Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Slavery: Not Just Something For The South

Part IV

Now we are really beginning to see what was happening in the New England states, with their self-righteous attitude & priggish behaviour.  Also I'm still waiting for ANY apology for ANY part that they played: their condescencion, smugness, and anti-South attitude led directly to war.....war that would kill over 600,000 men. 

Moreover the massive cover-up in history books makes me think that the New England states need to wake up, just as the South is waking up to the realization of how very DEEP the North's involvement was in slavery. 

Lincoln knew all of it.  And cared not a whit.  Before I'm through, starting with this thread and going on with another thread concerning "show me the money" I intend to lay before you facts that will make your blood boil.

Certainly other states had opinions on "the peculiar institution" and it would lend credence to the North's position on slavery later on if, in the early years they were joining hands with their black brethren in a show of equality. Of course that is a ludicrous pipedream because no one in those early years considered the blacks as equals.

There's a website that shows some very different attitudes in this, "the land of the free and the home of the brave". I refer to SlaveNorth.com, with annotated sources.

"When the Illinois state constitution was adopted in 1818, it limited the vote to "free white men" and excluded blacks from the militia."

Indiana's anti-immigration rule was challenged in the case of a black man convicted for bringing a black woman into the state to marry her. The state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, noting that, "The policy of the state is ... clearly evolved. It is to exclude any further ingress of negroes, and to remove those already among us as speedily as possible."" [/b]

These are just two examples of dozens of others the website provides about all of the northern States with their institutionalised anti-Black bias and segregation.

Michael F. Holt, Ph.D. states on another website, Getting The Message Out, "Several midwestern free states, including Illinois, even passed laws prohibiting free blacks from entering their borders..."

I'm sure most people here are familiar with Lerone Bennett, Jr., editor of Ebony magazine who wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln being a White supremacist. In it, he details the Black Code laws of Illinois, the absurdly proclaimed "Land of Lincoln". There, it was a crime for a Black to settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond, and if they could do that, they were under constant surveillance and could be arrested by any white.

 They could not vote, sue, or testify in court. These State laws were voted for by Abraham Lincoln while he was a State legislator in January of 1836, according to Mr. Bennett's book, Forced Into Glory. (Naturally here loud cries will be heard of "He changed his opinion later in life." I will even grant that this could be true, but it's also true that it's still on the books what was happening and how Mr. Lincoln voted before "this cruel war" began.)

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I am still looking at the years before the war and I see things a bit differently about the North than the nobility of those marching off "to die to make men free."

Before returning to my original premise of the North and the vast fortunes they were accumulating before the war, almost all having some form of association with the slavery in the South, let me add this:

Whether or not one agreed with human bondage, it was protected in the US Constitution. Therefore, all States were legally obliged to honour those provisions that dealt with their sister States who held slaves.

The northern States abolitionists were the ones who claimed the right to nullify the Constitution. Even though the northern States had no empathy for the Black race, slavery had been abolished there, further proof that a war was unnecessary for the eventual freedom of the Black race here in the States. For the States knew that slavery was a right reserved for the State to deal with. Or, a Constitutional Amendment could be propounded. But, such a one was not required for the northern States to abolish it within their borders, their lack of empathy for the Blacks notwithstanding.

By Allen (Piewacket1861) He is member in the forum