<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
In fact, it was a topic seriously discussed in the Republican party
in the generation after the Civil War.<br>
<br>
The Radical Republicans argued that since they fought a war to end
chattel slavery, they should now turn their attention to wage
slavery and eliminate that. (Lincoln, ever the political realist,
was aware of the issue, as the State of the Union message I cited
shows.) It produced a severe ideological contest within the
Republican party, because that party also represented the
industrialists of the North - those whose interests "were most
carefully attended to," in the destruction of their Southern rivals.<br>
<br>
There was obvious force in the pre-war arguments from slaveholders,
that they took better care of their workers than the Northerners
did. (Just as you take better care of the car you own than of a
rental.) E.g., when the pestilential swamps around New Orleans were
drained, Irish wage-laborers were imported from New York for a task
that was too dangerous for slaves: a dead slave was a capital loss,
but a dead Irishman just meant you rented another one. <br>
<br>
The matter was settled, at least for a time, by the "robber barons"
of the Gilded Age, who - as one of their number, Jay Gould, is
supposed to have said (in the context of the Great Southwest
Railroad Strike of 1886) - "could hire one-half the American working
class to kill the other half." So the war against chattel slavery
was won (?) and the war against wage-slavery lost, but the
immiseration of American workers, black and white (and Asian)
continued apace. <br>
<br>
The struggle emerged again after the depression of the 1890s with
the American socialist movement. It took war, repression (the Palmer
Raids), judicial chicanery ('fire in a crowded theater'), and the
development of full-fledged propaganda system (Creel Commission) -
all on the part of a liberal Democratic administration - to defeat
it. <br>
<br>
On 4/10/11 12:24 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:F1287683-BD5B-4DA9-99EC-222FAEF1503D@illinois.edu"
type="cite">Evidently, Slavery is equivalent (in moral and
economic terms) working for a wage. An amazing revisionist view
of the Civil War.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>--mkb</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Apr 10, 2011, at 9:18 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Societies are defined
by how the ruling class gets enough to eat. The American
civil war was a conflict between two ways of doing that.<br>
<br>
Two dominant political groups, one primarily resident
North of the Mason-Dixon Line and the other south of it,
competed because they profited from two different and
incompatible ways of exploiting labor - by renting it or
owning it (i.e., by chattel-slavery or wage-contract).
Extracting surplus value from the direct producer could be
done ether way, but probably not by a mixture of both. <br>
<br>
That's what Lincoln meant when he said in 1858, "I believe
this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and
half free ... it will cease to be divided. It will become
all one thing or all the other ... Either the opponents of
slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place
it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in
all the States, old as well as new — North as well as
South." <br>
<br>
("Free" labor has a technical meaning - it refers to the
labor of those who have no right to live without working
for their masters, i.e., those to whom the society had no
responsibility.)<br>
<br>
The Southern ruling class understood that the new
Republican party, with its central plank of "no extension
of slavery" was the vehicle of the northern ruling class
and wage-slavery, as opposed to their form of slavery.
When its candidate was elected president, the the rulers
of the Southern states knew an attack was imminent and
declared their independence - as these governments had
done three generations earlier, in 1776.<br>
<br>
Gen. Winfield Scott, the leading US military figure - his
generation's George Washington - wrote on the day before
Lincoln's inauguration (March 3, 1861) and suggested the
new president could conquer the Southern states at the end
of a long, expensive, and desolating war, and to no good
purpose; or he could say to the seceded States, "Wayward
sisters, depart in peace!" <br>
<br>
Lincoln chose the former, and Scott was retired. <br>
<br>
That Lincoln understood what was at stake in his
state-building is clear from his first State of the Union
address:
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/lincoln/stateoftheunion1861.html"><http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/lincoln/stateoftheunion1861.html></a>.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/10/11 6:02 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4DA18E3D.7060005@pigs.ag"
type="cite"> The best explanation of the "War of
Northern Aggression" that I ever heard came from Fred
Madsen,<br>
who took a bullet in South Vietnam during reconnaissance
in the early 60's.<br>
<br>
Fred said that the war was fought over who would control
the Land occupied by the southern states.<br>
<br>
I find Fred's explanation to be unassailable.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/10/2011 10:49 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:30011.30286.qm@web44915.mail.sp1.yahoo.com"
type="cite">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font: inherit;" valign="top">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font: inherit;" valign="top">
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px
solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left:
5px; padding-left: 5px;">
<div id="yiv790352220">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font: inherit;"
valign="top"><font
class="yiv790352220Apple-style-span"
size="2">I ran into
this today on Google or
Yahoo news and made it
into a word doc b/c I
tho't it was interesting
and enlightening enuff
on its own, plus it had
parallels with today's
issues, i e poor white
farmers [who were not
slave-owners] supporting
the Confederacy because
that was the class they
aspired to and
identified with...
(Sociologist James
Loewen wrote <i>Lies My
Teacher Told Me</i> and <i>Sundown
Towns</i>).</font>
<div><font
class="yiv790352220Apple-style-span"
size="2"> --Jenifer</font></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</blockquote>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<pre wrap=""><hr size="4" width="90%">
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre wrap=""><fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br>
Peace-discuss mailing list<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss</a><br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</div>
<pre wrap="">
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>