Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

The cotton industry and slavery were a very important part of the economy of Providence, RI. The Rhode Island cotton mills were supplied by Southern cotton produced by slaves and carried from the South on Rhode Island ships. Many of the southern slaves were kidnapped from Africa from Rhode Island slave trading ships. When the slave trade was made illegal, Brown was the first slave trader prosecuted. His brother, Moses Brown, a vehement abolitionist was one of the men who brought the prosecution.

After his Presidency, Adams served in the House of Representatives for many years and was thus active in politics.

Brown was the richest man in Rhode Island and made much of his money in the slave trade. This quotation shows that slavery was not completely a North verses South split. Northerners like Brown for whose family Brown University was named, was as virulent supporter of slavery as the most ardent Southerner.

This was written under the name of Ragnar Redbeard. There are a few scholars who believe that it was written by Jack London, but most credit Desmond.

This is one of the major reasons that Slavery was so hard to end in the South. At the time, the dollar value of the Southern slaves was greater than the value of all the land, factories, inventory, and capital equipment of the South. Slaves were not only capital, they were the largest component of Southern capital and Southern wealth. There were numerous ideas of paying slave owners for the freedom of their slaves, and if this was done, it would have been far less expensive in money alone than the Civil War cost. However, the Southern leadership, like Fitzhugh, were totally intransient with culture and customs—indeed the Southern concept of manhood—was dependent in Slavery. The result was that no compensation was paid to slave owners and the South was impoverished as a result of its capital loss and it would not recover for 150 years.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910

There is much valuable in old ideas. However every terrible idea in history is today an old idea and we certainly don’t want to respect ideas because they were old and revered or believed by our forefathers.

Clark, after becoming one of the richest men in America, wanted to go into National Politics, but most people hated him so he could never win elected office. At the time, Montana selected their Senators by a vote of the State Legislature. So Clark bribed enough members of the legislature to become the Senator. However, the bribery scheme became a public scandal and the Senate refused to seat him. So the legislature had another vote in the next legislative session and Clark won again, and that time no one had the evidence of the bribes. But then, more about Clark became known, and he just served the one term.

The Southeastern states were in a triple bind regarding slavery. The slave trade was ended so new slaves could not be imported. The existing slaves commanded much higher prices in the West and were sold to those destinations. Meanwhile, the European abject poverty provided a ready source of immigrants who would work for wages that were not much more than the cost of keeping and amortizing a slave. At the beginning of the Civil War, the death knell of Southeastern slavery had already been ringing.

In the first part of the 18th Century, one county in Virginia became a magnet for runaway indentured servants, The more runaways settled there the more empathetic and hospitable they were to new runaway servants. The culture at the time had identified knowing your place in society and accepting it. So a runaway indentured servant had renounced their oath and contrast to serve their masters, and hence were not Christians. These renegades were armed and there was not enough political will or support for forcing the County to comply with the laws and mores of the time.

This was the first public outing of Thomas Jefferson’s sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings.