On May 9, 12:43 pm, David Friedman <d...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> In article <slrng289et.5rk.wno...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Aaron Denney <wno...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > > Every state in the south that had a referendum on secession passed
it
> > > by a large margin.
>
> > To borrow your phrase: So what?
>
> His argument is weak, but not as weak as you make out. If a large
> majority of the men supported it and we have no reason to think the
> women held strong views in the opposite direction, it is likely that a
> large majority of the whites supported it. If a large majority of the
> whites supported it and the whites were 2/3 of the population, it is
> likely that a majority of the population supported it, even though we do
> have reason to expect blacks to have a different view on the subject
> than whites.
I would expect that they did, but it would not been what you may
think.
I agree 100% that the whole business of slavery was and is wrong, but
the fact of the matter is that the methods used in the US South to
control slaves was more psychology, and control of education and
information from early childhood, and less direct force or threat of
it.
Point of fact, no slave rebellions happened during the war. Yes
slaves ran away, yes some joined the Union Army, but no rebellions
where slaves took up arms against masters happened during the war when
this was the best chance for success for such a rebellion, especially
when an army that is the enemy of slave holders is near and they are
weak.
If you look at US census data from say 1860 just before the war in the
south you will notice something interesting. If you take the
population of each state and divide by the number of families you find
that the average size of a "family" in the south is *much* larger than
in the north or west. IIRC the average size of a family is 12.0 in
South Carolina in 1860, and 4.89 in Massachusetts.
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/start.php?year=V1860
How? Easy, slave owners are listing their slaves as part of their
families, and in many practical regards treating them as members of
their family.
Very dysfunctional families, very unfair families, but families where
the master is daddy and the mistress is mom, and the job or title of
heads of the family title passes only to white offspring and whites
who marry into the family (to white members of the family).
Slave family members are kept as ignorant of the outside world as
possible. Not just the north and other nations, but more like if he
does not need to know that to do his job, he has no business knowing
about it.
In this environment, the slave knows little of the outside world and
is kept fearful of it, and is sometimes threatened with being expelled
(sold) to keep him line, as he will lose everything and everyone they
have ever known if this is done. Slave children are raised in that
environment with master and mistress in the position of authority
(from the child's point of view *legitimate* authority) over everyone
especially including the children's biological parents.
My take on that is that the opinion of most slaves on such matters as
secession was what they thought the master wanted it to be given the
environment they were raised in.
So no it is most unreasonable to try and imagine what they "should"
think starting from your position of having been a free person all
your life having grown up in the culture of the modern USA, and trying
to imagine where the slave thought his best interests lay.
I will agree that a probably small minority of independent thinkers
among the slaves, who had managed to get a bit better educated than
other slaves had other opinions, but mostly kept their mouths shut to
prevent bad things from happening to them.
When these independent thinking slaves took action on these
independent opinions, it was along the lines of running away, not
trying to organize violent resistance as that would get them ratted
out by other slaves to master, and probably killed along with a lot of
people they might care about.
> The argument obviously runs into trouble in states where the blacks were
> a majority, if there were some, as there well may have been.
Yes, IIRC Mississippi and South Carolina were both as of 1860 majority
black states, others may have been as well, you can check that out on
the website I posted above.
However, for the reasons I list, and also the fact that the secret
ballot type election was almost unheard of and unused in English
speaking nations till it was adopted by striking miners in Australia
1854 and gradually spread over the English speaking world. It had not
gotten to any part of the USA by 1860.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot
Elections in the USA prior to the introduction of the secret ballot
were very violent, as in fistfights and brawls and sometimes shootings
taking place at polling places over politics. Votes were tallied by
public declaration and shows of hands. I recall you (David Friedman)
posting on your blog the funny election story recently about the
"Yaller dog democrat" But aspects of the threat of election violence
in that story were by no means exaggerated, and were not confined the
the US South.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/burkle/news/article.asp?parentid=15887
--------quote-----
Rapoport cited some examples of a tradition of violence in the late
nineteenth century: "In 1889, one U.S. marshal in Philadelphia said
that fraudulent voting and violence were so endemic that 'never an
election goes by without a riot,' and that killing 'regularly occurred
in some wards.' A Cincinnati newspaper reported a 'quiet election in
which only eight people were killed.'
-------------end quote--------
So even if you gave slaves in the old US South the vote, they are
going to vote the way their owner tells them to, or get whipped or
shot.
> And it runs
> into a more fundamental problem in treating majority vote as if it were
> unanimous consent.
Exactly.
My point is that these votes were structurally the same as the
procedures by which those states entered the Union, if entry into the
Union was proper by those procedures, then exit was just as proper.
If the procedures are improper, then the union was improper.
.. As you have suggested, the same argument that implies
> the state can secede from the union implies that the town can secede
> from the state and I from the town.
The argument that the states of the CSA would make about that is that
they were "sovereign" while a town or an individual (other than a
king) is not. At it's root it is a military might makes right
argument as in the end sovereignty is a property of a person or nation
that is too militarily powerful to be safely pushed around by others.
"It is mine because I will kill you (or die trying) if you challenge
my ownership of it."
That is the crux of it, but they make the language pretty and much
less direct.
However that was the standing theory of law of the time as regards
state sovereignty.
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