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Book About an Ignored Aspect of Emancipation is Politically Charged From Many Angles
The end of slavery in the United States led to anarchy and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of black Americans claims a new revisionist history of the Civil War.
Instead of a granting former slaves a glorious moment of freedom, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation condemned millions to a life of disease and hunger says historian Jim Downs in his new book, ‘Sick from Freedom’.
Scouring through obscure records, Professor Downs has revealed that freed slaves were subject to outbreaks of cholera and smallpox as they attempted to start new lives for themselves and that thousands starved to death.
Writing about the period of 1862 to 1870, Professor Downs claims that one million of the four million salves former slaves freed by Lincoln’s 1863 executive order died or got sick.
As the anniversary of President Lincoln’s order approaches, Mr. Downs, 39, is part of new school of thought re-addressing commonly held beliefs about the history of emancipation.
‘Some did not care and abolitionist, when they saw so many freed people dying, feared that it proved true what some people said: that slaves were not able to exist on their own.’
Professor Downs paints a desperate picture of freed families staggering away from southern plantations and finding themselves in Union run ‘contraband camps’ struggling for food and living in unsanitary conditions.
His book points out the irony that these camps were sometimes no better than the freed slaves previous living conditions and that the only way out was to offer to return to the same plantations from which they had escaped.
Troy
June 17th, 2012
In honor of Rodney King (Rest In Hell)
“Can’t we all get along”?
Annie
June 17th, 2012
Well duh, every history student remembers the misery of that camp where Scarlett had to be rescued by the honorable Big Sam.
Bad Brad
June 17th, 2012
OT, #88 finally got it done. And on fathers day.
CrustyB
June 17th, 2012
Lincoln’s initial thought was to send the freed slaves to South American colonies or back to Africa. But Frederick Douglass gave him the stink-eye and Lincoln relented.
BTW the same law that allowed slaves to become citizens is the same law that makes the kids illegal aliens squirt out become instantly legal.
Chuck U Farley
June 17th, 2012
So? I bet the same thing happened after the fall of the Roman Empire.
And if you read Lincoln’s 1863 ‘executive order’, commonly know as the Emancipation Proclamation, you will find it only freed the slaves in the states and territories that were not under Federal control. Namely, the states in rebellion.
The 13th Amendment freed the slaves. If the learned Professor gets these simple things wrong, I don’t have a good feeling about the rest of the book.
And ‘one million…got sick’ is very, very vague. People get sick all the time and it has nothing to do being freed. And to get sick within an eight-year period is something that has pretty good odds for anyone during that time. How many times were there cholera outbreaks in New Orleans before emancipation?
Whoever said, “Lies, Damnable Lies & Statistics” hit the nail squarely on the head.
serfer62
June 17th, 2012
Oh, the slaughter
all of the blacks born prior to the Civil War DIED!!!
Unslung Hero
June 17th, 2012
Lincoln “freed” the slaves to put economic pressure on the South, not because he was concerned about them. So many “freed’ slaves followed Sherman on his “march to the sea” that he had their mules shot to stop them. States like Missouri wanted to become a “free state” not because they opposed slavery in so much as having slaves around really killed the “wage base” for whites. Illegal aliens do that today! The Civil War has many myths…. depends on your political bias… or lack of..
dapenguin in Alaska
June 17th, 2012
or my fav fact.
Grant still had slaves at the end of the war.
somewhere a lib just popped a blood vessel on that one.
Or how about the reason for the NY riots. Yankees did not want to go to war so they paid someone of lower status to go in their steed.
This went down the chain to the poorest who at the time were Irish and thus said forget that I aint going to fight for this and ….
or
or
Do you think the truth will ever be written about the Civil War?
Was Lincoln a hero or soemthing else?
hmmmmm
Unneutral
June 17th, 2012
Some people, like democratic voters, will always need someone to tell them how to think ’cause they are unable to do it themselves.
Maudie N Mandeville
June 17th, 2012
#3 and counting!
I would put our accomplishments against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln – er, make that Johnson and FDR.
I luv Bacon
June 17th, 2012
Just beatiful. More reparations coming for lazy bigoted succubus’.
“You have to pass it to find out what’s in it”
h/t One sick bitch
simply enraged
June 17th, 2012
And Professor Down’s credentials are? His sources are? The context is? His previous publications reveal what about him?
xthred
June 17th, 2012
We were lied to in history class.
Maudie N Mandeville
June 17th, 2012
It’s always best to write history 150 years after an event so as to speak directly to the witnesses.
But nothing will ever equal Democrat Major Owens, who said that during the African slave trade more than 200,000,000 people were thrown overboard while ferrying them across the Atlantic to be purchased as slaves. The only way this is believable is if there was an Obama economics advisor on board the ships.
TigerEyes
June 17th, 2012
How much money do these new found “Black Victims” think they can extort from the rest of us for this Fairy Tale of injustice?
TN Tuxedo
June 17th, 2012
Waitaminit….
Aren’t the libs currently making the same claim that Blacks are going to die if they are taken off Welfare and, to quote Star Parker, “kicked off Uncle Sam’s Plantation”?
When an entire group of people that have spent most – if not all – of their lives under the administration of tyrants who cared more about the profit their servants provided them than the servants’ freedom, suddenly releasing them into the world without the necessary faculties for success can be very dangerous to them.
They found themselves instantly homeless. They had to learn how to be free. Part of being free is making decisions for yourself. And for the most part, they had never made decisions on their own.
But like they say, “Freedom isn’t free”.
jwm
June 17th, 2012
They found themselves instantly homeless. They had to learn how to be free. Part of being free is making decisions for yourself. And for the most part, they had never made decisions on their own.
Problem is, quite a few still haven’t figured it out.
JWM
Freddie Sykes
June 17th, 2012
RE: Writing about the period of 1862 to 1870, Professor Downs claims that one million of the four million salves former slaves freed by Lincoln’s 1863 executive order died or got sick.
This is one of the common methods of misdirections by statistics. He lumps the serious, “died”, with the vaguely defined, “got sick.” It is a meaningless statement without a breakdown of the relative sizes of the groups.
Another example would be domestic violence statistics: the majority of spouses were murdered, beaten or yelled at. The worse and rarest always gets top billing.
Unneutral
June 17th, 2012
My great-great granddaddy was robbed by a couple of blacks, all they got was his $12.00 and a cheap watch.
Where the hell is my compensation for this barbaric act?
Truth is; reparations are bullshit, I’m not the one that committed the mis-deed and you ain’t the one that got hurt. It’s a simple piece of history. Stop thinking you are ‘owed’ something you low life.
blahblahblah
June 17th, 2012
Liberals think Blacks are too stupid to make it on their own – we all know this already!
I mean sure, presenting an argument indicating Blacks should have probably never even been freed is a new one, but the insistence on cradle-to-grave entitlements and handouts, plus the constant dumbing-down of standards to meet Blacks limited capabilities, has already proven the Lefts lowly feelings towards the people.
If only “racist” Conservatives would get out of the way and stop trying to give Blacks Freedom, Education and Opportunities, everything could be great on the new Democrats Plantation!
bucketman
June 17th, 2012
T
FuzzyRider
June 17th, 2012
Why is this being called ‘revisionist’? I have dozens of books in my library covering the War Between the States and the reconstruction period that talk about the same things. The depth of economic dislocation in the defeated south was profound and adversely affected all of the inhabitants of that region for many years.
Grant did, indeed, have slaves (through his wife) until the 13th amendment forced him to free them. When asked why, he reportedly said that “good help is hard to find”. He also stated that “If I thought this was a war to free the slaves, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side.”
Always remember, the victors write the history!
NastyNat
June 17th, 2012
The picture on the cover of the book is also misleading. That is a picture of dead Union Soldiers being buried after the battle of Fredericksburg. I immediately recognized it as dead Union Soldiers being buried as I have seen that picture many times. I checked my books and indeed it is from the battle of Fredericksburg. The book is trash. Reference page 157 of The Atlas of the Civil War.James m McPherson
geofraz
June 17th, 2012
“I am not now nor have I ever been in favor of… (allowing) negroes (or) mulattos the right to vote, intermarry with whites… I am quite content assuming the superior position of the white race”
~ Abraham Lincoln in an 1858 presidential debate against Stephen A.Douglas, Dem.candidate
Let’s get a few more facts straight while we’re at it:
1) Only the wealthiest 4% of southerners ever owned slaves.
2) General (later President) U.S. Grant owned slaves until AFTER the war when the 13th amendment ended slavery. Though not proven, it is believed the the saying ‘Good help is hard to find’ is attributed to him when asked by a reporter why he didn’t free his slaves sooner.
3) Among southerners NOT holding slaves; CS General Robert E. Lee, CS General J.E.B. Stuart, CS General Fitzhugh Lee… and many more wealthy southern officers and gentlemen like my own great, great grandfather Dr. John Theodore Alston, a volunteer surgeon and farmer to the southern cause.
4) The Emancipation Proclamation only freed those slaves held in “The States of Rebellion” (that’s how Grant got off on a technicality). This was an attempt weaken the south’s cotton and peanut industy and pehaps inlist violent slave revolts to militarily weaken the Confederacy. It did not work. Most former slaves asked themselves “FREE? To do what? Starve? Or trek thousands of miles on foot in hopes that northern whites would treat them any better? Which brings me too…
5) NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) ~ Several northern states (notably Indiana, Illinois and Ohio) Adopted statutes stating that ” No new negroes or mulattos may immigrate to this state…” Etc. Freedom, yes! Intergration, no! That’s NIMBY.
6) Southern real estate and personal earnings on average were 10% higher than the northerners. Southern cotton and peanuts (and related products) were the nations number 1 and 2 exports with northern steel being third during peace time. The south owned 30% of railroad property and Shipping ports from Virginia to Southern Florida up through the gulf to Texas and would have England, Spain and Portugal as import/export partners. The northern ports only stretched from Maine to Maryland. Also the taxes and tariffs of southern trade would be lost if the south suceeded. The south was not only going to be far wealthier and internationally powerful than the north (despite the ignoarant, poor, helpless image the Union created of the south during ‘Reconstuction’) but the northern power structure knew they would have to war against them, at some point for the greatest prize: The gateway to Asia or what is now the western U.S. The winner of the war would become the most powerful nation on the planet. The losers would become it’s poorest and most oppressed region. Am I Wrong?!
Well, I could make a hundred points but BFH would probably ban me from IOTW. My info comes from many sources over the last 30 years. But If anybody wants an interesting read on the subject matter, try “The South Was Right!” By JR & WD Kennedy, Pelican Press.
reddecaesari
June 17th, 2012
i thought lincoln’s real job was a vampire hunter.
dapenguin in Alaska
June 18th, 2012
@geofraz
There should be no sacred cows on our side., We have exposed JKF and LBJ and FDR and MLK, so maybe the next person that really needs the magnifiying glass held close if AL. Honest Abe my butt
Friend of the family
June 18th, 2012
@reddecaesari
You are correct Reddecaesari, that was Lincoln’s primary occupation in addition to being President. However, the Civil War broke out leaving him with little alternative but to bury the stakes for a while. Sadly, after things had settled, and what really happened is the Southern vampires (due to lack of anger management)sucked most of the blacks blood in that this guy’s book which claims “they got sick,” and those blacks went on to become vampires too; however, before Lincoln could resume his duties as a non-discriminatory bloodsucker killer with new legions of night-starkers to slay, some creepy vampire turned human shot his butt at the theater. Now you understand the truth fully. Today, blacks still suck, but now it’s governmental money via tax dollars instead of blood (same shit in a way).
cracker
June 18th, 2012
Lincoln freed the slaves and on behalf of the white race,
You’re welcome.
Czar of Defenestration
June 18th, 2012
FREEDOM must be RAAAAAACIST!
beachmom
June 18th, 2012
This looks like nothing more than a justification for telling blacks they’re too stupid to succeed on their own and therefore they need affirmative action to even live.
Wonder what would have happened if all the slaves had been shipped back to Africa?
Maybe the tribes who had defeated their tribes and sold them to the slave traders would have taken them in and helped out?
IronyCurtain
June 18th, 2012
So they didn’t go straight from slavery to luxury? Shocking.
bigjoesaddle
June 18th, 2012
Get used to more people trying to convince us that “freedom” is not a good thing, since the Left’s plan is to take it away from us, bit by bit.