Slavery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1FO9MqWugY

1) This is semantics. Of course everyone knows that there are legal differences between chattel slavery and indentured servitude, but that the de facto condition is more or less the same.  Starting off right away with a pedantic nitpick and playing it up as a big gotcha is a bad start.

2) True enough.  Is that really a myth?

3) See #1.  This is another attempt to split hairs between chattel slavery and serfdom.

4) This misses all kinds of things, particularly about how a) there were riots in NYC after the Emancipation Proclamation, because people had felt duped into fighting the Civil War over slavery, b) there were massive amounts of desertions of Union troops after the Emancipation Proclamation for the same reason, and people were not willing to die for "the cause of the Negro," and c) journalists at the time; from the North, otherwise more or less sympathetic to Lincoln, were pretty united in their condemnation of the Emancipation Proclamation as nothing but a cynical move that had no actual effect, since it only freed the slaves in the territories that the Union didn't control and therefore had no authority over.

5) It was a minor issue.  He's totally wrong.  Mentioning slavery doesn't mean that slavery especially in the context of the South being "slave states" was the most important factor, merely that it was a convenient label that was in common usage at the time.  And Lincoln wasn't an abolitionist either, when elected.  Curiously, Jefferson Davis was more interested in the eventual dissolution of the institution of slavery than Lincoln was.  Don't "watch his other video" if you want more info.  Read one of Thomas DiLorenzo's books instead (or even his contributed chapters in Reassessing the Presidency.)  The real cause of the Civil War was economic Imperialism by the North, who had always seen the South as an area to be exploited by the North.

6) He doesn't even get the fact that there were two Souths; the Deep South, Gone with the Wind plantation south, and the backwoods Dukes of Hazzard South.  There is no doubt that slavery was an important economic component of the plantation south, which made it just as vulnerable and subject to eventual toppling as the Roman Empire was, which was much more dependent on slave labor than the South ever was.  Also, the 36% number is flat out wrong.  In the 1850 census, there were 350,000 slave owners.  That's less than 5%.  Now; granted, there were extended families included in the census that weren't slave-owners but which were dependent on the economics of slavery.  Maybe that's where he's getting his number?  Mine is from the actual census, as pointed out by Dr. John Hope Franklin in his book From Slavery to Freedom (1994).  His is based on some kind of voodoo mathematics.

7) This is also splitting hairs by making a big deal about alleged differences.  Saying that a worker could charge or sue his employers when he would then have no employment and would starve is absurd.

8) Again; read DeLorenzo.  There are all kinds of records that he apparently doesn't know about.  Few blacks in the South actually wanted freedom.  This shouldn't be surprising, really.  Few Americans of any color today want freedom either, and we've eagerly embraced the gradual socialization and removal of our rights as we approach slavery ourselves.  Remember; Limhi's people thought that the Lamanites taking half of their wealth as tribute was "grievous to be born"—and yet the actual tax rate once you account for all taxes that we pay (including "invisible" taxes that are baked into the cost of what we buy) are about that same rate in America today.  We are in bondage as surely as Limhi's people are, and to masters who are much more hostile to our well-being than the slave owners of the South were to the blacks.

9) Has yet to recover economically?  Good grief.  It never will recover, because west Africa is filled with Africans.  The average IQ in west African sub-Saharan countries is in the 60s and 70s with the lowest average IQ country in the world smack dab in the middle of this area, Equatorial Guinea, with an average IQ of 59.  That's the average for the entire country, and it's functionally retarded from the perspective of a Western European (or European Diaspora) nation.  In fact, every sub-Saharan African country, and most Third World countries in general have average IQs that would have been classified as "borderline deficient" (70-80) or "definite feeble-mindedness" (69 or below) according to classifications that were purged due to political correctness, but which were nonetheless accurate.  In fact, the most functional of Third World countries (China excepted—although there are numerous reasons to believe that the Chinese average IQ is significantly overstated for both methodological and political reasons) are still within the realm of "dullness" (80-90).  Rather; slavery was an opportunity for the above average elite caste of West Africa to profit from their neighbors, and given that they were both a) very tribal, and b) very r-selected, without any kind of Christian moral foundation to check their worst impulses, they saw no reason whatsoever not to sell the slaves that they already had anyway to European traders.

10) This is semantic word-games too.  Of course slavery isn't "ended" globally; because white countries only had the legal jurisdiction to end slavery within their own countries.  This point is, in fact, quite stupid, and meant as a gotcha; he agrees with it even as he disputes it by redefining the context to mean something other than what it actually means.

Anyway, this is hardly meant to be an apologetic of slavery.  The desire for cheap labor in America, whether slaves, serfs, indentured servants, or imported scabs that can be paid much less than market labor rates has been the poison that will kill America slowly over time.  We never should have brought slaves to America, and if our ancestors did so, then they should have been returned or set up somewhere else other than in America, as Lincoln himself believed was necessary for peaceful coexistence. He turned out to have been completely right on that one, at least.  The elite plantation owners are little better than the elite CEO caste who throws Americans under the bus for H1-B visas, outsourcing and illegal alien labor; both are equally sociopathic, exploiting others to enrich themselves while looting the commonwealth.

But the youtube guy is right about one thing; most people don't understand the history of slavery, and have tried to appropriate it through historical revisionism to create a victim narrative by which to blackmail their political enemies into paying victimgeld of some kind or another.