Just came across this page entitled Letters of Note: To My Old Master (h/t Mike Godwin). It’s a letter from a former slave to his old master in August 1865. Because the Northerners aggressively stopped southerners from exercising their state’s rights to allow one person to own another, Jourdan Anderson had been emancipated and moved to Ohio. His former owner, a Col. Anderson, apparently wrote to him, requesting that he return to work on the colonel’s farm.
The whole thing is worth a read, but I like where Jourdan pretends to consider it, but asks for a token of the colonel’s good faith. He figures if the colonel isn’t willing to pay back wages, he has no assurance of future wages. Calculating past wages based on what he’d been able to land work for in Ohio, he asked for $11,680 (about $161,125 in current dollars) plus interest less deduction for clothing and a few other items.
No wonder guys like Col. Anderson was fighting for the Confederacy and that the Confederacy was so reluctant to give up slavery. The colonel had been legally allowed to steal $160k from Jourdan and his family.
But, sure, the Lost Cause apologists will tell you it was all about tariffs or some nonsense.
Update Apropos of this someone brought to my attention that the Tea Party of Tennessee wants to, among other things, change how we educate kids about the history of slavery in the U.S.
“My biggest concern is that important information is being omitted, which creates a negative light on our Founding Fathers,” said Tea Party activist Brian Rieck.
Many members of the group are asking Tennessee lawmakers to tweak textbooks so that doesn’t happen. Notably, they’re hoping to make changes in how slavery and encroachment on Native Americans are portrayed to students. “Slavery is of course portrayed in the textbooks nowadays I’m sure as a totally negative thing. Had there not been slavery in the South, the economy would’ve fallen,” Rieck said.
The Southern economy just couldn’t survive without rich white people stealing labor from poor black people.
That was a really great letter.
I take a quote that might be an appropriate 9and timely) note to the legislature and the Governor.
“Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.”
I’m interested to understand how you can at once (rightly) smash down with such vehemence the ability of one man to steal the fruits of another’s labor in the form of slavery, but with the same vehemence encourage so regularly the ability of a collective of people to steal the fruits of another’s labor in the form of taxation.
What is it that makes the justifications work? Is it the difference in scale? That while taxed, unlike the slave, we have some of what we earn, can move around as we please and have other liberties? Is it the class of the person taken from? Is it the kind of work the person does- meaning, physical vs. mental work? Is it the intended use of the money by the one(s) doing the taking? I find these recent blog posts stacked side by side to be fascinating.
I think it might have something to do with the fact that there is no property or ownership in the first place without the collective that’s doing the taxing. The laws that create and enforce property rights comes from the same bodies that create and enforce the taxation of the same property.
I don’t think the individuals taxed create the value they call theirs in some heroic, atomistic, individual way. They do it in an environment not of their own making. (E.g., they wouldn’t profit in similar fashion in, say, Somalia.) I’m spitballing here, but it might be useful to think of society as sort of a joint investor — they’ve created the laws and courts and police force that allow business to be conducted in the first place. What cut of the profits is society entitled to for its investment? 15%? Maybe 40% of the millionth dollar? Those are judgment calls, not theft, and I guess we elect people to make those judgments.
But, I guess it’s because the fruits are the result of many things besides solely the individual’s labor (or creativity or investment.)
That is a perfectly acceptable position, but it falls apart when you talk about Medicare or Socialist Insecurity, or pretty much any other entitlement.
You also underestimate how much of civil society existed and worked well before the leviathan government we have now was created.
Also, your position is in no way a defense of progressive taxation. The wealthy have the means to provide for themselves the services that government often provides (in particular, security). It is actually the poor who benefit the most from having these government services, especially police protection.
Yeah, Somalia is definitely spitballing. That’s anarchy and warlordism. About on par with describing our society as a communist dictatorship.
It might be even more useful to think of society in terms of voluntary association- especially if slavery is a point of reference in any way. Slavery of course is involuntary. Tell me- are taxes voluntary. I mean, try to opt out and what happens? Does the IRS pat your head and shrug their shoulders? Or, do your accounts get attached and perhaps you go to jail? So, comparison to investment falls a little flat. I mean, I’ve never had those kinds of consequences for deciding that I don’t like the kinds of selections the Fund Manager makes on moral grounds, so I’ll just decide to hang on to what I’ve earned.
I’m quite happy to pay for a lot of government, especially the things you cite: courts, police and other safety, etc. Certainly that creates the stability in our country versus a Somalia. But what also has historically set us apart from other nations, and what has made people want to come to this country, is that you can keep more of your money for your effort comparatively.
Somalia is what you get when there is no collective investment in government. Consequently, individual efforts, no matter how clever, innovative, or diligent, do not very often result in profit. And, Somalia (or some other country with a tax structure to your liking) is your alternative to paying the taxes established by the legal process in this country.
In fact, I suppose we could think of this competition among countries as the ultimate free market. There is very little in the way of regulation among sovereigns – they can compete against one another without red tape. But, I don’t see that this market has yet produced a limited government, low tax superior alternative to the U.S.
Where did you find that letter? I’m reading a book right now about the era of the great capitalists, and that letter was referenced in the chapter about the end of slavery.
At a site called Letters of Note. I’m not sure where they get their stuff.
I saw that link, but how did you come across it?
It’s just weird that I’m reading that book, and probably read that passage maybe on Friday or Saturday, and then you post it. Strange coincidence.
Mike Godwin linked to it on Facebook. Apparently the Letters of Note site is reasonably popular and followed by a fair number of people. Someone expressed surprise that I wasn’t already following the site.
I think it’s that we get to elect the people who do the taxation and government spending. And that we have the freedom to move about. And that often our salary reflects our talents/training/effort, and that we get to keep a lot of it. And that we don’t live in fear of some owner or overseer raping our wives and daughters, or selling them down the river. Those would be a few differences that come to my mind.
Is that “era of great capitalists” or “(first) era of the robber barons”?
There is a distinct difference between the two.
1865 to 1910.
One man’s robber barron is another’s great capitalist.
Then we disagree (again).
To be a “great capitalist” does not have to equate to “robber baron”. If it does, then capitalism should be relegated to the dustbin of history like Marx said, because robber baronism is inherently corruptible and generally becomes dishonest to all those not able (or willing) to be robber barons.
I think if one paid more attention to Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, rather than to Jay Gould or James Fisk, the country and the economy would have been doing much better.
The data, such as it is, shows that prices were falling throughout the robber baron era. The anti-trust era that was a result of the robber barons was really driven by the competitors to the robber barons, not consumers themselves.
In my mind, the Federal Reserve is today’s version of Jay Gould. Gould was famous for ‘watering the stock’ of the Erie Railroad, a practice rightly outlawed. What then are the directors of the Federal Reserve doing with our currency, and why do they get a pass?
Right on about Hayek & Smith vs. Gould & Fisk.
The Southern economy just couldn’t survive without rich white people stealing labor from poor black people.
The economics of slavery, and the development of the plantation economy, is a fascinating subject, one that I could see being suppressed due to political correctness.
Another fascinating subject is the subject of the letter you cite, the era right after slavery ended, where many different systems could have emerged, but where sharecropping (which was almost feudal in nature) emerged victorious.
I’d like to see a Newt Gingrich style “alternative history” novel (he is the author of many) where there rises a sort of “Black Mao” in the aftermath of the civil war (or, perhaps, the Black Panther Party emerges a century earlier than it actually did).
Haiti’s revolution and the aftermath might also be instructive in this regard.
That sounds a wee bit “revisionist”. Who wrote that book?
That’s not the book talking, that is pure Buzzcut. It is common knowledge in the economics profession.
The progressive era and its aftermath have many great examples of how government regulation is driven by those who have the greatest stakes in the outcome of regulation. That isn’t consumers, it’s people whose business is directly effected by those regulations.
Initially, “trust busting” was driven by the smaller competitors that the trusts were putting out of business (for example, how many people know that Ida Tarbell’s father was one of the folks that John D. Rockefeller put out of business?)
Later, that regulatory process was captured by the very companies that were being regulated, to keep competitors from reaching the same scale.
caveo argumentum ad populum. Never assume that what “everyone believes” is necessarily “true”.
Not arguing, just saying. ;)
And no, I didn’t know that tidbit about Ida Tarbell’s father.