Bill Arp/Charles Henry Smith
"Bill Arp" struck the keynote when he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I am going to work."
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Charles Henry Smith was an American writer from the state of Georgia who used the pen-name Bill Arp. The following is taken from his memoirs. This narrative was published in 1902. After reading this passage the thing that struck me was that it is no new thing that the North’s role in the institution of slavery has been diminutized. His observation ...is as follows:
It is sad and mortifying that our young and middle-aged men and our
graduates from Southern colleges know so little of our ante-bellum history.
The Northern people are equally ignorant of the origin of slavery and the real
causes that precipitated the civil war. Most of them have a vague idea that
slavery was born and just grew up in the South - came up out of the ground
like the seventeen-year-old locusts--and was our sin and our curse.
Not one in ten thousand will believe that the South never imported a slave from Africa, but got all we had by purchase from our Northern brethren. I would wager a thousand dollars against ten that not a man under fifty nor a schoolboy who lives north of the line knows or believes that General Grant, their great military hero and idol, was a slave holder and lived off of their hire and their services while he was fighting us about ours. Lincoln's proclamation of freedom came in 1863, but General Grant paid no attention to it. He continued to use them as slaves until January, 1865. (See his biography by General James Grant Wilson in Appleton's Encyclopedia
How many of this generation, North or South, know, or will believe that as late as November, 1861, Nathaniel Gordon, master of a New England slave ship called the Erie, was convicted in New York City of carrying on the slave trade? (See Appleton.) Just think of it and wonder! In 1861 our Northern brethren made war upon us because we enslaved the negroes we had bought from them; but at the same time they kept on bringing more from Africa and begging us to buy them. How many know that England, our mother country, never emancipated her slaves until 1843, when twelve millions were set free in the East Indies and one hundred millions of dollars paid to their owners by act of Parliament?
I wish to impress it upon our boys and girls so that they may be ready and willing to defend their Southern ancestors from the baseless charge of suffering now for the sins of their fathers.
Source: Bill Arp from the Uncivil War to Date, 1861-1903, by Bill Arp, 1902.
Link to e-book: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/
Photo: Bill Arp (http://docsouth.unc.edu)
Not one in ten thousand will believe that the South never imported a slave from Africa, but got all we had by purchase from our Northern brethren. I would wager a thousand dollars against ten that not a man under fifty nor a schoolboy who lives north of the line knows or believes that General Grant, their great military hero and idol, was a slave holder and lived off of their hire and their services while he was fighting us about ours. Lincoln's proclamation of freedom came in 1863, but General Grant paid no attention to it. He continued to use them as slaves until January, 1865. (See his biography by General James Grant Wilson in Appleton's Encyclopedia
How many of this generation, North or South, know, or will believe that as late as November, 1861, Nathaniel Gordon, master of a New England slave ship called the Erie, was convicted in New York City of carrying on the slave trade? (See Appleton.) Just think of it and wonder! In 1861 our Northern brethren made war upon us because we enslaved the negroes we had bought from them; but at the same time they kept on bringing more from Africa and begging us to buy them. How many know that England, our mother country, never emancipated her slaves until 1843, when twelve millions were set free in the East Indies and one hundred millions of dollars paid to their owners by act of Parliament?
I wish to impress it upon our boys and girls so that they may be ready and willing to defend their Southern ancestors from the baseless charge of suffering now for the sins of their fathers.
Source: Bill Arp from the Uncivil War to Date, 1861-1903, by Bill Arp, 1902.
Link to e-book: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/
Photo: Bill Arp (http://docsouth.unc.edu)
Now, as I understand the history of the recent unpleasantness, wasn't the issue really about the spread of the Peculiar Institution to new states as they entered the Union? I'm pretty sure that's what the dust-up in Kansas Territory was all about. What it all boils down to is that the slave-holding power block feared becoming a minority in Congress if the Institution were restricted to it's present range in the Southeast. This is the true reason the South seceded.
ReplyDeleteThere were many reasons. The states had been married for too long and had absolutely nothing in common anymore and needed a divorce. They couldn't even agree on the design of the new capitol expansion.:)
Deletebut the North runs from the truth, that they too were involved in the practice of selling humans for slavery. they just conveniently kick it under the rug to try to make their "It's all about slavery" argument for the Un-Civil War. their grasp on this lie, in the end, will fail, and is failing now.
ReplyDeleteis failing now.
DeleteI agree, one small part at a time.
FYI, all good PBS watching liberals have been aware of the Norths complicity in the slave trade since at LEAST 2008 thanks to the documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. http://www.pbs.org/pov/tracesofthetrade/. After all, who ran the boats that made the triangle trade possible?
ReplyDelete90% of them still deny it, I imagine.:) Inconvenient facts.
Delete