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I agree. This author of the piece being discussed may be a long-time blogger, but he appears to be more of a janitor, his chosen profession, than a true historian, despite his statements about taking many history courses. In my view, he garbles the facts badly here. Years ago, when I was lurking (before I signed onto FR), someone posted a thread to discuss some somewhat grainy photostats of the original Crown Court case in Virginia (?Thomas v. Johnson) that altered the status of African indentured servants in the British colonies. The photostats were hard to read, but still legible. This case led to a change,from Africans having bondage durations identical to those white bond servants, to that of becoming lifetime slaves. Why? Slaveowner Johnson (a freedman from Angola who obtained his manumission in the 1630s, acquired some land, worked hard, and became affluent, and then purchased Thomas) argued that under the traditional slavery practiced in subSaharan Africa, he as an African owned Thomas for life, as well as Thomas’s offspring. For the full story, if you cannot locate that original discussion thread (I could not do so quickly), I suspect you would have to read accounts written by legitimate historians 30-40-50 yrs ago or more. For instance, Samuel Eliot Morrison’s Oxford History of the American People (written in the late 1960s, and a major work at the time) may suffice. Morrison was an eminent Yale professor of maritime history, and the book has several tidbits of information that true believers in the more current/revised versions of the history slavery in the US would find to be either eye-opening or shocking. And not supporting of the ongoing animus. To me, the plain truth is that modern political correctness imposes its own twisted biases and falsehoods on historic revisionism.

All I can say is that for me, I find the half-truths and yarns that today pass for actual history are sad. Very sad.