People's History: Slavery and the Civil War, 1830-65 (Chap 9)
Ashokan Farewell, by Jay Ungar (1990 PBS "Civil War" theme)
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Summary Imagine someone purchasing your daughter. You embrace a final time, a tortured understanding on her face, and as you watch and weep, you hear the whip and a command for her to leave, and part of life is over where you stand. Chapter Entrenched was slavery. Four-million slaves, a million tons of cotton, laws in place for keeping order, dogs and guns if needed, for the slave rebellions were a constant fear - Virginia needed one of every ten as volunteer or regular militia, just in case. Nat Turner's raid had terrified the owners. But Ms. Tubman, unafraid of punishment ("Be free or die," she said) went "Underground" to help the slaves escape the South, and others would resound with calls for freedom: Fredrick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, and abolitionists: John Brown, unorthodox, uncouth, heroic, but at Harper's Ferry trapped by General Lee. And Brown was hanged for fighting crimes against humanity. The North, and Lincoln too, considered blacks inferior. Though anti-slavery, their motives were ulterior: free markets, open land, the gains from Southern industry, a million votes arriving with the end of slavery. As always, then, the compromise of politics preempts morality. The Fugitive decree would foil attempts by slaves to run away, and then the highest court's Dred Scott Decision thwarted legal pleas for freedom. Still, the plot against the Southern Democrats advanced, with liberty for markets, not the slaves, the highest goal; the guarantee of freedom (the Emancipation Proclamation) freed the slaves of enemies, a move designed to supersede the Southern laws. But now the torch was lit, and suddenly the black had power, for the cotton-based economy was run by slaves; to some extent the Northern victory was due to Negro soldiers. Blacks were gaining dignity! |