believe he would object to being called a Southern partisan. And frankly I don’t object to that a bit. Having grown up in New England I would love to be able to call myself a New England Partisan but I cannot – my politics are so out-of-whack with those of my fellow New Englanders I count myself in the oppositon here. My objection is that for a Southern partisan – or merely a historian interested in the truth – there are myriad legitimate arguments to be made to rectify the wrong done to the South by historians, and to elucidate the history of South in such a way as to dispel the myths widely held about it, and to put in their rightful place her sons and heroes. “Northerners are all malicious, unpatriotic moneygrubbers” isn’t it.

143. 143 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “The abolitionists were consumed with moral conviction, and were willing to start an unnecessary Civil War to assuage their own sense of self-righteousness. How can you defend them?”

     They saw what they believed was an evil – a moral wrong so repugnant that “abomination” was not too harsh a term for it – and they sought to end it. I find that in itself defensible. But really that’s *not* what I’m defending – I’m defending abolitionists against the charge that *they were motivated primarily by a “lust for power”*. You yourself just agreed with me, that their prime motivator was moral conviction – not the lust for power. Whether one finds that moral conviction ill-founded or noble is not germane to the discussion.

     As for the idea that they “were willing to start an unnecessary Civil War” to end slavery – if you think that the North invaded the South to end slavery I’ll let the rest of the members of this site – Dr. Wilson included – disabuse you of that delusion.

144. 144 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Mr. Toddard makes the connection between abolitionists and anti-abortion agitators on the rhetorical assumption that many persons in these discussions are traditionalist Roman Catholics or other conservative Christians who oppose abortion on principle. He hopes in that way to disarm or pre-empt criticism of the abolitionists for their moral indignation on the question fo slavery.”

     No, I hoped to draw a parallel to show that when one is presented with a thing – an institution or practice – that one believes to be a mortal evil, and that thing is sanctioned by one’s government in one’s country, one not need be irrational or megalomaniac to endeavor to end that institution or practice whether it exist within the boundaries of one’s home state or without.

145. 145 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

     Off topic, but I thought this was an interesting piece related to our discussion of the South:

     http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/12/18/third_reconstruction/

     Talk about arrogance.

     It’s funny how much of a parallel that is to the situation in 1860 – the pro-tariff (and today – pro-union) North cannot handle the pro-free trade and productive South.

146. 146 Comment by robert m. peters on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard @72

     “You yourself, Robert, believe the chattel slavery of the antebellum South to have been a moral good? You see nothing immoral in the arrangement whatever? Do you reject the idea of natural rights in total? Whence comes the right of personal liberty – is there such a thing in your way of thinking, and is it natural, divinely ordained or entirely mundane?”

     I have long since emancipated myself of the notion of the “autonomous individual” and the “abstract rights” created out of whole cloth for him as from Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, etc.

     There are, because of the nature of fallen man, things immoral in all arrangements.

     Slavery as an abstraction does present problems with Lockean “natural rights” as abstractions. However, slavery under a particular master, at a particular time, in particular circumstances has millions of faces. I can speak to only two of those faces with any degree of insight and accuracy, two faces which I have mentioned before in the fora of Chronicles.

     My great-grandfather brought several families of slaves with him from North Carolina to Louisiana. All of the families of slaves carried the common family name of Shepherd. My great-grandfather had a wife and ultimately ten children. He, his wife, his children and his slaves worked an upland farm producing low quality cotton and corn. They also raised hogs. All of them, master, wife, children and slaves worked a six day week with long hours. On Sunday, they all attended the same family Church, which although a Baptist Church, rotated Methodist and Baptist ministers. They were all, master’s family and slave families, buried in the same cemetery, the cemetery in which I hope to be buried. They all faced the same paradox of life and death at the birth of the children, slave or free. They all got “equal” medical attention. They all ate the same food. At the end of the war, my great-grandfather gave the slave families land and mules. In a later generation, one of the Shepherds would become the caregiver of one of the Maddens (my kinsman).

     Another great-grandfather, at the age of seventeen went off to war to defend home and hearth from Lincoln’s legions. He left deep in the woods of the No Man’s Land of the western march of Louisiana a fourteen-year-old wife and an infant daughter in a one-room cabin. To assist her while he was away, he purchased a very young orphan slave. The cash crop was hog tallow. For nearly four years she and the very young slave struggled to keep the tiny hill farm productive. After the war, the young boy got his freedom and remained close to the family until his death in the late twenties.

     Compare those two very abbreviated “slave” narratives to the plight of my maternal grandmother. After the death of her mother at the birth of a sibling, her father married a lady who herself was a widow with children. There were too many mouths to feed and friction between my grandmother and her stepmother. So, at the age of six, she was farmed out to a farmer about a day’s horse ride from her family. She came home twice a year: at Christmas and at Easter. There she remained until she was thirteen and was married off.

     I would invite you to poke through this summary narratives and find what evil you will.

147. 147 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “It’s funny how much of a parallel that is to the situation in 1860 – the pro-tariff (and today – pro-union) North cannot handle the pro-free trade and productive South.”

     Are most people on this site anti-tariff? Do most of you object to Buchanan’s idea for a nationalist trade policy? I was anti tariff for a long time due to the libertarian streak in my conservatism, but I’ve been convinced otherwise. I don’t see the harm in placing tariffs on – for instance – foreign autos to make American companies more competitive. In the end it might cost the consumer more, but more of the money they spend will end up staying within our economy, instead of transferring our prosperity to third world countries. I have no strong convictions either way, but I see the sense in Buchanan’s point of view.

148. 148 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard, you simply don’t understand — people who are “consumed with moral conviction” are PRECISELY the sort of persons who prone to power-lust. Their utter sense of their correctness makes them think that opposition to their views is either the result of malice or culpable ignorance. And because they think that, they are more than willing to take extraordinary steps to suppress any opposition.

     Have you actually READ anything by the abolitionists? Have you checked out the foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric of William Lloyd Garrison, for example? These people were crazy, just as the extreme left-liberals of today are crazy.

     I remember Garrison writing in one article that if the Constitution could be read to justify slavery, then the Constitution ought to be destroyed, tout court. Is that the voice of reason?

     And yes, the war was fought for lots of other reasons besides the slavery question. Most Union soldiers said that they were fighting to preserve the Union, not to help free a minority whom they despised, and even lynched en masse during the Draft Riots in New York City.

     But it was those incendiary lunatics in New England who fanned the flames of regional hatred and discord. Those prim, judgmental, psalm-singing, rectitudinous children of the Pilgrim Dissenters caused the most sanguinary war in U.S. history. Stop trying to defend them.

149. 149 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

     @146

     Yes many of the people here are protectionist. Clyde Wilson and a few others, are not. I too am not. Buchanan in an economic nationalist, and I think that is silly.

     President Davis spoke of “…freest trade which our necessities will permit.” Well, that principle has helped them in this crisis. Like it or not, the hyper-unionism has not helped Detroit one bit.

150. 150 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 18 December 2008:

     “Mr. Toddard, you simply don’t understand — people who are “consumed with moral conviction” are PRECISELY the sort of persons who prone to power-lust.”

     That’s a false premise and I reject it wholly. I could make a list for you of people with strong moral convictions who aren’t prone to power-lust. Are you a man of weak moral convictions? And to believe that the chattel slavery on the plantations of the South was moral and exemplary of the teachings of Christ is one thing, but to fetishize it to the extent that one believes that any and all who opposed slavery are literally *insane* – that slavery was such a noble, virtuous institution that to oppose one must be literally and severely *mentally ill* – honestly I’m shocked that I have to point out the absurdity.

     That being said, moral convictions and mental illness do not indicate or are not components of or related to “power-lust”.

151. 151 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 18 December 2008:

     S.L. Toddard @ 149

     As I pointed out in an earlier post here, I believe that slavery was a wicked institution, and so did many loyal Confederates. But just because an evil exists it doesn’t mean that you are obliged to turn the world upside-down to root it out. That is why I am just as troubled by extreme anti-abortionists as I am by abolitionists.

     You know very well that I never said that slavery was “a noble, virtuous institution.” Quite the reverse. What is at issue here is the motivation of those who were willing to send hundreds of thousands of their fellow-countrymen to their deaths just to satisfy their peculiarly New Englandish sense of moral rectitude. Yes, that IS insanity, Mr. Toddard. And if you don’t think so, maybe you should see a psychiatrist yourself.

152. 152 Comment by Robert on 18 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard,
     Its been a long day and you have stood for endurance even when you couldn’t stand for something more. Get some rest and we can argue some more after first light in the morning. Some of your requests should be granted in fairness such as names of some of the fruitcakes you seem to be defending and that is only fair. ( Although earlier you said you were defending no abolitionists in particular.) But some of us still work for a living and the hour is late so build a fire and settle in for a while, there is no retreat or quit in anybody that posts over here. We can give it hell again tomorrow. Cheers

153. 153 Comment by robert m. peters on 18 December 2008:

     If I might somewhat interrupt this thread with a very recent anti-Southern call to arms by Mr. Michael Lind:

     “Dec. 18, 2008 | It is just as well that Barack Obama is emulating Abraham Lincoln by traveling to his inauguration in Washington by train. As the regional politics of the automobile bailout controversy demonstrate, the Civil War continues. If the major U.S. automobile companies go under, it will be partly because timely federal aid for them was blocked by members of Congress like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, whose states have created their own counter-Detroit in the form of Japanese, Korean, and German transplant factories. The South will have risen by bringing down the North. Jefferson Davis will have had his revenge.”

     Read the rest of the story through the link infra.

     http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/12/18/third_reconstruction/

     Not only is the historical Mr. Macon under attack, but so are we his heirs, today!

154. 154 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 18 December 2008:

     Good Mr. Roberts @152.

     I actually had already linked to the salon article @144. But it appears now LRC also found the same article. Of course, this may all open a can of worms with the more protectionist folks here at Chronicles.

     “It is just as well that Barack Obama is emulating Abraham Lincoln by traveling to his inauguration in Washington by train”

     I wonder if he will also emulate Lincoln by killing those who won’t pay his pet tax.

155. 155 Comment by Leon T. Haller on 19 December 2008:

     To Mr. Salemi @150 (Prof Wilson or Dr. Fleming please feel free to respond also):

     Why was American slavery a “wicked institution”? One could argue, eg, that it created the conditions whereby a sinful slaveowner could commit multiple wicked offenses in forcing himself upon a slave girl. But otherwise, was it really that awful?

     My mother has told me a story (confirmed by her mother, the daughter-in-law) of her paternal grandmother, who lived to an extraordinary age. She was born before the War Between the States, on an ancestral plantation in Louisiana, of which her father (who was actually a French immigrant intellectual married into an old-stock Catholic family) had by that time become the head. To the end of her very long life, my great-grandmother vividly recalled, with that wonderful mnemonic acuity often associated with the memories of middle-childhood, her father after the war telling their somewhat large coterie of Negro slaves that they were free. The slaves’ apparent reaction was to set up wailing and “carrying on like something out of the Bible”. They literally pleaded, some on bended knee, with my great-great-grandfather NOT to send them away (I guess they were afraid they would be ordered off the land, to set out for God knows where with nothing but their clothes). As the story goes, they continued to live out their lives in pretty much the same situation and occupation as under slavery, I believe into the twentieth century.

     The point, if it’s not obvious, is that any institution that, when radically overturned, would produce that kind of reaction can hardly be classified as “wicked”, at least if compared to most other slave regimes in history, let alone the cruel totalitarian tyrannies of modern times, whether Communist, Nazi, or Fascist, or the just plain tribal butcheries sprinkled throughout the modern Third World, nowhere more so than in “oppressed Africa”. Communist slaves died trying to reach freedom in the West; countless millions (or more) outside of the West have been tortured, ritually slaughtered, even cannibalized under abhorrent forms of (mis)rule, from Assyrian and Aztec up to Idi Amin and Milton Obote and “Emperor” Bokassa. THERE was wickedness.

     Indeed, some 15 years ago, if memory serves, the brilliant Austro-libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe published a little piece in CHRONICLES comparing, via dispassionate social science, the regimes of American Negro slavery and Eastern European Communist slavery, in terms of the negative effects of each upon their slave-subjects. After examining comparative data on life expectancies and fertility, Hoppe concluded that communism was more onerous than the life of slaves in the Old South. I would add that American slavery, being managed by whites, that is, members of the world’s most ethical and altruistic race, who themselves were, furthermore, as a culture, steeped in Christianity (and were as a group far more serious and sincere in their religiosity than most of us today), was probably the most, or one of the most, humane slave systems that ever existed. There are literally innumerable instances in the historical literature of slaves who exhibited tremendous affection for their masters – and vice versa.

     No, this nonsense about the wickedness of American slavery is merely the outgrowth of contemporary attitudes being applied ex post facto to a very different past – a kind of “historian’s fallacy”.

     And none of what I said even addresses the far more brutally “politically incorrect” issue of whether blacks were not better off under slavery than they would have been had they remained in Africa. Certainly their descendants are (while whites, of course, are much …).

156. 156 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     @150

     “As I pointed out in an earlier post here, I believe that slavery was a wicked institution, and so did many loyal Confederates. But just because an evil exists it doesn’t mean that you are obliged to turn the world upside-down to root it out. That is why I am just as troubled by extreme anti-abortionists as I am by abolitionists.”

     Mr Salemi, this is my point – not all abolitionists were “extreme abolitionists”, just as not all pro-lifers are extremist. And even then, though, even the worst of the extreme abolitionists were motivated by moral conviction – however overzealous one might believe it to be – rather than a lust for power. And I said it earlier in the thread and will reiterate it now: I *personally* believe that were slavery allowed to die a natural death it would have come within decades, and that the misery that caused the slaves themselves would have been off-set by the greater ease with which they would have been able to enter society as free men after the institution expired, and would have lessened the harshness of the world to which their free sons and daughters would have been born, that is to say those extra decades of toil and hardship would have saved their descendants generations of misery.

     “You know very well that I never said that slavery was “a noble, virtuous institution.” Quite the reverse.”

     You are correct and my inference was off-base. I apologize. I was hyperbolizing, I suppose, to counter the hyperbolic implication that all abolitionists – or even most – were “crazy”.

     “What is at issue here is the motivation of those who were willing to send hundreds of thousands of their fellow-countrymen to their deaths just to satisfy their peculiarly New Englandish sense of moral rectitude.”

     There is nothing whatsoever “peculiar” about believing slavery to be a wicked, evil institution. There is nothing “peculiar” about wanting to end such an institution. And I disagree that Northerners sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths to rectify or avenge that evil – I don’t believe most Union were fighting to free the slaves, they were fighting to retain territory.

157. 157 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     @ 151

     “Some of your requests should be granted in fairness such as names of some of the fruitcakes you seem to be defending and that is only fair. ( Although earlier you said you were defending no abolitionists in particular.)”

     That’s not really what I’m asking for. I understand that there were abolitionists who were zealots and firebrands whose rhetoric would seem irrational. Providing their quotes doesn’t demonstrate that they exemplify the greater body of the movement. Regardless, though, my main contention is simply that these people – the firebrands as well as the more run-of-the-mill abolitionists – were motivated primarily by moral conviction. Whether one finds that moral conviction misguided, ill-founded and irrational (like many of you) or well-founded and righteous (me) is a different argument entirely. It’s one we can have, but I don’t think it will be very constructive.

     And cheers right back atcha. I indeed had the fireplace roaring – it’s absolutely frigid New England weather we’re dealing with up here now, and is supposed to start snowing around 9AM today, and accumulate 2 inches per hour. By the time I leave work we could have a foot of snow on the ground. I think we can all agree that THAT is an abomination!

158. 158 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     @148

     “Yes many of the people here are protectionist. Clyde Wilson and a few others, are not. I too am not. Buchanan in an economic nationalist, and I think that is silly.

     President Davis spoke of “…freest trade which our necessities will permit.” Well, that principle has helped them in this crisis. Like it or not, the hyper-unionism has not helped Detroit one bit.”

     Oh I agree on that count – the unions have done their damage as well. But supposing a fair agreement vis a vis wages and benefits could be reached – one you yourself found acceptable and reasonable. American manufacturers would still be at a disadvantage, as it would still be more costly for them to produce autos than it would in Asia or Mexico, and to compete here in America they would need to cut corners and sacrifice on quality (as they do now). How would it not be better to – and I loathe using this phrase – “level the playing field” in favor of American manufacturing and the American men who earn their living there? To keep more of that wealth within our borders, instead of exporting that wealth and those jobs overseas to third world foreigners?

     I understand the general free-market arguments but I think they hold for commerce *within* the U.S. I cannot see an argument for why our trade policy should benefit other nations more than us ourselves. Have we benefited from shipping our manufacturing base overseas? Surely the mass exportation of wealth and jobs and industry has hurt rather than harmed us, no?

159. 159 Comment by J Meng on 19 December 2008:

     #154 – Leon Haller, “I would add that American slavery, being managed by whites, that is, members of the world’s most ethical and altruistic race,…’ I must assume you are joking, right? Other than it having the fetid odor of racist propaganda, how does enslaving human beings reflect altruism and ethics?

160. 160 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     Mr Meng – Mr Haller is a white supremacist. I don’t mean that as an epithet – he’s an actual white supremacist/white nationalist, Stormfront type.

161. 161 Comment by Leon T. Haller on 19 December 2008:

     Mr. Meng:

     Why would you think I was joking? Isn’t it obvious that whites are the most generous of races? Who else rushes around the world feeding the hungry, beggaring itself to fight disease in Africa, worrying over human rights in the Punjab, leading the world in the fight to preserve the biosphere less tarnished or denuded for future generations? Which race ended the immemoriable institution of slavery? To all these and so much more, ONLY THE WHITE RACE. Obviously we are ethically superior.

     Indeed, which race is the only race which is NOT ethnocentric, which literally persecutes its best patriotic sons in order NOT to offend the ludicrous hypersensitivities of ‘minorities’? Which race is willing to commit territorial suicide rather than deport even illegal aliens? Which is the only race whose constituent nations even accept racially alien immigrants? ONLY THE WHITE RACE. (Perhaps you’ve never read Sam Francis in CHRONICLES.)

     Our virtue is our vice. Our altruism is killing us. This is a fact, not debatable or arguable in any way. The white race is going extinct (probably to the great joy of an Asiatic-surnamed leftist like you) because we are too ethical to survive – or more precisely, over the past half-century we have been ideologically reconstructed to believe justice requires our not resisting our own demographic death. That this “anti-racism” is even more theologically suspect than the idiotic contention above that Christianity and slavery were/are incompatible (Sam disproved that hoary lie), has not yet reduced its stranglehold over the contemporary Western mind. But some of us are working on it, and growing stronger and bolder …

     Finally, reread my post. You obviously have low reading comprehension. I did not say slavery reflects altruism, but rather that whites’ superior, biologically evolved altruism (supplemented by Christianity) would have made slavery in the Old South more humane than other forms of slavery throughout history. Perhaps Prof. Wilson would care to elaborate on that point …

     As for Mr. Toddard @ 159: I have nothing to do with Stormfront, and I have elsewhere noted that there exists a difference between racial conservatism (to which I adhere) and racial nationalism – let alone racial supremacism. But I’m curious: in a/the nation founded and built by whites, what precisely is wrong with white supremacism? And how do you define it anyway?

162. 162 Comment by robert on 19 December 2008:

     Toddard,
     After “sleeping on it”, on all that we had discussed yesterday, I awoke with the strange feeling that I had been duped into riding into one of the oldest kinds of traps, the box canyon — or what the acncients described as “attempting the last word with a woman.” If this is true, and I now believe it is, I am finished with this thread and would have surrendered much earlier if I had known. Perhaps we will meet again on another thread and another subject much wiser to the ways of the world we both inhabit. Thanks for staying in the fight and my regards to Dr. Wilson for all that he is and does for the people, the things and country he loves. Long live Macon in the minds of men !!!

163. 163 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     Robert, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, there was no trap or ruse or any such thing in anything I wrote or said. I’ve stated perhaps a dozen times what my chief objections were to the piece itself, i.e. that it reduces the conflict between and history of the North and South to the sort of black and white, Good Guy Bad Guy narrative one usually finds in professional wrestling or comic books. Nothing more.

164. 164 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     “Which race ended the immemoriable institution of slavery? To all these and so much more, ONLY THE WHITE RACE. Obviously we are ethically superior.”

     Note that Mr Haller, like a good abolitionist, considers the eradication of slavery a moral and ethical good, and proof of ethical superiority.

165. 165 Comment by Allen Wilson on 19 December 2008:

     One wonders, is Mr Toddard constantly watching this thread, waiting for the next post in reply to him? I’ve read through 161 posts and learnt nothing from Toddard, but a few things from the other responders. Toddard is a waste of time. Dont worry about him, it’s not worth it.

     Perhaps some more elaboration or actual discussion of Macon or other lesser known heroes of the revolution or of colonial times would be time better spent. Since Macon is horribly, disgustingly stained with the unwashable, stinking, filthy, odorous, putrid, repulsive, black stain of slavery, perhaps we could choose another? Not necessarily a Southern hero, or even an Anglo-Saxon one. Surely we could respect William Penn regardless of his Quakerism (members of the Penn family owned slaves, so maybe not). Anyone here wish to criticise John Peter Zenger, or could we possibly learn something useful about him without getting so sidetracked?

     Personally, I would like to hear about the Swamp Fox, or Light Horse Harry Lee (an ancestor served under him), but then I would be showing my unforgivable Southern bigotry in making such a suggestion, and be admitting that I hold slavery quite dear in my heart and just long to lash out with a long whip at anyone or any poor creature I could put at my evil mercy, at least until the righteous abolitionists show up and put an end to my wickedness, and maybe they can do that before I molest some poor slave girl with my sick lusts.

166. 166 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 19 December 2008:

     Mr. Allen Wilson has said it perfectly. Stoddard, if that is his name, has wasted more than enough of our time. Let us close this for good. Perhaps I will be inspired to treat one or two other neglected Founders in future.

167. 167 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     @ 164 Allen Wilson

     “One wonders, is Mr Toddard constantly watching this thread, waiting for the next post in reply to him? I’ve read through 161 posts and learnt nothing from Toddard”

     Indeed Mr Wilson you have not, if you somehow inferred that I believe “Macon is horribly, disgustingly stained with the unwashable, stinking, filthy, odorous, putrid, repulsive, black stain of slavery”, or that this was my point. To whit:

     “I respect and admire Nathaniel Macon and don’t believe his owning slaves need mitigate that admiration.”

     “I don’t believe any discussion of Jefferson, Madison or Washington need contain a condemnation of or apology for slavery.”

     “I do not think that makes all slave-owners immoral, or slave-ownership itself inherently immoral – back then. It’s unfair, I think, to project our values backward in time onto people who lived centuries ago. I’m not convinced one can fault a man for living in his time, with the mores of his people and the knowledge available, and acting accordingly.”

     “I’m not using slavery to make the case that Macon was anything less than a hero and patriot – I don’t believe he was less than a hero or patriot.”

     And here the point I was making, repeated so many times the only excuse for failing to grasp it is an obtuseness feigned so that one might revel in perpetual victimhood while flamboyantly posing as a defender of one’s heroes against an attack against them that never happened:

     “it’s not slavery I’m opposing here, it’s the reduction, the simplification, of history into a Good Vs Evil narrative, always with the narrator’s side (shocker!) being The Good.”

     “replacing one false narrative for another is no way to correct a record.”

     “I merely object to painting all yankees – the elite, farmers, minutemen, layabouts, sincere and disingenuous – always with the same brush as scoundrels and liars and usurpers.”

     “And “all of this” is not “from praising a great American and true patriot”, it is from *maligning* and *defaming* other American patriots to aggrandize the subject of this piece.”

     “my issue was his claim that abolitionists were primarily motivated by maliciousness and a “lust for power” rather than moral indignation.”

     “I object to the reduction of the history of the pre-WBTS and WBTS America to a Good Guy/Bad Guy narrative, where the blemish-free, wholly noble, innocent and valiant Heroes battled the wholly ignoble, dishonest, villanous Scoundrels. It is the exact same narrative put for by Lincoln worshippers and Union partisans with the roles reversed, and it is equally, in my opinion, representative of the truth.”

     “there are myriad legitimate arguments to be made to rectify the wrong done to the South by historians, and to elucidate the history of South in such a way as to dispel the myths widely held about it, and to put in their rightful place her sons and heroes. “Northerners are all malicious, unpatriotic moneygrubbers” isn’t it.”

     “I’ve stated perhaps a dozen times what my chief objections were to the piece itself, i.e. that it reduces the conflict between and history of the North and South to the sort of black and white, Good Guy Bad Guy narrative one usually finds in professional wrestling or comic books. Nothing more.”

     Does anyone remain confused, still, about the point I was making, what my objection was, and whether I consider American heroes unfit for reverence based on the idea that their honor is “stained” by slavery?

168. 168 Comment by Rick on 19 December 2008:

     Professor Wilson #165 I am looking forward to your articles!

169. 169 Comment by J Meng on 19 December 2008:

     Leon T. Haller @ 160

     No, I read you right, my reading comprehension is excellent; and what I read of your written thoughts is a crackpot theory to justify chattel slavery as it occurred in the South. Your main claim is that altruism and ethics are natural to the white race — “…whites’ superior, biologically evolved altruism” is what you wrote — when you have given no proof whatsoever of this claim. At the same time, it seems quite logical, that if your claim were true, then slavery could not possibly have ever existed among the white race throughout history.

     Of course, there are historical examples that can be served up which certainly repudiate your claim. Ever since the Protestant Revolt, the white man has been engaged in ever increasingly horrible wars over nothing, i.e., that is territory or power or economic advantage. Can we blame the blacks, the Hispanics, the Red Indian, or even Asiatics for the Wars of Succession of the 18th century; or the bloodbath of the French Revolution and its consequent wars; or the violent injustices committed against the Red Indian for the sake of gold or land or other natural resources; or, what non-white race brought on the War between the States; whose altruism instigated the horrific wars of the twentieth century? And what about those 6 white justices of the Supreme Court, plus one black justice, who foisted upon this nation the sophisms in the Roe v Wade decision which has led to the slaughter of 50 million preborn human beings? This historical sketch doesn’t show me any general altruism or ethics predominating in the white race.

     Oh, by the way, Meng is a Swiss name.

170. 170 Comment by robert on 19 December 2008:

     Clyde Wilson says “Perhaps I will be inspired to treat one or two other neglected Founders in future.”

     We can only hope, Dr. Wilson that it is sooner rather than later. There are not very many like you left in our country. The situation with Stoddard is not that “he” is wasting time, rather it is “she” is wasting eternity on “her” moral convictions. The problem is perrenial and is always the gordian knot for any man who has attempted to argue to some conclusion with an irritated woman. But as you say, and as we all will learn some day, enough is enough. Thanks and God Bless.

171. 171 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 19 December 2008:

     Leon T. Haller @ 154

     In the matter of slavery, I follow the opinion of Orestes Brownson, the 19th-century Roman Catholic writer who argued that slavery was an evil for both the slave and the slave-owner: in the case of the first, because it deprived him of his liberty, property, and free choice in many matters; and in the second because it allowed him to act out his worst proclivities as a fallen human being (you mention this when you allude to the abuse of young slave-girls). Both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas believed slavery to be evil, but being sensible men, they realized that it was a part of the human condition and could not be eradicated.

     And in fact slavery exists today — “the thing but not the name”, as that very astute Southern senator put it. In the economic conditions of contemporary life, many persons are essentially slaves to their employers, their health-care plans, their union pension funds, their colleagues at work, and of course to the ultimate Simon Legree with a whip — our hideous and out-of-control Federal Government.

     This doesn’t mean that we had to have a Civil War to destroy the “peculiar institution.” Toddard himself seems to agree with that. That horrid war embittered the South forever, fostered the worst sort of race hate, turned the government over lock, stock, and barrel to rapacious capitalism and industrialism, and made “Yankee” synonymous with “American.”

     Revilo P. Oliver himself said that very strong moral arguments could be made against slavery. He himself felt, as Brownson did, that slavery was a bad idea for slave-owners as well as slaves. But he made a brilliant point when he added that he didn’t think the lives of single company of brave young men from Minnesota, Vermont, Georgia, Texas or any other state were worth paying to give some accusatory abolitionist fanatic in Boston the satisfaction of feeling morally superior.

     I should also mention, in this connection, Aquinas’s views on prostitution. Naturally as a Christian he felt that it was sinful. But he also said that it was necessary for society, just like a sewer system.

172. 172 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 19 December 2008:

     Leon T. Haller again

     Let me add that the information passed down to you by your older family members is absolutely relevant to this entire argument. Any institution — no matter how objectively evil — can be made less onerous and less inhumane by the inherent good will and kindness of those who administer it. I am sure that you are totally correct about the comparative mildness of slavery in the American South as compared to the kind of butchery and mindless cruelty that has marked modern totalitarian states.

173. 173 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 19 December 2008:

     Dr. Wilson @165

     I nominate John Taylor of Caroline or perhaps even Albert Gallatin, the supposed actual target of Mr. Adam’s Alien & Sedition Acts.

174. 174 Comment by J Meng on 19 December 2008:

     @171, You know, Joseph, you sound like, not that you are, be assured of that, but in #171 you sound like a sycophant.

175. 175 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 19 December 2008:

     @ 173

     I think “sycophant” might be a bit strong, but I’d like to point out to Mr Salemi that a hallmark of the absolute worst totalitarian societies is the use of slave labor. The use of slave labor at concentration camps and gulags are a great part of why civilized people consider the Nazi and Soviet regimes as among the most monstrous in the history of the world. Slavery – much like human sacrifice amongst the Gauls, cannibalism amongst the tribal peoples of the south seas, or pederasty in ancient Greece – could be considered excusable when practiced amongst people who knew no better. Now, however, we do know better, and appropriately find these sorts of practices – slavery, pederasty, human sacrifice, cannibalism – to be repellant. But as I said it is unfair to project modern, civilized morality backward in time to apply it to slavers, pederasts, cannibals and the like.

176. 176 Comment by J Meng on 19 December 2008:

     @174, possibly, you are correct with regard to my labeling Mr. Salemi a “sycophant”. More likely, the word “homage” or “deference” would better describe what I think he was manifesting in # 171.

177. 177 Comment by PcH on 19 December 2008:

     Slavery was and always has been a Northern institution.

     The slave-trade was conducted only by Northern ships from Africa to Brazil and the Caribbean in the Triangular Trade. Northern slavers brought slaves to the South. Northern slavers forbade the South from ending slavery when it, several times, tried to abolish it. Northern slavers profited more from Southern farms than the South did. Northerners persecuted Southerners because white worked side by side black in the fields. Northern slavers built Northern industry from slavery’s profits. The North became the dominant section of the continent from slavery’s profits. Northern slavers continued to ply slaves long after the trade was abolished. When the cost of maintaining slaves became more expensive than hiring laborers, the North started a war to keep the whole South, black and white, in perpetual grey slavery.

     The whole model today of society, centrally controlled by high finance over a population utterly dependent on corporate employment and loans, is that of universal grey slavery.

     Whereas the old Southern economy was a model of independent yeoman farmers, living free on the land with no power between them and God.

178. 178 Comment by Josh Cooney on 19 December 2008:

     #174

     Have you read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich? I think you’ll find that life in a Soviet Gulag differs in kind, not in degree, from life on a plantation in the American South. Further, as you are certainly aware, the Soviets and Nazis executed millions in these camps. This is NOT comparable in any substantial way to American slavery. Slaves were provided with food and shelter, and they were generally able to preserve a strong family structure, as well as religious and community identity. In other words, slaves, unlike those unfortunate enough to end up in Siberia or Auschwitz, were secured of life and able to retain their humanity through the preservation of family and faith.

179. 179 Comment by Bob Johnson on 19 December 2008:

     “What I don’t feel the need for is any more animosity on this tragedy unless it is directed against the old elite from New England.”

     Jon I.

     I still feel a need for animosity directed against Roth for sending his bastard childe Belmont to these shores.

     I think he was in Cuba first, but if anyone tried to have him killed, he failed to the curse of this nation.

180. 180 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 20 December 2008:

     “Toddard” can’t tell the difference between domestic servitude in the Bible and the Old South and enslavement of free people by governments. There was no barbed wire and guard towers on the plantation. This is a fairly typical half-educated American proclivity for names rather than things.
     Enough, enough, enough.

181. 181 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     ““Toddard” can’t tell the difference between domestic servitude in the Bible and the Old South and enslavement of free people by governments. There was no barbed wire and guard towers on the plantation.”

     This is a fairly typical half-educated American proclivity for confusing differences with distinctions. As though the absence of barbed wire and guard towers is in any way significant.

     No, the distinction between the two is that 20th century Germans and Russians should have known better. It is the ignorance of American slave-drivers that prevents them from being considered monsters – as does the ignorance of the ancient gauls, the ancient Greeks and the cannibals of the south seas – not the window dressing, as though bullwhips and slave-pens are somehow preferable to guard-towers and barbed wire. As I’ve said it is unfair to project 20th Century morality backwards on 19th, 18th, 17th century Americans.

182. 182 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     Here is nearly poetic irony – in my above post, when meaning to point out that Dr Wilson’s argument demonstrated a “proclivity for confusing distinctions with differences”, I then proceeded to use “distinction” in place of “difference”, and *literally* confuse the two.

     So, feel free, my good opponents, to mark that as a score against me.

     That post *should* have read:

     ““Toddard” can’t tell the difference between domestic servitude in the Bible and the Old South and enslavement of free people by governments. There was no barbed wire and guard towers on the plantation.”

     This is a fairly typical half-educated American proclivity for confusing distinctions with differences. As though the absence of barbed wire and guard towers is in any way significant.

     No, the difference between the two is that 20th century Germans and Russians should have known better. It is the ignorance of American slave-drivers that prevents them from being considered monsters – as does the ignorance of the ancient gauls, the ancient Greeks and the cannibals of the south seas – not the window dressing, as though bullwhips and slave-pens are somehow preferable to guard-towers and barbed wire. As I’ve said it is unfair to project 20th Century morality backwards on 19th, 18th, 17th century Americans.

183. 183 Comment by TJF on 20 December 2008:

     Unless Toddard either finds a coherent historical argument or lapses into dignified silence, I shall have to ask the webmaster to close off this discussion. In reading many tedious posts, I have yet to see on argument, Christian or otherwise, that supports the contention that slavery is per se immoral. Toddard obviously believes that modern liberals have discovered some moral truth unknown either to Aristotle or St. Paul, but what he/she cannot apparently do is explain why a Christian or a conservative should accept his newfangled religion. He/she is a perfect example of something I heard this morning on the radio. Tom Cruise was being interviewed about his new movie on the plot to kill Hitler, and poor Mr. Cruise was trying to explain how strange he found the German acceptance of Naziism. “I’m an American, and I was raised [sic--and with good reason] to have the ability to think for myself.” That is obviously how he came to be a Scientologist. What is the difference between this poor ignorant actor who thinks he is capable of thinking for himself and people like Toddard? Beats me. Sorry, Clyde, that you have had to endure this. I admire your patience.

184. 184 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     “I have yet to see on (sic) argument, Christian or otherwise, that supports the contention that slavery is per se immoral.”

     It violates the ethics of reciprocity, the most basic and fundamental rule of morality, as expressed by Christ Himself in Matthew 7:12. I’ve made that argument a number of times in this discussion, so your failure to “see” it is, to me, baffling. I should rather assume you actively *choose* to not see it, being incapable of formulating a logical riposte, or perhaps you did see it and are merely dishonest. I’ll leave it to you to tell us which.

     “What is the difference between this poor ignorant actor who thinks he is capable of thinking for himself and people like Toddard?”

     You mean people like Toddard, Thomas Jefferson, and General Robert E. Lee, both of whom also believed slavery immoral. Tell us, TJF, do you believe the similarities between Scientologist Tom Cruise, General Robt E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson end at what you perceive to be the profound ignorance of these three men, and their shared lack of a true comprehension of Christian morality, or do you believe it goes deeper than that?

185. 185 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 20 December 2008:

     J. Meng @ 173 and 175

     Is it sycophantic to say that someone has made a good point? You had better check your dictionary, Meng.

     And by the way — are you ever going to answer that question I asked you about Pope John Paul II? You know him, of course: Pontifex Maximus, Vicarius Christi, et Servus Servorum Dei.

186. 186 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 20 December 2008:

     S. L. Toddard @ 181

     “20th century Germans and Russians should have known better…”

     “it is unfair to project 20th century morality backwards..”

     Here, in a nutshell, is the biopsy slide we needed to analyze Toddard’s mentality and rhetorical motives. He believes that only a certain type of thinking is appropriate or allowable to moderns, and anything that goes against that orthodoxy is verboten. This is a textbook example of unconscious Whiggery.

     Who the hell are you, Toddard, to say what twentieth-century people “should” believe, or “ought” to believe? Why come here and insult serious scholars like Dr. Fleming and Dr. Wilson over the fact that they see things in a heterodox way? You are, in fact, a moral totalitarian, just like that loathsome creep Harry V. Jaffa, who has spent his life worshipping Lincoln, and who refuses to allow anyone to think differently on the subject.

     And you are also just like those lunatic abolitionists, who insisted that their moral position be carved into America’s flesh, and who couldn’t tolerate anyone thinking differently below the Mason-Dixon line.

187. 187 Comment by J Meng on 20 December 2008:

     @184: Mr. Joseph Salemi, yes, as I was cautioned by S. L. Toddard, the use of sycophant was a bit strong, and for that I apologize and as you noticed, I did scale it down.

     As to your demand for an answer to your question about John Paul II, I can only answer you this, if he was a true pope, he was a very sorry pope. Take it or leave it, Joseph. It really doesn’t matter to me.

     @182: Dr. Fleming, there is an excellent article explaining the Christian contention that slavery is immoral:
     http://catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0006.html.

     @183: S. L. Toddard, well, I for one have enoyed and appreciated your polite attempt, and erudite attempt (it seems to me), to have Dr. Wilson moderate his blanket condemnation of the motive of northern abolitionists as only a “malicious lust for power” in opposing slavery. In seeking what truth can be sifted from the historical record, it seems incumbent upon the one who makes a claim, but is opposed by a request for evidence, should provide the evidence. Why hide it? And, if there is no evidence, then the claim should be redefined as a subjective interpretation, which is most likely unhistorical. You have defended your point, well.

188. 188 Comment by Robbie on 20 December 2008:

     It seems S.L Toddard learned about slavery from Neil Young.

189. 189 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     “Who the hell are you, Toddard, to say what twentieth-century people “should” believe, or “ought” to believe?”

     Oh I would never presume to do that. I was merely commenting on what civilized persons in the 20th (and now 21st) century *do* believe. They *do* believe slavery of the sort that was practiced in America before the 13th Amendment is immoral. That is why it is illegal in every civilized nation in the world, and indeed in nearly every nation period. It is almost literally universally agreed upon that slavery is immoral. There is not one major Christian denomination or sect whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican or otherwise that now defends slavery as moral and consistent with the teachings of Christ. Now, perhaps you know something that all the churches in Christendom do not. If so I’m sure they’d like to hear it – and I would too.

     But again, this is besides the point – or at least besides mine. This argument about slavery was started and is being maintained by other people – I merely keep getting dragged back into it. My point, as I think I’ve made clear, was about the reduction of history to a comic bookish Good Vs Evil narrative with the two sides starkly contrasted in black and white. I only mentioned slavery in my first post to demonstrate how that simplistic narrative does not reflect reality.

190. 190 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     An apology – had I known “TJF” was Dr Fleming I would have written Dr Fleming. I only used those initials because it was all I had, having infrequently delved into the comments sections before, not because I was treating him like a brother at some vulgar fraternity.

     My apologies, Dr Fleming.

191. 191 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 20 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard, this has grown redundant. Simply agree to disagree and leave it at that.

192. 192 Comment by J Meng on 20 December 2008:

     @189: Daniel Maxwell, Sir, this issue has only become redundant, because those who Mr. Toddard has requested evidence have failed to do so; instead, they have vilified him for his “presumption” to question a “god” of history, who has made a general claim without any benefit of evidence. The excessiveness is on the part of those who made the claim in the first place. Get your facts straight.

193. 193 Comment by J Meng on 20 December 2008:

     Sorry, S. L. Toddard, for barging in where you are more than capable of defending your position. I’m going out to take a walk in the snow covered streets and cool off.

194. 194 Comment by Robert on 20 December 2008:

     Good idea Meng and while you are at it why don’t you take a walk for a season with the migrant workers who pick your fruits and vegetables for a living. Most “conservative “conversations in America were taken over by kids a long time ago and you silly sweethearts on this thread thumping your chests about slavery amd southerners are a great example of good people going silly in a shouting match. God Bless you though I know you and Toddard mean well and it isn’t that what you are saying is dishonest it is just incomplete. Also what ever became of the old Christian idea of respecting your elders even if in the modern imagination they are not your betters ? Not one jot or tiitle should pass away …. And if anyone should teach these little ones,,, they should have a millstone tied aroung the neck … Pompous Asses are we all !!!

195. 195 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 20 December 2008:

     No apology necessary, and thank you Mr Meng. It’s nice to know someone has both read and understood what I’ve written.

196. 196 Comment by Josh Cooney on 20 December 2008:

     This thread needs a mercy killing.

197. 197 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 21 December 2008:

     The demand to present “evidence” on the vast slavery question in a short article about a Founding Father is ridiculous and can only be clever sabotage. In fact, in my presentation I was quite properly describing and paraphrasing Macon’s views. “Toddard” is a good exhibition of the tactics of the more sneaking and less crazy type of leftist deceiver. While completely dominating discourse and suppressing all disagreement, they are quick to denounce lack of “balance” when a hint of a different perspective peaks through.

198. 198 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 21 December 2008:

     “The demand to present “evidence” on the vast slavery question in a short article about a Founding Father is ridiculous and can only be clever sabotage.”

     Strawman. I wasn’t asking for “evidence” on the “vast slavery question”, I was asking you to back up the hyperbolic claims that abolitionists in general were motivated by a lust for power (as opposed to moral indignation), and that yankees cared not for liberty but only for “making a quick buck off the government” (paraphrased). I didn’t expect any evidence to really be proffered, since there isn’t any. I was trying to demonstrate that these claims were *inaccurate* – that they were simply wrong, and that they would be more at home in a propaganda piece than a purportedly historical article.

     “they are quick to denounce lack of “balance” when a hint of a different perspective peaks through.”

     Another strawman. I was denouncing a lack of accuracy, I was denouncing sweeping, unsound generalizations, but I never mentioned “balance” and specifically addressed – to you – why I don’t believe “balance” of the sort you’re talking about now is warranted. Strawmen, ad-hominem (“sneaking”, “half-educated” etc) – who’s acting like a “leftist” here? In the grand scheme of things, Dr Wilson, there is very, very little about which you and I disagree. I am no more of a “leftist” than you are.

     That’s the last I’ll say about any of this unless I get dragged back in. I apologize for the disruptions. I thought this section was where readers could come to discuss – and, yes, even disagree about – the pieces here. Perhaps it might help to avoid any further unpleasantness if Chronicles were to change the title of this section from “Comments” to “Praises” or “Acclamations” or “Huzzahs and Hurrahs” or some such thing.

199. 199 Comment by PcH on 21 December 2008:

     Of course, Macon, like all the other Jeffersonians, knew without doubt that Northern attacks on slavery were malicious, counter-productive, and driven by lust for power rather than benevolence.

     This is obvious, Dr. Wilson.

     The North ran the slave trade.

     That’s what the Triangular Trade was, from New England to the Gold Coast to Brazil and back to New England, three points of the Triangle, selling rum for slaves for sugar for rum.

     All Northern industry was built on the profits from slavery, profits from both introducing slavery to new lands and from the entire plantation economy, especially cotton. Northern rum distilleries and cotton mills became the foundation for Northern industry. The profits from slaves, rum, cotton, and shipping everything to and from the South became the foundation for Northern finance.

     The South several times proposed to end slavery for good, but the Northeast blocked each proposal.

     Even after the war against the South when hundreds of thousands were killed, raped, burned, and tortured, the blacks were kept working on plantations under conditions unheard of before. Tens of thousands died. And the new system of debt slavery, built on the profits of the Northern slave trade, became universal.

     And at the time of Adams, New Englanders were no more serious about ending slavery than they were about mass seppuku. Obviously.

     Dr. Wilson should not have to explain fundamental historical facts that every educated adult should already know. Maybe Toddard should pull out a junior high history book and read up on the Triangular Trade.

200. 200 Comment by J Meng on 21 December 2008:

     @197 – PcH, this is just an academic question for my own information. I address the question not only to PcH, but to Dr. Wilson, and to any other commentator on this site. Granted that Northerners were involved in the slave trade, as well as Britain and Holland; where was the major market in the British North American colonies for these slaves; who bought the slaves; who exploited them for personal profit?

201. 201 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 21 December 2008:

     @197 PcH

     I would be indebted to you if you could explain how any of what you posted is germane to this discussion, and how any of it refutes anything I’ve said, or answers any of my questions. Did you mean to post this in a different section? Or do you have me confused with someone who claimed that every New Englander was an abolitionist and that no New Englanders profited from the slave trade?

     If this were indeed a junior high debate club you would be taken to task for this lengthy non-sequitur.

202. 202 Comment by Brock H. on 21 December 2008:

     S.L. Toddard,

     Abolitionists’ willingness to use the federal government to impose a type of lifestyle on a nation of people who had declared independence from it, by way of expanding the government’s power and turning it into an empire, is the evidence you are probably ignoring that abolitionists were power-hungry politicians rather than morally outraged humanitarians.

203. 203 Comment by robert m. peters on 21 December 2008:

     Mr. Meng @ 198

     Is your question indeed merely academic? Your the answer to your question, “…who bought the slaves…?” would depend on what part of the antebellum period one was focusing on. For parts of that period, fresh slaves from Africa were bought by good folks from all across North America, the Caribbean and South America, including those in all of the thirteen British colonies which would eventually secede from the Crown. By 1860, in the union of constitutionally federated republics known as the United States, the vast majority of slaves held were in those states commonly called the Cotton States and the Border States, although most of the slaves by that time, with exception, were not freshly imported from Africa or even from the Caribbean as had been the case earlier in the 19th century. I am sure that Dr. Wilson can add greater detail and/or correct may narrative where necessary.

     Any of us can be exploited for personal profit. I believe that Marx was fond of using that statement when referring to the capitalist/proletariat relationship. Among those who held slaves in the South were no few Northerners who had their cake, i.e. slave labor, and who could also eat it, i.e. no Africans to “taint” their households, local polities and states. There were, here in Louisiana, notable plantations spared the plundering and burning which was SOP for most plantations and yeoman farms, namely those owned by Northern interests.

204. 204 Comment by robert m. peters on 21 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard @ 199

     You likely have the course of this thread in the woof and the warp of this discussion better in mind than do I; however, I is not clear to me that PcH was directly addressing you. There is, I would note, the difference between a discussion and a debate. The “subtle” ad hominem in regard to “debate” could not be missed. I could have well missed it; however, I have not seen a response to the three scenarios which I gave you in response to one of your quires.

205. 205 Comment by J Meng on 21 December 2008:

     @201 – robert m. peters: Sir, if you will re-read my post carefully, you’ll note that I used an adjective to mark the predominant market for slaves in the North American colonies: the adjective is “major”. Everyone, who knows his American history, knows that slaves were a part of the New England colonies, but not to the degree they were in the South. My point, which I gather you didn’t understand, was to emphasize that for the slave trade to be profitable or successful for those Northerners involved, there had to be a major Buyer.

206. 206 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 21 December 2008:

     @ 202

     Mr Peters, PcH said: “Maybe Toddard should pull out a junior high history book and read up on the Triangular Trade”, the implication being clear enough, I think.

207. 207 Comment by J Meng on 21 December 2008:

     @201 – robert m. peters,

     Or to put it another way, Mr. Peters, in what region of the British colonies in North America was the greatest number of slaves kept?

208. 208 Comment by robert m. peters on 21 December 2008:

     Mr. Meng @ 203 and 204

     I do not believe that I misunderstood. I provided a quick summary narrative in which I included the answer. I believe that the 1860 census reveals that approximately 95% of Africa in the U.S. resided in the South. If I recall correctly, about twelve million Africans came to the New World between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Of those, 645,000 to 650,000 were brought to the territories which would later become the U.S. Since there were about 4 million slaves according to the 1860 census, most slaves by that date had been born here and were not direct results of the triangular slave trade, although their ancestors had obviously been so brought here.

     Perhaps I am wrong, but there seems to hid an agenda behind your question. We Southerners have never denied the obvious, i.e. most slaves in 1860 in the union of constitutionally federated republics lived in and worked in the Cotton States and Border States. Those who have denied the obvious are those sections of the country which have buried their own slave-owning past, have denied their profits from the work of slaves and their profits from the slave trade which went well beyond 1866. It seems that when such facts are pointed out, their only retort is to say, “But where did the majority of slaves work in 1860?” It is certainly not a moral argument and not even a good quid pro quo argument.

209. 209 Comment by robert m. peters on 21 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard @ 204

     Your reference at 199 was a reference to PcH at 197. There, in the post which you referenced, he did not seem to be addressing you. As you will note, I ceded that you may well know the thread pursuant to those who had addressed you better than I. Thank you for the actual PcH reference which elicited your response.

210. 210 Comment by PcH on 21 December 2008:

     The most important thing to understand about slavery is who brought them. Who waged it and perpetuated it?

     The slave trade was early on abolished by the European powers. Even long before then, it was almost exclusively dominated by New England shippers under the English flag. After then, it was exclusively New England’s dominion.

     Those who brought the trade to these shores, also bought them.

     Because the Triangular Trade was exclusively in the hands of New England, slavery was a peculiarly New England institution.

     New England forbade the South from abolishing the trafficking, as the South tried many times, because the whole of the New England economy was dependent on it. New England industry and finance were built exclusively on the returns of slavery, directly through the slave-trade and also through exclusive shipping rights over the agricultural products of the trade, enforced by tariff laws.

     In other words, well-connected Northern abolitionists, whom history show were handsomely funded by New England elites beholden to slave-profits, were obviously gratuitous.

     This is germane because it is clarifies what Dr. Wilson says:

     Of course, Macon, like all the other Jeffersonians, knew without doubt that Northern attacks on slavery were malicious, counter-productive, and driven by lust for power rather than benevolence.

     New England was, in practice, hostile to the abolition of its slave-industry. As noted above, it had forbidden the South to abolish it and its whole economy depended upon it.

     Indeed, after the war, New England elites made sure that things remained much as before, but with the South plunged into a hundred years of abject poverty. This is malicious. New England treated the South literally as conquered territory and overthrew the Constitution permanently in order to deny the continent its rights as free states. This too is malicious. It is also demonstrably a power-grab.

     That Northern abolitionism (as opposed to Southern abolitionism, which was active and healthy) was insincere is clear: the New England elites who bankrolled abolitionism, were utterly dependent upon slavery, and imposed financial grey slavery on the whole continent with the power they had gained from ages of running the Triangular Trade. But I repeat myself.

     Thus, Dr. Wilson made no sweeping generalization in the above quote, but made a pithy summary of what every man should know. There was no space nor was it germane to connect the dots as any knowledgeable man can do – “malice and lust for power” – is.

     Further, a discussion of the slavery in the South (which the North imposed) is not germane, but a discussion of New England disingenousness and perfidy is.

     In contrast to that despotism is the example of Southern republicanism:

     Good Americans of the Founding and for several generations thereafter praised the idea of “republican simplicity.” A free government of the people did not need the fancy costumes and ceremonies of European courts. This is why Jefferson walked to his inauguration in a plain suit, delivered his state of the Union message in writing rather than preaching to the assembled congressmen like a monarch on a throne, and made his White House social events as informal as possible.

211. 211 Comment by PcH on 21 December 2008:

     Who exploited the slaves who were tortured and died in the holds of the slave-ships? Who changed the US from a treaty between free republics into an empire – from their profits in exploiting these slaves?

212. 212 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 22 December 2008:

     Mr. Toddard, you’ve kept this thread going for several days past it’s prime. Am I the only one who forgot what the original argument was over?

213. 213 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 22 December 2008:

     S.L. Toddard @ 187

     “I was merely commenting on what civilized persons in the 20th century (and now the 21st century) *do* believe.”

     So therefore anyone here who has expressed a contrary opinion to Mr. Toddard’s on the question of slavery is uncivilized.

     Toddard, this is a simon-pure example of what is called Whiggery. It’s also a profound arrogance.

     I also think slavery was wicked. But I’m not prepared to denounce everyone else here with a different opinion as “uncivilized.”

     Also, let everyone note that in this post at 187 Toddard falls back on religious authority as his last resort. Do we have a Bible-thumper in disguise here?

214. 214 Comment by TJF on 22 December 2008:

     Since Mr/Ms Toddard can only argue by analogy and in the teeth of explicit Scriptural passages, and since he/she refuses to confront the fact that Christianity did not prohibit slavery, I can only conclude that he is either in agreement with Dr. Wilson or too dumb to take part in this discussion, which by the authority vested in me, I pronounce closed. Many people have disliked slavery and not always for bad reasons. It is an institution, like the drinking of distilled spirits or industrial capitalism, that lends itself to abuse.. In America, the fact that it produced a multi-racial society with a vast class of alien people who were utterly dependent on others, this certainly gave many sensible people pause. Mr. Jefferson would have liked to have found a way of eliminating slavery, but as he said during the Missouri agitation ginned up by John Adams’s rotten son, “We have the wolf by the ears and dare not let him go.” Jefferson knew that the Yankees were Hell-bent on breaking up union over the slavery issue, with the ultimate goal of putting it together under their control. JQ Adams says exactly that in a letter. Prof. Wilson knows vastly more about this than I do, but anyone who even skims the letters and documents of that era will gain some understanding of reality.

215. 215 Comment by EE Roberts on 22 December 2008:

     Someone must point out an obvious fact when a discussion includes slavery:

     Slavery is an African tradition which predates the transatlantic slave trade and which is practiced to this day in Africa whereby African slaves are sold to willing buyers in Asia, particularly in the Islamic countries.

     The American slavery era ended years ago and yankees are still flogging the South over it. As always, the yankees have a deep desire to rule over others and to control their fellow men. That may have been what prompted Hammond’s remark about yankees changing the name of slavery without actually surrendering control over the enslaved.

216. 216 Comment by PcH on 22 December 2008:

     I thought the discussion of slavery was “pronounced closed?”