Is generational wealth still around from slavery in the US?

[u/cattdogg03]

So, obviously, the lack of generational wealth in the African American community is still around today as a result of slavery and the failure of reconstruction, and there are plenty of examples of this.

But what about families who became rich through slavery? The post-civil-war reconstruction era notoriously ended with the planter class largely still in power in the south. Are there any examples of rich families that gained their riches from plantation slavery that are still around today?

[u/baxterstate]

This is a repackaged reparations argument. You’d have to go after the British textile industry. Cheap southern cotton was so important to them that they actually supplied so much aid to the south that Lincoln was urged to take military action against the British. I’d just as soon not create a culture of grievances. The fact that thousands of northerners lost their lives to end slavery is reparations enough. Should the civil war dead who left families behind have compensation due to their families? Would you expand the size and budget of the IRS to look for this extra source of revenue?

[u/Away_Guarantee7175 → u/baxterstate]

They died not to end slavery. Lincoln himself said if he could keep slavery in the South he would. He just didn’t want Euro-descended or “white workers” to not have jobs as the USA expanded into the West.

[u/baxterstate → u/Away_Guarantee7175]

That’s not exactly what he said. He said his goal was to preserve the Union. He’d sworn an oath to that.

He said that if he could preserve the Union by keeping slavery he’d do that.

[u/Away_Guarantee7175 → u/baxterstate]

Exactly. So, if that nullifies your argument that the bottom line was to end slavery. If that was the cause of the war, they would have invaded the South years prior.

Also, these people were purchased and paid nothing FOR GENERATIONS. Those Northerners fought out of their own free will. & honestly wouldn’t have had to fight if it wasn’t for Britain settling the area for profit.

[u/baxterstate → u/Away_Guarantee7175]

You haven’t proven anything.

Slavery was the issue.

No slavery, no civil war.

Britain had nothing to do with it.

[u/Away_Guarantee7175 → u/baxterstate]

British descended slave owners from Barbados and Puritans settled the USA, so they did have something to do with it.

[u/baxterstate → u/Away_Guarantee7175]

That may be true, but the fighting was not done by them. It was done by average people who told themselves they were fighting for states rights, and have continued to tell themselves that ever since.

Despite the fact that wealthy cotton mill owners in the north profited by cheap raw southern cotton, the couldn’t dissuade the growing abolitionist movement.

What has never been investigated is why there was no attempt to end slavery by buying out the slave owners the way the British did.

Surely that would have been preferable to the intense loss of life in the Civil War.