Nowadays Voodoo economics is a well-known phrase to question your political opponent’s intellectual ability or honesty. 150 years ago a Southern editorial said abolitionists’ claims that they wanted to free slaves was “moonshine philanthropy” – abolitionists really just wanted to transfer ownership to themselves. Who could think the North was going to add 3 million people to the free labor market?
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 11, 1863:
“Under which King?”
Several publications have lately appeared in the Western United States defending the institution of slavery upon grounds of Scripture and reason. The Yankees in general will say that the time for such discussions has passed. We agree with them in this. Whether slavery is lawful or unlawful is not the question now. Whether Scripture and Reason are for it or against it is a matter of entire indifference to infidels and madmens. The great practical issue is, who shall be the masters? The man who is absurd enough to believe that the Yankees intend the permanent emancipation of the negro is fit for a straight jacket. It suits their purposes at present to deceive the world with the pretence of a philanthropic mission, and, forcing the stolen blacks into the ranks of the army, to mock them with the name of free men. But, the subjugation of the South once accomplished, we should hear no more of abolition. The slaves would be taken from their present masters, it is true; not one Southern proprietor, great or small, would be permitted to own a single “chattel,” animate or inanimate; not a negro would be left him any more than any other description of property; but property of no kind would be abolished. It is not in the nature of the abolitionist, or any other thief, to abolish property. It is only a transfer to their own possession of the goods, lands, tenements, and negroes of their Southern brethren that they design and fully intend to accomplish. They have not gone to all the expense and hard knocks of this war for the gratification of any moonshine philanthropy. They mean to reimburse themselves for all their outlay to the last farthing. Any one who doubts that proposition may doubt that there are any such beings as Yankees.
Who knows better than the Yankees that the abolition of slavery in the Southern States would destroy forever the cultivation of the great Southern staples, and with it all the commerce and wealth of “this glorious Union?” It needs no books on slavery to convince them of its lawfulness or Divine sanction. They care not whether it is lawful, or has the Divine sanction or any other sanction. They simply understand that it pays, and anything that pays is their highest law and the only god that they worship.–The ruinous results of every attempt ever made under the sun to cultivate the earth, especially in hot countries, by free negro labor, is as familiar to their minds as it is to ours. They have no more idea of permitting the South to become a Jamaica or St. Domingo than we have. They will simply take the administration of the labor into their own humane and merciful hands. Of all the miserable victims of a Yankee conquest of the South none will be as miserable as the slaves. Of all the woes their race has ever suffered none will equal the horrors which will be piled mountain high upon their heads should they ever exchange Southern for Yankee masters. We have only to look at the cruelty of their ship captains to free white sailors, and at the marble hardness of heart which they have displayed in this war, to form a faint idea of the hell upon earth which awaits the negroes of the South should the Yankees once get them into their greedy and remorseless hands.
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150 years ago today Richmond commented on U.S. President Lincoln’s amnesty plan. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 14, 1863:
Lincoln’s message.
The comments of the European and Confederate press have had their influence upon Abe. He appears less of a jack-pudding in this message than he has done since he assumed the purple. He has probably been under the discipline of Seward or some other mender of “Cakeology. ” and we congratulate him upon the symptoms of improvement.
Of course the first thing to be spoken of in the immense progress made during the last two years and a half in subduing a rebellion which was to have been subdued in one month with 75,000 men. He now really thinks he is near the end, and therefore feels himself justified in prescribing terms and publishing an amnesty. Every man who will “come in,” it seems, is to be safe in life and and have back all his property, (except negroes,) or unless it be already seized on by the vultures of confiscation — that is to say, he is to have back none at all. He must also take an cath, prescribed in a huge proclamation, which he publishes, whether as part of the cath or not, we are not advised. Everything goes on swimmingly with Abe. He has plenty of money, plenty of loyal subjects, and plenty of everything else that is good. But we must defer further comment for the present.
