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UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
David Barnett, Ph.D. - Uncle Tom's Cabin - Confede
Mark Lawrence refers to the confederate constitution which allegedly protected slavery. This is not exactly true. It forbade interfering with the right of property in slaves. It was open to congress to purchase all the slaves and free them. Since the constitution also forbade the importation of slaves, state purchase would have ended slavery altogether. In other words, the Confederate constitution hedged the issue of slavery and merely forbade the confiscation of slaves without compensation. Hard line abolitionists would have opposed compensating slave owners on the principle that even a good-faith purchaser of stolen goods is required to return them and his only recourse is to the original thief. But slaves, by 1860, commanded huge prices and confiscation would have been as economically devastating as war. Imagine the effect of the government confiscating your home, requiring you to pay rent to live there and repay the mortgage which you still owe. While slavery was a divisive issue, the more important cause of the civil war was the dispute over taxation. So important and vexing was it that the confederate constitution forbade to impose protective tariffs. The proximate cause of the secession and war was Lincoln's insistence on fulfilling his backer's wish to re-impose a high tariff on imported manufactures. In the face of this, not even promises of a constitutional amendment barring interference with slavery could avert the secession [which gives the lie to any assertion that slavery was the cause of the war].
Slavery and the American Civil War
Dr. David Barnett -Uncle Tom's Cabin Slavery was not the cause of the Civil war. During the program we were given a key quote from Lincoln: "If I could preserve the union without freeing a single slave, I would do so". So the war was to "preserve the union". But why did the southern states want to secede? The issue was taxation. The south was principally agrarian. The north was industrializing rapidly. The nascent industries wanted high tariffs on imported manufactures, but the southerners, justifiably, saw these taxes as an arbitrary transfer of wealth from the south to the north. In 1832 South Carolina was on the verge of secession over the high tariffs. The crisis was averted by the passing of a staged reduction in the the tax. The problem continued to smoulder, however, as there was continued pressure from the northern manufacturers to raise the tariffs. In some ways the slavery issue became a political proxy for the more fundamental free trade issue - an irony since slavery is the antithesis of free trade. Although slave owners comprised only about 5% of the south, they were a very influential part of the establishment hierarchy. What is often forgotten is that there was a very vigorous abolition movement in the south. There is no way that slave owners could have mustered support for secession on this issue alone. The election of 1860 saw Lincoln elected on a pro-tariff platform and this set the secession clock ticking. Politicians scurried to avert the crisis - even going so far as to propose a constitutional amendment which would bar the Federal government from interfering with slavery. But since slavery was not the issue, and they would not back down on the tariff, nothing came of it. Lincoln is often praised for an allegedly conciliatory inauguration speech, but his first act as president was to sign the raised tariff into law. Had he declared that he would not do so, he could have preserved the Union without a fight. Lincoln's famous 1863 "emancipation proclamation" is not what it appears, for it only "freed" slaves currently under confederate rule. Slaves in Maryland, for example, were not declared free. It was a strategy of foreign public relations [successfully turning Britain from sympathy with the confederacy] and destabilizing the slave areas of the south. There is no doubt that the end result of the war was the nominal abolition of slavery. I say nominal, because racial prejudice and poverty coupled with southern resentment probably retarded true emancipation for another hundred years. Lincoln's successful PR had transformed the southern struggle for freedom from oppressive Federal taxes into a war to free the slaves. The south was destroyed and the "nigger" was to blame! If Lincoln had rejected the tariff, 640,000 soldiers and many more civilians, would have been spared. Slavery could not have survived the new economics of manufacturing and mechanized agriculture. With hindsight, all the slave owners could have been bought out for a small fraction of the cost of the war. Had there been no war, the influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" would have continued to grow. The slaves would have been freed without the acrimony and resentment.
Peter Bolt: Uncle Tom's Cabin
I find myself disagreeing with the sentiments questioning an "all white" discussion on the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was written by a "white" for "white readers"" so it is not absurb that it should be discussed by "white academics". Multi cultureism came at least 100 years later.
Mark Lawrence - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Another point I'd like to make on the program on Uncle Tom's Cabin, was on the subject of the book's influence on the start of the Civil War. I take the point that Abraham Lincoln said "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it". But if you are using this you have to put it in context. He appended his bulletin with "I have he stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free." If you argue that the northern rank and file primarily volunteered to save their country, you have to remember why their country was breaking up. The Confederate Constitution gives the reason why it members seceded; it explicitly protected slavery. The South believed that its peculiar institution could not be protected in the long term given the poliical climate of the United States in 1860-1. I would say that to a not-inconsiderable extent, this political climate was created by the impact on popular thinking of "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Mark Lawrence - Transatlantic
I have one small critiqe of the early part of the program on the background to the book. I felt it covered the external influences on the American debate on slavery too briefly. I think that you have to see Uncle Tom's Cabin as a continuation of a much wider transatlantic debate on human rights.
Isobel Middleton - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Whilst I found today's discussion interesting, I was dismayed and rather surprised that all the featured panelists appeared to be white middle class academics. As I'm sure there is no shortage of black academics who may have added a great deal to this cultural, historical, economic, social and political discussion, I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that we may not have moved much further on since the era in which the book was published. Come on BBC. You can do better than this! We're a great big multi-cultural world out here.
Derek Spedding - Uncle Tom's Cabin
As usual, an excellent discussion. Mr Bragg intimated that not enough time was given to Frederick Douglass, so why not a programme devoted to him. If it only encourages people to read his autobiographical Narrative, that would be reason enough. An account of the brutality of slavery from one who knows. Look how Douglass learnt his ABC, as he puts it. If only Jefferson had known Douglass - he would have had to eat his words!
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