The Jim Crow regime was a racialisation of the Antebellum “Southern system” that had repressed the “masterless men”. The great fear of the plantation elite was slaves and “poor whites” making common cause. That is why they seceded when Lincoln was elected President: the Republican program of trade protection and homesteading was catnip for the masterless men. With the end of slavery, Jim Crow was about dividing off the ex-slaves from the “poor whites”.
Elite racialisation is always a divide-favour-and-dominate game. Which is absolutely true of “woke” racialisation. In the race of life, back self-interest, it’s the only horse that’s trying.
That that poor whites and slaves might make common cause was already a thing in the 17th century with the Indentured Servants Plot in 1663 and more seriously in Bacon's rebellion in 1675. The elite response was passing laws delineating the difference between Black slaves and poor whites and phasing our white indentured servitude.
Sixty percent of the wealth of Southern planation elites was the value of their slaves. Emancipation when the end of their elite status, which is what happened. They fought the Civil War to try to prevent that, in the same way as Herward the Wake trying to resist the destruction of his elite status, or the Lancastrians strove to maintain their status in the War of the Roses.
Maurice Keen argues that the Lancastrians were those with estates in France and the Yorkists were the ones who did not.
Wasn’t aware of the previous history, ta.
Lincoln as an anti-slave President was not a new thing, there had been anti-slave Presidents before. The extra bits of the Republican program were the new thing. But yes, the preservation of one’s wealth and status was what folk were willing to take up arms for.
Part of the Confederacy’s problem is that it had to allocate troops to control bits of its own territories, due to pro-Union resistance in various areas. A practical expression of the alliance that the plantation elite so feared.
In ‘Without Consent or Contract’ Fogel argues that mass migration (thanks to steamships and railways) fractured the US Republic along the fault line of slavery. Mass migration increased the electoral and demographic weight of the free States and led to the Republicans escaping the electoral straightjacket of nativism by appealing to working voters via opposition to The Slave Power. Mass migration also increased the number of the “masterless men” in the South.
Mass migration is currently polarising US, UK and France along the metro/provincial divide. Not Canada or Australia, as we are somewhat cleverer about migration (not having a large land border with much poorer lands helps) and are so highly urbanised.
The Jim Crow regime was a racialisation of the Antebellum “Southern system” that had repressed the “masterless men”. The great fear of the plantation elite was slaves and “poor whites” making common cause. That is why they seceded when Lincoln was elected President: the Republican program of trade protection and homesteading was catnip for the masterless men. With the end of slavery, Jim Crow was about dividing off the ex-slaves from the “poor whites”.
Elite racialisation is always a divide-favour-and-dominate game. Which is absolutely true of “woke” racialisation. In the race of life, back self-interest, it’s the only horse that’s trying.
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/race-and-other-annoyances
That that poor whites and slaves might make common cause was already a thing in the 17th century with the Indentured Servants Plot in 1663 and more seriously in Bacon's rebellion in 1675. The elite response was passing laws delineating the difference between Black slaves and poor whites and phasing our white indentured servitude.
Sixty percent of the wealth of Southern planation elites was the value of their slaves. Emancipation when the end of their elite status, which is what happened. They fought the Civil War to try to prevent that, in the same way as Herward the Wake trying to resist the destruction of his elite status, or the Lancastrians strove to maintain their status in the War of the Roses.
Maurice Keen argues that the Lancastrians were those with estates in France and the Yorkists were the ones who did not.
Wasn’t aware of the previous history, ta.
Lincoln as an anti-slave President was not a new thing, there had been anti-slave Presidents before. The extra bits of the Republican program were the new thing. But yes, the preservation of one’s wealth and status was what folk were willing to take up arms for.
Part of the Confederacy’s problem is that it had to allocate troops to control bits of its own territories, due to pro-Union resistance in various areas. A practical expression of the alliance that the plantation elite so feared.
In ‘Without Consent or Contract’ Fogel argues that mass migration (thanks to steamships and railways) fractured the US Republic along the fault line of slavery. Mass migration increased the electoral and demographic weight of the free States and led to the Republicans escaping the electoral straightjacket of nativism by appealing to working voters via opposition to The Slave Power. Mass migration also increased the number of the “masterless men” in the South.
Mass migration is currently polarising US, UK and France along the metro/provincial divide. Not Canada or Australia, as we are somewhat cleverer about migration (not having a large land border with much poorer lands helps) and are so highly urbanised.