AFKAN ON THE SOUTHERN NATION | 2008-07-18
Bob had a question in his reply, and I'd like to take a shot at addressing it.
Bob wrote:
His second point is harder to dismiss so easily. Blacks were not considered PART of the Southern Nation, but the Southern Nation's "way of life" depended on blacks. I am still mulling over that one.
In reply:
I suspect "the Southern Nation's 'way of life'" was based on a feudal social order, and a feudal economic system.
The average White Man in the South actually outnumbered the slaves, and had it worse than the slaves. After all, they had no "right" to protection, as the feudal Lords OWED those who were in fealty to them.
So, the Southern Nation - essentially, the transplanted Elite of London, many of whom journeyed to London annually - remained a feudal social order, and those who favored the War of the Northern Aggression looked at the black slaves as luxuries that were in the way of their imposition of an Industrial Age sensibility on a feudal, agrarian social order.
Ironically, Lincoln's (Prussian!) policies - redemption of the slaves with money from the sale of Western lands, and their shipment back to Africa - would have worked in the South's interests far more than Calhoun could ever have imagined.
                -- AFKAN