The way old slaves were treated helps explain the attitude toward older workers, social security...

[ieoeja]

18. "95% of the whites weren't slave owners" ... at any given time.

My family rarely owned slaves, but owned them we did. The Norman/Celtic military culture of the South viewed workers as a subclass^^ only fit for inferior races like Africans and Anglo-Saxons**.

A group of Northern industrialists tried manufacturing in the South once. Every worker they hired ended up buing a slave as soon as they'd saved up enough money then tried to convince the owners to pay them to have their slaves do their job. The owners tried explaining that if they were going to use slave labor, they might as well fire the employee and buy their own slaves.

In the South one did not hire an employee even for temporary jobs. Need help building a barn? Buy a slave. When the barn is built, you sell the slave.

So while only a very small percentage of free males owned slaves at any given time, most of them owned slaves from time to time.



^^The South eventually stopped burning bridges in the North because the North was rebuilding them almost as fast as the South could burn them. Southern Generals who looked upon laborers with contempt were completely befuddled. Similiarly when Sherman began his march through South Carolina, Lee concured with South Carolina's decision not to call up their militia since they "knew" it was impossible to march through the swamps of South Carolina in the winter. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes," wrote a South Carolina General to Lee in what may have been the first time those words were ever written down. These Normans should have learned from their Danish cousins that Anglo-Saxons in a swamp during winter time is a dangerous thing.


**Yes, the South hated Anglo-Saxons. There were even two proposals made for enslaving Anglo-Saxons. One would have replaced Africans with Anglo-Saxons by raiding an independant North. The other involved conquering the North, tearing down their cities and industries***, and reimposing feudalsim; "our ancestors did it in England, and we can do it here."


***Capitalism may not be where we want to end, but it was a big step away from feudalism. The South had fewer railroads, canals, roads and manufacturers because they were opposed to all those things pre-War. Those things led to upward mobility for those who were not part of the landed gentry.

For the same reason they had poll taxes and literacy tests to keep poor Whites from voting. And no public schools. One state even criminalized public schools to prevent any county or city governments from setting up a school. Not sure which, but I'd put my money on it being Louisiana as New Orleans had a far different culture to the rest of the South.

Conversely, every Northern state had a public school system with a nearly universal reach. Contrary to common wisdow, the North actually had over 95% literacy rate compared to the South under 45%. A quick reading of diaries/letters by opposing soldiers certainly demonstrates this.

Southern defenders always like to say that the war was about more than slavery. They're right. What they don't tell you, and what most probably don't even know, is that the rest was almost as bad. The old South was brutal in more ways than just slavery, and to more people than just Africans.