What about the strength of pro slavery sentiment

As I understand it the American founding fathers were likely racist by current standards.

They believed that slavery was necassary but were uncomfortable about it, hence the terms in the Constitution assisting slavery without mentioning it.

Some time later in the ante belum period it became dangerous to queston slavery in slave states and many argued for it as a 'positive good'.

Did this relate mainly to fear following attempts at rising or the big powor of the Cotton planter class and their huge proffit.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
"The" founding fathers is a generalization. Those in the South considered it critically important, those in the North were as you describe (uncomfortable but...).
 
Both. The Planter class became increasingly concerned about slave rebellions, due principally to Nat Turner's Rebellion and Denmark Vesey's plot. However, they were also very concerned about attempts by Northern abolitionists to undermine slavery in the South. The Planters were so afriad of these things because slavery was vital to their profits and lifestyle. Without it they couldn't have maintained nearly the same level of profitability from their cotton plantations.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Incidentally, one reason slavery was where it was and wasn't where it wasn't was where Malaria was a major problem. Since Blacks had more resistance to malaria, they were used as slaves in the malaria areas and it became a race thing. (Look at the classical Planter house - high on a hill with lots of airy windows. That results in too high a wind speed for mosquitos...)
 

TFSmith121

Banned
By current standards, pretty much everyone in the world

As I understand it the American founding fathers were likely racist by current standards.

They believed that slavery was necassary but were uncomfortable about it, hence the terms in the Constitution assisting slavery without mentioning it.

Some time later in the ante belum period it became dangerous to queston slavery in slave states and many argued for it as a 'positive good'.

Did this relate mainly to fear following attempts at rising or the big powor of the Cotton planter class and their huge proffit.

By current standards, pretty much everyone in the world who afford to have an opinion was racist, sexist, and extremely focused on questions of theology that today most Westerners would find mind-boggling.

They also had lousy personal hygiene and terrible teeth.;)

The past is another country.

In terms of the sectional crisis in the U.S. in the Nineteenth Century, the Revolutionary generation was fairly clear-eyed about slavery, in the terms of the day and from an elite perspective; it was perceived as a structural weakness in the U.S., on economic, demographic, political, and (increasingly) philosophical and moral grounds. There is a reason slavery was outlawed in the north and old northwest, beginning as early as 1777 in Vermont and 1780 in Pennsylvania, and why by 1804, the northern and western territories in existence had prohibited it.

However, as the economic wealth created by chattel slavery and plantation agriculture piled up with the impetus of mechanization and expanding markets, especially in Europe, there was more and more incentive for the southern states and territories to push for its retention and expansion, which led to the compromise of 1820 etc. The southern elite generation who were - in many cases - the sons of the founding generation were the leaders who presided over the sectional crisis; their sons, the grandsons of the Revolutionary generation, were the ones who paid the price in blood in the 1860s of their fathers' shift from a national perspective to a regional/sectional one.

Southern Sons by Lorri Glover is an excellent survey of the generational aspect of the sectional crisis.

Best,
 
It's to my understanding that even the Southern poor whites, who owned no slaves, where also rabid supporters of slavery, and eventually, of the Confederates. All to feel the satisfaction of having someone else to look down on...

That said... Was this proslavery position only in regards to Black Africans, or where Natives and/or Hispanic mestizos, also viable to be enslaved?
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The racial element was key, as it was elsewhere in

It's to my understanding that even the Southern poor whites, who owned no slaves, where also rabid supporters of slavery, and eventually, of the Confederates. All to feel the satisfaction of having someone else to look down on...

That said... Was this proslavery position only in regards to Black Africans, or where Natives and/or Hispanic mestizos, also viable to be enslaved?

The racial element was key, as it was elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere but there were multiple examples of individuals of essentially "mixed" ancestries who got swept into slavery at different times between the 1600s and the 1800s in the U.S.

There was a caste system in the southern U.S. as finely lined as any in Latin America, but it tended to be more de facto than de jure, and the "one-drop" rule was incrwasingly to the forefront in the antebellum South (meaning immediately before the Civil War); in addition, some southern states were essentially outlawing the status of free people of color, as late as 1860 (Arkansas, for example), so even in states where status tended to be more fluid (Louisiana, for example) the writing was one the wall.

What amounted to "white" slavery, of course, also existed and in fact women who fell into such a classification were luxury goods, bought and sold at high prices.

One has to work very hard to make much "moonlight and magnolia" romance out of selling off one's daughters as enslaved prostitutes, but there are those who try.:rolleyes:

Best,
 
The racial element was key, as it was elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere but there were multiple examples of individuals of essentially "mixed" ancestries who got swept into slavery at different times between the 1600s and the 1800s in the U.S.

There was a caste system in the southern U.S. as finely lined as any in Latin America, but it tended to be more de facto than de jure, and the "one-drop" rule was incrwasingly to the forefront in the antebellum South (meaning immediately before the Civil War); in addition, some southern states were essentially outlawing the status of free people of color, as late as 1860 (Arkansas, for example), so even in states where status tended to be more fluid (Louisiana, for example) the writing was one the wall.

What amounted to "white" slavery, of course, also existed and in fact women who fell into such a classification were luxury goods, bought and sold at high prices.

One has to work very hard to make much "moonlight and magnolia" romance out of selling off one's daughters as enslaved prostitutes, but there are those who try.:rolleyes:

Best,
Just when I thought the Deep South could not get any more despicable...

So I take that had they achieved their dream of "The Golden Circle" both Hispanics and Natives (especially Mexican natives, who lack the nomadic traditions of the ones up north, making it harder for them to escape their new Anglo-Saxon masters) would have been added to the list as slaves for the Southern Empire, huh?
 
So I take that had they achieved their dream of "The Golden Circle" both Hispanics and Natives (especially Mexican natives, who lack the nomadic traditions of the ones up north, making it harder for them to escape their new Anglo-Saxon masters) would have been added to the list as slaves for the Southern Empire, huh?

They'd probably just go for a good old fashioned ethnic cleansing, given the Spanish experience of enslaving the natives.
 
It's a complicated issue, though I would point out that, back then, even some of the Southern founders weren't all that comfortable about slavery(not just Washington and Jefferson, mind, but what of Robert "The Emancipator" Carter?)

As I understand it the American founding fathers were likely racist by current standards.

They believed that slavery was necassary but were uncomfortable about it, hence the terms in the Constitution assisting slavery without mentioning it.

I imagine that most of them were probably indeed at least casually racist by today's standards, yes, but it's also a tad complicated; many of these men were simply reflecting on what they were taught by society at large during their coming of age.....programming that, I might add, could not have been entirely broken.

With that said, though, I've no doubt that most of them would've been quite put off by the machinations of the Fire-Eaters of later days.

Some time later in the ante belum period it became dangerous to queston slavery in slave states and many argued for it as a 'positive good'.

Did this relate mainly to fear following attempts at rising or the big powor of the Cotton planter class and their huge proffit.

A lot of it certainly was profit-related, yes. But, just as importantly, slavery was starting to become a key part of a certain way of life for the mostly WASP(with a few Scots-Irish and Anglo-Normans mixed in) Southern elite.

It's to my understanding that even the Southern poor whites, who owned no slaves, where also rabid supporters of slavery, and eventually, of the Confederates. All to feel the satisfaction of having someone else to look down on...

That was certainly true for many; we can thank some decades of fairly intensive propaganda for what happened there. Then again, though, this wasn't true for all poor whites-in fact, many of the (predominantly Scots-Irish) people of the Appalachians became pretty pro-Union during the Civil War, quite staunchly, in some cases.

That said... Was this proslavery position only in regards to Black Africans, or where Natives and/or Hispanic mestizos, also viable to be enslaved?

Although I don't believe slavery of Latinos was really ever tried IOTL(that might have been acceptable in Mississippi or Georgia, but it wouldn't have flown here in Texas, though), I do believe this happened to some of the mixed-blood Natives with African-American heritage, particularly during some of the wars against the indigenous peoples there(the Seminole and the Creek in particular, but others, too).

Just when I thought the Deep South could not get any more despicable...

So I take that had they achieved their dream of "The Golden Circle" both Hispanics and Natives (especially Mexican natives, who lack the nomadic traditions of the ones up north, making it harder for them to escape their new Anglo-Saxon masters) would have been added to the list as slaves for the Southern Empire, huh?

They'd probably just go for a good old fashioned ethnic cleansing, given the Spanish experience of enslaving the natives.

Possibly, especially if one of the most extreme reactionaries ever took power(like a Robert Rhett or Tillman type in a surviving Confederacy.....). :(
 
It's to my understanding that even the Southern poor whites, who owned no slaves, where also rabid supporters of slavery, and eventually, of the Confederates. All to feel the satisfaction of having someone else to look down on...

Poor whites who lived in areas of the South where plantation slavery was dominant favored slavery. Poor whites who lived in areas of the South whose economy was not dominated by plantation slavery were not so supportive. They weren't abolitionist, but there was a huge cultural divide - enough that those areas were pro-Union during the civil war. If for some reason the Civil War did not happen, but the Republicans held the Presidency, those areas would have eventually become anti-slavery - starting first in the Border States, then spreading to the Upper South.

People tend to follow local elite opinion since the elite are the people they look up to. The poor do not determine their society's values. In areas of plantation slavery, the elite were the slaveholders or people dependent on slaveholders for clients. In areas where the economy was not dependent on plantations, the elite was not based on slavery, and they were often looked down upon by the plantation aristocrats.

Being anti-slavery does not mean they were anti-racist. While many abolitionists were anti-racist, at least by the standards of that day if not today, many more free-soilers were upset about competing with slave labor, or having slave plantations control the land and prevent them from being independent farmers. Hence why many opponents of slavery also supported the various colonization movements which would have sent liberated slaves to Africa.
 
Poor whites who lived in areas of the South where plantation slavery was dominant favored slavery. Poor whites who lived in areas of the South whose economy was not dominated by plantation slavery were not so supportive. They weren't abolitionist, but there was a huge cultural divide - enough that those areas were pro-Union during the civil war. If for some reason the Civil War did not happen, but the Republicans held the Presidency, those areas would have eventually become anti-slavery - starting first in the Border States, then spreading to the Upper South.

People tend to follow local elite opinion since the elite are the people they look up to. The poor do not determine their society's values. In areas of plantation slavery, the elite were the slaveholders or people dependent on slaveholders for clients. In areas where the economy was not dependent on plantations, the elite was not based on slavery, and they were often looked down upon by the plantation aristocrats.

This was indeed true to a large extent, unfortunately, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the Deep South in those days.

Being anti-slavery does not mean they were anti-racist. While many abolitionists were anti-racist, at least by the standards of that day if not today, many more free-soilers were upset about competing with slave labor, or having slave plantations control the land and prevent them from being independent farmers. Hence why many opponents of slavery also supported the various colonization movements which would have sent liberated slaves to Africa.

And even with that, I would argue that the racism of the Free Soilers was rarely ever even partly close to as outright vicious, as what came out of the mouths and minds of the Fire-Eaters down south.
 
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