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Dear Doug and the LBOers,
<p>I agree with you on jury nullification. I don't know anything
about Godfrey Lehman, but, I do know Cockburn thinks highly of him and
has written about his crusade on a number of occasions.
<p>Where I don't agree with Cockburn or many of our fellow LBOers is on
the subject of the viability of slavery. Slavery as practiced in
the ante-bellum south was a very viable economic system and was evolving
into an industrial system at a rapid pace prior to the civil war.
<p>Read a few accounts of southern slaveholders after "their negros" ran
away with the union army. There are thousands of these little primary
source first person stories floating around, and, don't forget the slaves
started running away long before the Emancipation Proclamation. First
sight of the Union army and these so-called at the time "contrabands" were
gone.
<p>I don't subscribe to what I call the Oberlin theory that the anti-slavery
movement was some sort of a holy crusade for racial equality and that the
anti-slavery forces were all motivated by religious belief. It's
nice to think that you have God on your side. The reality is that
people fight over real property and real control of that property.
<p><b>Then there is that great anti-slavery organization Tammany Hall...</b>
<p>Sincerely,
<br>Tom Lehman
<p>Doug Henwood wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>William S. Lear wrote:
<p>>Doug's posting of Cockburn's "curious take on American history" (I
<br>>didn't find it so, Doug, why did you?)
<p>Because the Civil War represented a profound clash of economic and
<br>political systems that marked the emergence of the U.S. as an industrial
<br>power. I'm all for jury nullification, don't get me wrong, but the
<br>Cockburn/FIJA take trivializes it in an individualizing, legalistic
way. I
<br>won't even bring up the anti-Semites lurking in FIJA, since that would
be
<br>beside the point.
<p>Besides, wouldn't it have taken a long long time for a critical mass
of
<br>slaves to escape, be caught, and, if lucky, acquitted by a fully informed
<br>jury?
<p>In Cockburn's case, I find the analysis especially troubling coming
after
<br>the "get over it" remark. It's one thing to talk to right-wing nuts;
it's
<br>another to start taking them seriously and quoting them.
<p>Doug</blockquote>
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