Was Antebellum South a shithole?
It was the landed gentry. The well-to-do of America, before the war.
>>430630
This
If you were a landowner, you were a New World leisured aristocrat
It was a shithole for blacks, and probably tough for all the common white farmers too
>>430797
That's what baffles me about the south, it was so damn anachronistic come 1861...there's no way the Confederacy would have survived running a feudalistic, agrarian model in the mid-19th century. Just look at what happened to Russia.
>>430630
The gentry was the tiny cream of the society. They were doing great, no one is denying that.
But others - both slaves and poor whites lived in poverty and without any chance to break out of it.
>>430805
It was hardly feudalistic, and the vast majority of the population were still farmers back then. The industrial revolution was creeping up, but they had no way of knowing that a century down the line, only 2% of the population would be required to produce all the food for everybody else.
Agriculture was still the source of most of the world's wealth, so it made sense, particularly when you were sitting on some of the best arable land in the world and cash crops were a huge fucking deal. AND you'd managed to sneak slavery back in.
>>430829
Let's say the south managed to survive the civil war, how long do you think they could have maintained slavery?
>>430829
>It was hardly feudalistic,
It was, both political and economic power was firmly held by the few planter families.
>>430834
My guess, for very long. Far longer than Brazil. Racism was intertwined with the South. Heck, it took the federal government to finally enforce the Blacks' voting rights whooping one hundred years after the 15th amendment.
>>430848
>It was, both political and economic power was firmly held by the few planter families.
This is a radically deficient theoretical category for "feudalism."
Plebeian Southerners were so poor they would literally eat dirt. And they kept doing it even after the Civil War.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/13/us/southern-practice-of-eating-dirt-shows-signs-of-waning.html
>>430620
Not as much as post-Civil War South.
>>430620
Jamaica imported far more slaves than were imported to the South - and yet there are now far fewer Blacks in Jamaica. Why is that? Because the Brits worked them to death - that's why. The South, by comparison, was a much more desirable destination.
>>430797
>polite, well-mannered gentlemen running an arguably clean society
>worse than people getting drunk, killing each other, shitting in the streets, and spreading diseases while causing ethnic tensions
Have people forgotten how shitty city living used to be?
I've got a book I picked up called "Preface to Poverty"; a report for the Racial Cooperation Committee from the 20s to the 30s about living conditions in the South. It speaks volumes about how, even long after reconstruction and even the first World War, both blacks and whites were living in systematic misery.
Landowners ran EVERYTHING. If you were not a descendant of a landed family, you rented your farmland or were for all intents and purposes a financial slave.
>>431694
Sound like the present.
>>431694
I guess that stupid Civil War didn't really accomplish anything.
>>431694
I stopped short.
My point is, this was the situation from the beginning. Many sharecroppers lamented the fact that every parcel of land was already gobbled up by the wealthy who went so far back as to the British aristocracy. It was impossible for a smaller, subsistence farmer to make a living with out a big chunk of his paycheck being cycled from farmowner to farmowner. Whites made more than blacks, but both were astronomically poor.
Those who controlled the farmland used up a plantation for as long as it was profitable, then gave it to someone less wealthy to plant an even worse crop. Cotton and tobacco are infamous for destroying the soil they are planted in. When you're rich, you don't need to make sure the next farmer can support himself -- you just need to have an exit strategy.
>>431694
>>431714
Sorry, I'm stoned, it's "Preface to Peasantry" by (don't laugh) Arthur F. Raper.
>>431694
Reconstruction in some ways made things worse though.
The south never properly got of reconstruction until the end of the great depression.
>>431722
That's the essential message of this book. The key issue is income disparity, not race. Sure, racial relations were miserable, but the poverty was equal. The South operated on a very neo-feudalist economy, even during Reconstruction.
>>431711
Yeah, I guess they were thinking that when they provoked a war. They were like 'well shit can't get any worse might as well make everyone else miserable.'
What a bunch of jerks.
Jesus. How did Southerners reconcile their faux-aristocracy with the ideals of the American Revolution?
>>431739
>ideals of the American Revolution
tolerated slavery
the North was practically a slave state at the time
>>431739
You have to remember that for all intents and purposes, the USA was England Jr. until the mid-19th century.
When you hear a "Southern Gentleman" voice, you hear a distinct lilt in it that is descended from British English; same with WASPy New England accents. Boston's distinct accent is also a byproduct.
There existed for a VERY long time both Yankee and Dixie faux-aristocatic families. Look at the founding fathers, and you'll see many of them lead "dynasties". In fact, it was part of the Civil War - wealthy families feeling ignored by the rich, corrupt, industrialized North. The factories and output of the North made them fear for the economy, and it also meant that families were being replaced with boards of trustees.
>>431683
Those well manned gentlemen were complete minorites. Saying that they were all the south was is like saying everyone in the North was a millionaire living in a penthouse
>>431735
>they provoked a war
What were they thinking? Trying to impose slavery in the Northern States?
>>431781
Uh, yeah, they would pay slave hunters to kidnap free and runaway Blacks in the North, and these 'slave hunters' would often just kidnap legal freemen.
Truly the South's villainy knows no bounds.
>>431788
No, the South did not want to take over the North.
The did not want to pay the Tariff. Lincoln invaded the South because the federal government ran off of proceeds from this.
>>431804
Uhhh, I'm pretty sure the South fired the first shot by marching on Fort Sumter.
>>430823
Who cares about them.
>>431808
>Fort Sumter.
The winners get to write the history books.
>>431821
>It's a conspiracy!!
Jesus Christ. Confederacyfags are worse than Marxists when it comes to denying reality..
>>431821
Typical Confederate apologist mode of argumentation
>WE WUZ ARISTOCRATS N SHIET
The wealthy planters were maybe 3% of society. The rest of the white people were barefeet illiterate rednecks barely any different from niggers when it comes to rights.
after the slaves were freed many black folks began to starve
before they had their own communities with churches and plots of land to raise chickens, pigs, corn, watermelon, whatever they desired, remember these same people bathed their master's kids, cooked his meals, cleaned his house, shaved his beard, if he started whipping them all up for no good reason then bad things might start to happen
not saying it is right, they didn't have the freedom to learn to read and move to the cities or anything which is unamerican but it wasn't as bad as they say it was
>>431821
>shoot at a federal fort
>WOOOOOW why did they declare war on us fucking yankees
>>431804
>The did not want to pay the Tariff.
They would not have to pay the tariff if they had remained in the union long enough to block it in the Senate. Tariffs were low all through the 19th century until the Republicans passed it in March 1861. Because there were no longer any southern democratic senators to vote against it.
>>431722
Reconstruction would have worked if they let it go on long enough. But then Rutherfraud and the moderate Republicans ruined everything.
>>431850
Here's your reply.
>>431711
Yes, because the South actively did their best to undo everything the civil war had changed.
>shut down all the freedmen's bureaus introduced to provide unskilled, unemployed, uneducated niggers with a bastardized culture the means to be productive members of society (to be fair the North is responsible for this too by failing to properly fund the bureaus and shutting them down early, see >>432484)
>obstruct their ability to participate in the democratic process
>give them shittier schools
>150 years later, complain that niggers are unskilled, uneducated and unemployed, and that somehow this is the North's fault
>>430620
Not all of it, but the part that was shitty:
Slavery for blacks
Sharecroppers for whites
>>431719
>"A pseudonym? why would I need that?"
>>432492
sharecroping is bieng represented as a thing that only haooened to blacks (so much so that when looking up the term its listed under black history month stuff)
Yes. Neither the whites or blacks shared a haplotype with us. By destroying them we can finally prove ourselves relevant to America.
t. Franz Sigel
>>430620
For blacks and poor whites.
Rich Southerners had it great.
>>431905
Stop mollifying slave conditions
>>432492
>>433357
A disproportionate amount of black agricultural workers were sharecroppers, sharecropping was the bottom most rung and thus with such low pay only the poorest of whites would do what was at that time "nigger work".
It was by and large an extension of the plantation system.
Related question:
Was the South more laissez-faire than the North?
It's commonly thought of the South as adhering to more liberal economic views (except for slavery, of course) while the North was more protectionist. This is also seen as one of the causes leading to the Civil War. Was it really the case?
And another question: how common was the idea of the racial difference between Southern and Northern whites? As in: Dixie are Normans, Yankees are Saxons?
>>433511
>Was the South more laissez-faire than the North?
That might not be the right word, Free Market vs. Protectionist is closer.
The South was a mature export economy, so free trade favored its interests. When one nation raises trade barriers like tariffs and excise taxes, the other will too, and that meant that tariffs on British goods meant that the British would likely respond in kind against Southern exports.
The North was a developing industrial economy, and one that lagged behind Britain (and maybe Germany and Belgium). It could not produce manufactured goods at the same cost and quality as europe (or so it was perceived), and so needed protections so that its industrial sector could flourish without being outcompeted by foreign manufacturers. So naturally, they favored more protectionist measures.
>This is also seen as one of the causes leading to the Civil War. Was it really the case?
It was a cause but certainly not the leading one. The Republican party HAD campaigned on a platform of Tarriffs, but congress had been dominated by southern democrats since the Jackson years, and had the south remained the Republican's proposal, the Morill Tarrffs, would have died in the senate, where the North's advantage in population was irrelevant. At any rate, while some of the Southern states mentioned tariffs as their reasons, their declarations of secession are all invariably about the preservation of slavery. Tariffs were a reason, but it was not the primary one and certainly not the one that drove the South to secede.
>>433517
It kind of was during the reconstruction, some romanticist southerners viewed it as an oppression of the Celtic south by the Germanic north.
>>431651
well it's a good way of getting minerals, so I can't honestly knock it.
>>433494
>Stop mollifying slave conditions
stop pretending it was the worst of all possible situations and actually address his point
>>431804
>invaded
Spotted the Dixie
South Carolina succeeded first
>>433494
>the union were heroes who freed the slaves
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war
>>434162
Considering they lost the war I wouldn't say they succeeded.
That aside, secession is not an act of war.
>>435238
Killing Union soldiers and attacking a fort was though.
No.
>>435254
Soldier. One person was killed in the Battle of Fort Sumter.
>>435292
Fair point, but attacking and capturing a fort manned by soldiers from a sovereign nation is pretty much as clear cut a casus-belli as you can get. No nation would ever accept such an act.
>>431676
>Our version slavery wasn't as brutal, therefore our version of slavery was good and right!
>>430620
I do declare, the action of posting this here thread is unseemly! It is quite typical of you Yanks to insult us in such manners.
>>435521
What this guy said
>>434128
For black people in the South slavery was literally the worst situation, you cannot treat someone you can own well. Any attachment or feelings they have for their captors is Stockholm syndrome
>>434198
>people going through civil war are starving
>See!!! Slavery wasn't bad at all by comparison
It can't possibly be just the aftermath of a civil war, it can't possibly be because blacks by large were barred from land ownership, it can't possibly be white supremacist aggression against autonomous black communities seeking to sustain themselves.
>>435254
I'm not denying that, I was saying that secession isn't an act of war. If there could have been peace between the Confederacy and the Union
>>430620
For the average citizen, absolutely.
The South was an unsustainable society. Had the CSA won, it would have gone the way of Zimbabwe or been invaded by Mexico.
Was less of a shithole than the northern states.
Where large cities ruled by ethnic gangs, early industrialists, and corrupt politicians, were the norm.
>>437344
Would have been no worse off than Brazil. Which was actually successful till the Cold War. When Fascism, Socialism, and Communism completely destabilized the South American continent.
>>437355
>ethnic gangs
In the mid-19th century? What ethnicities were those?
Yes.
>>437794
>In the mid-19th century?
Dear God this board is historically illiterate. YES!
These gangs roved about doing what gangs have always done. Albeit with funnier slang.
>What ethnicities were those?
Italians, Irishmen, Slavs, and a few Jews
Blacks were overwhelmingly confined to the south and would get tortured to death if they tried to pull what white gangs pulled
>>437794
>>437831
B T F O
back to reddit kiddo
>>430620
Only when there were blacks around.
>>437831
>Slavs
>mid 19th century
"No."
>>437831
Italian and Slav gangs before the Civil War? Ruling major cities? I'll need to see a source on that.
>>430834
Until the Boll Weevil destroys the cotton industry
>>438108
It was in relative decline by most indicators, tho.
>>435553
>you will never be a wealthy pre civil war southern land owner
>rich people had it good
>poor people didn't
so basically no different from anywhere else in the world
but just because black folks weren't permitted to act up all of a sudden the south is the worst place in the world ever and needs to be invaded
>modern history is entirely free from bias, I swear!
