Deflection

The silence is deafening. This is how I felt at about 3:00 today setting in my truck in the packing lot of Melrose National Historical Park. As the handout states, “a cotton kingdom estate.” Just imagine a 132-acre plantation with a labor force of 28 people. (The owners, the McMurrens, had five plantation with 1,000 acres and a labor force of 300 people.). As I sat there, it is in the late fall, and I am probably the last person of the day to visit the park, so there is no one around, except for a park employee. Therefore, to see the park without anyone in it, was deafening. I could only imagine this location with 32 people living there and all of the noise coming from people that are working, with some of the family members enjoying the times that they are doing, assuming that there was no guest.

The aristocratic life style. In general, was it so bad? In the north and in Europe, there was the aristocratic life style, but with workers and not people being enslaved. (I noticed today that they talked about the blacks being enslaved, and not slaves.). Where woman were given a much bigger role in the family that they have today. It was women that ran the house hold and workeing with her husband on the executive functions of the family. Yes, if a person wants to look at a woman that ran the house hold and supported her husband, you do not have to look any further than Martha Washington. She was not just there to run the house, but she supported him as a general and president. This does not let the man of the family off the hook, since he was in control of everything that when on in the family, and that means making sure that the wife has everything that she needs to run the house. It goes to the very principal that the wife makes the man. Unlike the information revolution, where women seem to be equal to the man, the roles of the aristocratic life style where the roles of the husband and wife were clearly defined. Furthermore, even today, a good wife can make for an outstanding family.

However, no person should be owned by another person. In 1482, Columbus brought blacks to America; and, on August 20, 1619, the first blacks were sold in Jamestown as servants. In 1860, just before the Civil War, the US population was 31.4 million, with 3.9 million enslaved. Those that were in slaved, they really had it nice in the northeastern part of the southern states, with most of them being house hold slaves. They were well respected by there owners. Once again, it is easy to look at George and Martha Washington, since they freed all of there slaves the time of Martha’s death. Some of these slaves were emotional when they lost their masters. In these cases, they were well treated.

Unfortunately, especially in the cotton fields, the enslaved persons were treated in inhumane. As I read today, the enslaved were not getting enough to eat, so a black went into a pen of about 300 chickens and took one to have something to eat. When another person saw him take the chicken, he reported the incident and the slave got 100 whippings over his back. Today that was a photo showing the back of a black that probably received 100 whippings many times before the photos. It is no wonder that the was ready to fight against slavery when photos of this type of inhuman activities were taking place all of the time.

At the time of Lincoln’s assassination, he was working on a plan for the freed blacks; but, since he was working on it with only a few days after the end of the Civil War, there is not much known about his plan. It is speculated that part of his plan was to return some the black back to Africa. President Andrew Johnson did nothing for the blacks. President Ulysses Grant did work on the freed slaves; but, with his presidency surrounded with so much controversy over so many items, he really never had a chance to focus on the freed slaves. As for the blacks, their destiny was like a ship without a rudder. There really was not much for them to do, since there was no jobs for them. In some cases, they were worse off than being enslaved. This is really as sad part to the end of the Civil War.

The cotton gin was patented in 1794 by Eli Whitney, and it could replace fifty workers. But, since the South was so into the plantation environment, they were not going to bring the gin in and layoff their enslaved personnel. However, with the economic forces with prove that the gin would be less expensive than the enslaved, the blacks would have slowly been brought into the American society, instead of dumping them into the society. Did just dumping the blacks into our society create the problems that are faced today? This is a hard question to answer, but dumping them into the society was not the answer. Lincoln had it correct, there needed to be plan to bring them in to our society.

Roger