The right for states to do what they want means some states are going to have shyt laws and practices.
Let's also not forget that the invention of the cotton gin made owning, feeding, and clothing slaves a financial liability. So it was all a moot point. Slavery was ending whether they liked it or not.
OMG...LOL.
Have you read and learned about how the enslaved were treated? Clothing, feeding? They barely did that -- many of the enslaved were half-naked and many of the men didn't even have pants - and wore long shirts -- no underwear.
Men without Pants: Masculinity and the Enslaved – AAIHS
In 1860 --- with the invention of the Cotton Gin -- slavery was more popular than ever in the U.S. -- with no sign of declining. They were fighting to EXPAND it.
The Slaveholders were busy hatching schemes to seize Cuba, Mexico, and parts of South America in order to expand slavery.
Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America: "I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 106.]
To even speak out against slavery branded you an enemy of the South.
Atlanta Confederacy, 1860:
"We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South, who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing."
And the enslaved did more than pick cotton -- they were skilled men and women. I do not understand is why there are so many that seem to think that once the cotton industry died out so would slavery. Why on earth would a slave only be capable of working a cotton or any other field for that matter. Slaves could easily be used in mines, RR work and more skilled trades. It's easy enough to learn that some of the most skillful tradesmen in the South were slaves. I've seen sale bills for skilled coopers, blacksmiths, silversmiths etc.
Pick up a book --- or go talk to any historian that specializes in slavery and the Civil War.
Clothing:
"In every slave-holding state, many slaves suffer extremely, both while they labor and while they sleep, for want of clothing to keep them warm."
"We rode through many rice swamps, where the blacks were very numerous, great droves of these poor slaves, working up to the middle in water, men and women nearly naked."
Mr. Bouldin said "he knew that many negroes had died from exposure to weather," and added, "they are clad in a flimsy fabric, that will turn neither wind nor water."
"The apparel of the slaves, is of the coarsest sort and exceedingly deficient in quantity. I have been on many plantations, where children of eight and ten years old, were in a state of perfect nudity. Slaves are in general wretchedly clad."
Theodore Dwight Weld, 1803-1895. American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.
Food
:
By confining the slaves to the Southern states, where crops are raised for exportation, and bread and meat are purchased, you doom them to scarcity and hunger. It is proposed to hem in the blacks where they are ILL FED."
"My blood has frequently run cold within me, to think how many of your slaves have not sufficient food to eat; they are scarcely permitted to pick up the crumbs, that fall from their master's table."
"Thousands of the slaves are pressed with the gnawings of cruel hunger during their whole lives."
Speaking of the condition of slaves, in the eastern part of that state, the report says,--"The master puts the unfortunate wretches upon short allowances, scarcely sufficient for their sustenance, so that a great part of them go half starved much of the time."
Mr. Asa A. Stone, a Theological Student, who resided near Natchez, Miss., in 1834-5. "On almost every plantation, the hands suffer more or less from hunger at some seasons of almost every year. There is always a good deal of suffering from hunger. On many plantations, and particularly in Louisiana, the slaves are in a condition of almost utter famishment, during a great portion of the year."
"The slaves down the Mississippi, are half-starved, the boats, when they stop at night, are constantly boarded by slaves, begging for something to eat."
"As a general thing on the plantations, the slaves suffer extremely for the want of food."
Theodore Dwight Weld, 1803-1895. American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.
US still got Confederate flag and statues everywhere !
