Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 April 25

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April 25

How much of a factor was slavery in Southerners' desire to expand the US?

How much of a factor was slavery in Southerners' desire to expand the US in the 1840s and beyond? I know that James K. Polk (the pro-expansionist candidate) won in various northern US states in 1844 as well, but I am curious specifically about Southerners' motives for supporting US territorial expansion. Was it only about slavery for them or did they also want to achieve something else as a result of US expansion, and if so, what? Futurist110 (talk) 00:35, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

From my recollections of history classes, basically all Americans wanted to expand westward, it was just that the Southern states wanted that expansion to allow slavery in at least some of the new states. --Khajidha (talk) 00:40, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Did this always remain the case or did this change in the 1850s? Futurist110 (talk) 03:03, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

In the early-to-mid 1840s, many northerners were more interested in expanding claims in the Pacific Northwest area (as in the slogan "54°40' or fight!"), while southerners were more interested in annexing Texas. Polk favored the south over the north in annexing Texas (and supporting Texas' claims over the area between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers), while compromising with the British over Oregon/Columbia. After the Mexican war, northerners retaliated with the Wilmot Proviso. There wasn't much territorial expansion in the 1850s, but (mostly) southerners were in favor of the annexation of Cuba, with the Ostend Manifesto and constant threats of "filibustering" expeditions by imitators of William Walker. The southerners were in part motivated by general ideas of Manifest Destiny, I assume, but the main reason why they urgently wanted to expand to specific warm-weather areas at that specific time was of course to expand slavery. Just before the onset of the Civil War, the Crittenden Compromise failed mainly because of the issue of whether slavery would be allowed to exist in territories that would be acquired in the United States in the future. By that point, the controversy over slavery in existing U.S. territories had somewhat exhausted itself, and the way was open for a practical compromise there -- but no compromise was found to be possible with respect to future territories... AnonMoos (talk) 05:11, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this information! Anyway, it seems really stupid from the South's perspective to shoot themselves in the foot like that by seceding. That allowed the North to shove abolition of slavery down their threats after defeating them in the American Civil War--as well as also forcing them to adopt the 14th and 15th Amendments. Had the South never seceded, slavery in the US could have possibly survived up to the 20th century. Given the extreme difficulty of amending the US Constitution, it would have been extremely hard to successfully pass and ratify the 13th,1 4th, and 15th Amendments had the South not shot itself in the foot and seceded prior to this. Futurist110 (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The South was gambling that the North would not have the resolve to carry the war to its end. --Khajidha (talk) 21:46, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense. In hindsight, though, it was obviously a wrong calculation. Futurist110 (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

If they had left Fort Sumter alone, maybe things would have turned out differently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:35, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I strongly doubt it since Southern secession was unacceptable to the North in any case. If anything, the attack on Fort Sumter might have only increased the support for the Confederacy in the South since it might have motivated several additional Southern states to secede afterwards. Futurist110 (talk) 07:10, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

It might not have made a big difference in the end, but there would have been less support in the north in 1861 for beginning major military operations if southerners hadn't been the ones to start the shooting. The decision by South Carolinians to obligingly be seen as the first to start shooting is one of number of decisions by southerners which looked good for them in terms of immediate politics, but which seem rather unwise in a long-term perspective... AnonMoos (talk) 19:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

• It was a HUGE issue and one of the driving factors in the scramble for western settlement was to establish future states as either slave- or free-states. By 1819, (with the admission of Alabama) the U.S. had 22 states; exactly 11 free states and 11 slave states, and thus the U.S. Senate was evenly divided on the issue of slavery. The whole idea of the Missouri Compromise which admitted both Maine and Missouri, the idea was to maintain that balance, as neither side wanted the other to get any advantage in abolishing (or not) slavery on a national level. Things remained roughly in balance until 1848 (when at that point there were 15 free and 15 slave states) and the Mexican Cession and Oregon Territory suddenly almost doubled the size of the U.S., and decisions needed to be made on how to maintain the careful balance, thus the Compromise of 1850 that admitted California as a free state. One of the complicating factors in Southern Secession coming when it did, which is not often talked about, is the admission of several free states in the late 1850s, once Minnesota and Oregon joined as free states, it brought the Senate balance to 18 free/15 slave. The free states, being higher population, always controlled the House, and once the Senate was clearly going to remain a free-state body, the South had no legislative recourse to stop abolition if it ever came up.

Actually, even with a hostile Congress, the Southerners could have tried relying on the US Supreme Court to strike down any federal attempts to abolish slavery nationwide. If the Supreme Court would have been filled with originalist Justices, they would have probably believed that the US Congress doesn't actually have the authority to abolish slavery nationwide in the US in the absence of a constitutional amendment to this effect. Futurist110 (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The Presidents nominate justices and the Senate confirms them. There'd be a bit of a lag as Jusitices died or retired, but it would have only been a matter of time. The tide was turning. --Jayron32 18:59, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Makes sense, I suppose. Futurist110 (talk) 19:38, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Futurist110 -- such possibilities were rather theoretical, since from 1852-1860, there were southern-sympathizer presidents in the White House, as well as solid southern and southern-sympathizer majorities in the Supreme Court and the Senate, leaving the House of Representatives as the only branch of the federal government which was sometimes not under the effective control of the South. And southerners largely had themselves to blame for losing the presidency in the election of 1860, since they insisted on splitting the Democratic Party in two over abstract principles of pro-slavery extremism, in order to sabotage the presidential campaign of Stephen A. Douglas. AnonMoos (talk) 20:18, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Douglas would have lost the election even if the Democratic vote had been united, no? Indeed, I was under the impression that even if the entire anti-Lincoln vote would have all went to one candidate, Lincoln would have decisively lost the popular vote but still won the electoral vote. Futurist110 (talk) 21:31, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

That assumes that everything would be the same if the Democratic party hadn't split (so that it's meaningful to aggregate the vote totals between the two factions), which is highly doubtful. At a minimum, the Constitutional Union party would probably have been less prominent (might not have existed at all). AnonMoos (talk) 00:56, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

It wouldn't have mattered whether the Constitutional Union Party would have existed since Lincoln won an absolute majority of the vote in all northern US states other than New Jersey. That in itself would have been enough to deliver victory to him in 1860 even if all of the supporters of the Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats, and Constitutional Union Party had united around one candidate that year. Futurist110 (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Also, it was widely admitted, even by anti-slavery advocates, that the U.S. constitution as it existed in 1830-1860 simply did not give the federal government the power to abolish slavery within the states (except perhaps inside federally owned facilities such as arsenals, dockyards, etc). That's why William Lloyd Garrison was constantly ranting about how the constitution was an evil pro-slavery document, and abolitionists should avoid corrupting themselves by strictly avoiding involvement in American politics... AnonMoos (talk) 20:18, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

How exactly was Garrison's strategy going to help abolitionists, though?

Also, for what it's worth, Lysander Spooner actually did argue that slavery was unconstitutional even before the American Civil War, but based on what you said here, his theory of interpretation was probably a fringe one. It's quite interesting that even though living constitutionalism could have theoretically become very popular with abolitionists in the pre-Civil War era, most abolitionists preferred to stick to originalism even though that meant that they could not abolish slavery nationwide in the US. Futurist110 (talk) 21:31, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Garrison's strategy was intended to keep abolitionists morally pure and uncontaminated while they thunderously denounced the evils of slavery. The Republican party renounced any intentions (or ability) to tamper with slavery inside the states where it already existed, but was firmly resolute in seeking to prevent slavery from spreading to new areas. AnonMoos (talk) 00:56, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

It sounds like a recipe for failure, to be honest. Futurist110 (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Which in turn made it really, really stupid for Southerners to secede from the Union since they would have remained perfectly capable of blocking an anti-slavery US Constitutional Amendment for an extremely long time to come had they remained in the Union. Futurist110 (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Both some northerners and some southerners thought that if slavery was not allowed to expand into new territories, then ultimately it would become less economically significant and less politically entrenched. In the pre-war period, the threat was not really an anti-slavery constitutional amendment, but rather simply a president and executive branch under him who would passively withhold the federal support for slavery which slaveholders had grown accustomed to. Unfortunately, in the run-up to the 1860 election, prominent southern politicians and spokesmen were issuing ever-more extreme demands for the protection of slavery at a time when many northerners were increasingly tired and fed up with the supposedly-final Compromise of 1850 being modified by a series of unilateral concessions to the south (the Kansas-Nebraska act, Dred Scott decision etc), and had concluded that if the preservation of slavery demanded suspending the ordinary rules of democracy (as in the Lecompton constitution, the caning of Sumner, the lack of free speech rights in much of the south), then it probably wasn't worth preserving... AnonMoos (talk) 10:23, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

There's a big difference between slavery being less economically significant and slavery being outright abolished, though. Even with slavery becoming less important, the South could have still blocked any efforts to abolish slavery had it so desired. Also, thanks for your analysis and explanation here. Futurist110 (talk) 07:10, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

If slavery became less economically significant and less politically entrenched, then at that point it would be a manageable problem (rather than an intractable problem, as it increasingly came to be seen over the period of the late 1840s and the 1850s). As Abraham Lincoln phrased it, the territorial containment of slavery would create a situation where "the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction". That's what many northern slavery opponents were hoping for, and what many southerners were afraid of... AnonMoos (talk) 10:15, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, I suppose. Still, it is worth noting that, even in this scenario, fears of slavery's ultimate extinction would have probably been overblown. I mean, even when other parts of the US were abolishing Jim Crow, it required rulings from the US Supreme Court for the Southern US to do the same in the mid- and late 20th century in real life. I suspect that something similar would have occurred in regards to slavery in this scenario (as in, slavery would remain in the South long after it would be a distant memory elsewhere in the US)--though whether there would have actually been court orders to force the Southern US to ultimately abolish slavery would have been quite a separate issue. Futurist110 (talk) 00:56, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Hence Rhett Butler's comment, "All we have are cotton, slaves... and arrogance." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:34, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

• The 1850 compromise did allow for "popular sovereignty" to decide the issue of slavery in the new territories, but it became quickly clear that the North, with its higher more mobile population, was settling the new territories faster than the South, and as such, it was rather obvious that they were only going to increase this legislative advantage. The South had only the Presidency left in its pocket, and it was lucky to have had a series of either openly sympathetic (or at least non-interventionist) presidents to balance the growing Northern advantage. The election of Lincoln in 1860 meant they lost even that office. That was exactly why they started seceding shortly thereafter. --Jayron32 12:32, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Was it actually a widespread belief in the Northern US that the US federal government could abolish slavery nationwide without a constitutional amendment to that effect, though? Futurist110 (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Apparently it was a widespread enough belief to cause a bunch of states to leave the US over said belief. --Jayron32 18:59, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I mean, one would think so. Else, what would have been the logic in seceding? Futurist110 (talk) 19:38, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Did any country ever have a sex ratio for middle-aged people lower than Russia had in 1950?

According to the map here, for people aged 25 to 49 in 1950, there were only 62 men for every 100 women in Russia:

https://i.redd.it/bvyej003gwv11.png

Other parts of the Soviet Union--such as Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia--fared slightly better than Russia, but not too much. Germany also suffered heavy losses for its middle-aged male cohorts, but not as severe as Russia and various other Soviet SSRs.

In turn, this raises an interesting question--were there ever any countries that had an even lower ratio of males to females for their middle-aged people (in comparison to Russia in 1950, of course)? If so, which countries and when? Futurist110 (talk) 18:47, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Paraguay after the Paraguayan War. Look at the Aftermath section of that article, and even better at the Spanish article [1]. Xuxl (talk) 19:10, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

What does the Spanish article about this say? For some reason, I can't use the Google Translate function with the operating system that I am currently using. Futurist110 (talk) 19:37, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The main points of that article are that around 50% of the country's population was lost to the war, of which 90% were males. After the war, the country's population was down to 150-160,000, of whom 28,000 only were adult males. As a result of the lack of males, polygamy became widely practiced for a time. --Xuxl (talk) 12:41, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

OK; makes sense. Futurist110 (talk) 20:12, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

17th-century French literature

The intruductory sentence reads: "17th-century French literature was written throughout the Grand Singer of France …" – What is that term Grand Singer supposed to refer to? I briefly checked on Google, and was unable to find a single relevant hit! Thanks in advance for any support!--Hildeoc (talk) 20:25, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

It was a piece of vandalism that unfortunately remained uncorrected since last October. The intended word was of course Grand Siècle, the "great century". Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:40, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I think there's a good chance that wasn't vandalism, but rather someone's spell checker firing inadvertently. It may have been autocorrected, or the editor mistakenly thought it was a typo. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 21:54, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

The role of blank slatism in decolonization

How much of a role did blank slatism (as in, the idea that all groups of humans have the same potential in regards to intelligence and various other traits; in other words, the opposite of hereditarianism) play in creating large-scale political and public support for decolonization?

I know that some advocates of colonialism and/or imperialism previously used the alleged inferiority of certain races and/or ethnic groups as being a reason as to why colonialism and/or imperialism by "superior races" is justified and/or necessary. In turn, this makes me wonder if there was likewise a similar use of blank slatism (as in, the opposite of hereditarianism) in advocating in favor of decolonization. Futurist110 (talk) 23:10, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

If you look at the areas of major decolonization, they did not believe that all people have the same potential. In the colonies (to become the United States), the Constitution claimed all men are created equal, but in society it was clear that people were not equal. In India, people were very different based on religion and caste. In China, your heredity was very important. Throughout Africa, heredity decides if you are a superior or inferior race. That wasn't just then. It continues today. Racism is prevalent in the United States. The caste system is still very much in effect throughout India. If you aren't Han, you are inferior Chinese. Race wars, black on black, continue throughout Africa. Therefore, it is a whitewash of history to claim that the Europeans disbanded the colonies because they realized they weren't superior and suddenly felt bad about the whole thing. 68.115.219.139 (talk) 11:54, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

So, what was the main factor that caused Europeans to give up their colonies? Them becoming bankrupt as a result of two World Wars? The belief that all peoples should have the right to national self-determination regardless of what their average level of intelligence is? Futurist110 (talk) 04:57, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

It was not financially beneficial. The natives were fighting back. Suppressing them comes at a cost and that cost was too high. Note that wars were fought. Europe didn't decide colonies were bad and just quit. They fought for years to keep the colonies. You also need to keep timelines in order. The US revolution was 1765 to 1783. The Indian revolution was 1757 to 1947. WWI was 1914 to 1918 and WWII was 1939 to 1945. When India won their revolution, the momentum was set. Colonies knew they could fight and win. You can claim that England gave up on India because they couldn't continue fighting after WWII, but that doesn't mean that they gave up on colonialism because of WWII or that they suddenly saw all people as equal. It simply wasn't profitable in 1947 to continue using military might to suppress rebellions that kept coming up around the world. 68.115.219.139 (talk) 17:59, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's particularly relevant. At the height of European colonial power, notions of European racial superiority were mainstream, widely supported by academics in anthropology, and an important part of the ruling ideology. That is no longer the case. To what extent that change contributed to the end of colonialism I don't know, but the persistence of racism in the West, and the existence of similar attitudes in the former colonies themselves don't mean it had none. Iapetus (talk)

I brought up racism in America, India, China, and Africa. You response with "racism in the West". I do not consider India, China, and Africa to be "the West." The caste system of India is racism. The idea that Han is superior in China is racism. Ongoing acts of genocide in Africa are racism. In all cases, this continues with the belief that one race is superior to another, be it by color of skin or height or shape of nose. 68.115.219.139 (talk) 18:06, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I talked about "the west, and former colonies". America is in the West, and India and Africa are former colonies. In any case, I still don't see what the relevance is. Whether or not "Europeans stopped thinking they were superior" is completely separate from the existence of racism or racism-like attitudes or ideologies in other countries. Iapetus (talk) 09:05, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

While the Caste system in India may look like racism, it seems to be based more on social class. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:15, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

What is race ultimately than a bunch of sets of genetic clusters, though? I would presume that various Indian castes make up their own genetic clusters as a result of centuries or even millennia of little-to-no outbreeding. Futurist110 (talk) 00:58, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Correct. In India, caste is identifiable by sight. So, there are physical characteristics that identify caste. In the United States, "race" is very narrowly defined as "color of skin." Throughout the rest of the world, it is a complex set of physical attributes. For example, the Tutsi and Hutu consider themselves very different races. In the United States, they are all black. That causes problems because the war in Rwanda is clearly genocide, but how do you recognize genocide if you refuse to recognize that the two groups are two different races? There are attempts in the United States to tease out "race" and "ethnicity" into two completely different categorizations. That is limited to Hispanic without any real justification as to why Hispanic is ethnicity and everything else is race. 68.115.219.139 (talk) 12:24, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Another problem with that idea is that even given the same genetic potential, people in newly freed colonies may not have access to physical or educational resources to take advantage of that potential. Even if genetically you are the "next Einstein", you may wind up starving to death if food distribution in your country is very poor or you may make a living as a manual laborer if your society cannot provide the proper education to take advantage of your intellectual potential. --Khajidha (talk) 13:34, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh, certainly! This could be, for example, why Russia performed better on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA exam) in 2015 than it did back at the start of the 21st century. Russia's quality of life was poorer back in 2000 than it was in 2015. Ditto for other countries that saw consistent improvements in their PISA exam results over the last 15 or 20 years. Futurist110 (talk) 04:57, 29 April 2019 (UTC)