Reply #100: We should remember that most people in the [View All]

[DemBones DemBones]

North did not think black people were equal to white people. I seem to recall that Lincoln himself didn't, though he later signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Let's also remember that women were not considered equal to men in any way. They could not vote until nearly sixty years after blacks were granted suffrage. Their husbands were allowed to beat them, too. People thought differently about many things than we do today.

Think about a Southern farm family, typical of many, a married couple and their three sons and four daughters, owning 100 acres and four slaves. 100 acres is a lot of land to plow, a lot of crops to pick, animals to care for, whatever, for four men and four slaves to manage. The mother and daughters likely had a kitchen garden and kept chickens besides doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing, etc. , possibly helped by one of the four slaves. I don't think anybody was sitting on the porch drinking mint juleps and being fanned by slaves too often, if ever.

I also doubt that all slaves were mistreated by their masters, though we know some were. Let's face it: slaves were viewed as sub-human property, much like livestock, which was wrong, BUT people don't usually hit their horses, mules, oxen hard enough to do them real harm because they have an investment in them. Slaves were more expensive so it was even more important to keep them in good health/ good working condition, meaning feeding them well enough, providing them with whatever medical care they could when they got sick, and not beating them to a pulp.

The book in question may glorify the slave-owning South but posters are demonizing it. The truth is most likely to lie somewhere between the extremes.