Slavery Impact Quotes
This is an example of how values in politics can get complex. Family Leader put together The Marriage Vow, a pledge it wanted political candidates to sign. The pledge dealt with marital fidelity and other traditional family values. Two Republican Presidential Nomination Candidates signed the pledge rapidly as many of their competitors had notorious affairs and/or had been divorced. The 2 signers thought that they would obtain a substantial advantage. However, another part of the pledge was dealing with the importance of children being brought up in a 2 parent home, The quotation gives their statement on Black families and illegitimacy. However, they organization was so hung up on the evil of children in single parent households, that they said in the pledge that Blacks were better off under slavery than they are under Barack Obama—the first Black President. As might have been expected, there were no Blacks and even very few racist whites who would claim Black children and families were better off under slavery. They two politicians, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum—neither very sensitive to minority issues and perceived by most Blacks as racists—began to back away from their signing, First Leader, then removed the quoted paragraph from all copies of the signed pledges and removed it from their website. However, original copies—including the quoted paragraph—got into the hands of the media and the scandal began. Family Leader, trying to do damage control, wisely apologized. The other Republican Presidential aspirants both monogamous and otherwise, refused to sign but what it is that made them refuse was probably different for each person.
After the civil war there was a concerted effort to shape American opinion away from the notion that the Civil War has mainly about slavery which we now know was a false notion. Slavery was the only significant issue for both sides. This quotation is cited by many who argue that the prospect of the end of slavery was tantamount to economic confiscation and impoverishment for the slave owning minority and hence it drove them to rebellion. Also, Davis and others argue that the value of the slaves was so great that there was no possible economic way to compensate the slave owners for emancipation at fair market value which was why that “compromise” never went anywhere.
Indian and Black slaves were outlawed very early in Connecticut, not on moral grounds of concern for the Indians and Blacks, but because of the negative effects on the white poor. Why would anyone pay the poor any more than the amortization costs of a slave? Therefore there was no way a poor white could make a living wage if slavery were to coexist.
