# Why no major American slave revolt?



## Arrius

In a mild attempt to learn something more about American History, a surprising thought has struck me.  Both in Cuba and in Haiti there have been large-scale and successful revolts amongst the slaves of African ethnicity against their Spanish and French masters respectively, but there seem to have occurred only a few individual and isolated acts of retalation and resistance amongst the slaves of the American states even when the victorious Yankee armies were approaching in the War of Secession.  Since there were far more slaves on the American mainland than in the Caribbean, I find this fact rather extraordinary.  Assuming what I say is correct, can anyone explain the absence of a large-scale revolt on American soil.  Even the oppressed Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, though admittedly treated far worse, finally revolted against their Nazi oppressors.


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## avok

But in Cuba and Haiti, the percentage of Black communities are so high. I guess, in Haiti almost everyone is of African ancestry to some extent. America is predominantly white.


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## Arrius

A good point. However, in the early days when black slaves were replacing white bondsmen the proportions of black to white in some areas were to the colonists worryingly close, and there were attempts to prevent the introduction of any more slaves for this reason, overruled by the British authorities for reasons of gain. What the proportions were in later years I do not known, but on any given plantation, which might be far from the nearest town, the slaves must have greatly outnumbered their masters. They could conceivably have revolted like Spartacus against the Romans, with the advantage of having "free" states and Canada to flee to, which he and his followers did not have.


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## Tjahzi

Interesting thought. Maybe the technological and advantage of the whites made them so superior numbers were pretty much irrelevant? After all, both the Aztec and Incan empires were conquered by a handful of Spaniards with guns and horses. 

Also, I believe you might be overestimating the unity of the African slaves. At the time, there were far from any indigenous lingua franca along the Gold Coast. Instead, many of the slaves brought to the Americas were from different tribes, maybe even hostile to each other, with different languages and to an extent, cultures. Revolting together might not have come as naturally as for jews surrounded in a Warsaw ghetto.

However, the latter doesn't explain why there were in fact revolts on Cuba and Hispaniola. Maybe the slave lords there made the mistake of making the slave group to homogenous and to out number their masters to a too high degree?

I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.


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## cuchuflete

This is somewhat akin to asking why serfs in European nations didn't revolt against
the nobility.  We can speculate about the mindset of people hundreds of years ago,
which ones were abused to the point of taking such a risk—the penalty for a failed revolt would surely have been harsh—what prospects slaves might have seen for life following a "successful" revolt, and so on.  

We will never know with any degree of certainty why some slaves did rebel, while others did not.


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## bbmkw

There were some minor unsuccessful revolts in the US.  You have to understand how big of an area we are talking about compared to these island nations.  The american south is huge and even if one group successfully revolted and fled, they would have no where to go.  The police and even the military would have quelled it very quickly.


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## alexacohen

Tjahzi said:


> Interesting thought. Maybe the technological and advantage of the whites made them so superior numbers were pretty much irrelevant? After all, both the Aztec and Incan empires were conquered by a handful of Spaniards with guns and horses.


Don't forget the viruses which Spaniards carried with them as well.


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## Arrius

The heterogeneous nature of the black slave population may indeed have been a factor that deterred them from united action, but on the other hand many of them lived as families and felt a kinship with their fellow slaves on the same plantation, even if some were Igbo and others Yoruba etc. Admittedly, there are tribal conflicts to this day, but African village life is remarkably similar from Cape Town to the fringes of the Sahara, and these slaves all came from West Africa in the first instance. Spartacus's army was far more heterogeneous. consisting of White, Black and Berber, Greek, Persian and Celt. Perhaps the American slave owners were on the whole kinder or at least not so cruel to their chattels as those in the West Indies, where it was often found more economical to work a batch of slaves to death in five years or so and then replace them, rather than to look after the basic needs of their welfare, if only to safeguard one's investment.


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## Harry Batt

This fact sheds a lot of light on the question:- _even when the victorious Yankee armies were approaching in the War of Secession. _No single reason exists why no slave revolt succeeded and no major slave revolt was initiated. A study of slavery in early England reveals that the son of the first slave still has some memory of freedom and as the generations pass through history, slavery becomes an acceptable conditon. On the plantations not all of the master's slaves toiled in the cotton fields. Many held posts in the big house and around the plantation's yard, which posts were a valuable as a bird in the hand, so to speak, rather than the two in the bush of a risky mutiny. Match that left-handed loyalty with the anti-rebellion organization by white society and you have a pair of good reasons by there were no major rebellions.


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## Sepia

I think the answer is pretty simple. The will to revolt simply depends on how many people on one place are desperate enough to overcome the fear of the dangers they will be facing. 

So the reason is the combination of the slaves not being desparate enough and the Americans having the better guns. 

Why weren't they not desperate enough? Maybe for the same reason that the Americans have the better guns. They made a lot of money. Maybe that money enabled the slavekeepers who were clever enough, to at least feed their slaves well.


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## Arrius

*bbmkw*'s mention of Nat Turner, whom I had vaguely heard of, is said to be the biggest of apparently 250 minor instances of revolt. The statistics for Turner's revolt in 1831 are: that it lasted only thirty hours (not much time for mayhem when you have to go from house to distant house), fifty-five Whites were killed, fifty-five slaves summarily tried and executed (a coincidence?), and a further 200, mostly quite innocent, lynched in the backlash:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html

This is somewhat akin to asking why serfs in European nations didn't revolt against the nobility. *cachuflete*
But they did! In the French Revolution, the Bolchevik October Revolution and long before that the Pugachev Revolt in the reign of Katherine the Great of Russia, that led by Wat Tyler in England, and the Bauernkrieg or Peasants' Revolt of 1542, to name but a few. 

Don't forget the viruses which Spaniards carried with them as well.* alexacohen*
Indeed. Besides working the poor indios to death, Cortés, Pizarro and their boys infected them directly or indirectly with syphilis and many other diseases, which considerably lowered their resistance. This added to the fact that, at least in Mexico, the coming of the god-like Spaniards and their strange centaur-like beasts with flaming red hair (a redheaded conquistador on a horse) was foretold by their priests.


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## palomnik

It probably isn't fair to compare the situation of the slaves in Haiti and Cuba with the ones in the USA. A fairer comparison would be with Brazil.

There were some slave revolts in Brazil, but by far the commoner form of slave resistance was to run into the Brazilian wilderness where they formed independent communities, or _quilombos. _The biggest of these, Palmares, was formed in the seventeenth century and was an independent state, which the Portuguese authorities spent more than twenty years trying to eradicate.

The thing was that the empty space was there, and the climate was similar to the Africa that the slaves knew. To be sure, there was empty space in North America too, but the climate was harder. Still, it appears from anecdotal evidence that a lot of runaway slaves joined together with Native Americans, although there doesn't seem to be a lot of hard data on that.


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## Arrius

a lot of runaway slaves joined together with Native Americans, *palomik*
I remember hearing that happened mostly in the Everglades of Florida with the Seminoles, I think.
It must be remembered that the North American colonists had Indian, now called Native American, slaves too, probably not surprising to the latter as they kept slaves themselves.
One more point concerning a possible refuge: in Mexico slavery was illegal when it was at its height in the States, though I don't know how long this had been so. There, to the south of the slave-holding states renegades and escapees would have found a climate more amenable to them and a society freer from racial prejudice. Many a white desperado had managed this with a posse at his heels, though admittedly, a lone slave might have to steal a horse first.


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## Outsider

Arrius said:


> Since there were far more slaves on the American mainland than in the Caribbean, I find this fact rather extraordinary.


As others have noted, the percentage of slaves to total population was higher in the Caribbean than in the U.S. In Brazil, too.  



Arrius said:


> Assuming what I say is correct, can anyone explain the absence of a large-scale revolt on American soil.


Are you sure about that? How large-scale did it need to be?



Arrius said:


> What the proportions were in later years I do not known, but on any given plantation, which might be far from the nearest town, the slaves must have greatly outnumbered their masters.


Not necessarily. You should check that. My guess is that the percentage of slaves varied significantly between differen regions in the American colonies.

You mentioned Spartacus: from what I recall, the Romans had a huge percentage of slaves in their society, rarely equalled in modern times.



Tjahzi said:


> Interesting thought. Maybe the technological and advantage of the whites made them so superior numbers were pretty much irrelevant? After all, both the Aztec and Incan empires were conquered by a handful of Spaniards with guns and horses.


Not quite. The Spaniards won in great part because they allied themselves with other local tribes that were hostile to the Aztecs.


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## Athaulf

cuchuflete said:


> This is somewhat akin to asking why serfs in European nations didn't revolt against
> the nobility.



Actually, whenever things got really bad, they revolted. The lives of medieval serfs were certainly miserable by today's standards, but the idea that the nobility normally exercised unchecked tyranny over them is a modern age myth. _Le droit du seigneur_ and most other extravagant examples of domineering by the nobility are fantasies invented much later by people deeply ignorant about what medieval Europe actually looked like -- just like horned viking helmets, chastity belts, Church insisting that the Earth is flat, etc.


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## EmilyD

http://www.johnhorse.com/highlights/essays/largest.htm

There is a large body of research in this field.  

_Nomi_


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## Arrius

OK, *Outsider,* but I was thinking of the cotton plantations, tobacco and other large farms which must have had a large numbers of slaves to be economical, not a poor farmer with one black cook that he probably treated quite kindly anyway. I leave you to ransack the Library of Congress for the obscure statistics you require. The Nat Turner case , as has been said, was the the most important one of the 250 incidences of revolt on record, and for which I have already provided statistics and a link. Whatever the size of what a major revolt may be, a death toll of 55 victims and the same number of rebels (many of whom had taken no active part) does not by any standard constitute a major revolt. By revolt I mean armed violence, not just running away.
Spartacus' revolt started with a very small number of slaves but was nevertheless successsful at the outset and snowballed wherever it went. It was only because they were betrayed concerning the ships they were to escape in from Brindisium that they finally failed. But a slave in revolt does not necessarily expect success, perhaps only the opportunity to strike back at his oppressors. I admit that there were more slaves in the City of Rome than citizens, but these did not revolt, though many were crucified as an example nonetheless. Maybe the black slave in America did not feel desperate enough to revolt on a large scale.
PS Thank you *Emily D.* for the useful link.


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## Joca

palomnik said:


> It probably isn't fair to compare the situation of the slaves in Haiti and Cuba with the ones in the USA. A fairer comparison would be with Brazil.
> 
> There were some slave revolts in Brazil, but by far the commoner form of slave resistance was to run into the Brazilian wilderness where they formed independent communities, or _quilombos. _The biggest of these, Palomares, was formed in the seventeenth century and was an independent state, which the Portuguese authorities spent more than twenty years trying to eradicate.
> 
> The thing was that the empty space was there, and the climate was similar to the Africa that the slaves knew. To be sure, there was empty space in North America too, but the climate was harder. Still, it appears from anecdotal evidence that a lot of runaway slaves joined together with Native Americans, although there doesn't seem to be a lot of hard data on that.


 
Right on, Palomnik. Just a minor rectification, though. The name is Palmares rather than Palomares.


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## Arrius

The same thing happened in Jamaica, where the descendants of escaped slaves still live isolated in the mountains. They are called Maroons, I used to think because they were brown, but since most people in Jamaica are brown, this would be rather silly. It is abbreviated from Spanish _cimarrón._ derived from _cima_, a (mountain) peak, where they live. Apparently the term is used for similar groups in other coutries as well, (see link). The citizens of Kingston are rather nervous about them, which when you consider how dangerous a place Kingston itself is, speaks volumes: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroons


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## fenixpollo

Arrius, you need to re-examine your assumption that American slaveowners treated their slaves "quite kindly" or more compassionately than Carribean slaveowners. Physical punishment, intimidation and threat of death were the typical tools for slaveholders to keep their chattel in line.  Even for a hundred years after slavery was abolished, African-Americans were deprived of their basic human rights by a culture that oppressed them with messages that they were inferior, subhuman, worthless creatures.

Hardly a kindler, gentler nation.


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## Fernando

I do not know any major slave rebellion in Cuba. I could be wrong since I am far from being an expert.

The only example of successful slave rebellion is Haiti, when the slaves were the overwhelming majority.


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## HUMBERT0

I guess bigger revolts didn’t happened because steps were taken to prevent this. Only whites could ride horses, carry weapons, etc., at least in my country. We have to situate our selves back in those days, apart from the institution of slavery, you also have to somehow not question the morality or sinfulness of it and justify it, and also they had to find ways to maintain them oppressed or keep these people in a subjugated state, where they have no rights, no education, etc., keeping them away from the means (peaceful or violent revolt) to try to seek freedom or better them selves in anyway.

  For example in my country the end of the institution of slavery didn’t happen until independent from Spain. And it only happened when the Spaniards not born in Europe, the Mestizos, Indians, Blacks, and all of the rest of the Casts joint against the relative few European born Spaniards backed by an army, in a time when news of liberty, equality and an end to tyrannical monarchy came from the French revolution, and pro-Independence ideas came from a new country forming from13 former British colonies in the northeast of the continent, and of course when the King was deposed, the Viceroyalty had the opportunity to try to gain its independence. 

  But it took a majority of the society that wanted this, to do away with that horrendous institution, though conditions of Whites, Indians, Mestizos, Blacks and Casts were not the same, and prejudices and inequality still linger into the present day, even though wars have being fought to stop inequality, and in spite of the efforts in our modern history to diminish it.


  Here it talks of one of the slave revolts in my country:
http://www.johntoddjr.com/86%20Yanga/yanga01.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_Yanga
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/legacy/almmx.html
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2904/Yanga_an_African_legend_in_Mexico


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## Dom Casmurro

Of course, Palomnik made a point by implying that the gepographic factor plays a key role. How can two islands of the size of Haiti and Cuba be compared with countries as big as continents, like the US and Brazil? Precisely because of the lack of vast empty spaces and the sense of confinement that, by definition, is imposed upon every islander, the slaves in Haiti and Cuba were bound to stick together, conspire together, rebel together and fight together. Such a togetherness was more unlikely to take place in the endless prairies of the US and Brazil. 

I'm far from being knowledgeable of Cuban and Haitian history, but I would dare say that the slaves in those islands were much more urban - or at least, they had more access to urban life - than the ones that were scattered throughout the plantations of Brazil and the US. Needless to say, urban concentration and political organization go hand in hand.


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## Arrius

Arrius, you need to re-examine your assumption that American slaveowners treated their slaves "quite kindly" or more compassionately than Carribean slaveowners. *fenixpollo*
*What you based your assumpton on of what my assumption was, was the following:*
_not a poor farmer with one black cook that he probably treated quite kindly anyway._

House slaves that worked for a family for many years were often beloved by the children they looked after and, it would be unrealistic to deny, sometimes treated with kindness by their masters, so that they felt no urgent desire to escape or turn on them. If there were only a few house slaves they may even have felt themselves part of the family, which sometimes they actually were biologically! If you read_ Uncle Tom's Cabin_ by Harriet Beecher-Stowe, a novel written against slavery and anathematised at the time by the pro-slavery lobby,  you will find much talk of kindness and doubt about the whole system on the part of some owners as well as incredible cruelty from others. The slaves' subjection to the whims of their owners, the legal ban on their learning to read, and the possibility of suddenly being sold down the river away from their families even by a "good" master when bankruptcy threatened is, of course, horrendous, and no amount of kindness could compensate for this. But we are discussing why it was that they were not driven en masse to retaliate.


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## Sepia

Arrius said:


> Arrius, you need to re-examine your assumption that American slaveowners treated their slaves "quite kindly" or more compassionately than Carribean slaveowners. *fenixpollo*
> *What you based your assumpton on of what my assumption was, was the following:*
> _not a poor farmer with one black cook that he probably treated quite kindly anyway._
> 
> House slaves that worked for a family for many years were often beloved by the children they looked after and, it would be unrealistic to deny, sometimes treated with kindness by their masters, so that they felt no urgent desire to escape or turn on them. If there were only a few house slaves they may even have felt themselves part of the family, which sometimes they actually were biologically! If you read_ Uncle Tom's Cabin_ by Harriet Beecher-Stowe, a novel written against slavery and anathematised at the time by the pro-slavery lobby,  you will find much talk of kindness and doubt about the whole system on the part of some owners as well as incredible cruelty from others. The slaves' subjection to the whims of their owners, the legal ban on their learning to read, and the possibility of suddenly being sold down the river away from their families even by a "good" master when bankruptcy threatened is, of course, horrendous, and no amount of kindness could compensate for this. But we are discussing why it was that they were not driven en masse to retaliate.




You are right. And it would be naive to think that literature of that era would give any realistic view of the situation. You probably all see how scared the US media of today are of publishing anything controversial. Who should write a book giving a realistic, possibly negative view of things? Somebody who lived right there, in the South. And who would read it or publish it? OK, he could go up North to publish it, but one should ask when it became politically convenient to oppose to slavery - I am not sure how early that started before it came to war between the two federations. Obvious is that it was convenient for the North to liberate slaves because they had a growing industry and needed cheap labor.


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## Joca

Dom Casmurro said:


> Of course, Palomnik made a point by implying that the gepographic factor plays a key role. How can two islands of the size of Haiti and Cuba be compared with countries as big as continents, like the US and Brazil? Precisely because of the lack of vast empty spaces and the sense of confinement that, by definition, is imposed upon every islander, the slaves in Haiti and Cuba were bound to stick together, conspire together, rebel together and fight together. Such a togetherness was more unlikely to take place in the endless prairies of the US and Brazil.
> 
> I'm far from being knowledgeable of Cuban and Haitian history, but I would dare say that the slaves in those islands were much more urban - or at least, they had more access to urban life - than the ones that were scattered throughout the plantations of Brazil and the US. Needless to say, urban concentration and political organization go hand in hand.


 
Good points. I agree that geography plays an important role here. But as far as I know, we don't have "endless prairies" in Brazil. Actually, we have a very hilly and uneven country, which in its turn makes for ideal places to hide.

I was wondering if the word "revolt" is the best one in this context. I would prefer "flight". Slaves would run away rather than fight. That is a kind of revolt, but not really in the sense of confronting their masters with weapons.


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## Harry Batt

Sepia, your post is  well  taken. However, there is no indication from the papers that I have read that recruiting  cheap labor ---ex slaves---was a motivation for Northern business to end slavery. The first real evidence of recruitment occurred just before WWII when Henry Ford brought blacks to work in Detroit. The  real motivation to move north came from black family fathers who realized that the opportunity for education and employment was  better in the North than in the South. Stories of those emigrations fill the pages of black literature. Alec Baldwin is a good read along that line.


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## Sepia

Harry Batt said:


> Sepia, your post is  well  taken. However, there is no indication from the papers that I have read that recruiting  cheap labor ---ex slaves---was a motivation for Northern business to end slavery. The first real evidence of recruitment occurred just before WWII when Henry Ford brought blacks to work in Detroit. The  real motivation to move north came from black family fathers who realized that the opportunity for education and employment was  better in the North than in the South. Stories of those emigrations fill the pages of black literature. Alec Baldwin is a good read along that line.



You forget the meat processing industries. (Where do you think the Texans sent all their cattle. They didn't keep them just to have them listen to guitar music and cowboy songs during the long Texan Summer nights.) And quite a lot ended up in New York. Logically there must be a socio-economic reason to that too. Of course you don't find many sources bluntly saying this was the reason for them going to war. Of course they did that to overthrow dictatorship and indtroduce democracy in Iraq ... oh sorry that was another war. Of course they did it to liberate the slaves because it is a bad thing to keep slaves. That, of course, was the "real" reason for entering into the war where more Americans died than in any other war in history. That may one believe or not believe as one wishes.


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## fenixpollo

Sepia and Joca, it sounds like you're confusing your places and times. 

The majority of slaves were very far from the Great Plains and because the slaveowners did not educate them, many of the slaves wouldn't have known that the Plains even existed. As to meat-packing, there wasn't a lot of that going on in the Chicago area before 1861, because it was only founded in 1833. 

In addition, there were not "two federations" that entered into war with each other, but one country that was made up of several, semi-autonomous "states". The states in the southern region formed a federation that declared its independence, on paper, from the rest of the country. 





			
				Sepia said:
			
		

> Of course they did it to liberate the slaves because it is a bad thing to keep slaves. That, of course, was the "real" reason for entering into the war where more Americans died than in any other war in history. That may one believe or not believe as one wishes.


 While slavery was one of the key issues that led to the Civil War, remember that the North did not start the war in order to gain labor or to abolish slavery, but to re-unite the country.  Also realize that there was a very complex political and economic relationship (and rivalry) between the North and South before 1861, and that slavery was only one component.


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## Harry Batt

Sepia, you  are well read on this subject. However, Texas was a Southern state and not a northwern recruiter.


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## Joca

fenixpollo said:


> Sepia and Joca, it sounds like you're confusing your places and times.
> 
> The majority of slaves were very far from the Great Plains and because the slaveowners did not educate them, many of the slaves wouldn't have known that the Plains even existed. .


 
But I was not referring to the United States of America. I was talking about Brazil. It was a small digression, anyway.


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## EmilyD

Harry Batt said:


> Sepia, your post is well taken. However, there is no indication from the papers that I have read that recruiting cheap labor ---ex slaves---was a motivation for Northern business to end slavery. The first real evidence of recruitment occurred just before WWII when Henry Ford brought blacks to work in Detroit. The real motivation to move north came from black family fathers who realized that the opportunity for education and employment was better in the North than in the South. Stories of those emigrations fill the pages of black literature.* Alec Baldwin* is a good read along that line.



_Do you mean *James* Baldwin?!  _A great writer.
 I recommend *Chester Himes*, especially: If He Hollers Let Him Go

_Nomi_


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## HUMBERT0

fenixpollo said:


> In addition, there were not "two federations" that entered into war with each other, but one country that was made up of several, semi-autonomous "states". The states in the southern region formed a federation that declared its independence, on paper, from the rest of the country.  While slavery was one of the key issues that led to the Civil War, remember that the North did not start the war in order to gain labor or to abolish slavery, but to re-unite the country.  Also realize that there was a very complex political and economic relationship (and rivalry) between the North and South before 1861, and that slavery was only one component.


 Re-Unification was the justification of the war, not the issue. To say it was to abolish slavery would be an over simplification of one of the main issues, the social-economical system. The systems of the South based in agriculture (slavery driven) as the basis of development clashed with the North’s capitalistic-industrial system, and one had to go. Since neither side would relent in their own ideology or pursuits, the South though to maintain their way of creating wealth with out any interference from the North by seceding, which in turn gave the North the valid  justification to invade the South and settle once and for all the social economic model the hole country would follow.


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## Harry Batt

Emily, it was a typo. _Invisible Man. _Who can forget that light bulb?  Well, it really wasn't a typo.


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## Chaska Ñawi

American slaves had the option, albeit a dangerous and difficult one, of relocating to Canada and settling there.  They also had at least heard of free blacks in the northern states.  The slaves of Cuba and the other islands had no other countries to which they could flee.

That is, of course, only one piece of the puzzle.


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## ireney

Moderator's note: Please remember that the subject of discussion is not the reasons for the Civil War in the U.S.A. Just a reminder so that we don't lose focus


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## Arrius

Fernando said:


> I do not know any major slave rebellion in Cuba. I could be wrong since I am far from being an expert.
> 
> The only example of successful slave rebellion is Haiti, when the slaves were the overwhelming majority.


 
I was referring to the Ten Years War against Spain which started in 1868 in the wake of the American Civil War, when slaves fought on the side of the so-called Cuban Republic in Arms, leading to a promise of greater autonomy at the peace treaty of 1878. However, it appears that these slaves were deliberately freed by the wealthy landowner, de Céspedes, who proclaimed himself President of this republic. I was misled by a Cuban film I once saw about this war, in which Afro-Cubans were very efficiently chopping up the Spanish Army in the forest with their machetes. It would seem likely that the manumitted slaves freed others to join them, but I have been unable to find any information on that. Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. partly under pressure from the USA.
Thus the only unquestionable example of a really large-scale slave revolt in modern times (not counting serfs), is Haïti, which successfully threw off the yoke and broke off from Napoleonic France, whose "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" was not intended for them in the eyes of the Emperor.


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## Fernando

That was my point. Thank for your data, Arrius.

I think that Haiti was one of the few places where slaves could successfully rebel.

In all other places slaves were an important part of the population, but never the majority.

Even in Southern US, where slave owners were scared to death for a possible rebellion, individual runaways to the North were possible, but major rebellions should be quelled for a majority of whites, who (slaveowners or not) were interested in the system.

Even during the Civil War, most slaves did not quell, and Lee even thought in giving them weapons to defend the South. I guess that one of the major problems of slavery is that the slave is absolutely dependent on the master. He probably will not thinking in running away because he knows no other life,


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## aleCcowaN

I think the question asked here departs from this notion: being slavery so painful, diminishing and ugly (all kind of negative adjectives stuffed), why then didn't they rise up?

Following this line, some speculations about slavery being not so bad, with lots of kind and fatherly masters.

Beecher Stowe's Uncle's Tom Cabin didn't showed typical people and typical institutions, but it showed something possible under the system.

The fact is that a revolt needs a political body, it needs leaders, ideology, supplies, and most of all, a model of some kind of functional society once the revolt is victorious. Let's take the case of Spartacus; they had leadership, arms, military training, and a background of dispair. They succeeded, but later the lack of a clear and feasible political project made things end with six thousand crucified on Via Apia.

The typical slave in the States had a tough life, but some kind of protection and bonds, including family bonds inside the institution that contained him or her. Any troublesome slave will be, in the long run, sold to a tougher master, thus breaking all the bonds that were the only valuable thing in their lives.

Then, having a revolt, who would had lead them? which weapons could have used the rebels? to whom would had been aimed the violence? what would be the expected result? once that revolution triumphed, what would had society looked like? everybody friendly and equal? the old masters saying "we were wrong, excuse us" and singing with their old slaves "heigh-ho, heigh-ho" like Snow White's Dwarfs?

The slaves in the States had no collective option. Slavery yes, slavery no, was a subject exclusively for whites. Whites dealt with it, whites solved the puzzle after a war were whites killed whites almost exclusively. Those things happened as slaves were not invited to the party, that's a probable cause of they not rising up "even when the victorious Yankee armies were approaching in the War of Secession". Remember that loyal states were let to keep their slaves, and later got economic compensation when slavery was abolished.


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## Arrius

As far as I can see, a good summing up, *aleCcowaN.* 
There was a slave song at the end of hostilities that went: "The master runs, ha-ha, but we all stay, ho-ho. It must be now that the Kingdom's coming and the Day of Jubilo. There's wine and cider in the cellar and I guess we'll all have some, but I s'pose it'll all be confiscated when the Yankee soldiers come". Not quite like the work chant of the seven dwarfs, you mention, but does sound pretty pacific, doesn't it?


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## aleCcowaN

Yeah, it really does! In some way, yankies went bringing warfare and to change life as they knew so far.

I always compare the end of black slavery in USA (1863-65), four years of war, lots of dead ; the British colonies (1837), manumission, lots of money; and Argentina (1813 to 1853), neither cost lives nor money. 

We had "Freedom of Wombs": every person born from January 1st 1813 on, was free citizen. The masters could take advantage of the labour of those free children until they were 15 provided they had light duties and they got an education in return. Also, the masters had to fork over some petty money to the remaining slaves, for them to enjoy on Saturday or just save it to buy their freedom. As a result, there were many slaves and slave trade in the 1820s, but it began to dissapear in the 1830s. Our 1853 Constitution says:



> *Section 15*
> In the Argentine Nation there are no slaves: the few who  still exist shall become free as from the swearing of his Constitution; and a  special law shall regulate whatever compensation this declaration may give rise  to. Any contract for the purchase and sale of persons is a crime for which the  parties shall be liable, as well as the notary or officer authorizing it. And  slaves who by any means enter the nation shall be free by the mere fact of  entering the territory of the Republic.


Some troubles arose with Brazilian slaves running into Argentina to gain freedom, and there almost were a war, so "the mere fact" remained just an idea, but anyway, much better than killing 2% of white population just for having second class citizens during a century.

Sometimes, all these ruminations come back to my mind as I try to learn why some good ideas never become true, be it yesterday, today or tomorrow.


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