The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #115851 Message #2484533
Posted By: Sawzaw
04-Nov-08 - 11:38 AM
Thread Name: BS: Quotes from Joe the Fumbler
Subject: RE: BS: Quotes from Joe the Fumbler
"You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state,a slave state that fought beside the North. That's only because we couldn't figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way."
While most of Delaware's citizens sympathized with the south, most of Delaware's trade was with the north.
Residents of the State were divided in their sympathies. Many Delawareans left and served in the Confederate army. Even more enlisted in defense of the Union, and Delaware troops distinguished themselves at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and other battlefields. Delaware's reputation for valor, earned by the Blue Hen Regiment that served under Brother Washington during the Revolution, was upheld during the Civil War.
In 1847 a gradual emancipation bill that would have freed all African-Americans born into slavery after 1850 made it out of committee, with a recommendation of approval on economic grounds. Industrial Wilmington was eager to keep up with its bigger rivals, and the Northern political rhetoric of the times held that free laboring men, working to better their condition in factories or on farms, were the key to a region's prosperity. The committee report warned that "the carelessness, slovenly and unproductive husbandry visible in some parts of our state, undoubtedly result mainly from the habit of depending on slave labor. It is no longer a disputable question that slave labor impoverishes, while free labor enriches people."
The House passed the bill, by a vote of 12 to 8, 13 years before the civil war started.
Black persons, percent, 2006....Delaware 20.9%...USA 12.8%