Why didn't slave owners just cry "class warfare" in the 1860s?

[moondust]

That would have gotten Lincoln off their backs, right?

[lonestarnot]

1. They prollee did. Didn't work then either.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. If they knew about framing, they certainly would have.

[Zax2me]

3. So, if I make less than what - 250k - I'm a slave?

good analogy.

[sudopod]

6. Will you lose everything you own if you don't work 60 hours a week? nt

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Nah. Lincoln was a good Marxist.

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln

[tblue]

5. Excuse me. You mean "Job Creators."

Show some respect to the ones who make everything possible. ;)

[moondust]

7. I stand corrected.

It was an honest mistake, I swear. :scared:

[DrunkenBoat]

8. In their case it was inter-class warfare: northern industrialists v. large southern landholders.

Lincoln had been a lawyer for the railroad interests & financiers, you know. Those people were his funders & backers.

There are no good guys in history.

[markpkessinger]

12. With both sides using the poor as cannon fodder . . .

. . . not unlike the way working and middle class tea party sympathizers are used as cannon fodder for the Koch brothers.

[Nye Bevan]

9. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there *was* some "warfare" over this issue? (nt)

[FarLeftFist]

10. Actually they did cry class warfare.

A HUGE majority of white southerners DIDN'T own slaves yet wanted slavery to remain to bump them up the social ladder. As long as slaves were around they weren't the bottom of the barrel.

[Renaissance Man]

11. Precisely!

White Southern planters convinced poor white Southern non-slave owning farmers that they, too, could be rich, if it wasn't for that pesky federal government wanting to keep them from owning slaves.

It's sort of like the shit that the Republican Party feeds to the idiot Teabaggers that are poor. If only the federal government would just not regulate and cut taxes for the wealthy, they, too, could one day become wealthy.

Same shit. Different toilet.

[eallen]

13. They did. They bitched about the industrial north, and wrote screeds for southern freedom.

Really.

The antebellum apologists for the south used "freedom" and "liberty" as their shibboleths as much as their intellectual, tea party descendants. And had no qualm in doing that, in their struggle to preserve a slave system.

Another historical fillip: Marx reported on the Civil War for the New York Tribune. He was a fan of Lincoln, and sent Lincoln a congratulatory letter toward the end of the war. Were Lincoln running for office today, he would be excoriated for palling around with Marx(ists).

:evilgrin:

:hippie:

[white_wolf]

15. In fact here's the letter:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

[rhett o rick]

14. If the wealthy in the North needed slaves to work their factories there never would have been a

Civil War.

[DrunkenBoat]

16. Free labor is more profitable. You're not responsible for them in old age.

Long-term personal relationships with slaves make it more difficult to kick them to the curb when they can't work anymore.