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A conspiracy theory I've been working on. Mostly new material.
SoreShoulder
Member Posts: 3,148 ✭✭✭
While the details I've worked out may be found lacking by serious historians, the blockade of Southern shipping by the North, the South's embargo of its own cotton, and the destruction of the Southern economy by Sherman mean we should not take for granted that all of today's American blacks are actually the descendants of slaves.
Many if not most slaves may have starved to death during the war. Food may have been shorter in the South than the history books tell. Besides that, many slaves were probably sold during the war so the South could buy weapons. The blacks we have today may be in part descended from replacements secretly brought in with the government's help so the South could continue to be the source of the nation's cash exports.
The slaves could have been replaced in postwar generations by large Southern landowners who needed a workforce, didn't want to pay white men a fair wage, and might have hated the free men of the South for helping lose the war. Rich industrialists might have also brought in a few. Colonial Africa might have been a much worse place than the racist US at the time and might have looked attractive to some Africans even if they knew our society would not treat them as equals at the time. Deals might have been made between the US government and some of the Southern planters even before the end of the war to help them rebuild their economy and keep the South exporting the agricultural goods which gave the US its trade surplus.
The replacements could have come from Liberia, or they could have been schooled in how to talk like ex slaves by Liberians. They could have been running from colonial oppression like the Belgian Congo or German Angola or tribal warfare, starvation, or disease. They would have paid to learn how to talk like Americans.
If the government aided and abetted large southern landowners in re-establishing the nation's cash exports, they may also have aided them by getting Segregation passed into law until the slaves' replacements learned to speak without foreign accents. Maybe I'm obsessed with my theory but when I hear recordings of civil rights leaders speak of segregation when it was still in living memory, they seem to be hiding something.
It is well known that the South tried to practice "Cotton Diplomacy" by embargoing its own cotton crop from Europe. There were also said to be vigilance committees of Southerners who blocked cotton exports in order to manipulate the value of certain bonds. They probably had to import at least some of their food even in good times because it may have made more sense to do so than to grow food on land that was well suited to more lucrative crops. If there was no money coming in, there would have been no way to buy food. The North also blockaded Southern ports which would have hampered all exports and imports.
The rich plantation owners would have realized they should sell their slaves if they could. If they didn't get money for weapons, they were probably going to lose and have to give the slaves up for free. They knew they could always buy more slaves after the war even on credit because it was known the South was good for making money. The South would not be able to export goods grown by slaves until after they won the war.
The slave traders could have run the Northern blockade easier than other goods. Bales of cotton and hogsheads of tobacco need to be loaded onto ships in ports but slaves could walk to any point on a coastline and be rowed out to waiting ships in small boats. They might have been sold throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Perhaps the war would have ended sooner if this had not been taking place because the South would have run out of money, weapons, and food faster.
The Emancipation Proclamation may have been an attempt to render the slaves less salable to governments that had not yet recognized the Confederacy, in order to deprive the Union's enemy of gold which they could use to buy weapons.
Sherman's march may have also been an attempt to break the slave pens so the slaves could not be sold. It destroyed much of the South's economy so it would have worsened starvation. Sherman's soldiers probably weren't carrying or foraging enough food to feed all the runaway slaves. It may have happened after the Emancipation Proclamation but the slaves might still have been valuable on the black market.
Many if not most slaves may have starved to death during the war. Food may have been shorter in the South than the history books tell. Besides that, many slaves were probably sold during the war so the South could buy weapons. The blacks we have today may be in part descended from replacements secretly brought in with the government's help so the South could continue to be the source of the nation's cash exports.
The slaves could have been replaced in postwar generations by large Southern landowners who needed a workforce, didn't want to pay white men a fair wage, and might have hated the free men of the South for helping lose the war. Rich industrialists might have also brought in a few. Colonial Africa might have been a much worse place than the racist US at the time and might have looked attractive to some Africans even if they knew our society would not treat them as equals at the time. Deals might have been made between the US government and some of the Southern planters even before the end of the war to help them rebuild their economy and keep the South exporting the agricultural goods which gave the US its trade surplus.
The replacements could have come from Liberia, or they could have been schooled in how to talk like ex slaves by Liberians. They could have been running from colonial oppression like the Belgian Congo or German Angola or tribal warfare, starvation, or disease. They would have paid to learn how to talk like Americans.
If the government aided and abetted large southern landowners in re-establishing the nation's cash exports, they may also have aided them by getting Segregation passed into law until the slaves' replacements learned to speak without foreign accents. Maybe I'm obsessed with my theory but when I hear recordings of civil rights leaders speak of segregation when it was still in living memory, they seem to be hiding something.
It is well known that the South tried to practice "Cotton Diplomacy" by embargoing its own cotton crop from Europe. There were also said to be vigilance committees of Southerners who blocked cotton exports in order to manipulate the value of certain bonds. They probably had to import at least some of their food even in good times because it may have made more sense to do so than to grow food on land that was well suited to more lucrative crops. If there was no money coming in, there would have been no way to buy food. The North also blockaded Southern ports which would have hampered all exports and imports.
The rich plantation owners would have realized they should sell their slaves if they could. If they didn't get money for weapons, they were probably going to lose and have to give the slaves up for free. They knew they could always buy more slaves after the war even on credit because it was known the South was good for making money. The South would not be able to export goods grown by slaves until after they won the war.
The slave traders could have run the Northern blockade easier than other goods. Bales of cotton and hogsheads of tobacco need to be loaded onto ships in ports but slaves could walk to any point on a coastline and be rowed out to waiting ships in small boats. They might have been sold throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Perhaps the war would have ended sooner if this had not been taking place because the South would have run out of money, weapons, and food faster.
The Emancipation Proclamation may have been an attempt to render the slaves less salable to governments that had not yet recognized the Confederacy, in order to deprive the Union's enemy of gold which they could use to buy weapons.
Sherman's march may have also been an attempt to break the slave pens so the slaves could not be sold. It destroyed much of the South's economy so it would have worsened starvation. Sherman's soldiers probably weren't carrying or foraging enough food to feed all the runaway slaves. It may have happened after the Emancipation Proclamation but the slaves might still have been valuable on the black market.
Comments
Cotton Diplomacy may not have been so much about getting Europe to help the Confederacy or manipulating the worth of cotton backed war bonds as it was about the fact that many in the South probably didn't trust the owners and sellers of the bulk of the cotton, the rich plantation owners.
The plantation owners who sent their sons to West Point often were the great grandsons of British loyalists. They may have wished they could become lords with titles and special rights. They may have wanted to return to an alliance with Great Britain or maybe another royal power like Spain which was not yet hostile to slavery, in order to obtain a powerful defensive military alliance.
Or, the rich planters may simply have wanted to bring back settlers along with the guns they planned to buy with the cotton crop. They could bring technically trained men from educated but overcrowded European countries who could help give the Confederacy an industrial base as well as a militia for defense and for controlling the slaves. If the rich planters had won the war, they could have then squeezed out the previous militia, the small farmers, and replanted their land with cash crops.
So if the rest of the South didn't trust the planters, they might have kept the planters from exporting any of their cotton even when people were starting to starve and it was clear Europe wasn't going to help. Come to think of it, the South must have realized before they started that Europe wouldn't cave because the pressure would be greater on the South because they were going to be at war.
It is said the Confederates in Lee's invasion of the North in 1863 subsisted on apples foraged from Northern fields. It was probably not an isolated incident, being one of the most important campaigns of the war.
So, no cotton went out, consequently no money or food went in, consequently, the slaves were starving while at the same time not being good for anything until the war was over because of the Northern blockade and Cotton Diplomacy. So, why not sell them? They would be easier to secretly load onto ships than bales of cotton and they wouldn't need a port. But I sense that the rich planters didn't like it one bit and said, "if you make us sell our slaves, we'll get you some new ones after the war." So one additional reason they might have repopulated the plantations is spite.
There is also little risk that speaking about it will prevent anyone from profiting from reparations. Many non-slave-descendants may support reparations because they think all that money being given to people will stimulate spending and make us all wealthier. However, if any of my theory is true, there's people who know about it and have evidence. Some of them are still rich and don't want to get soaked in order to pay people who don't deserve it. So they will find a way to release a little evidence such as letting an authentic old letter come to light describing the postwar re-population of plantations. They could conceal it in an original copy of "Gone With The Wind" and sell it to an antique shop.
The plantation owners got workers but did not have to give jobs to the very people who had prevented them from selling their cotton and buying guns and winning the war.
If the slaves had been sold off, you'd think there wouldn't be so many here.
But if the big planters found volunteers to replace the sold ex-slaves, no one would be the wiser.
They could let the few remaining authentic ex-slaves do the talking until the rest learned to speak like Americans.
The war was very expensive. It left individuals and states impoverished. The Federal Government or their own states would probably have wanted to tax or fine the former large slaveholders heavily and their own people might have robbed them or burned them out if everyone knew they were sitting on a great deal of gold.
Interesting. Over the entire slave trade barely 200k were brought here.
Also, the 3/5ths compromise meant political representation depended on an accurate count of the number of slaves, so it's not likely that the numbers in the country at the start of the C i v i l war are being grossly inflated.
Well, almost anything, I guess.
Brad Steele
From: "https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-so-many-african-americans-have-nigerian-ancestry/ar-BB17N5jM"
"In the largest DNA study of people of African ancestry in the Americas, researchers found an overrepresentation of Nigerian genetic ancestry in the United States and Latin America compared to the proportion of enslaved people shipped to these places from regions within modern day Nigeria. While the finds from the genetic study are largely supported by established narratives and historic records of the transatlantic slave trade, there were also inconsistencies.
The researchers put forward a new narrative explaining the variations in African ancestry in the Americas and how these variations were shaped by the transatlantic and a later intra-America slave trade whose impact was only recently understood.
The study which involved the DNA of 50,281 people of African descent in the United States, Latin America and western Europe was carried out by the consumer genetics company, 23andMe. The genetic data was analyzed against historical records of over 36,000 transatlantic slave trade voyages that happened between 1492 and the early 19th century.
The overrepresentation of Nigeria ancestry is said to be a result of intra-American slave trade between the British Caribbean and mainland Americas.Previous genetic studies have shown that African Americans in the US have more African ancestry from populations that lived near present-day Nigeria than from populations that lived elsewhere in Atlantic Africa (Western and west central Africa). In agreement, it was shown in this study Nigerian as the most common ancestry within the US, the French Caribbean, and the British Caribbean.
This is despite, nearly half of the slaves who landed in the United States coming from Senegambia (Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal) and West-Central Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola), a considerable number of the remaining half had their origins in Ghana as well as Ivory Coast.
The overrepresentation of Nigeria ancestry reported was found to be a result of the later intra-American slave trade between the British Caribbean and the mainland Americas.
The intra-American trade which was an inter-colonial trade involving over 11,000 slave voyages within the Americas stretched as far as Boston to Buenos Aires and also Atlantic and the Pacific littorals. Intra-American trade records show that while the transatlantic voyages were going on, slave traders transferred nearly 500,000 slaves throughout the Americas with most intra-American voyages originating in the Caribbean."
Want to read some interesting stuff, read about the civil war of 1642 - Sep 3, 1651. Many of the people on the losing side (my ancestors included) fled to the "new country" because the roundheads (soldiers of the queen) were hunting them. My ancestors arrived between 1653 and 1656, changed their name in fear of the roundheads here in this country, who still had the authority of the "queen".
I'm thinking the people who represented the queen in the new country wanted to continue ruling the South and that is one primary reason for the Civil War.
Info: More Indians married blacks than whites because Indians were treated as slaves and seldom respected by whites. Ever notice that most people who claim Indian heritage always say their grandmother (normally false) was married to an Indian. Females are harder to trace than males because of the name change.
They really needed money and if they didn't get it, they were going to lose the slaves anyway. What if Cemetery Ridge or the Hornet's Nest had been shelled with several times more artillery? So even though the planters were rich, they were a little behind in artillery and other modern weapons.
They could always buy more slaves after the war with credit because of their proven ability to make money doing what they do. They probably maxed out their credit as it is. Taking a step to help win the war, like selling slaves and buying weapons, would strengthen their credit because of the better chance of paying back.
Someone with more time and skill for historical research could figure out what we know they bought from Europe and what it cost. .577 was the official Southern caliber because of English muskets.
Then there's the fact that they were probably the first to realize when the war was lost because the planter class were traditionally the people who got military educations at West Point and of course, the Citadel, from which the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. So they would want to sell them for any price they could because they were going to lose them anyway.
Last, they were easy to smuggle for a reason I hadn't thought of before. A rowed ship cuts a much lower profile than a tall sailing ship so can run blockades easier.
And one more thing. The historian on Ken Burns' "The Civil War" said the Southern militia system had been a joke before John Brown's raid. So those slaves were easy to keep in line, meaning they are not the ancestors of the people we have today.