Robert Dabney's contemporaries who wrote sympathetically of the South?

[Jeri Tanner]

I'm reading Robert Dabney's "A Defense of Virginia and the South" in which he mentions other contemporaries of his whose voices were in agreement with his views on the the moralities surrounding the war and the slavery issue. Is anyone aware of any writings from or about such men? (I will go ahead and answer my questions with "probably"; *others* may want to add to that.)

Dabney also talks about the fact that slavery was headed toward becoming economically unprofitable in the South. This seems to have been a discussion on the table at the time, but again, I haven't found anything yet to verify this. I know that records and documents were destroyed in the course of the war, and news was suppressed, so perhaps all or most of that type of info is gone with the wind. But if anyone has any info on this please do share.

 

[RamistThomist]

I imagine he has in mind most of the Southern Presbyterians.

As to its becoming economically unprofitable, that's a hard question. On one hand, slavery isn't an economically progressive mindset. Unless you are a multi-billionaire, it's too expensive to keep slaves for labor.

Some will claim that advances in technology would render slavery obsolete. I want to believe that, but the invention of the cotton gin only meant that slaves were now free to do other chores for the master.

 

[alexandermsmith]

Excellent book.

 

[retroGRAD3]

I just picked this book up (Dabney's). Looking forward to reading it.

 

[Rome2Geneva]

If slavery was on its way to becoming economically unprofitable, the rich planter classes in the deep south, eastern North Carolina, and Virginia certainly didn't seem to be aware of it. I have yet to see anything indicating that the South was looking to become a more industrial society with an eye to freeing black slaves. As RamistThomist pointed out, black slaves would have been used for other labor even if cotton was no longer king.

 

[Schoolman]

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=197

Yes, it is generally agreed that the costs to provide all aspects of life for a slave had become more expensive than to hire a day laborer who provided for himself, by about 1860.

The war was about leaders of one section taking control of the government of the US. To do that, a war was needed, and a cause for the war. The war required wonderful financing, which those leaders did secure, seeing that even while war was waged, the Transcontinental Railroad was being built. The original advocate for the war was Karl Marx of the New York Tribune, who also carried on a correspondence with Lincoln. If we agree that Marxism is a well worked out system of slavery, then it should become clearer that the charge of slavery against Americans was a distraction or alibi from the more complete slavery of Marxism, into which America has been eased in fits and starts since 1865. The charge also allowed leaders from the one section (which Nixon would later call the Northeastern establishment) to end constitutional restraints and seize power. Thus the slogan Americans had during the war, “The union as it was, the constitution as it is.” They believed that the aggressive war by the north against Americans ended both the voluntary union and the constitution.

 

[Jeri Tanner]

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=197

Yes, it is generally agreed that the costs to provide all aspects of life for a slave had become more expensive than to hire a day laborer who provided for himself, by about 1860.

The war was about leaders of one section taking control of the government of the US. To do that, a war was needed, and a cause for the war. The war required wonderful financing, which those leaders did secure, seeing that even while war was waged, the Transcontinental Railroad was being built. The original advocate for the war was Karl Marx of the New York Tribune, who also carried on a correspondence with Lincoln. If we agree that Marxism is a well worked out system of slavery, then it should become clearer that the charge of slavery against Americans was a distraction or alibi from the more complete slavery of Marxism, into which America has been eased in fits and starts since 1865. The charge also allowed leaders from the one section (which Nixon would later call the Northeastern establishment) to end constitutional restraints and seize power. Thus the slogan Americans had during the war, “The union as it was, the constitution as it is.” They believed that the aggressive war by the north against Americans ended both the voluntary union and the constitution.

Yes I was so intrigued right out of the gate in the book when Rev. Dabney made the analogy between the abolitionists and the Jacobins. It was like reading a modern take on current world upheavals.

 

[Pilgrim]

I imagine he has in mind most of the Southern Presbyterians.

As to its becoming economically unprofitable, that's a hard question. On one hand, slavery isn't an economically progressive mindset. Unless you are a multi-billionaire, it's too expensive to keep slaves for labor.

Some will claim that advances in technology would render slavery obsolete. I want to believe that, but the invention of the cotton gin only meant that slaves were now free to do other chores for the master.

I've concluded that slavery might have continued in some form for a very long time. Once we get into the 20th Century, with the arrival of modern farm machinery increasingly there wasn't the need for labor that there had been in the past. But there were places in the rural South where blacks were subjected to a form of peonage into the 1960s and who had no clue about anything else.