Off the wall and bizzare perhaps, BUT: what would you have done about slavery in the 1800's?

Had you been alive and kicking back then?

I asked this because, it seems to me in some ways, we face a similar dilemma on other issues this very day.

HOW do we get a government to stop doing something we see as damned wrong and awful???

WHAT would you have done back then to stop slavery, and are we doing enough today to stop not only this war but the war on the rights of many other people in this country (health care, poverty, racism, etc and so on)?

YES - I know slavery was FAR worse, I am not here to debate which thing is worse than another thing. But the issue of the day for us is war, health care, poverty (and others) - and the issues of the day for liberals back then was slavery.

I guess, perhaps, the question is - how vested are we emotionally on current issues compared to how vested we feel ourselves on past issues, and how do we project what we would have done then into what we should do now?

Perhaps all this came about because of the many Cindy threads today :)

SO I go back again to this: what would you have done then to stop the evils of slavery, and is it any different than what you would do today to stop the evils of murderous war (and other issues)?

Underground Railroad.

:)

Back then, if you lived out west it did not really affect people. In the south if you were against it you really took your life into your own hands.
IF you lived on the route, you would help with the underground railroad.
I could honestly say my family did not live here then.
But, seriously, knowing myself, if I had the opportunity to help, I would. I just don't feel I have the makeup of someone who could not help.

Just because you have figured out that something is wrong does not mean other people get it as well.

Social progress is made by increasing numbers of people coming to realize a new thought or idea. Be it the realization that a long held moral position is hurting someone or that new ways need to be considered. Not everyone is on the same page of the book of enlightenment. It takes time to move an entire society forward. Sometimes kicking and screaming. And sometimes those that are kicking and screaming manage to overwhelm the forces trying to drag the society forward.

Today everyone sees slavery as evil. Then slavery was seen as part of the social backdrop. It took a major war to shift our society on this seemingly clear issue. The things that seem obvious to you may not be so to others.

How 150 years changes things:evilgrin:

Considering I'd be slaving away on someone plantation.

That being said, I would have kissed the feet and been forever grateful to ANYONE doing ANYTHING to get me out of a horrendous predicament not of my own making, like the troops in Iraq.

There were plenty of blacks that were freemen (and women) who were very active in fighting slavery back in the day.

but if I couldn't fight for myself, I would be grateful to those who fought on my behalf.

Feed anyone who showed up hungry, turn a blind eye and fail to report any of them.

Why?

I'm a history buff, particularly Civil War. It's cool that your family has a living memory of this.

My branch of the family moved from Virginia to Kentucky, took their slaves with them, and then ended up fighting on the union side. The rest of the family were firm Virginia Confederates. Weird.

wait..that's what happened...of course that wasn't the only reason for the Civil War...

So if it came to it I would defend my country and the Constitution...

slavery, as evil as we all understand it to be now, had a tradition of hundreds of years behind it by 1860. Even if people didn't approve of it, and there were doutlessly many who didn't, no one had ever seen a day when slavery was not legal. Even the "free states" had black codes where free black people could be risking arrest just by their very presence in some places.

Elijah Lovejoy was an abolitionist in Alton, Illinois. He was killed by a mob in 1836 because they wanted to intimidate him into not printing anti-slavery materials. We all might think we would have been right there with Lovejoy fighting off the mob, but who is to say the best we could hope for back then wouldn't have been to get out of the mob's way? And can any of us say definitively we wouldn't have joined the mob against Lovejoy? I'm just glad I wasn't put in a place to have to make such a decision.

And neither does anyone else answering on this thread.

and supported slavery on the grounds that it would be politically inexpedient to oppose it. In fact, I would have tried to expand slavery into the north in order to reduce regional tensions and to keep the powerful southern landowners from being angry with me.

















:sarcasm:

And if it didn't exist then I'd invent it!

Choo, choo!!

that is comparable?

For the record, I am not. I am very involved at the grassroots level in my county Democrats, in a very red county. But that does not make me brave.

Cindy Sheehan is brave. Not many of us are brave, really.

Worked quite hard for the Nancy For Congress campaign, canvassed, sent her around 50 dollars(Alot for me since I'm a college student), went to the candidate forums, asked good questions, even got a T-shirt that said to vote for her. I'm planning on doing more when things settle down, like possibly volunteering at her constituient office in Topeka, but that's like an hour if not more away so I'm not sure if that's viable. I want to set up some candidate forum(s) at my old high school and the other high school in the area, get her in there and get the kids in the Government class to listen to her, ask her questions about Congress, etc. Gets them interested in politics and seeing as how a lot of them will be seniors or juniors makes them just that much more likely to vote for her since they met her.

I'm also a member of my counties local Democratic party and if my precint didn't allready have a Captain I'd the Captain, and I'm only 19. ;)

it makes you involved.

I take issue with your statement that you would have invented the Underground Railroad.

Many 19 year olds have put their lives on the line for their beliefs. The people who ran the underground railroad did that.

I accept that individual's answer. My answer would be the same, and yet, I have never faced a life challenge in which I had to sacrifice something major (hopefully it never will, but if it does I like to think I would meet that challenge).

I like to think I would have been a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but I can never really know until I would be faced with personal loss for doing so, if I would indeed do it.

So, maybe just take the answer with a grain of salt, knowing there is no real way that anyone who hasn't had to "gut check" themselves through real life, can answer that question with any assurance.

But I think I would have been a conductor on the UR. The person above thinks so, too. Let's all hope & pray we never have to find out what the real answer is.

But as sarcastic, witty, and hysterical as I might be from time to time you bet I would have gladly stood up and faced hanging as I fought for the rights of slaves. And you can sure as hell bet that I would have been a conductor had the railroad been going while I'd been alive.

and knowing some laws are just wrong and trying not to get caught breaking immoral laws.

That would pretty much make me a sneaky lawbreaker and that would have been uncomfortable but what needed to be done.

That we only flatter ourselves to say we're certain we'd stand and fight an evil system if it didn't threaten us directly. A lot of the opposition to racism was based on some pretty ugly racist precepts, too. Applying modern sensibilities to historical settings simply doesn't work; the comfort of knowing you're on the right side of history is entirely different from believing you're on the side of the angels in a contemporary issue.

Many of those who opposed slavery paid dearly for their beliefs and came to their viewpoints slowly over a long evolution of the issue. Would the me born in 1963 oppose slavery if I woke up in 1858 one morning? Yes. Would a me born in 1810 oppose slavery in 1854 if I woke up a few months after the passage of the fugitive slave act? Hopefullly, but I'm not certain who I'd be or what I'd believe if I came from that different time.

I'd have enlisted in the Union Army. I'd have been a vocal supporter of John Brown.

and in truth, the only thing we can say is what we'd like to think we would have done, but how can we apply our 21st century morals and values to the 19th century? It's impossible.

FWIW, most union soldiers DID NOT got to war to stop slavery, and the vast majority of the confederate soldiers didn't hold any slaves.

William Lloyd Garrison was a good man, and while not working, I probably would be writing small pamphlets to spread some ideas on the side like socialism and racial equality and equality of the sexes.