rePukes have been celebrating the glorious Black delivery out of Africa to America by way of chattel slavery within their Hate Porn radio and media precincts for years- if anyone bothered to listen. This obnoxious argument- and the “fact” that American racism ended the day LBJ signed the Sixties era Civil Rights legislation (or the day Obama was elected) and the argument that the racist Dixiecrat wing is the true expression of the current Democratic Party have been the feast of ignorance these buffoons have sustained themselves on for quite some time.
When the happy well care for slaves argument was made by Americans who actually owned them, the real actual Abraham Lincoln argued (I paraphrase ): Why if this slavery was such a good deal why aren’t they all lining up to be hired.
May the Goddess of Truth choke Billo to death some day with a White Privilege soaked luffa.
“Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government”
Yeah, cattle are “well fed” also, living in communal barns. Yep, nice analogy, Mr. Loofah.
Ummm, yeah. They couldn’t own property, prevent their spouses or children from being taken away from them, appeal to a court for being beaten, change jobs at their choice, move to a new town or any thing else.
Jeebus Christianity.
Bill, So what’s your point? Absolutely, nothing at all. (And he gets paid for it.)
That’s mighty white of you, Bill.
WTF does this even MEAN Billo? ‘Others’ were working there too? Huh? You mean like overseers and such? How about well fed and well housed? Oh C’MON. It was a freakin’ SWAMP. People DIED from malaria…I guess they were expendable. AND how the FK do you know? Honest to God…how does it FEEL to be a big ol’ 'ho everytime a person of color says something about slavery to hop on the bandwagon of ‘slavery wasn’t THAT bad’? It is a stain on the history of this country and it would behoove you and Limbaugh and other people of your ilk to STFU when it’s discussed.
May I reply in my best Arnold “Terminator” voice: “Fock You Azzhole!”
The thing that I don’t understand is why the wingnuts bother arguing the whole thing. Why can’t they just shrug and say yeah things sucked back then. Trying to justify, obfuscate and hair split the thing just makes them look ridiculous.
I’m just happy that O’Reilly advocated for a completely open immigration policy during that segment.
And if Bill O’Reilly were alive back then he and his like-minded audience would be the first people to argue that they were too well-fed, and would be petitioning for more meager rations as they cried about the “others [who] worked there as well” being paid too much.
I’d suggest you read a book or two, preferably not an American History textbook from school.
Republicans can no longer FIND the bridge, and believe it’s a hoax anyway.
Without Roger Ailes to protect him, BillO is going to find he isn’t as smart and well loved as he imagines.
He really is the Ted Baxter of Fox News.
I know O’Reilly is old, but what, was he there.
What an asshole.
You mean like:
“Time on the Cross” by Nobel Laureate Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman
“Without Consent or Contract” by Fogel
“Slavery and the Numbers Game” by Herbert Gutman (a critique of “Time on the Cross”)
“The Slavery Debates 1952-1960” by Fogel
“Slavery and Human Progress” by David Brion Davis (considered the foremost modern scholar of the institution of slavery)
“Inhuman Bondage” by David Brion Davis
“The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture” by David Brion Davis
“Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made” by Eugene Genovese
“The Cotton Kingdom” by Frederick Olmstead
“The Fall of the House of Dixie” by Bruce Levine (has an excellent account of the collapse of slavery during the war)
“Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War I” by Douglas Blackmon
“The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination” by Leonard Richards
“The Other Slavery” by Andrés Reséndez
I read all of those, and then there quite a number of journal articles on the subject.
I leave out the books specifically on the institution of slavery in the Caribbean, elsewhere in the British Empire, and in Latin America, since they are not particularly relevant to North America (but not wholly irrelevant either). And I may be missing some others that I don’t recall at the moment.
I have a serious interest in this subject, and an excellent grasp on the modern scholarship of slavery.
Which other books do you suggest?
Which ones have you read?
The problem with O’Reilly’s comment is not that it is a lie. It is that it is irrelevant.
Slavery wasn’t bad because most slaves were ill fed (they weren’t), it was because it was slavery – the utter subjugation of another human as if they were an inanimate object, a mere machine to be put work for the master’s pleasure and profit, a grueling existence of unending heavy labor at the limit of human capacity to perform, subject to torture and death also at that master’s pleasure, without any recourse whatsoever, without the ability to legally marry, or have the rights to ones own children, to offer any protection to ones family, subject to sexual abuse at any time, denied the ability to read (indeed learning to read could result in execution), no chance of escape from the lifelong condition nor to free ones own children from it. I could go on.
It is a trap to argue “slavery was bad because slaves weren’t fed well” - don’t fall into it.
I have not read any of the titles on your list, but will. I see that the Douglas book that I suggested earlier was not on your list.Firsthand account vs modern scholarship)
I cannot state emphatically whether most were ill fed or well fed. I do agree with your final statement that feeding practices (as well as lodging) is irrelevant. Human servitude itself was the problem.
Although not a slave, Olmstead’s account is a first hand observation of slavery.
I actually have Douglass’s books but have not read them yet (I also have Solomon Northup’s “Twelve Years a Slave”).
Bill, if it was so great, why don’t we work out something where you can live the experience. That way you can come from a place of authenticity.
I have Northup as well, but have not read it yet. Maybe I will read Olmstead first from your list. My reading interest is not just slavery, but history as well. The Everyday Life of Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison–The Abolitionist, and Speak out in Thunder Tones–Letters and Writings by Black Northerners,1787-1865 were all good reads.
And how much of that decision was made by the slaves, and how much of the compensation that was paid to their owners went to them? Sorry … but the slaves were not “hired” … which is my point. Maybe we could say the were “hired out” which would be factually correct.