Thomas Jefferson and the Paradox of Slavery ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 194 commentsBy: ImaginativeCons (The Imaginative Conservative)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Mark Malvasi|
The masters of slaves, it turned out, were themselves neither independent nor self-sufficient, but were bound to, and reliant upon, their slaves both for their welfare and their identity. This vague recognition in part accounts for the grim tone that Thomas Jefferson adopted in his analysis of slavery: He had to confront the prospect that Virginia, that America itself, was at least potentially as depraved as Europe.
"How is it," wondered Samuel Johnson in 1775, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" Nearly twenty years earlier, Dr. Johnson had written that "slavery is… ..no where [sic] more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty."[1] Notwithstanding Johnson's ridicule, slavery had always been something of a problem for Englishmen and their progeny. The enslavement of Africans violated the English tradition of jurisprudence, for the common law did not recognize the legitimacy of slavery in England. Three years before Johnson posed his question, William Murray, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, clarified the precedent. In Somerset v. Stewart (1772), he ruled that a slave brought to England could not be compelled to leave and, if coerced to do so, could apply for a writ of habeas corpus and assert his freedom.[2] The introduction of slavery into the English colonies, although legal, was thus, in important respects, a radical innovation of the kind that prudent Englishmen sought to avoid.[3]
No one embodied the dilemma of slavery that beset Englishmen, and later Americans, more painfully than did Thomas Jefferson. Writing to John Holmes in 1820, Jefferson described the ordeal that slavery had fixed upon the United States. "We have a wolf by the ears," he proclaimed, "and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[4] The existence of slavery was especially distressing because Jefferson had set forth an image of America as the repudiation of an Old World plagued by despotism, poverty, revolution, violence, and war. America, and in particular Jefferson's beloved Virginia, exemplified the refinement of civilization. He imagined in America the emergence of a distinctly moral community, which independence from Great Britain had made possible—a community free of avarice and corruption, existing in tranquil and permanent harmony with nature. A body of free and independent citizens peopled this Novus Ordo Seclorum, a chosen people to be sure, but a people destined not to fulfill history as much as to transcend it.
Despite his personal opposition to slavery (he once declared that one hour of slavery was worse than ages of British oppression), and despite the threat that slavery would annul his vision of an American paradise, Jefferson actively participated in the world the slaveholders were making. He owned approximately 600 slaves during the course of his lifetime. Even while president, he engaged in the slave trade, conducting the transactions through an agent to conceal his identity. Like other slaveholders, he hunted down and punished runaways. He wrote a slave code for Virginia, and opposed any limits on the expansion of slavery throughout the United States. Although widely reputed to be a beneficent and humane master (contemporaries, in fact, accused him of having too great an affection for some of his female slaves), Jefferson emancipated only two slaves, Robert and James Hemings, while he was alive, and Robert bought his freedom for $200. Nor did he grant his slaves their freedom in his last will and testament. Like the country that he had helped to found and govern, Jefferson was locked into support of the slave system if for none other than pragmatic reasons. He simply could not afford to free his slaves because he needed them to work his 10,000 acres of land (not all of it at Monticello), which, without their labor, would have lost most of its value. Yet, for more than fifty years, Jefferson devoted himself not only to an economy based on slave labor but also to a defense of the idea that the slaves themselves constituted a legitimate form of property and slavery was an indispensable social practice. [5]
It was against the intellectual, moral, and economic background of the plantation world in which he resided that Jefferson projected the vision of America as an enlightened and redemptive community. In Query XVIII of Notes on the States of Virginia (1785), titled "On Manners," Jefferson articulated the most thoroughgoing denunciation of slavery that he ever wrote. He found the problem of slavery so monstrous, so beyond the capacity of human reason even to fathom, that any solution required nothing less than divine intervention. In "On Manners," Jefferson's full horror at the problem of slavery reached its climax:
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it…. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances….
Jefferson condemned slavery as a corruption of manners and morals so persistent and complete that it eliminated even the prospect of instruction in civility. Instead, both in the family and in the community, slavery offered an enticing summons to lassitude and an irresistible education in tyranny. And "with the morals of the people," he lamented:
their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him…. And can the liberties of the nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference![6]
With or without the intercession of Providence, this distinctive combination of vices nonetheless spelled disaster for the Republic. Jefferson had placed his hopes for the continued welfare of America on the enduring virtue of its citizens, which the fall into idleness, sloth, and tyranny placed in the utmost peril.
Jefferson's qualms about the future of the Republic are nearly as pronounced as those of the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman. God, Woolman declared, had led Europeans to a paradise in the New World. As He had with the Israelites in the Old Testament, He again blessed His chosen people with abundance. But instead of being humbled by this gesture of divine munificence, and grateful for the bounty they had received, those who settled in the New World surrendered to greed. They forgot God and indulged their appetites, becoming absorbed in the pursuit of luxury and power, of which slavery was only the most depraved expression. If Americans continued to betray to their calling to redeem the world from sin, Woolman prophesied that they and their descendants would face the terrible justice of God's wrath.[7]
Unlike Woolman, Jefferson was unconcerned about the detrimental influence of slavery on blacks. He never doubted that blacks were physically, intellectually, culturally, and morally inferior. Convinced that the inferiority of blacks was an immutable fact of natural history, Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia, combined the antislavery principles of the Enlightenment with an impenitent racism. "Blacks," Jefferson suspected, "whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites in the endowments of both body and mind…. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."[8] With many of his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, Jefferson shared an antipathy toward blacks, whose skin colored he regarded as a curse. He could not imagine living with black people as equal citizens in a free, multiracial society. Whenever Jefferson had occasion to contemplate the abolition of slavery, he found it impossible to conceive of it without colonization:
Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made freed, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.[9]
The freed slaves, Jefferson feared, could never live in peace and equality among their former masters, or with whites in general. This conviction, arising in part from Jefferson's racism, also grew out of his equation of citizenship with independence and independence with the ownership of property. The presence of a huge mass of free, propertyless blacks was a blight on the social order and a cancer on the body politic.
More than once, Jefferson had voiced his distrust of propertyless men, whatever the color of their skin, whom he regarded as free in name only. No man could be economically self-sufficient or politically independent who did not own property or possess the means to provide for himself. Reliant upon others to secure a livelihood, the propertyless were a dangerous, evil company. Idle, miserable, and desperate, these unfortunate men could, and inevitably would, become vicious, ignore the law, steal, and perhaps kill to survive. They were also vulnerable to the intrigues of ambitious and unscrupulous politicians, of whom they became the willing but deluded advocates. They disrupted the virtuous, but always fragile, republican social and political order that honorable men had toiled long to establish and secure.
Jefferson worried lest the freed slaves become such an unmanageable and treacherous class of shiftless and vulnerable poor, who would create the same problems for United States as had their impoverished working-class counterparts in Europe. The former slaves, Jefferson asserted, accustomed to compulsory labor, would refuse to work when freedom removed the compulsion. Indolence alone foreclosed all possibility that blacks could ever become good citizens of the Republic. According to Jefferson, blacks, although a degraded people, had the potential, if freed, to destroy the beautiful harmony of his world. In Jefferson's American paradise, indeed, at Monticello itself, there "lurked a beast… a sinister shadow in the foliage."[10] Blacks were the snakes in Eden.
With Jefferson, nothing is ever simple. In Notes on the States of Virginia , he immediately followed the critique of slavery with a celebration of the independent, nonslaveholding yeoman farmers, whom, he acclaimed, were "the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he had made the peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."[11] The unique virtue of the yeoman farmers derived from their labor in earth. The image of farmers living contentedly on the land and enjoying the fruits of their labor represented Jefferson's tonic for the apocalyptic danger that slavery presented. The existence of an independent yeomanry restored Jefferson's original faith in the New World as an alternative to the Old. The blessings of geography and history had spared America the vices of Europe, for Jefferson offered the reassurance that there was never, throughout the long course of history, an instance of the "corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators." He affirmed that:
In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman…. Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandman, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degrees of corruption. While we have land to labour, then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff…. Let our Work-shops remain in Europe. [12]
Devoted to self-sufficiency rather than to profits, small farmers were the lifeblood of the Republic and the warrant against its decay and death.
As a practical matter, Jefferson dealt with the problem of slavery largely by ignoring or dismissing it, perhaps hoping that it would solve itself in time, for he could imagine no human solution. He extolled the small farm rather than the slave plantation as the economic and moral center of the southern world, idealizing it as the purification of society. But the formulation of this image compelled him to exclude slaves from that community. To be fair, Jefferson had little choice; he seems to have intuited the logic of his own argument. If those who "labored in the earth were the chosen people of God," then in Jefferson's Virginia and throughout the plantation South, the slaves, juxtaposed between the masters and the soil, were, by Jefferson's own analysis, the true repositories of virtue. This concession Jefferson could never admit, and so the independent farmers and the small farms had to supersede, if not displace, the slaves, the masters, and the plantations. Jefferson could not conceive of the slaves linking the masters to the soil. Unlike the European peasants, the slaves were too alien ever to enable the masters to project a representation of themselves in touch with the soil through them. As a consequence, Jefferson could regard the slaves only as isolating the masters from the land, thereby impeding the masters' access to the source of virtue.
As an additional complication, the masters saw the slaves as mere extensions of their will, and demanded from the slaves' absolute obedience. Yet, Jefferson contemplated the unthinkable notion that the masters had, quite unwittingly, rendered themselves dependent on their slaves not only for their material welfare, which, of course, originated from slave labor, but also for the very definition of themselves as masters. The master's identity as a master depended on the willingness of the slaves to acknowledge his rightful authority. Subtly but unmistakably, the logic of this suspicion brought into focus the possibility that the slaves had some measure of autonomy and could not simply be dismissed as instruments of the master's will, but were, instead, human beings with minds and wills of their own. Once the masters granted that the slaves had the ability to think for themselves, they had also to admit the prospect that the slaves could challenge the masters' version of reality and, at a minimum, demand for themselves the dignity and respect accorded even to the most humble of God's creatures.
Aristotle had maintained that slaves, by their very nature, possessed no interests or wills of their own. The embodiment of docility and submission, ideal slaves were the complete instruments of a master's will, mere extensions of a master's consciousness. They were not autonomous beings, free or able to think for themselves. "Anybody who by his nature is not his own man, but another's," Aristotle explained, "is by his nature a slave…. A man is thus by nature a slave if he is capable of becoming (and this is the reason why he also actually becomes) the property of another …."[13] Endowed with reason, the master governed the slave, who had only the capacity of mind to understand, and the strength of body to carry out, the master's commands. For all intents and purposes, Aristotle concluded, slaves differed little in their station from domesticated animals. Both served the master's needs, eased the master's burdens, and increased the master's happiness. Yet, Aristotle's definition of the perfect slave anticipated the problem of slavery in Western thought that, centuries later, Jefferson himself approximated and G.W.F. Hegel finally and fully clarified.
The problem for Western thinkers that Aristotle intimated was that the distinction between masters and slaves was not always as clear as nature apparently intended it to be. This ambiguity introduced a question about whether slavery was just, or whether it violated both the laws of nature and the edicts of man. Critics of slavery, Aristotle conceded, "regard it as a detestable notion that anyone who is subjugated by superior power should become the slave of the person who has the power to subjugate him, and who is his superior merely in power."[14] With this admission, Aristotle implied that slavery rests on an existential absurdity. One human being cannot be so completely subsumed by another as to be the extension of another's consciousness and will, even if the master is the "superior in goodness" and thereby justified in his rule over all who are inferior.[15]
Hegel extended Aristotle's original insight into the paradoxical nature of enslavement. The more perfect the slave, Hegel observed, the more enslaved becomes the master. As Jefferson had conjectured, the master's identity depends on having slaves recognize him as master and accept the legitimacy of his rule. The basis of the master's free and independent consciousness, then, lies in the dependent and allegedly inessential consciousness of the slaves. Hegel recognized that slaves had voluntarily to acknowledge the master as a master. To do so was an act of free will, which meant that the slaves, according to the very conditions of their enslavement, had wills of their own. Hegel's judgment suggested that, if slaves willingly accepted the master's authority, they could, under other circumstances, just as willingly reject it and forswear their bondage. The master, of course, might then use force to compel the slaves to submit. But compulsion would only expose the pretense of the master's ascendancy and dominion, revealing that his power originated in nothing more than naked aggression.
The masters of slaves, from Hegel's perspective, were ensnared by their own power in which the slaves, at first overwhelmed by the fear of death, had acquiesced. The slaves assented to a definition of themselves as subservient and inferior, denying to themselves even the capacity to develop an independent consciousness and will equivalent to the master's own. Ironically, Hegel proposed, even the slaves' initial fear of death and the desire to preserve their lives pointed to a way out of slavery. Their fears and desires arose independently of their master's will. In the depths of their weaknesses and degradation, then, the slaves had begun to discern in themselves a consciousness and will of their own.
By transforming the elements of the natural world, the labor of the slaves fashioned what Hegel identified an "objective reality" to confirm this emergent consciousness of self. He declared:
Thus precisely in labour where there seemed to be merely some outsider's mind and ideas involved, the bondsman becomes aware, through this re-discovery of himself by himself, of having and being a "mind" of his own.[16]
Through compulsory labor, the slaves acquired patience, fortitude, and endurance. Yet, they alone had an interest in changing their circumstances, and looked always to the future, to that moment when they could shed their chains and become free. It is not too fanciful to interpret Hegel's dissection of slavery as an enduring message to the downtrodden and the powerless. Writing across the centuries from different points of view and with different purposes, Aristotle and Hegel, like Jefferson himself, reached similar conclusions. The conditions of dominance and submission are not as simple and transparent as they may at first seem, and those who wield power in the present can never be confident about the future. The wheel of fortune turns ceaselessly, with or without divine intervention.
For Hegel, slavery lay at the core of human existence. All human relations were relations of power—that is, relations of dominance on the one part and submission on the other—that were fraught with a tension that often became murderous. At the same time, Hegel bequeathed to the modern world an original idea of freedom. He believed that human beings were independent and autonomous only insofar as they recognized the independence and autonomy of others. Like the brotherhood in Christ, to which Hegel's idea of freedom bears more than a fleeting resemblance, it appears innocuous enough in the abstract. But Hegel entertained no illusions about how difficult and frightening a task it is to recognize and tolerate others who are themselves free to feel, think, act, and live as independent human beings.
Blacks' assertion of the humanity that slavery denied them provoked such fears in Thomas Jefferson, rendering preposterous his dream of Virginia and America as an earthly paradise, the locus of political, intellectual, and spiritual independence from the crimes and sins of the Old World. The masters of slaves, it turned out, were themselves neither independent nor self-sufficient, but were bound to, and reliant upon, their slaves both for their welfare and their identity. This vague recognition in part accounts for the grim tone that Jefferson adopted in his analysis of slavery in Query XVIII. He had to confront the prospect that Virginia, that America itself, was at least potentially as depraved as Europe. For, in the end, Jefferson could deny neither the reality nor the importance of slavery to the success and prosperity of the New World. Slaveholding Virginians did not, after all, live in harmony with nature as God intended, but instead exploited nature and human nature alike for their own advantage. The more deeply Jefferson contemplated such a prospect, the more his rational control over the problem of slavery fell to pieces. Faced with such a disquieting truth, even the most resolute philosophe may be forgiven for uttering a dark prophecy that God, His justice at last roused from slumber, would in the fullness of time lay waste to the New Canaan of the South.
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Notes:
[1] Samuel Johnson, "Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress (1775) in The Works of Samuel Johnson (London, 1801), Vol. 8, 203; Idler , No. 11 (June 24, 1758), in Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin, ed., (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 72.
[2] Somerset v. Stewart , Loft 1 (1772). For a discussion of the historical background of the Somerset case and a review of the arguments of counsel, see A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period (New York, 1978), 313-68. For a discussion of the application of the Somerset case to the development of American slave law, see Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), passim.
[3] In 1827, William Scott, Lord Stowell, presiding justice of the High Court of Admiralty, clarified and limited the scope of Somerset. In The Slave, Grace, Lord Stowell determined that a slave, having been brought to England but returning voluntarily to a jurisdiction where slavery was legal, in this instance the West Indies, forfeited the right to sue for freedom and remained a slave.
[4] Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. X, 1816-1826, Paul Leicester Ford, ed. (New York, 1899), 157-58. I have quoted the letter as it appears in Jefferson's collected writings. In the original letter, Jefferson wrote "ear" rather than "ears." Jefferson used the phrase a second time in a letter of July 18, 1824 to Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney, Magazine of American History , XXI (1891), 481. In The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (New York, 1913), 333, Suetonius attributed the phrase "wolf by the ears" to the emperor Tiberius. See Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 264. On Jefferson and slavery, see John Chester Miller, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery (New York, 1977).
[5] William Cohen, "Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery," The Journal of American History LVI/3 (December 1969), 503-26; Lewis P. Simpson, The Dispossessed Garden: Pastoral and History in Southern Literature (Baton Rouge, 1983), 26; Miller , The Wolf by the Ears, 104-107. Jefferson did free five additional slaves in his will: Joseph Fossett, Burwell Colbert, Madison Hemings, John Hemings, and Easton Hemings. Although apparently never emancipated, three others, James Hemings, Beverly Hemings, and Harriet Hemings, left Monticello with Jefferson's tacit consent between 1805 and 1822.
[6] Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, William Peden, ed., (New York, 1954), pp.162-63.
[7] On John Woolman, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966), 483-93.
[8] Jefferson, Notes, p. 143. See also Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 46-59, 99-103.
[9] Ibid. See also Jefferson's letter to John Holmes, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. X, 1816-1826, 157 and Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 60-64, 264-72.
[10] Simpson, The Dispossessed Garden , 27. See also Miller, The Wolf by the Ears , 31-37.
[11] Jefferson, Notes, Query XIX: Manufactures, 165.
[12] Ibid, 164-65.
[13] Aristotle, The Politics , Ernest Barker, ed. and trans. (New York, 1958), 11, 13.
[14] Ibid ., 14.
[15] Ibid ., 15-17.
[16] G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, Second ed., J. B. Baillie, trans. (New York, 1964), 239-40.
The featured image is a sculpture of Thomas Jefferson seated for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville by Karl Bitter (1867-1915) and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
About the Author: Mark Malvasi
Mark Malvasi is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and Professor of History at Randolph-Macon College, where he teaches "The Idea and Problem of Slavery." Dr. Malvasi is the author of The Unregenerate South: The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson , Slavery in the Western Hemisphere Circa 1500-1888 , and Dark Fields: Poems and an Essay .
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Jefferson was very important to the founding of the country.
But he was not an admirable figure by 21st century standards.
We do live in the 21st century, dont we?
Yes, yes we do, but Jefferson did not. We cannot judge a man by the standards and norms of today.
I dont think people should spend a lot of time attacking Thomas Jefferson, but they shouldnt spend a lot of time praising him either. He did some good things for the young country, but nothing that still needs to be praised 250 years later.
Be careful you don’t fall prey to presentism.
The Declaration of Independence is probably the most important document of the last 1000 years. It's certainly done more to inspire freedom and the idea of racial equality both here and globally than anything else.
What does deserve praise in 2021 John? Whose accomplishments come close to mattering, if Jefferson's don't?
That is a pretty bold statement. I’d definitely say one of but it impossible to say “the most” since that is a purely subjective statement. Why about all the other documents/books that informed and molded Jefferson’s thinking? Important yes, but one among many.
But I do agree that while we cannot help but impose our current views and values on historical characters and events, it is important to look at them in the context of the times. No one was perfect and if that is the standard for someone to be celebrated then EVERYONE falls short since perfection is a constantly moving target.
Sure, but from 1776 forward it was the language of the declaration that was referenced throughout the world, not Locke or Montesquieu. His synthesis of other's works became the reference point for those seeking liberty.
BUT, we are told rather constantly that we should admire these people for their good ideas and their dedication. Not just to admire the ideas, but to admire the men who had them.
Thomas Jefferson may have been a man of his times, and Washington too, but they knew that slavery was wrong. Their economic incentive to use the slaves overcame their understanding that it was wrong. Sorry, that is not admirable and not entirely related to being" men of their times".
We do live in the 21st century, dont we?
Yep...and slavery is long gone.
But don't forget that the slave trade didn't necessarily originate with White Europeans
It is always a timely subject because "patriots" insist on bringing up the Founding Fathers for praise on a very regular basis.
We are not supposed to talk about slavery because it ended in 1865 but we are supposed to always praise the Founding Fathers, personally , even though their activities were over long before the Civil War.
Jefferson was not all that admirable. We can admire the Declaration of Independence without admiring Jefferson the man so much.
Shouldn't present day Blacks apologize that their ancestors were slave traders?
Is that really all you have?
Yes or No?
To who? White folks? Just because you can say it, don't make it so! And, lynching? Drownings? Beatings? Red-linings? No legal education? Working beneath an economic floor? Why did some white folks do it?
I saw this article and was going to leave it off. But, stupidity is attempting to lay a foundation here and that ain't happening 'today.' Now you may choose to tell yourself that you won't be lectured to on the subject matter and that is your right, but one thing you will not be allowed to do is say is 'my predecessors' hands are clean' because we can bring up past photos showing and documents written in black 'blood.'
The only possible reason to ask blacks to apologize would be to further the argument that whites are no more responsible for North American slavery than blacks are, which is absurd and also a well established racist rationalization.
Who were the slave traders in the United States?
Did African slave traders force their 'merchandise' into the colonies and into the fields?
Did African slave traders brutalize, murder, and destroy slaves put into our colonies 'care'?
What policy/ies did the African slave traders create and enforce in the U.S.?
What laws did our colonies put in place to empower, authorize, legalize, and sustain slavery?
Why?
Does the US government owe an apology? Yes because it was the entity that permitted and supported slavery and the slave trade and should work to correct the lasting negative consequences of that.
Do I owe an apology for slavery? Of course not because I had nothing to do with it.
There is a big difference between institutional guilt/fault and personal.
No, our African slave trading ancestors should apologize to us, their 'children,' they sent away to be dogged, beat, heinously tortured, and murdered in a land bragging about liberties and freedoms. On a positive note, things are better today in our country, relatively-speaking.
It is the tired old argument that its the 'White Man's Burden' to toil away at controlling the world and making life work out for this the planet else all will go to rot. Thus, white men should control the levers of power, wealth, and influence (and in doing so make lasting determinations about winners and losers across the spectrums of human existence).
Which 'present day Blacks' are you talking about? Africans traded slaves between tribes long before the Atlantic slave trade began. Yet slavery in Africa was NOT chattel slavery as perpetrated in the New World.
I remember that in grade school, teachers were constantly telling us how uniquely wonderful the Founding fathers were.
Especially George Washington who was portrayed as super-human. In fact, to hear some of those school teachers tell it-- he was close to Jesus Christ in his numerous virtues!
(My own opinion is that many people often have a tendency to over generalize-- seeing each historical figure as either totally wonderful-- or totally evil...when if act the reality is often more complex than that...)
That applies to Martin Luther King as well.
No reason he should be praised today, right?
Now hold it! What does Dr. King have to do with Thomas Jefferson? Did King own slaves? Did King advocate civil rights and human rights? Did King exist in the same period as Jefferson? Whatever reasons you may feel you can raise about King criticism-Jefferson is not a proper comparison. That's a red herring fallacy.
I think he is going with the line of thinking that if you look closely at anyone you will find they have done some shit you disagree with/disapprove of and that if not being perfect is a disqualifier for having a higher opinion of someone then we shouldn’t hold up anyone as a positive example. Which if he is the he is right.
We have to look at the entirety of a person and then decide if the good the did outweighs the bad.
See my comment # 2. 2. 12, above
Does Thomas Jefferson's dilemma explain why today's Democratic Party is as dependent upon the Black population as was the Democratic Party of the 1830s? The glaringly obvious point presented in Malvasi's essay is that the Black population has divided the United States from the beginning.
It's also interesting that Malvasi cites whites opposed to slavery. Aristotle, Hegel, Woolman did not arise out of Africa. Where's the abolitionist philosophy from the African continent? The people were slaves in West Africa and their African slave owners chose to sell them to white people. The institution of slavery in West Africa provided the model for slavery in North America. The institution of African slavery originated on the continent of Africa; not on the North American continent.
What was West Africa's contribution to the enlightened ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality? As Malvasi points out, in a backhanded manner, the role played by the Black population was to divide the white population. And today's Black population is making the same contributions and playing the same role within the white population as they did 400 years ago.
Wow , Nerm.
Didn't you read what you seeded? Malvasi is pointing out that African slavery even divided Thomas Jefferson. Malvasi doesn't cite any philosophical arguments of African origin.
The Black population really were the cause of conflicts between white people when founding the United States. The United States was divided over slavery from the beginning. And the only thing the Black population contributed to the founding of the United States was division. What has changed?
An odd response, since the article quite clearly suggests that Jefferson opposed freeing the African slaves because he needed the money they brought in through their working his land. Obviously slaves made an enormous financial contribution to the founding of the United States, even if they did so unwillingly.
Bizarrely , you seem to be blaming the "black population" for whatever dissent was caused by their being held in cruel bondage.
So let me understand this. A people were kidnapped from their home country, brought here under force, and were slaves for over 200 years, and it's their fault that there was division between the races? Am I misunderstanding something here?
They were not kidnapped. These people were slaves in West Africa and their African owners sold them to white people.
The institution of African slavery originated in Africa. Slavery in West Africa was an institution long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And the institution of slavery persisted in West Africa after slavery was abolished in the United States.
Nerm, slavery in America early on became race based. Were there white people enslaving black people in Africa?
Personally I would be embarrassed to argue that whites have less culpability for race based chattel slavery in North America on the basis that slavery also existed in Africa.
Some were slaves there, most were not. And yes I know that African slavery originated in Africa. It didn't mean we had to join in and bring them here.
As for West Africa after slavery was abolished in the United States, are you trying to say we had some sort of moral high ground? Because it cost a whole lot of Americans their lives to defend the institution of slavery vs those who didn't want it anymore, something the English ended before us, without a war.
Slavery in America was only based on race because West Africans only had Black people to sell as slaves. West African slaves were a commodity.
African slavery did not originate in the United States. African slavery did not originate on the North American continent. African slavery originated on the African continent and was practiced centuries before North America was colonized.
As I pointed out, slavery divided the United States from the beginning. Malvasi doesn't cite any African abolitionist philosophy or African opposition to slavery. Malvasi's essay presents division and conflict within the white population. And Malvasi is even highlighting the division and conflict within Thomas Jefferson's thinking.
The only thing the Black population contributed to the founding of the United States was division and conflict. What has changed?
The United States did not join in. The founding of the United States limited the spread of slavery and prohibited the importation of slaves.
The United States, at its founding, was divided over what to do about slaves that were already in the country. The United States inherited the institution of slavery from the British colonies. White people were in conflict with white people over the Black population at the beginning of the country. What has changed?
Of course, they did. The moment our slave ships arrived in ports in Boston and NYC, we were involved. The founding of this nation did nothing to stop it, since the antislavery clause was removed from the Declaration of Independence.
That is true.
That is also true, but it continued way past our independence, so we own that.
And here is where you lose me. 200+ years later, where is the conflict? Don't you think that we should own our national history since it did happen?
And for the record, I am just discussing our history, and nothing else.
I don't get it either and I totally agree with your assessment.
White people are still arguing with white people over what to do with the Black population. Malvasi highlights the conflict within the white population at the beginning of the United States. What has changed?
The Black population is still an object of discussion within the white population 250 years later. The white population still argues about what to do to or to do for or to do with the Black population. The white population is still arguing within itself about what the Black population should be allowed to do or helped to do or, even, forced to do. The white population is as conflicted today over the Black population as it was in Thomas Jefferson's time. What has changed?
What is the Black population contributing to resolving the division and conflict within the white population?
The only thing being defended is an honest discussion of the topic. Malvasi's is extrapolating the specific example of Thomas Jefferson into general conclusions concerning slavery. But that extrapolation is based upon an extremely narrow and highly selective presentation of history.
Wow. I don't have words that that I am allowed to post here. Nerm, how 'Black Man's Burden' of you:
White Man's Burden Trailer 1995
How could those insidious 'dark landers' seduce 'white landers' to take their diabolical stock into themselves and prosper by making cotton king! /sarcasm.
No, you are seeing on display this aspect of an alternative reality where some conservatives do not apologize, admit defeat, display humility, or willingly share the same facts as you and me. You're faced with the real "me" of these hard-core " Big Lie Party " conservatives.
Black people have been talking and dealing with them for generations. These people have always undermined our dreams, kept the 'spoils' from hard-work for their children's benefit (and gave us the equivalent of lesser crumbs, for which they would change hats and sit across the negotiating table and criticize us for accepting), and looked for 'life-long' ways to tell us to accept that its the best this country can do!
Some conservatives -
"Crocodile tears."
I explicitly pointed out that slaves are not responsible for slavery.
What I've said is that Africans are responsible for African slavery. Africans were not trying to end the slave trade.
Was the United States raped by Africa in the 17th century?
Is it your statement the United States were beguiled by African slave traders to open its. . . 'ports' and African slaves 'inserted' their big, hulking, 'ships' inside?
A case of we said, "no," but Africa would not listen, they just kept on. . . 'pounding' and 'sailing' into our 'ports' until we began to. . . 'cu— make cotton king.' And, then we wanted those Africans all the more in endless streams of bodies.
Things that make you go: Hmmm. (Where have I heard this kind of thing happening before?)
Oh yeah, the Biblical Joseph when he was accused of adultery by Potiphar's wife comes to mind!
It's some conservatives who would like to "reimagine" the past where their 'relaxed' consciences can feel nothing (but 'better'), thus they admit to no present guilt when they give nothing to make life better for the masses of citizens neglected throughout U.S. since this nation's time immemorial.
It's Trumpism on steroids. That is, do not apologize, do not forgive, do not forget, do not relent, just engage in political combat with hopes of destroying and winning everywhere.
With that in mind. . .meet the Trumpist doctrine on the U.S. slavery past.
The Black man is placing the burden of guilt onto the white population. The white population bears the burden of guilt for slavery. That's today's Black Man's burden.
Democrats have been telling the white population what to do with the Black population since the beginning of the Democratic Party. Democrats are still telling the white population what to do to, for, and with the Black population. Just because some of today's Democrats are Black doesn't change that Democrat's politics are based on the same attitude toward the Black population espoused by John C. Calhoun.
Calhoun told the white population they had a moral duty to care for the Black population. How is that attitude toward the Black population any different than what today's Black Democrats are telling the white population? Why would the justification for slavery be wrong and the same justification used for civil rights be right?
One by one, in drips and drabs, and collectively - through the force of our black being, we are having effect on White hearts and minds to see minorities in this country. Although it really is not our 'duty' to have to sell some White people on our citizenship and thereby understanding we are one.
Nerm, question: At what precise instance does anybody become a citizen of this country subject to full rights and privileges?
When you can correctly and fully answer this simple question, you will question what for is there division and conflict in the White population!
The United States didn't rape Africa, either. The founding of the United States brought about the end of slave importation and limited the spread of slavery within the newly founded United States.
Assuming what you SAY about Calhoun is correct, it's simple: Some Whites systematically broke (and now continue to break) Black and Other minorities in this country. It was and is accomplished through oppression, suppression (repression) using power politics. Therefore, you "break it you become the ones accountable to fix it!"
You are framing the question inaccurately:
1. The white population as a whole is not at issue. There are component groups and caucuses of our white majority that actively engage in oppression and suppression. On the other hand, many white people support equality and fairness across the board for all, and I do mean all, their fellow citizens.
2. Blacks, Other minorities, and Whites in the Democratic Party are telling Whites, Other minorities, and Blacks in our former Republic Party - now, "Big Lie Party" that they have a moral duty to "form a more perfect union" more now than upon when they arrived in power, wealth, and influence. And to leave this citizenry better off as a whole and not merely better off in its select parts. We are compelled to strive to be "one."
Establishing conservative alternative realities and from its lofty ramparts flinging out edicts and dictatorial statements that the citizenry are 'well' when evidentially we are nearly pathologically devastated and nearly paralyzed as a whole is wrong.
We, all of us, need YOU to care. It will go better for the state of affairs of our nation and the world, since we are its superpower if we scaled down our ramparts and scale up caring about civilly, decency, and coming together to once again achieve great things.
Why did slavery end in the United States, Nerm? Straight answer; forget the 'chaser.'
Please elaborate farther.
@3.1.4 that was not your framing. It is a red herring.
Our slave/r narrative begins when each 'trader' ship departs from the African continent!
The U.S. colonies, slave trade, slave laws, succeeding policies in our 'homeland,' and Thomas Jefferson are our 'threshold' for discussion. What Africa did and didn't do is not considered "American" history, Nerm.
What the hell?! Why would you post something so horrible? It hurts my heart to read something like that, even from you.
What fucking history book are YOU reading Nerm?
By the way, here is a photo of my Uncle Elijah P. Lovejoy :
Here is a photo of my Uncle Owen Lovejoy :
My Uncle Elijah was murdered for his beliefs. My Uncle Owen spent the rest of his life making sure his brother didn't die in vain. That's why it hurts my heart to read your comments.
It also hurts my heart for those of color, which includes NT members and others who might be reading your comments.
Well, if these two, division and conflict were only what Blacks contributed to the founding of the United States why is it belied by the phrase: "Cotton is king"?
Conditions Which Led to a Dependence on Cotton
When white settlers came into the American South, they discovered very fertile farmland which turned out to be some of the best lands in the world for growing cotton.
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, which automated the work of cleaning cotton fiber, made it possible to process more cotton than ever before.
And, of course, what made enormous cotton crops profitable was cheap labor, in the form of enslaved Africans. The picking of cotton fibers from the plants was very difficult to work which had to be done by hand. So the harvesting of cotton required an enormous workforce.
As the cotton industry grew, the number of enslaved people in America also increased during the early 19th century. Many of them, especially in the "lower South," were engaged in cotton farming.
And though the United States instituted a ban against importing enslaved people early in the 19th century, the growing need for them to farm cotton inspired a large and thriving internal trade. For example, traders of enslaved people in Virginia would transport them southward, to markets in New Orleans and other Deep South cities.
Nerm,
The black population didn't ask or wanted to come here, so what is there to say from them?
Wrong. We didn't have to buy them. That was a choice we made. Just because someone sells drugs doesn't force you to buy them, right?
What was the color of those who owned or operated the ships that purchased and brought the slaves to America Nerm?
They were New England faces.... Seafaring faces... AKA... White European faces.
What is glaringly obvious is that the Africans did not choose to come to America in 1619. Nor does the willingness of Africans to sell their brethren have any relevance to white guilt. I let Africans worry about African culpability. I am a white American and concern myself with what Americans did.
Those Africans didn't have a choice is West Africa, either. Those Africans were slaves in West Africa before they left the continent of Africa.
Wrong. Obviously, you never heard about the "Triangle Trade"; Molausus, to rum, to slaves. The coastal tribes would go inland, with rum from the slave traders, get members of those tribes drunk and then load them onto the boats.
And even if they were slaves in Africa, they didn't ask to stuffed into ships and brought to America, did they?
Are you claiming there were no blacks slaves in Africa? And that slaves weren't sold to slave traders by black tribes?
How do you square that with legal slavery ending in Africa after it did in the US?
Are you consumed with White guilty? Perhaps you should be concerned with what they do now
If someone sells you a gun , and you use it to kill someone , do you go to court at your murder trial and blame him for selling you the gun?
I dont recall ever hearing that as a defense in a murder case.
No, I am not claiming that there were no slaves in Africa, but I am sure they didn't want to be slaves there, or slaves here.
So there is nothing to square. One could argue that the English ended the use of slaves way before we did, too. Are they more civilized than we were?
You claimed that "slave traders" stole people after getting them drunk and claimed Nerm's correct point about how slaves for the international trade were acquired was wrong.
I pointed out the easy to find proof that slavery existed in Africa independent of the slave trade and that it continued well after the slave trade ended.
But by all means demonstrate how Nerm was wrong while admitting slavery existed in Africa independent of the slave trade.
Then wouldn't that make holding gun manufacturers liable for the results of what gun owners do rather silly, which is exactly what many Democrats want?
That is not a claim, that is a fact. The constant flow of slaves by African slave traders was facilitated by our rum.
Yes, those coastal African tribes knew how to gather slaves since that was the practice for centuries. Africans were selling slaves to Romans.
Those white slave traders didn't capture slaves. Africans captured slaves and sold them to white people. Those coastal African tribes weren't bothered by moral dilemmas; that was business as usual. Slavery was embedded in West African culture as an institution.
IT's more like if you buy a stolen watch, it's pointing out the watch was already stolen if you are accused of stealing the watch.
I dont believe slavery was as important to the English economy as it was in America.
People like Thomas Jefferson knew that slavery was wrong but they rationalized that it couldnt be ended, for various reasons, when the reality appears to be that they liked the benefits it gave them.
In this particular article the author, who is described as a college professor who teaches a course on slavery , goes to some length to suggest that Jefferson thought freeing slaves would impact his lifestyle and undermine his philosophical beliefs about the optimal society.
lol. thats a good one.
If you buy a stolen watch knowing it was stolen you are still guilty.
I never said they did, but they did trade with those slave traders to get slaves. It is still being a part of the slave trade and you are trying to blame the victims and not that we were complicit in this disgusting business.
They were heavily used in their colonies like the British West Indies for the purpose of sugar harvesting, and a workforce. Also, it didn't end there. They made slaves out of Indians in India. Hard to equate.
Also, remember that the Triangle Trade involved many northerners since slaves were brought into northern ports and sold there.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he included an antislavery clause that was removed from the document, because the south would not sign it with that clause in it.
Jefferson, himself, was a bit of a hypocrite, first saying that he would free his slaves, and then being in debt, didn't, where Washington said he would free his slaves upon his death, and did. Jefferson didn't even do that, with the exception of Sally Hemings.
I respect Thomas Jefferson for his intellect, his scholarship, his varied interests, his skill at constructing the Declaration of Independence, but I think his indifference, at best , about slavery and the fact that he needed slaves for his personal benefit makes him an unadmirable character.
Around 25 or 30 years ago sources like the Encyclopedia Britannica began to openly question Jefferson's status
What? African slavery was important in the British colonies because British landowners had emptied the British prisons. Colonization was driven by investors in British land companies based upon the model of tenet rent.
The United States inherited the institution of slavery from the British colonies. North American slavery did not begin with the founding of the United States. In fact, the founding of the United States limited the spread of slavery and ended the importation of slaves.
The American revolution did not begin in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson was a late comer to the original tea party.
The Jesus freaks and religious nutters in the northeastern United States didn't rationalize slavery. The demand for abolition was quite clear. There's been a lot of talk about how the founding of the United States required a compromise over the institution of slavery. But that compromise was driven by abolitionist demands of northern Jesus freaks and religious nutters.
Secular rationalizations overwhelmed religious moral objections when the United States was founded; just as they do today.
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was
the first American abolition society . It was founded April 14, 1775 ,
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and held four meetings.
Yes, the first abolitionist meeting in the world was held in America in 1775. So much for the 1619 narrative, huh?
According to your argument, Jefferson and Washington and the other founding fathers were BOTH British slaveholders and American slaveholders. Please tell us how they changed when they became Americans.
Yes it only took 165 years for someone to organize opposition to slavery in America.
took 165 years for someone to organize opposition to slavery in America.
America didn't exist. And, again, no one in the world really cared about slavery, hence the lack of any popular movement to abolish it before the first occurred in Philadelphia.
The point is that the 1619 project claims that the US rebelled because England posed a threat to slavery. There was no English threat to slavery. The first place in the world with an anti-slavery movement was in the soon to be declared USA.
"The first statement against slavery in Colonial America was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends."
As I said, the compromise over slavery at the founding of the United States was driven by abolitionist demands of Jesus freaks and religious nutters. Secular rationalizations overwhelmed religious moral objections and the institution of slavery continued; just as secular rationalizations are overwhelming religious moral objections today.
The history of secular dismissal of religion in the United States hasn't changed in 250 years. That's why slavery persisted after the United States was founded.
That's correct, the founders of the United States were all British subjects. And the British subjects that owned slaves continued to own slaves as citizens of the United States.
But not all British subjects owned slaves, not all the founders of the United States owned slaves, and those founders did not begin owning slaves when they became citizens of the United States.
The United States was divided over the issue of slavery when the country was founded. That's why a compromise was necessary. It's true that compromise allowed slavery to continue but that compromise also didn't force those opposed to slavery to begin owning slaves. Slavery wasn't an enforced requirement by the newly formed government just as abolition wasn't an enforced requirement. Colonies where slavery had been abolished weren't forced to allow slavery with the founding of the United States. Slavery did survive the founding of the United States but so did abolition.
Nor did they asked to be purged overboard at sea orlay around in other's piss and feces. I think Nerm knows better, but do I really know? That is he could just be delivering counterarguments for their own sake. Or worse, some conservatives party-line or think tank.
Cut to the chase: Sean Treacy, if given the choice between being a slave trader / slaver master/ or slave abolitionist in the future. . . which persona is the best fit for your personality? Don't squirm: Choose.
Is that some code? "They" who, Greg?
What is occurring is a re-framing of your @3.2.2 comment. He is 'arguing' for 'black African guilt' after you brought up 'kidnapping' and theft, Perrie. AKA: a red herring.
Nerm_L, where was Thomas Jefferson - his 599 plus slaves- and U.S slave-holding states are located could it be in . . . Africa?! /sarcasm
How long are you going to play at this? History, logic, and commonsense simply are not going to permit a win for your perspective. Though invariably there are two-sides or more to every narrative, buying slaves from slave traders to 'hold' in a new republic declaring itself a "freedom-land" is simply a party's attempt at special pleading.
Actually its more like fencing stolen goods where its the case slavers buy 'people merchandise,' hauls their carcasses across an ocean deep and wide, deposits and resells them to merciless people who turn out to the 'people merchandise' markets. All thanks to authorization from your business friendly state governing bodies. Is that it, Sean?
I can kind of understand Jefferson's "catch-22." People get caught up in. . . life-stuff and then they 'waffle' and before they know it they're done. That said, it does not one iota of good to refashion the truth into a harmful and damaging lie. Because truth is well, healthier for our character traits and inner-workings (soul) of any nation.
That's nice - prove it 'clear and free.'
What means this, Nerm? Are you attempting to say that "British citizens" owned slaves transitioned to owning the same lot of slaves as "U.S. citizens?"
Such an argument as above would be a fallacy of division (fallacy). For example, in 1777 Vermont abolished slavery - years ahead of applying for statehood (1791).
When the United States is credited as being a slave nation it is clear we are talking about federal and state authorities which permit the 'whole' of our union (not all its component states, towns, municipalities, and unincorporated areas) to be slave-holding (emphasis on 'holding' not 'trading' - the latter ending in year 1808) places unless and until expressly forbidden to do so. As in the case of the Lincoln-ear presidency.
Wow, crack a history book Sean.
Chattel slavery was all but non-existent in England by 1200.
Imagine thinking that contradicts anything I wrote. IF you cracked a history book, you would know that slavery continued in the British Empire until 1843. Popular agitation against slavery didn't begin in England until after the Revolutionary War.
Consider that a free lesson.
Save that supercilious bullshit for someone who you can impress.
Stop conflating and go look up CHATTEL SLAVERY Sean.
You are totally forgetting one little point Nerm...... PROFFIT.
The import of African slaves had a sizeable return on the investments for those white Europeans that participated in it. Greed has always trumped morality, ethics and most definitely...... the belief in abolition.
Dude, that sounds pretty fucking racist. You may wanna rethink that post because you are more or less explicitly blaming slavery on black people and painting them as intentionally trying to sabotage white people.
Our system of slavery was what is known as chattel slavery and has been practiced around the world for thousands of years, possibly most famously by the US and Roman Empire. It didn’t originate in West Africa and was not imported from West Africa, Europe and Europeans were already VERY familiar with it before the African slave trade became attractive. In fact, the primary reason the Europeans started importing African slaves into the colonies was because the Natives made for shitty slaves (they died way too easily from disease, and there weren’t a lot left after a colonization). The Europeans were already practicing chattel slavery before they started using African slaves.
Your description of the slave trade is hideously inaccurate at best and just flat out fucking wrong at worst.
Since African slavery originated on the continent of Africa, who else is responsible? I'm not blaming slaves but, yes, Black people do bear responsibility for African slavery. Africans weren't trying to stop the slave trade.
Do drug dealers have no responsibility for crimes committed by drug addicts? We blame the cartels for the drug trade. Why shouldn't Africans be blamed for capturing and selling Africans as slaves?
The buyers and sellers. And again you are making it sound like they came up with the concept of chattel slavery to begin with, which is absolutely untrue. African slavers didn’t send their sales reps to the America’s and be like “hey guys, we see you are using paid labor for your fields, mines, and other related jobs. Let us show you this cool new idea called chattel slavery.” The slaves were Africans yes, but the style is chattel slavery, there is no such thing as “African slavery”.
SOME. They were providing a product to meet the demand, but they were not solely responsible for the institution itself, white Europeans implemented it all on their own with no input from African slavers, hence their desire to purchase the slaves to begin with.
No many were.
No. Do auto-manufacturers or alcohol producers have any responsibility for drunk drivers?
I blame them for meeting the supply side, but they are just meeting the demand. Responsibility falls on both sides.
They share their part of the blame for enslaving people to begin with, but you cannot pin what happened after they made the sale on the slavers. Europeans chose to make the purchase and chose to practice chattel slavery, it was never forced upon them and thus the blame for that system and the ills that our society continues to feel from it are on them.
Also known as: Human 'beasts of burden.' To be used, abused, crushed, or exploited 'to hell and back.'
Nerm, should distinguish better, but. . . who really knows?
Thrawn, thank you - yes -really thank you. I 'felt' a soul coming through in waves.
I really have no idea what Nerm is going for here other than to apparently try to say black people are responsible for the entire concept and practice of slavery as a way to wage some sort of weird race war against white people and destabilize America? Some fucked up thinking along those lines at least.
I mean yeah, Africans enslaved and sold other Africans to Americans/Europeans, but that is the end of their involvement with slavery here in the americas.
Africa had and continues to have its own unique set of problems, dilemmas, and circumstances-back then and now. However, Nerm is using a recent talking point shared by some conservative columnists. In summation: If democrats are 'for' something loosely or closely - the loyal opposition stresses reasons to be against it. It is the surest sign of a partisan (on either side)!
To be clear, I have not found the time (or motivation) to read this 1619 Project material, though it is readily accessible to me. Perhaps I will soon.
That is utterly false.
That is pure unadulterated BULL SHIT, Nerm. In fact, your whole premise is nonsense and as bigoted as they come.
The problem with discussing slavery throughout history is that the concept of 'property' has changed over time. Tribal cultures tend to consider 'property' as more communal than individual. There are also various forms of slavery; chattel slavery is only one of many forms.
Evidence indicates that chattel slavery was practiced in ancient Africa throughout the northern Africa and in the Nile Valley. Some evidence suggests that chattel slavery was more widespread throughout central and western Africa. But chattel slavery was not the only form a slavery that was practiced.
Ignorance is not sufficient justification for alleging bigotry.
By all means, let's ignore Exodus.
Y'know, Biblical references to slavery really has played a significant role in the history of slavery in the Americas; both for master and slave.
Nerm, I know you think you have produced some sort of "gotcha" to lay on everyone who disagrees with you, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Africans were not responsible for white people buying slaves and transporting them thousands of miles to North America, and no amount of massaging the facts can make black people responsible for their own enslavement in America.
How about some "personal responsibility" for the colonists?
Africans do share responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. White people were buying what African slave traders were selling. African slave traders weren't victims.
You are highlighting a significant problem with today's civil rights movement. Factual history is claimed to be a 'gotcha' for political reasons; not because the history isn't factual. The effort to control the political message has overshadowed honest discussion.
Slavery in various forms persists on the continent of Africa. But the evils of modern slavery aren't really important for civil rights in the United States. Shared complicity for African slavery in the past would suggest that today's civil rights would require a shared effort. That honest discussion would upturn the political message of what the white population can do to, for, and with the Black population.
The Europeans practiced chattel slavery of Native Americans in what is now the US starting in the 1500s and after King Phillip's war in early 1600s the practice increased. Between 2 and 5 million NA's were enslaved before it ended for NA's.
What you seem to be doing is trying to excuse the use of chattel slavery in the US by blaming Africa and excusing white Europeans/Americans
That is bigotry.
I dont think you even realize that some of your comments come off as odd. Even if one were to agree with you (and I don't) that black Africans played a decisive part in sending African slaves to North America, that still leaves hundreds of years of what happened to those people and their descendants once they got here. Or do you contend that Africans in Africa continued to be responsible for slavery even after it had taken root in Virginia and the Carolinas, and had been passed , by bloodlines and skin color, from generation to generation there.
As did the Mohawks. The Mohawks ended the Great Narragansett War by attacking the various New England tribes that had allied against he European settlers. (That history is more complex than a simple telling here can cover. The New England Indian tribes had formed alliances with the Puritan colony. New European arrivals began competing with the Puritan colony and with the indigenous people. Conflict was inevitable.) War captives became slaves. That type of slavery had been practiced by American Indians before European colonists arrived.
American Indians practiced slavery in various forms long before Europeans arrived. However, the slavery practiced by American Indians was not chattel slavery because the concept of 'property' was quite different among the indigenous people than the European concept of 'property'.
None of which has anything to do with slavery in the United States. The Great Narragansett War occurred a century before there was a United States.
Per your own comment, it was not chattel slavery so stop the nonsense Nerm.
The people that practiced chattel slavery before the US became a country are the same ones that did it after the US became a country.
You're still trying to justify chattel slavery by white Europeans/Americans of both Native Americans and blacks.
I am well aware that what I am presenting does not fit the narrow political narrative adopted for civil rights. Descendants of African slaves may also be descendants of African slave traders. The Black race shares responsibility for chattel slavery. Those are the historical facts. Addressing the consequences of slavery is not the sole responsibility of the descendants of white Europeans. And there isn't any consideration of the Muslim influence on the slave trade. African slaves were not just carried west out of Africa; they were transported to the east as well.
The political narrative of 'victimhood' completely ignores that the United States was divided over slavery from the beginning. The United States was not founded on slavery. Abolitionists played a more significant role in the founding of the United States than is being acknowledged. The United States was divided geographically over slavery from the beginning.
The political narrative of 'victimhood' ignores that the northern section of the United States, where slavery had been prohibited, was attracting more settlers, was growing, and was developing. The southern section of the United States with entrenched slavery was stagnating. The northern half of the young United States was following Thomas Jefferson's idealist views while the southern half of the United States was trapped in Thomas Jefferson's rationalizations over slavery.
The first half century of the United States included pursuit of a political end to slavery. And the abolitionist point of view was making political progress toward that goal. But the Democratic Party rigged the political system to retain power and thwart the political progress of abolition. (The real history is not kind, the Democratic Party really was on the wrong side of history.) The southern half of the United States was being left behind in the growth and development of the country. The loss of political power was inevitable; slavery was going to end. Since the south had stagnated because of slavery then the end of slavery would result in an enormous economic and political disadvantage; the south could not compete with the north without slavery.
The institution of slavery allowed the Democratic Party to rig politics in its favor. And political power allowed Democrats more influence over domestic policy, foreign policy, trade policy; slavery allowed Democrats to control the Federal government. Control of the Federal government allowed the stagnant south to compete with the developing north. Slavery allowed the Democratic Party to impose its narrow and self serving political ideology on the majority of the country.
Yes, the Civil War was fought over slavery. But the institution of slavery meant much more than just owning Black people as property. The Black population allowed the Democratic Party to control the country.
What has changed?
That is not relevant. Until you understand that you will be in the wilderness.
Nerm knows that! He is attempting a "whataboutism" JR. It's straight out of 'combat' conservativism which seeks to do nothing and admit nothing, resulting in a collection of conscience-less, insensitive, followers of extreme Right-wing politics and policies.
They will fail, because the truth of history will pour 'hot and abundantly' on top of some conservatives thick 'heads' until they have no choice but to leave their alternative 'universe' and re-connect with the real world.
How about you address Thomas Jefferson's "share" of chattel slavery. You know, the former president of the United States that owned slavery in the land aspiring to be the world's "model" of freedom and liberties (galore). Oh, and Nerm when you get 'around to it' you can hit Africa up on their 'share' of slavery. Won't have nothing to do with your share of responsibility, nevertheless.
YES IT IS !
Race based slavery led to the rationalization by the white slaveowners that the Africans were an inferior race. That led to centuries of racism and racial discrimination encoded into law.
It is not Africans who imposed race based slavery or created racial discrimination against non-whites, it is whites who did that.
It was U.S. law that forbade its slaves the rights and privileges of reading and writing. It is U.S states legislatures that put blacks into slavery collectively and kept them there by writ. It was U.S. courts that kept slavery intact by ruling it constitutional.
Nerm, is floating 'off-shore' because he loses all reason to speak once the slaves are under U.S. authority.
The threat posed by the fact that the descendants of African slaves may also be descendants of African slave traders would remove race from the discussion.
If the Black race shared responsibility for the slave trade then where does that leave racial politics? Wouldn't that stunt the political narrative of racial victimhood?
Then why is discussion of the division and conflict between Thomas Jefferson's idealism and rationalizations over slavery of any significance?
Nerm the only way your "argument" could work would be if race was not the basis for slavery in America.
But because race was used as the justification and basis for slavery in America, the fact that Africans sold their own into slavery is incidental, and not relevant to the issue. You dont seem to understand that but we cant go around in this circle much longer.
The "coup de grace"?
There you have it. Bottomline: Nerm, is representing a confederation of thinkers (and talking points) that does not want any guilt for the past to effectively affect what this country STILL struggles not to do in the present: Treat all its citizens the same with fairness, decency, cooperation, and financial well-being.
That is, there are a group of White people (thinkers?) who want to keep vast power, wealth, and influence they feel is their exclusively to control. And "they" mete it out to 'deserving' minorities as they see fit and proper.
This is a 'survival' tactic: Talk about Africa's slave history and not our U.S. slave history.
It won't work, Nerm. We see your group clearly. Do you see that we see your 'talking points' and raise you with rock solid history?
One more thing. As you might have noticed Black Americans, accent of Americans, do quite well with advancement as a people in our country when "roadblockers," detractors, and political obstructionists get out of the way.
As I pointed out, the United States was as divided over slavery from the beginning as was Thomas Jefferson in his views.
The founding of the United States did, essentially, create two countries. A northern half that followed Thomas Jefferson's idealism without slavery. And a southern half trapped in Thomas Jefferson's rationalizations over slavery.
The United States was not founded on slavery. In fact, slavery was an obstacle that had to be addressed with compromise to create a confederation between states. When the federation of states was established following the revolution, abolition was protected. Abolition is as much a part of the history of the United States as slavery.
The northern half of the United States was the model of freedom and liberties espoused by Thomas Jefferson's idealism. African slaves wanted to escape to the northern half of the United States. Crossing the Ohio River meant freedom and liberty within the United States.
Nerm, you say that the birth of America created the impetus to end slavery and racial inequality. Then why did it take another 188 years, until 1964 to encode equality into law across the nation? Does that actually sound like a reasonable time frame to you? And even if we confine the time frame to the end of slavery it was 89 years .
Get serious.
And the "composition" of slavery in the Southern states where cotton was king and 'empire'? What portion of that wealth benefited chattel slaves?
Are you aware that Jefferson brought two slave women to work in the White House during his presidency?
So much for Jefferson's working ideology: double mindedness. Jefferson died with "valuable" (not lazy worthless blacks as some would have us believe) slaves living on his property needing to be sold to aid in 'recovery' of his debts.
And what is the guilt of the northern half of the United States? Are you complaining because the northern states didn't fight a civil war 40 years sooner?
You are not treating the citizens of the United States the same with fairness, decency, and cooperation. You are treating the Black citizens of the United States as victims and you are assigning guilt to the entire white population of the United States. You only want to focus attention on the flaws and failings of Thomas Jefferson and portray the Black population as victims of those flaws and failings. That's not a fair or honest discussion and certainly won't encourage cooperation.
Nerm, no one is denying that chattle slavery was practiced in Africa. No one is denying that various kingdoms/tribes/groups in Africa were more than happy to sell slaves to the Europeans. You keep harping on that like anyone here has said that never happened. Of course it did, it is a undisputed, well document historical fact. As has been said numerous times, slavery was a common practice across the globe, so of course every race shares responsibility for it because every race practiced it.
The way you are presenting it is as though Africans came up with the idea of slavery in the first place and then basically convinced/tricked Europeans into adopting it in the colonies and are thus responsible for what happened here. African responsibility for slavery practiced in the colonies and later the US ends the moment the buyers took possession of their product.
The 1960s happened. The FREE black community overwhelmingly supports Democrats because of the significant political shifts that took place as a result of the civil rights movement. A tad bit different than the Southern Democrats of the 1800s having outsized influence in government because slaves counted as 3/5 of a person.
As to Thomas Jefferson:
As to Black "victimhood" that is beyond the scope of this article on Jefferson and slavery - yes?
As to White guilt. I assigned nothing to the entire White population. There have always been portions of White citizen society (here and internationally) who have stood 'shoulder to shoulder' to help Black slaves/people/citizens get out from under oppression/suppression(repression). Such White citizens are a MAJOR cause Black citizens have been able to 'bear up,' survive, and yes, prosper here. So on this one - you uttered an untruth.
As to cooperation - I will just have to keep 'heaping' until you come out of the alternative universe. Because African history is not U.S. history, Nerm!
As to fairness and honesty: Okay Nerm: (full-frontal!) Why won't you answer the question asked @ 3.1.23 that you (keep) blowing off or letting past by:
Um no. Nerm, you seem to be unable or unwilling to grasp the concept that as soon as the Europeans/Americans bought the slaves, they were responsible for what happened next. If you buy a car and then drunkenly run over a child, does the dealership or manufacturer then have anymore responsibility for that other than they sold you the car? Should they be held equally liable?
Africans sold the slaves to the colonies/US, yes indeed. But they did not make the colonists or Americans impose a system of chattle slavery, nor did they make slavery be passed down from generation to generation, nor did they make the colonists or Americans determine that black people are inferior or sub-human as a way to justify the continued practice of slavery when it flies in the face of the values the United States supposedly held dear. That is 100% on the colonists and Americans. White people in America decided that race justified the existence of slavery, white people in America decided that black people didn't deserve the same rights and opportunities even after slavery was abolished. That was not Africans in any way shape or form and as such Africans, or black people generally do not have to share the responsibility for that shit.
Okay. Who accepted that responsibility and ended slavery in the United States?
WTF does THAT have to do with your prior statement Nerm? Here, let's look at it again:
The story of Exodus happened in EGYPT which is NOT in West Africa Nerm. So stop obfuscating.
Secondly, the fact that Europeans used the the Bible to excuse slavery has NOTHING to do with West Africa's 'model for slavery'.
In short, your tap dancing isn't cutting it.
The Constitution protects slavery and slave owners Nerm. Get real.
So, you are claiming the American Indians practiced a 'kinder, gentler' type of slavery? What types of slavery are acceptable?
And Ohio ain't Virginia. Slavery in the southern United States doesn't have anything to do with slavery in the northern United States.
The argument is being made that slavery practiced anywhere in the United States makes the entire United States guilty. Yet those same finger pointers equivocate over where the enslavement of Africans originated. Egypt ain't west Africa, after all. Well Michigan ain't Alabama, either.
West Africans were enslaved by West Africans. Not all west African slaves were transported out of Africa. European traders did not force West Africans to enslave West Africans. European traders did not force Africans anywhere on the continent to practice slavery. And European traders refusing to trade in slaves would not have ended slavery in West Africa.
The United States ended the trans-Atlantic slave trade very soon after the country was founded. The United States limited the spread of slavery when the country was founded. The United States was not founded on slavery. And the entire United States isn't responsible for slavery.
You want to make the argument that the entire United States is responsible for slavery since the institution was allowed to continue. Okay. Who accepted that responsibility and ended the institution of slavery? Who removed the protections for owning slaves from the Constitution?
Way to move the goalpost. I've been discussing slavery; not racial inequality. Since you feel there is an advantage to introducing racial inequality into the discussion, then answer these questions.
Does racial expectations affect racial inequality? Will focusing attention on racial distinctions bring about equality among the races?
We are separate races; that only states the obvious. If equality can't be colorblind then equality must accommodate racial distinctions and racial expectations. Won't celebrating the distinctions that separate the races lead toward a segregated equality?
North of the Ohio River cotton was not king. North of the Ohio River Black people lived as 'yeoman farmers' in accordance with Thomas Jefferson's ideal. There weren't plantations or slave masters or patrollers north of the Ohio River. North of the Ohio River, Black people were free people. And that was established when the United States was founded.
Thomas Jefferson was not King of the Realm. Thomas Jefferson was not a dictator. And the United States was not required to accede to Thomas Jefferson's every whim. When the United States was founded, abolition of slavery was imposed on westward expansion and growth of the United States. Thomas Jefferson couldn't and didn't stop abolition with his rationalizations.
Nope. One of your arguments is that the Declaration of Independence set the course to end slavery. Would you now contend that the sentiments of the Founding Fathers , so noble, would not set the nation on the path to racial equality? Isnt racial equality implicit in the words all men are created equal?
The truth is that Jefferson didnt much care if slavery ended. And he certainly didnt think Africans were equal to whites. Isnt that a betrayal of the Declaration of Independence?
I never made any such argument. Spewing falsehoods will only trap you into a corner. So, let's discuss the issue in your corner.
The statement that 'all men are created equal' is colorblind, isn't it? That simple statement that 'all men are created equal' doesn't acknowledge racial distinctions and doesn't accommodate racial expectations. Race doesn't have anything to do with equality in that statement.
Now answer my question, does racial expectations affect racial inequality?
Racial equality is really about a separate but equal equality that accommodates racial expectations; a segregated equality. I challenge you to refute that contention.
Then it is fortunate that Thomas Jefferson wasn't allowed to dictate his views onto the founding of the United States. When the United States was established abolition was imposed upon westward expansion and growth of the United States. Thomas Jefferson couldn't and didn't stop abolition of slavery when the country was founded.
Thomas Jefferson's rationalizations may have been an important factor in allowing the institution of slavery to continue when the United States was created. But Thomas Jefferson's rationalizations didn't force the newly established United States to allow slavery everywhere into the future.
You are not going to trap me so you can give up on that idea.
Nerm, when the Declaration of Independence was written there were approximately 500,000 African slaves in the colonies and represented about 13% of the population . The text of the Declaration in itself wouldnt have done anything for them, as slavery was legal and the about to be independent nation had no government to free them.
The fact that the Declaration is "colorblind" is meaningless to the slaves. They needed intervention, not platitudes.
You are trapping yourself. I am only discussing the issue in your corner.
But there aren't slaves today. Who accepted the responsibility for slavery and ended the institution of slavery? Who eliminated the possibility of the return of slavery from the Constitution? Weren't they Americans?
And the statement that 'all men are created equal' is still as colorblind as when it was written. You brought racial inequality into the discussion. Racial inequality is not a colorblind issue. You've only spread more paint and avoided answering my question.
Does racial expectations affect racial inequality?
Racial equality is really about a separate but equal equality that accommodates racial expectations; a segregated equality. Racial equality does not conform to the idea of colorblind equality in the Declaration of Independence. Racial equality is not a colorblind equality. I still challenge you to refute that contention.
By what authority/ies?
Once you achieve an expectation of racial equality in a society, then it could be treated as "colorblind". Of course the society cannot be colorblind while there is still inequality to be redressed, it would be self defeating to approach a situation that needed remediation by using a "colorblind" perspective.
The statement of equality in the Declaration of Independence is quite clear; all men are created equal. (Which in today's language would be 'all humans are created equal'.)
The ideal of equality in the Declaration of Independence doesn't differentiate between status or circumstance. The only prerequisite for equality is to be human.
Overlaying distinctions onto the idea of equality would require accommodating those distinctions, wouldn't it? Black equality would need to fulfill Black expectations, wouldn't it? The same is true for any other distinction overlaid onto equality. Economic equality would need to fulfill economic expectations.
The introduction of distinctions into equality is based upon the argument that some are being treated differently than others resulting in inequality. Inequality is based upon distinctions between humans which segregates humans according to those distinctions. Poor-humans are not treated equally with rich-humans; humans have been segregated into poor and rich. Overlaying distinctions onto the ideal of equality presented in the Declaration of Independence would translate into using unequal treatment to achieve an ideal of equality that accommodates the distinctions and expectations.
Yes, attempting to achieve equality through unequal treatment based upon distinctions isn't a serious solution. As I contend, that approach would only result in a 'separate but equal' type of equality; a segregated equality.
By the legislature; the Congress of the United States. By the representatives of the citizens of the United States. By the people of the United States where the authority for governing resides.
So if blacks or latinos or Native Americans start the race a half a lap behind whites we should not try and make them equal by giving help to the ones who started the race with a handicap because that would be unfair to the whites? Or that would reinforce "segregated equality"?
AFTER we have established equality then we can talk about a colorblind society.
You may recall that MLK's words were about a "dream" , not a present day reality. He made the "content of their character" speech 5 years before he died and he spent all of those 5 years working to redress inequality, not talking about how the dream had been achieved.
The ideal of equality presented in the Declaration of Independence can only be achieved by focusing attention on what humans have in common. Once humans are divided by differences then why should we expect those differences can be resolved?
Racial equality can only be achieved by becoming colorblind. Until we become colorblind, those racial differences will always divide us.
Does racial expectations affect racial inequality? Yes. That's because focusing attention on racial differences will always divide us.
Handicapping those ahead in the race may provide an equal outcome. But that unequal treatment won't result in the ideal of equality. The racers will always be segregated into those who must be handicapped and those who must be helped; the racers will never achieve equality.
There it is! The "sovereign citizens" of these United States, even in northern states which allowed for free Black- men, women, boys, and girls did not see fit to consider slaves and former slave, "sovereign citizens" like themselves, or equal to even those dumbest of White men, women, boys, and girls. (No matter a slave's or "freeman's" capability to learn and administer.)
I repeat, northern states still maintained that freed blacks were not citizens of their communities. They were "Other."
What nonsense. And a strawman argument. Because White people are not being "handicapped" so that Blacks can compete! There have always been a category of Whites in this country who look to ways, and ways and means to handicap, suppress, obstruct, mutilate, set-back, and yes kill the hopes, aspirations, and accomplishments of their fellow citizens be they Blacks or other minorities.
Moreover, as was the case in the past, now some Whites give themselves too much credit when those Whites assume they are smarter than other races. It is beyond the scope of this article to 'launch' into a litany of nuances about how some Whites in our country maintain control, status, and position at the expense of others races.
WITH YOUR NEXT COMMENT:
I'll take the chance that redressing inequality may not be philosophically perfect.
It's better than pretending that a colorblind approach will achieve good results.
To this very date, there are some conservatives hiding amongst the Republicans who hold the worldview Blacks, Indians, and Asians are not sovereign citizens as meant and established by the founding fathers (See: Dred Scott Decision.) Accordingly, their succeeding "generations" have been gaining power and 'holding the line' against minority/ies advancement ever since!
In after this fashion, some conservatives would see their fellow Whites live, suffer, and die in sad economic despair/shape, rather than see minorities-at large advance in our country. You can hear it in their rhetoric of who qualifies to be called (by them) a "Patriot." (Anybody who agrees with White racial dominion in this country.)
You might want to stick with history rather than political talking points.
I realize that Democrat's politics requires marginalizing rural America. But that political expediency is really a disservice to Black history. Black history in the United States isn't just about slaves.
WITH YOUR NEXT COMMENT:
In the United States, citizenship is a birthright. Immigrants can also become citizens by naturalization. People are also allowed to legally reside in the United States as non-citizens.
What rights are denied non-citizens legally residing in the United States? What Constitutional protections are denied non-citizens legally residing in the United States?
Nerm, you wrote :
Nerm, since you 'SAY' that Black Americans born in the United States are in fact, sovereign citizens, entitled to full rights and privileges— why is it your opinion that White people have to care for and manage Black citizens?
Beyond the scope of this article about Jefferson and slavery.
That's what civil rights advocates are telling white people. The point I'm making is that advocates (and Democrats, if we're honest) telling white people what to do to, for, or with the Black population is not advancing civil rights.
Today's civil rights is being used to divide the United States for political advantage and to justify unequal treatment.
You keep changing your comment Nerm. AGAIN, you said:
NOT WHERE the enslavement of Africans originated.
Slavery in West Africa was NOT chattel slavery Nerm.
Slavery in North America WAS chattel slavery.
Is there any chance that you will acknowledge those 2 simple facts any time soon Nerm?
All of those answers are wrong.
Black People can't and don't speak (up) for themselves, in you opinion? Is that right? And these "advocates" they are not Black, Brown, White, and other "rainbow" colors? Moreover, why are some conservatives missing from the civil rights "struggle"?
You don't realize any such thing, because it is simply untrue. Rural America is "welcome" to come struggle right alongside oppressed, suppressed, citizens of this country any time they wish.
This article is about Jefferson and slavery, Nerm.
I will "start" on this specific area of your comment, in this way:
Did you "marginalize" this link, Nerm? And, it would seem "expediency" got the best of you. From your link :
The very "next" paragraph below your quoted materials.
Since I am just getting back to this from a long day, and my train of thought is 'wavering' I will just post this about the
:
'The Bone and Sinew of the Land' restores a lost chapter of US history
In The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & the Struggle for Equality , historian Anna-Lisa Cox digs deep into archives and census data to reveal the hidden lives of the tens of thousands of blacks in the Northwest Territory from 1800 until 1860. (Over the decades, the territory broke up into the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois.)
Historians have known many blacks lived in the territory, but Cox writes that it wasn’t clear before that so many were entrepreneurial farmers who owned dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of acres each.
Her findings reveal “a reality that no one thought existed, of a population that most have considered impossible – a population of successful African American pioneers integrating America’s first frontier,” Cox writes.
Slavery was not allowed in the territory, and all American men who owned at least 50 acres of land could vote regardless of race, at least at first. The equality allowed by law was “astonishing,” Cox writes, and helped the black pioneers see the territory “as a place of fresh hope.”
Indeed, the book takes its title from a letter written by Ohio farmers in a tiny town near the Indiana border to fellow African-Americans in Columbus, urging them to leave the jobs “which prejudice has assigned to you” and “go into the country and become a part of the bone and sinew of the land.”
Unfortunately, we don’t known much about the details of many of their lives. Facing this lack, Cox often chooses to imagine novelistic scenarios about their lives. Her approach is most successful when she stops romanticizing her subjects and instead offers details about the challenges they faced.
For example, Cox reveals that farmers had to store their plows indoors. Otherwise, “creatures from bears to squirrels would gnaw on the handles soaked with their sweat and salt.” Readers also learn about the elaborate process to prepare wool and the fact that it typically took 20 years for “frontier farmers to clear their land so they could plow with horses instead of oxen” – two decades of “felling trees, chopping roots, pulling rocks. ”
While these pioneers were successful enough to start schools and churches, the Northwest Territory was far from paradise. Whites were also flooding into the Great West, and many didn’t want to share the bounty with blacks.
The oppression faced by these black pioneers is well chronicled and devastatingly vivid in “Bone and Sinew.” Over time, the rights of African-Americans dwindled and hatred rose.
So-called Black Laws destroyed the hopes of resettling former slaves by requiring them to prove they were free and to find two frontiersmen to deposit a bond of a stunning $500. And whites revoked voting rights for black men as the Northwest Territory began to split up into states.
Yes, Cox notes, “there was always a dissenting voice arguing for equality.” That’s heartening. But, as she sharply observes, this fact exposes another truth: It means that there was debate, and “whites were very thoughtfully and deliberately withdrawing the right of citizenship from African-Americans.”
Racist whites found other ways to oppress free black people through indentured servitude – slavery in all but name. Some blacks found horrific employment in “salt springs,” where they mined salt amid “whippings, fire, smoke and a muddy, ever-deepening pit.” White mobs also attacked the schools, churches, and newspaper offices of black people.
Today, many of the legacies of the black pioneers are scattered. There’s an African-American church in Indiana that persevered despite being torched again. And in Ohio, a “mansion of brick and limestone as grand as any plantation in the South” still stands. It was once owned by members of a black family who started a school for both genders and all races and “were active conductors on the Underground Railroad.”
There’s another legacy: all the 19th-century Americans who were fed because these pioneers dared to plow and plant and persevere.
Nerm, you were upbraiding me about using 'political talking points'? Try again!
Well, I put in the 'work' on this. . . . I did my part.
And yet you have ignored the Fugitive Slave Act and it's effect on laws in territories and states north of the Ohio River. Who was responsible for enacting the Fugitive Slave Act?
King Cotton was rural; not urban. The economic advantage of King Cotton plantation slavery was in rural America; not in cities. Jim Crow wasn't about urban populations or eating at a Woolworth lunch counter, either. Jim Crow was about making sharecropping as abusive as planation slavery. But the abuses of southern sharecropping didn't discriminate based on race so that story is not useful for the politics of racism.
Modern civil rights is about urban Black populations. And urban civil rights deliberately marginalizes rural America. The institution of slavery and plantation slavery was all about rural agriculture, after all.
As your cited material points out, Black farmers north of the Ohio River weren't segregated or subjected to discrimination. The Black population north of the Ohio River really did have freedom that conformed to Thomas Jefferson's ideal of 'yeoman farmers'. At least they enjoyed that freedom until the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act. Who is responsible for imposing those changes onto the states north of the Ohio River?
West African slavery was not chattel slavery? Are you attempting to convince us that West African slave owners gifted slaves to European traders?
Here are some things for you to consider regarding how the European slave trade began. How did sailing vessels replace sailors in the 17th century? We know that sailing ships lost people to sickness, injury, and over zealous punishment. Trading ships did not carry an over abundance of crew so losses needed replacements. Sailors in the 17th century weren't all volunteers.
A trading ship buying slaves to serve as sailors doesn't require a large stretch of imagination. If a ship needs replacement sailors in mid-voyage then there aren't a lot of options. But what do traders do with a slave when the slave isn't needed any longer? Since the slave was bought then the slave can be sold. Traders trade; traders made their money by buying and selling things.
@3.4.53 where do you "mention" the Fugitive Slave Act? I'll wait for you to point it out. . . .
I didn't mention the Fugitive Slave Act because I was discussing Black farmers north of the Ohio River. And you provided a citation that confirmed what I said.
You began the gish gallop about Black laws and you completely ignored the biggest, baddest, nastiest Black law of all: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Who imposed that Black law on states north of the Ohio River? If the responsible party created that law at the Federal level then what would you expect from state level politics?
You're pointing at trees and completely ignoring the forest.
Oh wow. In the 'final analysis' - you relied on a narrow (incomplete) quote from a book, The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality" by Ana Lisa Cox 2018 copyright to buoy your 'argument' that some blacks (farmers) 'had it made - in the shade' at least that what comes to my mind.
You moved from southern state slavery accountability to territorial liberties for black farmers to end up landing at the feet of federal responsibility for slavery!
The 'union' of colonies (become states) is the thing. There is no applicable distinction to be made. That is, the United States is accountable for slavery and oppression in its borders.
I confirmed little to anything you presented in the sense that you placed it.
DAYS of blathering about a topic which you obviously do NOT understand. Will you PLEASE go READ about what chattel slavery entails Nerm.
But whaddabout today's Republican Party being as dependent upon extremist pro-fascist hate groups (for example the Klan and other rascist hate-mongers) as they've been for year's?
OTOH-- there's also a very positive trend that's been happening amongst many Republicans today:
List of Republicans who opposed the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign
Is the only thing important about historical figures is how they treated blacks?
In America, where we hear about "freedom", daily, from some conservatives, yes the way the founding fathers treated blacks is important.
It is definitely important when it comes to understanding many current aspects of the United States.
No and your question is a sound one, Charger. The problem lies with those who would assent the positive and DENY the negative. That can not be allowed. Thomas Jefferson needs to survive on the merits of his life - good, bad, indifferent.
What right or privilege do some conservatives (or anybody else for that matter) have to revise or create a 'fog' around U.S. slavery anyway? It's well-established history.
My problem is not with Jefferson; my issue is with those who try to re-imagine the facts as promulgated fabricated lies. I say, tell the truth and 'shame the devil' - honor what's wholesome and sound.
Exactly. Overall I kinda like Jefferson, I think we was overall a net positive influence in history. Was he perfect, of course not (being a slave owner as the prime example) but it is important to remember he was also a product of his time.
Emphatically.
If I listed the American Presidents I most admire...for each one I could give you a list of some "faults" they had....
(IMHO, part of the reason that so many discussions on social media sites are so superficial {heck, in many cases downright STUPID} is the tendency to overgeneralize. To make quick {and very superficial] judgements} of things.Often things are a bit more complex than many people realize...)