In 1831, a twenty-six-year-old Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville made a nine-month tour of the United States. Part of his journey took him down the Ohio River. As there is more historical truth in a single page of de Tocqueville than in five decades of the combined output of Hollywood, here he is on slavery:
The stream which the Indians had distinguished by the name of Ohio, or Beautiful River, waters one of the most magnificent valleys that has ever been made the abode of man. Undulating lands extend upon both shores of the Ohio, whose soil affords inexhaustible treasures to the laborer; on either bank the air is wholesome and the climate mild, and each of them forms the extreme frontier of a vast State: That which follows the numerous windings of the Ohio upon the left is called Kentucky, that upon the right bears the name of the river. These two States only differ in a single respect; Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the State of Ohio has prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders.
Thus the traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio to the spot where that river falls into the Mississippi, may be said to sail between liberty and servitude; and a transient inspection of the surrounding objects will convince him as to which of the two is most favorable to mankind. Upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields; the primaeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life. From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests, the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer, and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is the reward of labor.
The State of Kentucky was founded in 1775, the State of Ohio only twelve years later; but…at the present day, the population of Ohio exceeds that of Kentucky by two hundred and fifty thousand souls. These opposite consequences of slavery and freedom may readily be understood…
Upon the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the idea of slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the other it is honored…
It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay wages to the slaves whom they employ; but they derive small profits from their labor, whilst the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid, but he does his work quicker than the slave, and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but they are only purchased at the times at which they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual…
Even if it weren’t the moral abomination de Tocqueville denounces with vehemence, slavery was doomed in any case by its sheer unprofitability.
As these truths became apparent in the United States, slavery receded before the progress of experience. Servitude had begun in the South, and had thence spread towards the North; but it now retires again. Freedom, which started from the North, now descends uninterruptedly towards the South. Amongst the great States, Pennsylvania now constitutes the extreme limit of slavery to the North: but even within those limits the slave system is shaken: Maryland, which is immediately below Pennsylvania, is preparing for its abolition; and Virginia, which comes next to Maryland, is already discussing its utility and its dangers.
In other words, slavery was dying of its own accord; its economic unviability foreordained its demise. Far from being a source of national wealth, then, it was a drain. The only wealth created by slavery was in the slave trade itself.1 If slave labor, in any case, were a means to building national wealth, the Central African Republic, in which slavery is more common and more recent than in any other country, should be among the richest on earth instead of #187 out of 188. The idea that the wealth of any nation is built on the backs of slaves is laughably wrong. Particularly (need it be said?) more than a century and a half on.
There are other arguments, too, in favor of reparations for the “descendants of slaves” even more ridiculous than the economic argument. It isn’t surprising or particularly embarrassing that those arguments are out there, since every place and time has its share of charlatans, but that there are so many grown adults in this country who take these arguments seriously is a national humiliation. And yet, the reparations movement continues to grow—even seems destined finally to come to fruition. Why?
Many years ago, I noticed a social phenomenon that may be applied, I think, to the question of why such a patently stupid policy as reparations continues to gain steam. In general, in the United States, if you had no access to “the news,” you would think the relations between the races are harmonious. As Americans go about their day-to-day activities, interactions between white and black are, in the vast majority, no worse (maybe even better) than those between white and white and black and black. Then, beginning about a half century ago, about every year or so, Hollywood excretes some racially inflammatory product “inspired by a true story” that seems calculated to engender as much racial hatred as possible by blacks against whites.
You could detect the impact of a particular movie in the street, if you paid attention to such things. There would be suddenly an inexplicable little spurt of seemingly unprompted racial hostility directed toward the white American by the random black American. Then one would notice the ads for the new release and the mystery would be explained. The months would go by, the hostile eruptions would dwindle in frequency, and race relations would return to their previous daily amicability—as generally among humans all just trying to get through this life the best way we can. Then the next racially inflammatory, heavily promoted blockbuster would appear, and the cycle would repeat.2
It was almost as if there were an intentional, coordinated effort emanating from the film industry to foment race hatred in the United States. But, since that sounds just like a conspiracy theory, it couldn’t be true. Then along came the contributions from the other major drivers of public opinion, and there could be no doubt.
From academia we got false and poisonous theories like “white privilege” and systemic racism. From the press, we got distorted, inflammatory, and egregiously selective news accounts out of Ferguson, Missouri and Minneapolis, Minnesota. At some point, anyone with any intellectual integrity at all really had to say, “Yeah, it sure looks like somebody just flat out wants blacks to hate whites.” If there is such a somebody, then the idea has to be on the table that they have an ultimate aim, and that that ultimate aim is racial violence—i.e., race war. (And, let it be acknowledged here, given the decades of endless blood libel for which they’ve been the intended audience, it is a testament to the generally laudable temperament of black Americans that there is as much amity between the races as there is.)
In 2007, the presidential candidacy of the junior senator from Illinois, Barak Obama, was being widely discussed, “Was America ready for a black president?” Most proclaimed it wasn’t and there was much hand-wringing in the press over the racist obstinacy of “rural whites” to support a black man for the presidency. One day, I was discussing the subject with a South American whose work had brought him to Washington, DC. “America is too racist to elect a black president,” he said. I asked him how he could say Americans were racist when he had never been in any part of the country outside DC. “Well, we learned it from the movies,” he said. (Thanks, Hollywood!)
As a native rural white, myself, I knew the dominant narrative on the matter was simply wrong. So I went to the Federal Election Commission’s website, which displays the campaign contributions by state to candidates for major public office. I looked up the contributions from the ten whitest states in the country to the various presidential campaigns. Unless the state had a favorite son in the race (e.g., John McCain in Arizona, or John Kerry in Massachusetts) Barak Obama led all candidates—Republican and Democrat—in campaign contributions. It didn’t matter whether the state was deep blue, like Vermont, or deep red, like Nebraska, Barack Obama, who hadn’t even finished his first term as senator, was receiving more support than any other candidate from every one of the ten whitest states in the country—however rural. (This, by the way, was before the Iowa caucuses, when a plurality of blacks were still polling for Hillary Clinton.) The bigoted claim by The New York Times and The Washington Post of endemic racial hatred suffused throughout white America was a giant lie. They were wrong. I was right, and I’m right about this, too: white Americans in general have a deep reservoir of good will toward black Americans.
It is that good will of whites toward blacks that stands as the greatest obstacle to anyone out there working for the cause of race war in the United States, and reparations seem uniquely capable of destroying that good will. If every one of the roughly 40 million “descendants of slaves” in the United States receives reparations of 250 thousand dollars (to choose a figure lower than any among the numbers being bandied about), the cost comes in at 10 trillion dollars. The economic impact for all Americans would be financial chaos and, for a large segment of Americans, particularly among those who do the actual fighting in actual wars, impoverishment. Human nature being what it is, it is a sure bet the dam would blow and the reservoir of good will would empty into a catastrophic flood of race hatred. What better way to start a race war and make sure both sides show up?
Interested readers may want to read NOI Research Group’s The Secret History between Blacks and Jews. “Drawing almost entirely from Jewish documents, the first volume of this series (1991) reveals that Jews came to the Americas and became slave traders, auctioneers, plantation owners, and slave shippers.” (from Unz Review, which has it available for order). I haven’t read the book, so can’t give my direct opinion one way or the other, but Amazon has banned it and, as I give great weight to the claim that only the truth is ever censored, I believe the book’s historical claims are probably accurate. Moreover, Wikipedia’s entry on the book calls it “pseudo-scholarship,” which is practically iron-clad evidence it is scholarship of the highest order.
This, in any case, was my experience living in New York City and Washington, DC from the 1990s through the 2020s. Perhaps the experience of others is different.
I read a fair amount on substack, and I have to say that it is refreshing to read posts that are so original. You are doing more than just re-hashing what everyone else is saying.
The observations de Toqueville made about the goings on on either side of the Ohio River were very enlightening. I figured out the Civil War was not about slavery some time ago, but to realize that slavery was already dying out in America anyhow (before the civil war) is very revealing.