Poll: When Would the CSA Eliminate Slavery

[Fiver]

It depends on which founding father your talking about. Remember a few of them are from Virginia.

I am well aware that many of the Founders were from Virginia. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" was written by a Virginian.he Confederacy would have a decade later.

 

[Fiver]

Also why would they not train there slave patrols and militia units at all? That goes against all human reasoning. Confederates want to get better at what they do and take pride in “hard work”. Naturally they want to get better at catching slaves and fighting partisans in the country. They are being paid to do this and they probably develop as time progresses to something more then rag tag armed groups.

Slave patrols received no training. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Ziltch. You may think that it "goes against all human reasoning", but that was the real slave patrols used successfully for decades. They didn't get paid, either, the slave patrol's only payoff was if they caught an escaped slave. You didn't have to know how to track, that's what the dogs were for. You didn't have to know how to fight, either, that is also what the dogs were for. Being on a slave patrol was usually a boring, unpaid waste of time - many poor whites had to be legally required to serve, No one would waste time or money trying to give them military training.

Fighting partisans would be the job of the actual Confederate army, not some local militia. Local militias were voluntary, poorly paid or unpaid, and poorly trained at best. If you try to use militias and slave patrols for the difficult and very dangerous job of hunting partisans, the possible outcomes are:

* The militia charges in and get wiped out.
* The militia refuses to take on organized partisans.
* The militia spends a few days "looking for" Unionists in places where they don't think there are any Unionists, then report the Unionists have escaped.
* The militia spends a few days "looking for" Unionists in places where they don't think there are any Unionists, then report there are no Unionists.
* The militia spends a few days "looking for" Unionists in places where they don't think there are any Unionists, get ambushed by Unionists, and flee.
* The militia ambushes and kills a couple of random poor white men that they don't like, steals anything that isn't nailed down, sets fire to their homes, and possibly rapes their women.
* The militia ambushes and kills a couple of random black men, steals anything that isn't nailed down, sets fire to their homes, and possibly rapes their women.

The CSA could easily arm them with military gear, weapons, some horses, and have them trained very regularly since many do this as a full time job now(poor whites need jobs).

Where is the Confederate government getting the money to afford giving state militia and even slave patrols military gear or weapons or horses or training. It will be expensive enough doing this for the actual standing army. Being in the state militia was not a full time job in peacetime and in wartime it was often a way of avoiding being in the real army. Being part of a slave patrol was not a job at all, let alone a full time job, it was a chore that men often had to be legally forced to do. Being a professional slave catcher was sometimes a full time job, but the skills it required would not give proper military training.

Some officers(Bedford Forest types) could be very willing to train these men.

Forrest didn't become a military success by using militia instead of real soldiers.

Training brutality might be extreme if someone like Bedford Forest or hotheaded aristocrats(training someone in a brutal fashion might be common but won’t drive away many volunteers if they are getting paid well especially since how harsh normal life makes this treatment seem more normal to them. Aristocrats don’t mind paying them a bit more if it helps keep the slaves on the plantation and unionist dealt with. All levels of government are likely to be fine with funding this since it’s in all their best interest). What their doing is wrong but they are going to try to do it in the most practical and efficient way. They are thugs but that doesn’t mean they can’t train and learn so they can get better at it.

Militia were volunteers who would never put up with this kind of training. Any officer who attempted brutal training would be "accidentally" shot. And the planters would want the real soldiers to do the job they were paid for, not waste money sending militia after partisans. Slave patrols were not paid. Their only payoff was if they caught an escaped slave.

Edit: you do realize slaves are often bred selectively by masters like animals. This means the most physically strong or fast are often forced to breed together so the master can have better laborers in the field. That makes them harder to catch when they escaped if your stupid about it. This stuff isn’t right but it does take skills of some sort. Imagine someone who desires freedom more then anything else and the fear of being caught would drive someone. Mix that with physical traits of selective breeding and constant labor in the field. These are people just like us. Me or you are going to do whatever it takes to put up as much of a fight as possible to be caught.

Horrific as actual slavery was, I know of no examples of Southern slave owners forcibly breeding their slaves to be stronger. The eugenics movement was still generations away. Southern slave owners certainly were not breeding slaves to be able to run faster. Even the toughest slave wasn't immune to bullets, Even the strongest slave couldn't win against a dog pack. Even the fastest slave couldn't outrun dogs or horses, let alone bullets. Almost every day they had to go out, the slave patrols encountered nothing but boredom. On the few days they did find an escaped slave, the only skill required was one of the slave patrol being barely sober enough to not fall off their horse and to call off the dogs before they crippled or killed an unarmed, malnourished, and exhausted man, woman, or child.

 

[Fiver]

Also the situation you mentioned was CSA firing on partisans who were companied by women and children I think in North Carolina correct? It was a massacred by not really a organized or plan(just them firing reckless into a group of people off impulse and women and children getting into the cross fires). This is terrible but not planned or desired. You seem to be cherry picking information a bit.

None of the people that Sicarus listed were accompanying partisans. All of them were pre-planned murders of women or children.

Emmett Till. Addie Mae Collins. Cynthia Wesley. Carole Robertson. Carol Denise McNair. Huie Conorly. John Taylor. Ernest Green. Charlie Lang. Andrew Clark. Major Clark. Alma and Maggie House (both pregnant). Samuel Smith. William Shorter. Fred Rochelle. Henry Smith. Jesse Washington. Mary Turner. Thomas Shipp. Willie James Howard. And many others we'll never know, small bodies burned, drowned, mutilated, parts cut off for souvenirs while they were still alive.

Emmett Till. Age 14. Murdered in 1955 in Mississippi for talking to a white woman.

Addie Mae Collins. Cynthia Wesley. Carole Robertson. Carol Denise McNair. All were 14, except McNair who was only 11. Murdered in Alabama in 1963 while attending church.

Huie Conorly, Age 16. Murdered in 1884 in Louisiana after being accused of attempted rape.

Ernest Green. Charlie Lang. Both aged 14. Murdered in Mississippi in 1942. Accused of attempted rape.

Andrew Clark. Major Clark. Alma and Maggie House (both pregnant). Aged 18, 20, 14, and 20. Murdered in Mississippi in 1918. Accused of killing their white employer, who appears to have been raping both girls.

Samuel Smith. Age 15. Murdered in 1924 in Tennessee. Accused of wounding a white man while allegedly attempting to steal spark plugs.

William Shorter. Age 17. Murdered in 1893 in Virginia after being accused of assault.

Fred Rochelle. Age 16. Murdered in 1901 in Florida because he was accused of being seen near where the body of a white woman was found.

Henry Smith. Age 17. Murdered in 1893 in Texas after being accused of murder.

Jesse Washington Age 17. Murdered in 1916 in Texas after being accused of murder.

Mary Turner. Aged 18 and pregnant. Murdered in Georgia in 1918 for objecting to her husband being murdered.

Thomas Shipp. Aged 18. Murdered in Indiana in 1930 after being accused of robbery.

Willie James Howard. Age 15. Murdered in 1944 in Florida for giving a Christmas card to a white girl.

John Taylor. I am not sure which John Taylor Sicarus meant.

And let me add.
Marie Scott. Age 17. Murdered in Oklahoma in 1914 because her brother killed one of the white men that raped her.

Cordie Cheek. Age 17. Murdered in 1933 in Tennessee after being falsely accused of rape.

Felix Hall. Age 19. Murdered in 1941 in Georgia, apparently for no other reason than being black.

Donald Michael. Age 19. Murdered in 1981 in Alabama for no other reason than being black.

The Walker family. Five children including an infant, plus the parents. Murdered in 1908 in Kentucky, apparently for no other reason than being black.

Julia Baker. An infant murdered in 1898 in South Carolina along with her father, because her father had been appointed postmaster. Her mother and five siblings escaped. some of them wounded.

 

[Fiver]

You do realize many of the founding fathers had slaves right? When they wrote that they only had certain people in mind. Jefferson and Washington both had slaves and believed in those writing but in a different way then you or I do. Blacks were not considered men like white men were by many. They did not see blacks as even the same species or race at times. When they said all men are created equal their going by their definition of men which isn’t a black person or slave. To them equality only applies to males they consider humans like them. So depending how you twist the argument they are not going against the founding principles of this nation in the minds of many. Why did you think they often referred to black people as “boys” because they did not see them as men. To them you can’t give equality to someone who “god has made inferior by nature”. The argument is based around the “humanity level” of black people. Even many in the north and opponents of slavery were unsure about considering black peoples as normal citizens with the same rights as them because they did not see them as humans like them. Do you understand the racial mindset of both the north and south at all?

I am aware that both Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. They, like most slaveholders of their era, saw slavery as a necessary evil that they did not know how to end. Unusual for their era, Washington freed his slaves. Jefferson freed those slaves he was related to, which was still better than many of his contemporaries. And Jefferson, though he thought black people were inferior, wrote "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…".

I know that Confederate leaders held beliefs that directly contradicted America's founding ideals, because they clearly said so. They repudiated "all Men are created equal" and said "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Confederate leaders saw slavery not as a necessrary evil, but as a positive good and said so clearly in their Declarations of Cauass for secession.

 

[Fiver]

People refine their tactics and get better at oppressing people. That is just them being practical about it. Better trained men are better at fighting unrest. That is common sense especially in a society that is very Darwinistic in outlook. A trained thug is better then an untrained one. He might act like a thug but that doesn’t mean they would not teach them how to use a gun, track people, fight in units, and teach them martial skills(martial skills and book smarts don’t always go hand and hand.

Slave patrols were not trained to use a gun or track people or fight at all, let alone fight in units. Slave patrols were not trained in anything.

 

[Fiver]

I'd argue the Union produced 3 or 4 strategic thinking generals, one strategic thinking admiral and one strategic thinking president. The Confederacy OTOH produced many men who were tactically skilled par excellence with maybe the exception of Lee's thinking he could inflict a defeat so politically damaging the Northern government would switch hands and the peace faction would win. That is at least a realistic strategy vs the pie in the sky thinking of the Confederate cabinet that the European powers would be obliged to save them simply because of "King Cotton" or that they could hold all of their territory in a suicidal forward strategy.

As for veterans, well that is probably one of a very small number of militarily smart moves the Confederacy made. They had others, which let them fight on for far longer than they should have been able to, but that was something which kept their armies which were almost literally falling apart together for so long.

I should not have said the Union had 2 strategic thinking generals - just off the top of my head there were Grant, Sherman, and Scott. Lincoln certainly was a strategic thinking President, while Jefferson Davis certainly was not. Who do you see as a strtegic thinking admiral for the Union?

Attempting to hold all Confederate territory was flawed, but probably necessary. Trading space for time to wear down a stronger opponent is often a good strategy, but it had a couple of serious flaws for the Confederacy. In any territory controlled by the Union, slaves fled in large numbers, with some joining the Union army. Also, most of Confederate industry was in the Border States, failing to hold those areas could cripple them economically and logistically. Donald Stoker's The Grand Design mentions one Confederate who saw a possible way. In early 1862, Braxton Bragg recommended abandoning almost all of their coastal towns, concentrating the forces in only the most important ports to try to keep the Union from seizing them. Bragg also recommended pulling all troops out of the huge and sparsely populated Texas and Florida and concentrating them in Tennessee to try to protect the Confederate heartland,

 

[DG Valdron]

Modern Imperialism said: ↑

Edit: you do realize slaves are often bred selectively by masters like animals. This means the most physically strong or fast are often forced to breed together so the master can have better laborers in the field. That makes them harder to catch when they escaped if your stupid about it. This stuff isn’t right but it does take skills of some sort. Imagine someone who desires freedom more then anything else and the fear of being caught would drive someone. Mix that with physical traits of selective breeding and constant labor in the field.

Oh Jesus H. Christ.

Someone else please puncture this toxic nonsense.

 

[Modern Imperialism]

Oh Jesus H. Christ.

Someone else please puncture this toxic nonsense.

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461
Because it is unpleasant doesn’t mean it did not happen. You say it is toxic while many Africana academics will say your ignoring the horrors of slavery

 

[DG Valdron]

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19461
Because it is unpleasant doesn’t mean it did not happen. You say it is toxic while many Africana academics will say your ignoring the horrors of slavery

Humans take way way too long for any systematic breeding program. To recap, a human takes nine months to gestate. It takes about 18 years to reach physical maturity. With good nutrition and medical care, you can advance sexual maturity to as young as 13 or 14, but most slave owners weren't really into good nutrition and medical care. A coherent breeding program would take five to ten generations. That is orders of magnitude beyond the adult life span of slave owners of the day, who at best might try to breed two generations, or maybe three if they didn't expect to live to see the results. Slave owners were far more interested in return on investment on a daily basis, and their understanding of hereditary would be sloppy at best. And of eugenics or dna, nonexistent. Given the conditions that slaves toiled under, the real natural selection factors would be against things like malnutrition, particularly infant and juvenile malnutrition, parasites, overwork and poor conditions.

We can expect that hypothetically, slave owners might want to breed what they considered their 'best slaves' - but there were literally hundreds of variables working against that, including the slaves own wishes and resistance. So its not likely to have amounted to anything significant. The closest slave owners came was the impulse to rape themselves, and an underlying notion that their own half breed children would fetch a better price. But that underlying notion was probably pretty secondary to the impulse to rape.

Overall, it's just a lurid repellent fantasy.

But honestly, I'm just going to give up on you.

 

[Modern Imperialism]

Humans take way way too long for any systematic breeding program. To recap, a human takes nine months to gestate. It takes about 18 years to reach physical maturity. With good nutrition and medical care, you can advance sexual maturity to as young as 13 or 14, but most slave owners weren't really into good nutrition and medical care. A coherent breeding program would take five to ten generations. That is orders of magnitude beyond the adult life span of slave owners of the day, who at best might try to breed two generations, or maybe three if they didn't expect to live to see the results. Slave owners were far more interested in return on investment on a daily basis, and their understanding of hereditary would be sloppy at best. And of eugenics or dna, nonexistent. Given the conditions that slaves toiled under, the real natural selection factors would be against things like malnutrition, particularly infant and juvenile malnutrition, parasites, overwork and poor conditions.

We can expect that hypothetically, slave owners might want to breed what they considered their 'best slaves' - but there were literally hundreds of variables working against that, including the slaves own wishes and resistance. So its not likely to have amounted to anything significant. The closest slave owners came was the impulse to rape themselves, and an underlying notion that their own half breed children would fetch a better price. But that underlying notion was probably pretty secondary to the impulse to rape.

Overall, it's just a lurid repellent fantasy.

But honestly, I'm just going to give up on you.

Slavery has been going on in the south for multiple generations. Basic eugenics isn’t that hard to understand. We are no different then any other animal. Farmers often knew how to breed livestock and horses. Humans also knew how to breed dogs. We are no different from them. We have known this as a species since ancient times. Spartans even practice primitive selective breeding. Some slaves family trees go back deep probably before even the founding of the US. If your masters are constantly picking who they breed with over multiple generations even when sold to different masters you are likely to see some changes. Extended slavery only makes this more common and refined in practice. Your statement is borderline insulting and offensive because many African American academics consider this to be true and have done studies on it. It’s not that hard to understand breeding the biggest and strongest man and women is likely to produce more physical bigger and stronger kids. That means more money and labor for the master. People did the same with domesticated animals. Slavery in the south literally had blacks treated as animals. If you took a bunch of Irish people and did the same to them for generations you would likely see it impact genetics and physical traits somewhat. A lasting CSA is likely to get into very disturbing amounts of eugenics the longer they last. I literally research African American studies and human genetics. Many within my fields will say your statement is false. People always want to shrug off the most disturbing elements of human history.

Edit:
https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-industry-in-the-united-states
Your statement ignores slaves being treated like livestock. You ignore the statements and views of the actual people who went through this and suffered because of it. You denying this is no different then someone denying the Nazis testing on other humans.

 

[Fiver]

Slavery has been going on in the south for multiple generations. Basic eugenics isn’t that hard to understand. We are no different then any other animal. Farmers often knew how to breed livestock and horses. Humans also knew how to breed dogs. We are no different from them. We have known this as a species since ancient times. Spartans even practice primitive selective breeding. Some slaves family trees go back deep probably before even the founding of the US. If your masters are constantly picking who they breed with over multiple generations even when sold to different masters you are likely to see some changes. Extended slavery only makes this more common and refined in practice. Your statement is borderline insulting and offensive because many African American academics consider this to be true and have done studies on it. It’s not that hard to understand breeding the biggest and strongest man and women is likely to produce more physical bigger and stronger kids. That means more money and labor for the master. People did the same with domesticated animals. Slavery in the south literally had blacks treated as animals. If you took a bunch of Irish people and did the same to them for generations you would likely see it impact genetics and physical traits somewhat. A lasting CSA is likely to get into very disturbing amounts of eugenics the longer they last. I literally research African American studies and human genetics. Many within my fields will say your statement is false. People always want to shrug off the most disturbing elements of human history.

Edit:
https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-industry-in-the-united-states
Your statement ignores slaves being treated like livestock. You ignore the statements and views of the actual people who went through this and suffered because of it. You denying this is no different then someone denying the Nazis testing on other humans.

Slaves certainly were bought and sold as livestock, but your own source says "For all the anecdotal testimony, circumstantial evidence, and creepy local lore, no one has proved with documents the existence of a single full-time specialized slave-breeding farm with a monocrop of fatherless children, much less a network of such farms constituting a supply chain. The best argument, pretty much a clincher, against the evidence of such businesses on any significant scale is that there seems to be no mention of them in existing slave traders' letters."

 

[Fiver]

I voted 1895. Though realistically I think it would be somewhere between 1885-1899. The Cotton industry would probably collapse worldwide sometime in the 1870's-1880's like it did in OTL, and the Confederacy would find itself on the cusp of a cataclysmic depression that would threaten to end the Confederacy as a whole.

The cotton industry did not collapse in the 1870s or 1880s.

The Economic History Association has complied data on export values between 1840 and 1900. Crunching those numbers showed that the US provided

* 84.8% of world cotton exports in 1840
* 84.3% of world cotton exports in 1860
* 68.6% of world cotton exports in 1880
* 69.2% of world cotton exports in 1900

Total world cotton exports were about $225 million in 1860, about $310 million in 1880, about $350 million in 1900.

 

[Fiver]

That is because no country ever kept true slavery past 1888 once you get past 1910 no country will support any other country that has true slavery in name.

Brazil did abolish slavery in 1888. but in 1885 King Leopold had established the Congo Free State, enslaving the Africans there for personal profit. Even though Leopold's atrocities were publicized shortly after, nobody stopped buying rubber from him. The British Government was the first government to bother to investigate the reports and they didn't do it until 1903. Leopold continued to oppress the Congolese until 1908.

 

[Fiver]

This is hogwash, you say the boil weevil and the destruction of cotton won't change anything but then turn around and say it "might" under "the right circumstances" ignoring the fact that to reach this point in time that's exactly what the CSA would need "the right circumstances", the moment you said a communist overthrow wouldn't end slavery (because you say so) you ceased to be making a credible argument, as anybody knows that the entire idea of communism is that everybody is treated equally and everybody gets their fair share, and that they typically only show up in societies that have no opportunity of advancement and are hopelessly corrupt or despotic, such as Tsarist Russia or the CSA....

I never said that the boil weevil and the destruction of cotton would not change anything; I said that they would bankrupt many planters, reduce the price of slaves, and increase the number of Confederates who owned slaves. I did say that these changes would not end slavery in an independent Confederacy. Please do not misrepresent my position to incorrectly claim I contradicted myself.

In an ideal communism "everybody is treated equally and everybody gets their fair share". The Communist regimes of the USSR, China, and North Korea show that in totalitarian communism people are not treated equally and that many, perhaps most do not receive their "fair share". As committed socialist George Orwell noted "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than other"s. Totalitarian communists were also just fine with slave labor as well, read about the Soviet labor camps for political dissidents and Axis POWs.

I stand by what I originally said:

The boll weevil went through the South between about 1890 and 1920. A lot of people seem to think the boll weevil would help end slavery, but I have yet to see any explanation as to why. Any planter bankrupted by the boll weevil would have to sell his assets, including his slaves, to pay his debts. Enough planters would be forced into selling that the price of slaves would drop sharply, increasing the number of Confederates who owned slaves, and thus had a financial interest in maintaining slavery. If a Great Depression isn't butterflied away, then it and the boll weevil might lead to a communist or fascist overthrow of the existing Confederate government, but that will not lead to emancipation.

 

[Fiver]

This would, of course, bring up the issue of where the former slaves go, and I'd be willing to wager that they would be sent either to Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico or Yucatan, assuming that the Confederacy has somehow acquired these states by the 1890's, which I personally don't think is that far fetched..

Compensated emancipation would bankrupt the Confederacy, so how could they afford to also transport them? Why do you feel think the Confederacy would have any chance of acquiring Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico or Yucatan by the 1890s?

 

[Fiver]

Would it be possible for the Confederacy to try and join in the scramble for Africa and possibly get some less profitable area (say, Western Sahara) through where they can settle the free blacks?

The Confederacy would be more likely to try to join the scramble for africa in order to covertly re-open the international slave trade. They certainly wouldn't pay to ship free blacks anywhere.

 

[funnyhat]

Brazil did abolish slavery in 1888. but in 1885 King Leopold had established the Congo Free State, enslaving the Africans there for personal profit. Even though Leopold's atrocities were publicized shortly after, nobody stopped buying rubber from him. The British Government was the first government to bother to investigate the reports and they didn't do it until 1903. Leopold continued to oppress the Congolese until 1908.

Forced labor existed in many other African colonies in that era, too. The Congo Free State was simply the most notorious.

 

[Fiver]

Thirty years is a full generation, two even, depending who you talk to. On top of that, money talks, and if slavery stopped being profitable and proved to be more of a economic burden than it was worth, the Confederacy would be forced to accept that model failed. Either that or dissolve the country.

This misses that there were also social reasons that most southern whites supported slavery. Also, while, people have suggested that slavery might become unprofitable, nobody has suggested how it would become unprofitable.

 

[EnglishCanuck]

I should not have said the Union had 2 strategic thinking generals - just off the top of my head there were Grant, Sherman, and Scott. Lincoln certainly was a strategic thinking President, while Jefferson Davis certainly was not. Who do you see as a strtegic thinking admiral for the Union?

I would say Grant, Sherman, Scott (though would Scott count purely as an ACW general? He fought in 1812 and Mexico) and Sheridan. You could probably throw Rosecrans and Thomas in there too if you wanted to go the extra mile. IMO Farragut was a very strategic thinking admiral. He understood the strategy of closing ports and crippling the Confederate ability to export/import supplies, and was very capable with his ships. Probably one of the great admirals of the mid 1800s.

Attempting to hold all Confederate territory was flawed, but probably necessary. Trading space for time to wear down a stronger opponent is often a good strategy, but it had a couple of serious flaws for the Confederacy. In any territory controlled by the Union, slaves fled in large numbers, with some joining the Union army. Also, most of Confederate industry was in the Border States, failing to hold those areas could cripple them economically and logistically. Donald Stoker's The Grand Design mentions one Confederate who saw a possible way. In early 1862, Braxton Bragg recommended abandoning almost all of their coastal towns, concentrating the forces in only the most important ports to try to keep the Union from seizing them. Bragg also recommended pulling all troops out of the huge and sparsely populated Texas and Florida and concentrating them in Tennessee to try to protect the Confederate heartland,

I do give credit by realizing that it was a political necessity (Davis could hardly hold a nation of separatists together if the philosophy was to let them hang separately) but simply accepting Kentucky neutrality and counting on that as a shield rather than attempting to leverage that neutrality within the state (admittedly, we can blame Polk for that one). He did have to try and hold Tennessee I grant, but playing a Fabian strategy in the West would probably have been far better than trying to hold everything.

Though I have to admit, Bragg's strategy sounds pretty realistic. While holding on to places like Charleston, Mobile and Wilmington was probably a necessity, it was silly to try and garrison points in Florida and Texas along the coasts.

 

[CalBear]

I'm closing this disaster down since it has wandered so far from the OP's original question as to have left the Galactic Plane.

Y'all REALLY need to proof read what is about to be posted and consider how it will be interpreted.

Be a hell of a good idea if everyone remembers to play the ball if this subject ever rears its ugly head again (and it will, this general question hops out of the shadows every few months).