Post by Andrew ClarkePost by OwenPost by John FowlerElihu Yale, after whom Yale University is named has been exposed as a slave trader.
Yale University to be renamed New Haven Community College.
John Brown, founder of Brown University (my alma mater!), has long been
outed as a slaver, and his museum/former residence tours have already
been adjusted to reflect this.
In Bristol, RI, I've seen "slaves quarters" in an early American former
mansion (now apartment building).
A lot of pre-revolutionary people in the North got rich on the slave
trade before they turned up their nose at it (most likely when they
weren't able to turn a profit at it anymore).
Remember that when Honest Abe first outlawed slavery, he restricted the abolition to the Confederate states. He did this because the war wasn't going as well as he had hoped it would, and he hoped the proclamation would cause a slave uprising in the southern states would cripple the Confederate economy. You could still have slaves in Missouri I believe, because the Show Me state wasn't in the Confederacy.
He restricted the abolition to the Confederate states because 1) he did
not have the power to do so in States not in "open rebellion" (nor did
he want to give them a reason to reverse their stand and fight for the
other side) and 2) he wanted to make it clear to the South that he did
not want a negotiated peace by which the slavery "question" (which tore
the States apart for decades) was still existing. That had to be
resolved, and the Proclamation made it such that for Southern States to
return to peaceful normalcy, they could no longer have slavery.
As far as Missouri and other border States, by removing slavery in the
core of the Confederacy, it really could not exist on its own in
isolated places. A subsequent Constitutional amendment mopped up the
last remaining ramparts of that hateful practise.
I don't think Lincoln had much hope in a slave uprising, particularly
after years of war, and there were already factors which were hurting
the Southern economy, mainly that Europe had stocked up on cotton in the
pre-war years and the Northern naval blockade had restricted trading.
Post by Andrew ClarkeI've read that a number of soldiers in the Union Army were horrified to learn that they were fighting to free the slaves. Their opinion was that they were fighting to preserve the Union, and they were fighting to prevent the spread of slavery into into free labour territories where that Peculiar Institution would depress the wages and opportunities of the working man.
The draft riots in New York were due to fear that emancipation would
mean workers replacement in the labor force by thousands of freed black
slaves from the South.
On the other side, most of the Confederate fighters didn't own slaves,
would never own them, and were too poor to own them. When asked by
Union soldiers "then why are you fighting?" the response was "because
you're down here."
-Owen