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While doing research for my contest entry (shoutout to Corgi) I came across an interesting fact. Apparently some black people would purchase their freedom through under-the-table income generated, usually through skilled trades (although one slave actually did so by winning $1,500 in a local lottery). Many of these freedmen and freedwoman would then start businesses, and purchase slaves to either help them with their jobs or maintain their home. 
 

How does someone go from being property to owning someone? Presumably, most of these slaves were later sold off after the death of their master, so it follows that the majority of black slave owners were purchasing them for the same reason why whites were: free labor.

You could make the argument that in order for blacks, who were heavily discriminated against, to have a chance in a market economy stacked against them, they needed fo employ the same methods their competitors did, including slavery. You could also make the argument that for a freedman, owning free labor was more cost efficient in the long run than paying for labor. 
 

Also shockingly, apparently the Confederacy, in 1862, paid black laborers, cooks, and musicians the same amount of money as a Confederate army private (which admittedly wasn't much). Whereas the Union did not legally pay black workers equal pay until 1864. Granted these were free black men getting paid (enslaved blacks had their wages paid to whoever owned them) but it is still  something you don't really hear about.

At the end of the day, the practice of slavery was an abomination (and I do my best to be clear on this in the story, hence the research), and ultimately the Union winning was the best outcome, but the more I look into the wartime roles of African Americans on both sides of the conflict, I find a lot of preconceptions have been turned upside down.

Nigger

fpbp

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I was getting a tattoo of the phrase "DEUS VULT" tattooed across my hands by a half black girl in exchange for sex.

Petros, you're a fag, and I look forward to both yours and Darius' defeat in the ThunderDome.

Choking on dick must've given you anoxia because I ain't losing in the THUNDERDOME or anywhere else any time soon

... You do realize that the majority of black slaves were actually captured by other black people and sold by African warlords to the European slavers, right?

Yeah I really disagree with the some of the points you made later on in your paragraph, so I did some research of my own.

Could you provide a source that states that Black laborers earned the same wages as white laborers in the confederacy?

With the argument that paid black laborers, cooks, and musicians got the same amount of money as a confederate army private, I feel that I must provide the disclaimer that their masters could simply confiscate the wages. I feel like this argument is a bit disingenuous because it's trying to show the confederacy in a more positive light because they're seemingly more progressive than the union. This argument is reminiscent of Lost Cause ideology, where people with an agenda retroactively try to paint the South as not as bad as most people thought; they were that bad.

From Ervin Jordan's book, "Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia"L: "But were African American laborers in the Confederate army formally enlisted in the army, equipped with uniforms, arms, and accoutrements, and paid for their own work, as were African Americans in the U.S. Army? No. Their status was that of enslaved or marginally free laborers serving in capacities in a military setting analogous to their roles in civilian life. Referring to such men as “soldiers” ignores a fundamental distinction between forced labor and military service."

Yes, the Union did pay their soldiers unfairly that point is a shocking point that definetly changes my preconception on the Union. They did so to incentivize and sway white landowners who might be more sympathetic to the southern cause, because they felt that white soldiers are superior to black soldiers. What they did was incredibly problematic, but this is not a thing where you can say that the Confederacy was more progressive than the union, that's just not it.

But I also have a confederate payroll that shows enslaved carpenters and laborers in the South, earning 2 dollars a day, and 1 dollar a day, for their enslaver.

You can also see slaves killed or hospitalized in this service, and you can see that a ton of slaves ran away to join the North's side so I find your second to last paragraph to be disingenuous and distorting what happened.

One could argue that the Confederacy paid the same wages because they didn't want to short the actual slave owners, because the money was going to them. This wasn't some progressive move of any sort, the Confederacy sucks balls, and no amount of Lost-Causeing will ever make anything they did redeemable. Source on black laborers and carpenters in South: Black Carpenters and Laborers in Fort Sumter

As I explained above, free black men and women were paid wages. I did explicitly state that "enslaved blacks had their wages paid to whoever owned them."

And I also pointed out that blacks, both free and enslaved, worked for the Confederacy in non-combat roles. Your point of "their master seized the wages" only applies to the enslaved ones. How it worked was that in order to keep up with wartime production, tens of thousands of blacks were pressed into service as laborers, cooks, musicians, etc. The enslaved blacks would have their wages paid to their masters. The freedmen and women would be paid directly. Your statements only refer to the payment of enslaved Africans, and points out that black men and women were not soldiers, ignoring non-combat roles.
 

And yes, a lot of the blacks who were enslaved did run off to the Union side. Heck, even a lot of the freedmen who were there willingly later switched teams to the Union when they took over. Their loyalty was not to the Confederacy, but to whoever was paying. Still doesn't change that they did work for, and were paid by, the CSA.

While your link is accurate, it is also misleading. The article details enslaved wages in 1861. I stated that the free blacks were paid equally 1862 onwards.

Thankfully, you did manage to prove I was mistaken to an extent. The average black laborer was making $1-$2 a day. Assuming a work week of five or six days (and let's be honest, they were probably working the full week). That would be a base minimum of $20-$40 per month. The average rate of a Confederate private was $11 per month. Meaning that free blacks working in skilled trades did not earn the same as confederate soldiers. They earned two to three times more. Thank you for correcting me.

I don't see how pointing out that the blacks got paid by the Confederacy (which could have been done simply to incentivize them to not run off at the first opportunity, as mentioned above) is indicative of them being "not that bad." You also didn't make any statements about the whole "black people got freed them bought other black people" part of my statement.

I also found the source of that quote you highlighted in bold. It was from a website that pops up in the same google search as the website you linked. Perhaps we should look at the paragraph directly above it: There is no question that tens of thousands of enslaved and free African Americans served with Confederate armies as body servants, laborers, teamsters, hospital workers, and cooks. But were these men “soldiers” in any real sense of the word? Partisans of the “Black Confederate” viewpoint answer in the affirmative, comparing the roles black men played in the Confederate army with analogous job descriptions of modern American soldiers, the labor battalions in the World Wars (especially those who were drafted and thus “forced” into service), and even the menial labor that U.S. Colored Troops units performed during the Civil War.

And now let us look at the paragraph directly beneath your quote: However, even before the last months of the Civil War, there were African Americans in Confederate armies who met some of those customary criteria to be soldiers. Beginning in 1862, the Confederacy formally enlisted hundreds of cooks and musicians; those men were paid, but almost certainly not armed or uniformed.

The book you mentioned as a "source" is mentioned later in the article as a defense of blacks on the confederate side. You intentionally cherry picked and misrepresented points made in that article (which was plenty critical to the Confederacy) and did not provide a link to the article. Which I will include below.

https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-black-confederates/

 

Again. I believe that a Confederate victory would have destroyed our country, and that the issue of the war was in fact slavery, no matter what Lost Causers say. I also believe that both sides were wrong for press-ganging blacks into manual labor (yes, the Union did so by labeling black workers as enemy contraband). I just thought it was interesting that the issue of black labor during the civil war had a lot of nuances to it that people don't really talk about today.

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I read through your passage and I think you were right. I should have provided a link to the article, and I think my initial post was mistaken in painting your arguments with the same brush as the Lost-Causers.

I didn't make any points about your argument that "free black people enslaved other black people" because I thought that argument was correct, I had more of an issue with the later half.

But you did resolve that, and I admit that there were several issues with my initial argument, so I take back some of the claims that you were disingenuous. I also shouldn't have cherry picked points like that.

Don't back down. Just abandon logic and call him a knob polisher

Nah I was the knob lol, when making an argument I need to be a lot more precise and rigorous and I fact checked Ben's claims and they made sense.

I will acknowledge, again, that the Confederacy was not a noble institution, like some Southerners claim. They were profiteering off the backs of human beings forced into service, and they instituted laws that dehumanized black Americans nearly a century after the end of the Civil War. I admit I did sound like a Confederate apologist, and I apologize. It's more the fact that I always kinda looked at the Union as the "good guys" in the situation, when in reality they seem to have been more of a "lesser of two evils" when compared to the CSA.

it's all good and I should have argued without cherry picking. I read the article, then looked at the source list, and picked a book, figured that the quote probably came from there. I probably should have been a bit more rigorous with how I went about it, and I do find your points to be fascinating.

In particular, I believe a really interesting story to be made with these contradictions and overturning of our preconceived notions. We all think we know things about the civil war, but there are some facts that disprove it, so that could be an interesting story, and it sounds like you're doing some really heavy research.

I like the phrasing "lesser of 2 evils" because the Union did have some problematic aspects, just that the Confederacy was batshit evil comparatively, so I take back what I said.

Inb4 some random faggot comes in and claims everyone here is a NAZI and defending WHITE SUPREMACY without actually reading the fucking thread.

(Also in before Cel does exactly that)

I think I was that person lol, I read Ben's argument and thought he was lost-causing so I got really triggered but I don't think so anymore.

You're fine. I should have clarified some of my points, cause rereading my initial post, it does come off as being a defense of the Confederacy, and a defense of the exploitation of black workers. Wasn't my intent to do so.

I understand, it definitely wasn't your intent, and I really liked your analysis and response. My response was factually unsound and I liked how you pointed that out. I'm looking forward to your story game, I bet it'll be really good

No, I was more referring to the noob last month who tried to do the whole backhand compliment thing about saying how great this place was but how he "didn't respect the community" because we were all defending Nazis or some bullshit because the thread with the actual Stormfronter got bumped at the time.

He later in the thread tried to backtrack realizing he read the whole fucking thing wrong since nobody was defending the guy and doing the exact opposite but still never apologized for his dumb ass conclusion jumping and then just meekly ran away.

Oh lol, I need to read this thread. That sounds really funny, he can dish it out but can't take the heat when it comes to him.

Here.

https://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/30186

And the thread he was bitching about

https://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/14872

Damn that guy does not understand this place well. It's not a good look to come in and immediately call everyone there words, just like you said in your post.

And you're right at any other website, like Reddit, criticizing moderators or higher-power users would have gotten him banned and his account nuked, but here, he just gets laughed at and held up as an example of what to not be like.

This is the thread with the whining noob: https://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/30186

This is the original thread the noob was referring to: https://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/14872

So apparently EndMaster and I had the exact same idea at the exact same time. Crazy.

Am I... learning?

Let's be honest: people are gonna do that anyways.

By the way, I still wanna buy your t-shirt.

It's 4 am here and for a second I thought this meant you'd expect me to be the faggot, rather than the white supremacist.

Time to sleep I guess.