It is my opinion that if we want to show the real story of the people's progress we need to fight the demon of exceptionalism by showing persistently that although people can be very different in particular, they are stunningly similar in big, general, mass events; the same powerful forces guide them, the same waves of love and hatred possess them, the same great callings are in the hearts of the strong and the same satanic whispers are in the hearts of the malicious. Exceptionalism is a true "enemy of the people' and unless we here in the US step down from the mystical City On The Hill and acknowledge that we are by far not better than anyone else we can face a wrath of Humanity so profound and so destructive that it is scary to even to imagine. We really tempt the fate here and that's why I would like to show how history can help us to understand ourselves and make the right decision.
1. The Peril Of The Southern Confederacy
If Southern Confederacy had freed its own slaves unconditionally in 1861 it would have been an independent state now. There would not have been any Civil War in the US. Who knows, maybe Lincoln would have been alive and writing memoirs together with Jefferson Davis in 1870s. Something like 'Abe and Jeff: North and South'.
But Confederacy did not free its slaves; it made that bondage a cornerstone of their new Constitution. And that was the end of them, right at the start. Lincoln had all the right to say no. From that moment all the progressive Humanity was on his side- he sure as Hell was destined to win. American exceptionalism played a really dirty trick on the Southerners- their hubris brought them to peril.
Northern bankers, industrialists and financiers did not like black people. They though loved the money turnaround. They were young, predatorish and active and they needed action and recognition throughout the world, especially in Europe. But Europe was developing and changing. In the European salons, in the parlors of Lloyd's and English East- Indian company, in the cozy brothels of Paris new Americans heard again and again, "When will you folks get rid of that atrocity, slavery? It is an obstacle in the way of the Free Trade." And yes, it was. In 1848 a wave of revolutions had forced the ruling class to reforms. As French had already abandoned slavery in colonies since the Great Revolution, England soon followed suit. Russia had just learned a tough lesson in the Crimean War and was preparing to abandon the serfdom; the last bastion of feudalism was falling. That all resulted in the shift in the world's markets and different assessment of property values. US slave-owners began to feel the heat right away.
Negroes were property. Land and negroes were the two main property sources for the Southern "gentry', the first one being exploited and the second- one- worked to death. But none of those two were profitable any more. Land- ownership can be profitable in two cases: if you rent it to someone else or if the people who work on it -- love it. Oil deposits were not discovered yet and cotton was the main product of the South. Sugar cane, tobacco and peanuts were not that far behind though. So there was not much rented property and the people who worked on those fields were slaves. They did not love that land at all. Had no reason to.
The tougher became a competition from Spanish territories and Cuba ( slave-owners too, BTW) as well as from English colonies (recently abandoned slavery), the more tough were the financial clutches on the landowners, the more indebted they became, the lower became the price of the land and the higher -- the price of slaves. Negro Jim in "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn' was worth about $800 -- quite a fortune in those times. Slave- trading routes became more and more dangerous; the European powers started to curb the slave transportation; even Russia adopted a policy of seizing the slave ships and freeing the people transported. Of course, there were still the countries like Ottoman Empire but it would be perilous for the Christian Southerners to associate themselves with these barbarians. By 1861 it became very clear that American slave-owners got themselves into a pickle; they literally had slept and/or fornicated through 50 years of human progress. There was a Transatlantic cable project soon to deploy but the US Southerners did not need it. They just wanted more Negroes to work them to death.
If only the leaders of the South had been smart, honest and loved their country as a place of living they could do a lot even if they would like to secede eventually. First, they should have insisted themselves on freeing slaves while asking for a reasonable property- related compensation from the US government, using Russian or English models. Then they should have initiated a cooperative movement on developing cotton -- producing coops on the Southern Lands, giving new free citizens the opportunity to earn their living while the landowners could rent the land to those coops and get paid by a % from profits. Those landowners could then push for active, maybe even aggressive competitive negotiations with main customers in the New World and in Europe, citing as the argument ( as an example) that the "new cotton' would be exclusively produced by free labor which would mean high quality and unlimited potential for growth. Southern young people could then be able to represent progress similar to the one in Europe and Northerners would have suddenly found themselves on the defensive; their image could have been tarnished if they had imposed tariffs on the developing South. They would have been forced to actively communicate and in fact- to help their brothers, the Southerners in their activities. And there was OIL on the horizon too.
All of that could be achieved only if the leadership of the South would have been honest and smart, but they possesses none of those qualities. Fish rots from the head. They were mean, stupid and full of vice. No wonder because their wealth was based on slavery, their image was based on slavery, their power was based on slavery and even their sexual prowess was based on the tradition of rape. They were all corrupted beyond repair and they knew that. The secession was not an act of courage; it was an act of a desperate fear on the part of those bankrupt people who knew they screwed up and wanted to cover it up by treason. Slavery became like a drug to them- they could not live without it. That's why they so hurriedly introduced that clause into the new Confederate Constitution about " slavery being a natural state of the Negro..' and thus sealed the fate of the whole " civilization, gone with the wind' per Margaret Mitchell. South lost its war at the start; it was betrayed by its own leadership or rather by their shallowness and hubris. Just think about it -- they wanted to define the whole RACE of people as a race of servants. What's the Hell were they smoking?
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