I find it interesting that most American blacks think they are decended from slaves when in fact, most have at least 35% European genes. Just before the civil war there were 4.5 million negroes in the US and around 4 million of them were living in slave holding states. There were 261,000 free blacks in the south. In New Orleans alone, over 3,000 free blacks owned slaves. Large numbers of free negroes owned black slaves. Strangely, 28% of free blacks owned slaves and only 4.8% of whites owned slaves. This was not just a case of purchasing family members and friends either because a fourth of all slave owners in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves and many owned 30 or more. In 1860 there were 6 negroes in LA who owned 65 slaves or more. One owned 152 slaves. The majority of slaveholders, black and white, owned only 1-5 slaves. In most cases the owners ate and slept alongside their slaves. Only the top 1% owned 50 or more slaves. Many black slave owners contributed to the confederate cause and many enlisted. It was illegal for blacks to enlist formally in the confederate army but prestige could override the law back then. A tragedy and one that should never be repeated to be sure. I watched a few specials on public television over the past week that were very interesting.


>>Slavery was a great capitalist concept. I wonder why they ever did away with it? Slavery was run by wealthy people. It should have been respected.
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>>Slavery is rooted in mindsets that totally conflict with the concept of a free market and individual rights.
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>>State-sponsored slavery, apartheid....they're all forms of ethnic and racial socialism.
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>>The greatest power in a free or even semi-free market is the middle class, a concept that goes all the way back to Aristotle.
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>Maybe you can 'splain me some things...
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>If slavery is totally in conflict with the concept of a "free market", how come slaves were sold at the market square in towns in "free countries"?
>If individual rights and the free market are so tightly related, how come women only got to vote in the 1920s and blacks in the 1960s? And why was it that only white male property owners were originally the only ones allowed to vote? And why was it that laws were enacted to prevent any one or any firm from "cornering the market"? And why can an employer fire someone for what they do on their own personal time?
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>What is "ethnic socialism"?... And "racial socialism"?
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>What is a semi-free market?
>Is the "middle class" that group of people between the wealthy and the homeless/dispossessed?
>Is one "middle class" if they have $10,000 in credit card debt and a $125,000. mortgage and they've lost their health insurance due to employer cut-backs and a family member takes gravely ill and the bills add up to $150,000 and are still adding up? Is that person still "free" in every sense of the word?
>Why is it the wealthy that suck money-related 'favors' out of government and demand tax breaks on everything when they can easily fend for themselves?
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>Finally, did Aristotle employ a slave to write those things down for him?
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>>Kevin