The Slave Trade: The African Slave Catchers

Has it actually been established that the North was 'the' great carriers of slaves or that the South 'the' great users of slaves?
While slavery has always existed in human history, has it always been race based?( people born to be slaves, because of birth in a certain race)
All good questions for historical study, but I am not sure it is relevent to a board on the Civil War itself. That the whole country was complicit in slavery, begs the question of why secession and why the war?

Slavery as historically practiced in Europe wasn't race based but was still slavery. My ancesters were from Norway and were quite happy selling Irish prisoners to the English and turning around and selling Enlish to the Irish and selling both to the French. Business is business.

A tangential connection might be that American abolitionists saw English abolitionists as an inspiration and they worked together, visiting back and forth. The English abolition movement successfully ended slavery in the English colonies in 1833 and the almost-as-bad apprenticeship situation a few years later.

Here's a quick overview: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/antislavery.html

The success in England may have helped the American abolitionists push forward with their crusade, just adding to the attitude of: everybody else is doing it, so why can't the south?

Though it was decades earlier, the bloody end of slavery in Haiti may also have reminded the south how bad things could get, if slaves could get the upper hand.

African's captured in Africa were, in fact, captives of one type or another, whose ultimate fate may have been slavery. But until they were sold to their masters, they remained captives. Much as captured Irishmen, Englishmen or Frenchmen etc. Except, in the caseof the Europeans there was no intimation that because they had been captured they were automatically slaves Nor that they deserved to be, because of the color of their skin.

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=64
Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans--as did a slave trade that exported a small number of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. But this system of slavery differed from the plantation slavery that developed in the New World.
Hereditary slavery, extending over several generations, was rare. Most slaves in Africa were female. Women were preferred because they bore children and because they performed most field labor. Slavery in early sub-Saharan Africa took a variety of forms. While most slaves were field workers, some served in royal courts, where they served as officials, soldiers, servants, and artisans. Under a system known as "pawnship," youths (usually girls) served as collateral for their family's debts. If their parents or kin defaulted on these debts, then these young girls were forced to labor to repay these debts. In many instances, these young women eventually married into their owner's lineage, and their family's debt was cancelled.
Under a system known as "clientage," slaves owed a share of their crop or their labor to an owner or a lineage. Yet they owned the bulk of their crop and were allowed to participate in the society's political activities. These slaves were often treated no differently than other peasant or tenant farmers.

In any case, the fact of slavery existing in Africa has little historical significance to the history of slavery in the United States as the central cause of the Civil War.
The rationale that equates slavery in Africa as some kind of mitigating influence on the existence of slavery in the United States, is too closely related to the argument that because someone has committed a crime, it is license to commit the same crime by someone else.
That slavery existed in Africa is of some historical importance in the study of the institution of slavery(especially its influence on the existence of race-based slavery and the growth of the belief in race-superiority in Western Culture) its existence and growing influence on the destabalizing of America's political system leading ultimately to war, is of considerable less historical significance.

P.S. To all intents and purposes after the Constitutional prohibition on the importation of slaves was enacted, whatever influence northern shipping on world slavery, it had little on that of the United States.

This is what makes the learning of history so important. We learn the bad things man has done along with the good. The point is we learn it, and hopefully we chart a better course for the future. I agree with Unionblue--no slavery, no war.

You could also say, no slavery, no United States.

No North accustom to profits from slavery, no war.

To say 'no slavery, no United States', if true, says a lot about the mind set of slave owners and their priorities for the Union.

And if only those Confederate crusiers had just been more effective at stopping those Northern slave ships.

Darn that George Washington.

The original 13 British Colonies, United States,(North or South) nor the Confederate States were the first or the last to benefit from the "Peculiar Institution" namely chatel slavery directly or indirectly. Actually slavery has been practised in most lands since mankind first established written language and likely long before. In fact speaking of recorded history abolishing slavery is actually a fairly recent trend. Another fact that rarely sees the light of day these days is slavery still exists on planet earth.

Keep in mind the Black Africans who were take your pick captured, pressed, and or sold into slavery were captured, pressed and or sold into slavery by fellow Black Africans. It amazes me that in 2012 it seems no one ever mentions that fact quite possibly because many are not aware of it. As to many who are aware of this some of them make a strong effort not to voice it because it doesn't fit into thier agenda. Europeans didn't venture into tropical Africa with guns and nets capturing slaves the Black Africans they purchased the slaves from did that.

I don't believe the Confederate Naval Jack ever flew from a slave ship but the US national colors did as well as the flags of many european nations. The original and primary need driving the demand for slaves in the new world was to provide labor for sugar not cotton. And the number of slaves imported to North America in general, the original British colonies and later the US in particular is dwarfed by the numbers shipped and enslaved in the other two Americas and the Carribean. However no region takes the bad rap for slavery more than the Southern United States specifically former Confederate States.

In a way I can understand one glaring reason for this in that the planters who were the most wealthy hence the most powerful people in the region and the ones that drove secession and they also stated quite clearly that slavery was the cornerstone of thier region's agrarian success and being such slavery was one of thier vital interests. Thats right slavery is very long lived and slavery was a fact of life over most of the planet far longer than not but I don't think any nation or section of a nation ever went to war over slavery. That is not to say the south actually fought a war to establish slavery as slavery existed there already and was in fact sanctioned and protected in the Constitution of the United States of which the southern states were a part of.

No the south formed the Confederate States of America to establish and found "southern independance" where they would protect thier region's unique agrarian status quo, govern themselves, and protect thier interests (read slavery) for generations to come. Part of the irony I find interesting regarding the pro and anti slavery movements preceding the ACW is that the Abolitionists must rank very highly in the hall of fame for political/social activists if such a thing were to exist in that thier numbers were actually quite small. Another piece of irony is that many of the Abolitionists were deeply religious as were slave holding Southerners of the day.

Also both groups also used the Christian faith namely Christian Bibles as the source for arguments promoting thier respective agendas. Harriet Beecher Stowe and more than a few others did an outstanding job of painting slaves as the deliberately oppressed and abused property of cruel and evil slaveholders. they supported thier allegations well with the written word and the testimony of escaped slaves and indeed some slaves were abused while more than a few notable and well known planters went to great lengths attempting to "refine" the "peculiar institution."

The slaves on Jeff Davis' Mississippi plantation actually operated a type of slave government that decided punishments for bad behavior or crimes and even held slave referendums to choose or appoint specific duties and responsibilities of slaves. Other slave holders took a great interest and pride in attending to the health and needs of thier human property. It was illegal in most of the antebellum south to teach a slave to read and that was likely the most violated or ignored law in the south. A significant number of slaveholders wouldn't break up or sell off slave families but an equal or greater number of others did. Another person on any plantation that greatly impacted a slave's life was the overseer. Today we take pains to test, vett, and screen people who are granted authority and responsibility for others such as police and prison guards. Unfortunately for everyone we did not do the same for our current President.(I couldn't resist adding that)

We put in place such a vetting and qualifing process today because we know some of the worst and most sadistic and cruel humans among us are strongly attracted to positions of ultimate authority over others. Abraham Lincoln said something that stuck with me in that he said he never met anyone who aspired to be a slave. Having said that the slave and the slave holder were both born into a world where large plantations, crops, and slavery had existed for a long time.

To some but not to others.

Personally I think their attitude could be summed up in two words. Self Interest. it is the wellspring from which self serving rationalizations flow.

Yes Prejudice/racism has existed since mankind could distinquish different tribes. Reminds me of a Star Trek episode where they were on a planet that the inhabitants faces were half black and half white. The planet was having race riots because some had the white on the left side of the face and some had it on the right. Both thought they were superior beings because of their skin color.

Trekkie!

From everything I've read I think it might have been a bit more than 'occasional'. (Sorry, couldn't find a smilie that quite conveyed what I meant by this so I settled on the bat).

Bats might be good but if I see another show on TV about vampires living among us in an otherwise sleepy and 'normal' American town I'll throw something through the screen. Bring back Star Trek I say.