Re: Todays rant

On 12/16/2024 11:59 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 12/16/2024 10:15 AM, Catrike Ryder wrote:

>
Was the 3/5th compromise a benefit to slaves?

 Well, let's see: It had the effect of preserving slavery for many decades. I wonder how the slaves felt about that?
 

Ask, instead, was the
subsequent creation of the USA a benefit to slaves?

 Compared to what?
 It made no real difference for those decades - that is, until every slave alive during the Compromise had died. For those it made no difference whatsoever. Oh, except for the Dred Scott decision, which arguably made things worse than if the colonies had remained separate.
 Eventually, eventually their descendents gained legal freedom - but with still greatly reduced rights.
 

Well, the issue probably should rightly grade 'on the curve' which is to say 'in context' or 'compared to what?'.
The British Crown engaged and broke the African slave trade (at great cost in Royal Navy lives) only after the Herculean efforts of William Wilberforce had changed many minds over many years.  There wasn't much cognizance about slavery's morality anywhere else to any politically effective extent.
Our abolition experience, after the Tsar but before the much larger slaveholding nation Brasil, had greater costs than anywhere else on earth, something around 3/4 million dead from a population of 31 million.
https://www.history.com/news/american-civil-war-deaths
Still and all, no one made any intellectual or political effort about slavery anywhere else (China, SE Asia, or #1 slaveholders then and now The Caliphate.)
Imperfect? Yes. Late and shamefully so? Yes.
But it was done and that's not nothing.
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971