William Feltman Quotes
I am surprized this does not hurt the feelings of the fair Sex to see those young boys of Fourteen and Fifteen years old to Attend them, [their] whole nakedness Expos’d, and I can Assure you It would Surprize a person to see those damn black boys how well they are hung.
When the Union Army had taken Richmond—the Capitol of the Confederacy—the Lieutenant had been invited to dinner at one of the Virginia plantations while slavery was still legal, and slaves served the dinner. The general (but erroneous) belief that Black males were “well hung” as compared with whites tended to make white observers notice the large size Negro penises when they saw them and often to perpetuate that as is the case with this quotation. It seems to be human nature to observe, notice and perpetuate instances of what one believes more often that that which contradicts our beliefs. In actuality Blacks as a groups have an average penis diameter that is very slightly less than whites and an average penis length that is longer than whites—by only one-tenth of an inch. See http://www.penissizes.org/average-penis-size-ethnicity-race-and-country
William Feltman The journal of Lieut. William Feltman, of the First Pennsylvania regiment, 1781-82 : including the march into Virginia and the siege of Yorktown Philadelphia : Pub. for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, by H.C. Baird, 1853
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Sexual abuse of female slaves was very common in the American South. See {642027} and {642028}. In the 1930s over 2,300 formerly enslaved African Americans were interviewed by members of the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal agency in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. This particular abuse was one of the most common reported. Ironically, the Southern justification for segregation and prohibition of inter-marriage even through the 1950s, was to prevent the great “crime” of miscegenation which white slave owners and their male friends committed by raping and sexually exploiting the female slaves. Today, as DNA analysis shows, most traditional Southern “white” families have recent Negroes in their ancestry.
This is but one of the quotations of someone who was a major force in perpetuating the old slavery era myth that “Negros” were not only inferior to whites, but they were unable to develop morality or repress their sexual urges. Dr. Howard was generally castigated by his professional colleagues, but he was quite popular with the general public for whom he wrote a number of books and magazine articles.
As just one example of Southern States' reasons, see {583044}. Many of the Northern States had passed laws declaring everyone in the state was free and making it illegal to return or assist in the returning of escaped slaves. The Southerners got the Federal Fugitive Slave Act passed which required all Americans to assist in recapturing escaped slaves. It was the Northern States who claimed states' rights were being trampled. The South was vehemently opposed to States' Rights when it came to allowing individual states to decide who was free and who was not. The Southerners had only one fundamental reason for secession—the maintenance of the Negro slavery system on which much of their economy depended as did their sociology, culture, and way of life.
Newsletter of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans
This quotation is very important for in the 20th century Southern revisionists made a major effort to ennoble the Confederate cause by claiming that Slavery and the desire to keep Blacks in bondage and unequal was just of byproduct of the reason for secession—States Rights and the decentralization of government. Many of the school history books were changed to reflect this claim. However, each of the seceding states left a legislative record of secession and the reasons for it. In all cases, Slavery and the preservation of Slavery in the South was the central and in most cases the only reason stated. In this case, Texas made its reasons clear. There was nothing noble therein but racism and racial exploitation.
The other Southern States had similar legal principles while still maintaining the hypocrisy that their legal system was grounded on Christian morality.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
Much of the South was so insular that people knew nothing about the notion of abolition and just assumed that no one would ever consider freeing the slaves. Many never knew that it was the South that first fired on the Union troops and flag. If the North won the war, the assumption was that Northerners would then own the plantations and the valuable slaves. In reality, while all slaves were emancipated in the South, very few plantations and farms were confiscated from their Southern owners by Northerners despite the fact that there was political pressure in the North to confiscate the land of all rebels who had committed treason and use the value to repay the Union bonds and care for the wounded Union veterans and the widows of dead Union Soldiers. Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
The reason for secession was the threat to slavery, which was a great threat to the slave-owners of the South. However, the non slave-owners had a very strong vested interest in maintaining slavery in that most Southerners had been brought up with such a negative view of Blacks that they were paranoid of Black equality or even worse some Blacks in positions of authority over whites. At the time, it was the Republican Party that was the advocate for minority equality and the Democratic Party embraced the racists. The parties would flip flop after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ending legal segregation was passed by a Democratic President and a Democratic Majority Congress.
The President had frequent stag (men only) dinners of national notables. At this dinner, the Chief Justice was seated close to the attorney who was representing the Southern segregationists in the Brown v Board of Education case that was before the court. Warren had objected to being in such close proximity to one party to a case before the court. Eisenhower, had taken Warren aside to smooth any bad feelings and thinking Warren might be distressed by the attorney’s racist and segregationist views tried to explain the Southern point of view. Although Eisenhower was not a racist or segregationist himself, he had worked closely with Southerners his whole career, and thought he understood them. Warren was so surprised by the President’s insensitive remark, that he noted it and revealed it in his memoirs.
See {642028} & {642029} for another quotation relating to this terrible abuse.
Nott, a Southerner who owned slaves, was not only an apologist for slavery as this quotation illustrates, but also wrote on his theories of race. Nott was one of the writers about race that Darwin singled out as being completely wrong in 1871: The Descent of Man.
One of the puzzles of American Civil War history has been how the poor whites of the South (who provided most of the military manpower that fought and died in the Civil War) were persuaded to fight against a much stronger, more highly industrialized, and more affluent few, that had many more soldiers. One of the main reasons, though difficult for us to understand today, was that the Southern leadership actually persuaded the Southerners that men from the North were cowards and lacked the character, virtue or will to fight. The general “party line” of the South was that one Southern solder was worth more than 5 Northern Soldiers,
Civil War Union Army Lieutenant who served with the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment. He tape a very detailed diary of his wartime service that is a major Civil War historical source.
