What Dixie's Children Learned

Here's hoping that this scan of "The Geographical Reader, for the Dixie Children" will cause some serious hearburn for all the "libertarian" neo-confederate idiots and liars who like to pretend that the "War of Northern Aggression"* [sic] was about anything other than the "right" of the Confederate states to keep black people in slavery. Some juicy tidbits:

The African or negro race is found in Africa. They are slothful and vicious, but possess little cunning. They are very cruel to each other, and when they have want they sell their prisoners to the white people for slaves. They know nothing of Jesus, and the climate in Africa is so unhealthy that white men can scarcely go there to preach to them. The slaves who are found in America are in much better condition. They are better fed, better clothed, and better instructed than in their native country.

Let it be noted that this charming talking point is still in circulation today amongst the Freeper set - "How dare these blacks complain or ask for reparations? They should be grateful their ancestors were made slaves and brought to America!"

Then the northern people began to preach, to lecture, and to write about the sin of slavery. The money for which they sold their slaves, was now partly spend in trying to persuade the Southern States to send their slaves back to Africa. And when the territories were settled they were not willing for any of them to become slaveholding. This would soon have made the North much stronger than the South; and many of the men said they would vote for a law to free all the negroes in the country. The Southern men tried to show them how unfair this would be, but still they kept on.

How unfair of those Northern bullies! But now we come to the crux of the matter: what was the South's attempt to secede really all about? The Geographical Reader clearly lays it out for us.

In the year 1860 the Abolitionists became strong enough to elect one of their men for President. Abraham Lincoln was a weak man, and the South believed he would allow laws to be made, which would deprive them of their rights. So the Southern States seceded, and elected Jefferson Davis for their president. This so enraged President Lincoln that he declared war, and has exhausted nearly all the strength of the nation, in a vain attempt to whip the South back into the Union.

Seeing as this paragraph follows right on the heels of the previous one, and given the direct attribution of blame for the war to the successful election of an Abolitionist candidate, there can be no doubt about the matter whatsoever: the "states rights" the Confederacy fought for was the "right" to not only keep millions of fellow human beings in slavery within their own states, but to extend this barbaric practice to any new states which might later join the Union. The Confederacy was no more honorable a cause than Nazi Germany, and those who attempt to "honor" or rehabilitate its loathsome cause are every bit as much scum as the Holocaust revisionists. My knowledge of the long history of Southern support for both slavery and then Jim Crow has immunized me completely against the siren song of "States Rights": states don't and cannot have rights, only individuals can, and the principle of local autonomy can never be allowed to supercede the freedoms of human beings: when people seek refuge in "States Rights" to uphold sodomy laws and the like, all they're really doing is looking for the nearest and most innocuous safe harbor to defend the misuse of government to enforce their prejudices.

To end on a "cheerier" note, I can't resist including this last excerpt, which tells us about just how happy and contented the pickaninies were laboring in the fields for massah.

The Southern people are noted for being high minded and courteous. A stranger seldom lacks friends in this country. Much of the field work is done by slaves. These are generally well used and often have as much pocket money as their mistresses. They are contented and happy, and many of them are christians. The sin of the South lies not in holding slaves, but they are sometimes mistreated.

Ah, that settles it then!

*It's a strange sort of "aggression" which begins with the "victim" attacking Fort Sumter.

[Via Boing Boing.]

PS: This astute gentleman notes that the Geographical Reader's style is emulated by a certain "race realist" [sic] who was notably quick to jump on the "Look at the rampaging savages in New Orleans!" bandwagon ...

Comments

[dsquared]

Fogel and Engerman won a Nobel prize for "proving" to their own satisfaction and that of the economics profession the exact same point about happy slaves. One of their key data points was that fear of punishment could not have been a material motivation for slaves, since each slave received an average of only 1.2 lashes per year (or some such).

Someone later pointed out that this must have meant that on the plantation they studied, an average of three slaves were flogged every week, but this received much less publicity.

[Jim]

Remember that this crap doesn't happen in a vacuum; the children who grow up on this crap become my neighbeors and fellow citizens. Abiola, do you remember a discussion concerning the value of public education, where you asked me how it was the business of the government to indoctrinate kids, or something along those lines? I agree in general with the opinion behind that question, but a society needs some degree of common outlook and shared assumptions to cohere enough to survive. It's fine to hold that people are free to educate their own children however they like , to include this kind of s**t, or to hold that it doesn't matter what people think, only what they do. But in reality there isn't that much distance between belief and action, and one person's right to raise his kids eventually become an encroachment on someone else's rights. I am not trying to be argumentative; I just think you might have something to say on this.

[radek]

"Fogel and Engerman won a Nobel prize for "proving" to their own satisfaction and that of the economics profession the exact same point about happy slaves."

Just curious, did you actually read the book or is this the standard dsquared opinion based on suspicion and distorted second hand accounts?

[radek]

Oh yeah, and Engerman didn't win no Nobel prize. And Fogel got it as much for railroads, navigation acts and methadology as for his work on slave productivity.

[dsquared]

I have read Time on the Cross and remember getting increasingly angry as I did so.