It's Confederate History Month in Dixie

[PanzerJaeger]

What he said was more like hiring Slaves as paid Workers.

He said "Not that it was remotely likely to happen, but break up the plantations and divide the land up among the slaves."

And thanks for the pre-edit correction.

[Beskar]

The slaves already did the work on those plantations, why shouldn't they be entitled to keep what they produced?

I read this statement as Serfdom, basically. The slaves become peasants and they work the lands and they keep what they produce, but they pay/rent or give a certain percentage of the crop to the owner. Another way of doing it would be the employ the slaves as labourers, so they can continue working the land as workers, not as a slave.

And thanks for the pre-edit correction.

Had me confused at first at what you meant, then I remembered I made a comment that it wouldn't be Marxism as the state would just take the land and it wouldn't be owned by anyone.

[drone]

Slavery in the US colonies evolved from indentured servitude (both European and African). Once the debt was paid, the indentured servant was freed but generally did not become prosperous as the best land was already taken. The participation of former indentured servants in uprisings like Bacon's Rebellion led to the switch from indentured servitude to racial slavery. I'm surprised Megas hasn't brought this up, since the presence of the Natives led to the institution of slavery in the US. Slavery didn't become a legal reality in the US colonies until around 1650, about 150 years behind the rest of the Americas.

Politically, the plantations were not going to be broken up when the US was formed since many of the FFs were plantation owners themselves.

Look to Zimbabwe to see what happens when you split up a large working farm and give it to people that don't have the proper knowledge to run it. There is more to farming than dropping seeds in the ground and harvesting the results.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Because it wasn't theirs.

It is one thing for society to decide that slavery is not right and should be abolished. It is completely different to then simply take land from property owners who legally owned their land and distribute it to other people.

It would be as if the president emancipated your dog, and, despite the fact that owning your dog was legal yesterday, today the government decides to take half of your possessions and give them to the dog. It screams of banana republic politics.

That's a really creepy analogy to try to draw, as that's exactly the attitude the slave owners had to their "possessions", but your analogy wouldn't even be close to correct unless the dog was sapient and provided the labor that amounted for half of your possessions.

I'm aiming for precisely the analogy Beskar mentioned - the slavery situation was just a really cruel version of serfdom. The solution to serfdom is to grant full ownership to the land the serfs were already working. Why can't we do that for slaves? It is obvious that those who kept slaves should release them and be on the hook for providing for them, as the slaves provided for their masters previously.

One only needs to look South of the border.

Care to elaborate, because I don't know what you are referring to.

Look to Zimbabwe to see what happens when you split up a large working farm and give it to people that don't have the proper knowledge to run it. There is more to farming than dropping seeds in the ground and harvesting the results.

The situation there is quite different, as the confiscated farms were not given to people who had previously been working that land as slaves.

[drone]

The situation there is quite different, as the confiscated farms were not given to people who had previously been working that land as slaves.

I don't think the results would be any different, at least for the big plantations. What happens to the livestock and farm equipment? Is that confiscated as well? How is it divvied up? Small farmers with 1 or 2 slaves probably imparted more knowledge, and had to trust their slaves more (and probably treated them better overall), so these slaves would have more success on their own. The big plantations? A few bad harvests and then dead soil.

Since we are talking 1788 in this little hypothetical and not 1850s deep South, what would happen to slaves working as blacksmith help, or as a dockworker, or any other non-plantation related work throughout the 13 colonies? Would the freed slaves get the business? What about the slave labor gangs that weren't tied to a plantation, but rented out across several?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

They should be at least paid the wages they would've received had they been white laborers while they were slaves, maybe throw in the cost for some remedial education, and any physical damages received beyond normal labor such as rape or the lash.

Then the freed slaves could purchase their own land/means of production.

[drone]

They should be at least paid the wages they would've received had they been white laborers while they were slaves, maybe throw in the cost for some remedial education, and any physical damages received beyond normal labor such as rape or the lash.

Then the freed slaves could purchase their own land/means of production.

You are obviously just trolling now.

[PanzerJaeger]

That's a really creepy analogy to try to draw, as that's exactly the attitude the slave owners had to their "possessions"

That is because they were possessions under the law.

but your analogy wouldn't even be close to correct unless the dog was sapient and provided the labor that amounted for half of your possessions.

Then make it your plowing horse. The type of animal is not really important to the point I was making. Slaves were animals... property... under the law. It's great that the law changed, but punishing those who acted within the old law is in itself illegal.

I'm aiming for precisely the analogy Beskar mentioned - the slavery situation was just a really cruel version of serfdom. The solution to serfdom is to grant full ownership to the land the serfs were already working. Why can't we do that for slaves?

I feel like I made my point earlier, but I'll take a stab at it from another angle.

The land legally belonged to the owners, not the slaves. Neither morality nor the ability of the slaves to succeed on their own has any real bearing on the situation. In owning slaves, the owners were not violating any laws. Retroactively punishing the owners for acting in a completely legal fashion violates Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.

It is obvious that those who kept slaves should release them and be on the hook for providing for them, as the slaves provided for their masters previously.

Not really. While a perfect example of such a situation does not present itself, ex post facto case law suggests that the owners would not be oh the hook for providing for them, which is aligned with the historical outcome.

Care to elaborate, because I don't know what you are referring to.

Mexico.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That is because they were possessions under the law.

Then make it your plowing horse. The type of animal is not really important to the point I was making. Slaves were animals... property... under the law. It's great that the law changed, but punishing those who acted within the old law is in itself illegal.

I feel like I made my point earlier, but I'll take a stab at it from another angle.

The land legally belonged to the owners, not the slaves. Neither morality nor the ability of the slaves to succeed on their own has any real bearing on the situation. In owning slaves, the owners were not violating any laws. Retroactively punishing the owners for acting in a completely legal fashion violates Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.

Not really. While a perfect example of such a situation does not present itself, ex post facto case law suggests that the owners would not be oh the hook for providing for them, which is aligned with the historical outcome.

I don't have a problem with punishing people who were committing horrible injustices even if it was legal all the time, as such a legal protection would be unjust and thus no valid law at all.

Mexico.

Could you actually elaborate for those of us who don't know Mexican history very much? Was there a situation in Mexico where freed slaves were given the land they worked as recompense for being held as slaves?

[PanzerJaeger]

I don't have a problem with punishing people who were committing horrible injustices even if it was legal all the time, as such a legal protection would be unjust and thus no valid law at all.

While such sentiments are admirable, "horrible injustice" is of course subjective. That is why the law exists; and under your scenario, your solution is unconstitutional.

Could you actually elaborate for those of us who don't know Mexican history very much? Was there a situation in Mexico where freed slaves were given the land they worked as recompense for being held as slaves?

Well, in Mexico after independence from Spain, various groups of people such as the Indians and country peasants were essentially endentured slaves to large land owners. While technically not slaves under the law, "debt slavery" was a common term among the populists of the time. After the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the politicians decided to correct this horrible injustice by simply taking land from the owners and distributing it among the workers through the ejidos system. Naturally, productivity and output collapsed due to the reasons Drone mentioned. (Laborers are not farmers; and it takes more than working on a farm to understand how to farm.) Worse, unlike America's black population after slavery was abolished who were at least mobile and could seek employment/opportunities elsewhere, those Mexican's were tied to their land and lives of subsistence farming. (With the exception of black sharecroppers, who shared much the same fate as the Mexican peasantry.) In a bid to increase productivity, the Mexican government abandoned further land distribution in the 90s.