Posted on 08/23/2019 9:27:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Murdochs’ WSJ is full in on the Leftist/Progressive/Dim political agendas now, with an entire article in today’s edition about a group set to commemorate the 1619 date and a cemetery site said to contain the oldest remains of 1st slaves brought to the Virginia colony.
So slavery was “culturally appropriated”.
New York was founded as New Amsterdam by the Dutch (remember the $24 glass beads mythology). When the Brits took control they renamed it as the New world city of York.
The emphasis needs to be turned around to the fact that the democrat party, from its start up to the present, ARE the party of slavery.
If it is going to be celebrated then the party of slavery needs to acknowledge its large part in maintaining and promoting slavery in this country.
For the first slaves both white and black, transportation and indenturement were implemented. Chattel slavery came later, primarily in the agricultural south.
Very good article.
I will add a couple of items.
First, Forrest Mc Donald in one of his books, offers an explanation of why the founders generation looked at regional slavery as something tolerable even if detestable and unfortunate. It is a very hard thing to accept but the slavery as seen in the late 1700s was not the brutal industry and engine of despair it became in the 1800s south — that era that so greatly defines our view of the terrible institution. McDonald looked at late 1760-80 slavery in Charleston and examined, free time, living conditions, personal property and similar factors for slaves there as opposed to indentured worker-immigrants of New England just a generation earlier and newly immigrating serfs from mainland Europe. Guess what? There was not that much difference.
This analysis is almost impossible to discuss in a public forum or in an educational setting as it is like saying the German Concentration camps did a lot of productive labor. But if you think about it, many of the founders generation saw something completely different than what it became.
Secondly, in a recent biography of Patrick Henry, the House of Burgess in the mid 1700s (when he joined it) was very aware that they had promoted an effort to stop British Slavery landings in Virginia and the Queen Anne ministry over-ruled the Virginia colonial legislature preventing the action from going forward. Again, to put ourselves in the places of those in that era we have to understand what they took for granted as known — the usage of slave labor was imposed on the colonials, not invented by them.
Slavery in America started thousands of years ago - before Columbus. The natives (Indian tribes) often enslaved other natives from other tribes. ..
bkmk
Google : How did New York get it’s name ? It’s not even arguable.
No more New York Times, New York City, New York State, New York Giants, New York Jets, New York Yankees, New York Mets.
Can’t have entities named after a slave trader.
The aboriginal peoples on the American continent practiced slavery up until they were placed on supervised reservations in the 1880s-1890s. Not a peep about that or the cannibalism practiced by the aboriginals.
The US begins in 1776.
But aside from that, slavery had actually died out in Europe by the Middle Ages, because it’s an unproductive economic system (it was replaced by serfdom, or sharecropping tied to the land).
It was revived not only through the Islamic invasions of Spain and Portugal, but through the kidnapping of Europeans on the Mediterranean by Muslim pirates from North Africa. The Spanish and the Portuguese had religious orders founded to pay ransom for these slaves, and there were also private parties in Portugal who would arrange ransoms for 20% (a “quinta”, which then became the slave-buyers commission even in later years). Portugal was under Islam for 500 years, but seems to have absorbed more Muslim influence than did Spain.
In any case, only the Muslims and then the British practiced chattel slavery, which means the slave is just a possession with no rights. Under Spanish law, a slave had human rights (to receive religious instruction and be permitted to practice his faith, to marry, not to be separated from his family by sales, to keep wages he had earned, and to buy his freedom and that of his family if he had earned enough). He didn’t have civil rights. That is, he couldn’t leave a property and go to another without permission, he couldn’t participate in government, etc. However, he could sue in Spanish courts for things like back wages or other breaches of contract. Essentially, it was considered long-term indentured servitude.
So the Portuguese got back into the slave trade as brokers, probably because of their Muslim influence and geographical closeness to Africa and thus to the Muslim slave trade (because the Portuguese and even the English weren’t out there “hunting” slaves, but bought them). Africans were sold by Arabs, after having been captured in North African slave raids in Sub-Saharan Africa or bought from rival African tribes who has sold them to the Arab slave traders.
Once slavery reentered Europe, the Portuguese were involved in the trade, the Spanish were marginal and either transported or “bought” mostly house servants, the French were supposed to do what the Spanish did (that is, abide by the code of slavery, which was developed in the Catholic world to mitigate slavery and control its reappearance) but they didn’t, and the British really got into it, especially the colonists in what is now the US, where they needed the labor.
The English had run through the Irish and Cockney labor they had normally impressed on the streets of Dublin and London or sentenced for minor infractions to servitude in the colonies, and thus the British went further afield, to North Africa, since their earlier activities in that regions had given them contacts.
English colonists from GA and SC attacked Spanish Florida on a regular basis until the end of the 18th century, because once an African slave made it across the border to Florida, he was free. And the colonists wanted their slaves back. At the end of the 18th century, the new US had put enough pressure on the Spanish that they finally gave up and said they’d return runaways to the US. Andrew Jackson, a very cruel slave owner, was instrumental in this.
Why the English colonists didn’t think beyond slavery, I don’t know. And the strange thing is that the “peace-loving” Quakers were among the most heavily involved in this.
bump
Couple of links to Wikipedia (I know) worth checking out:
Nikole Hanna-Jones, the primary author of the NYT’s 1619 article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikole_Hannah-Jones
The 1619 project:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
Both links contain interesting reading. Also contain leftist propaganda.
When countering that claim, it is well to ask those know-it-all 21st Century "elitists" to consider the historical context within which those Founders found themselves, as well as the enormous contributions they and their generations made toward eradicating slavery from these shores and creating a constitutional republic which could, ultimately, affirm and protect the rights of ALL people:
Of special interest in that regard is Jefferson's “Autobiography,” especially that portion which states:
"The first establishment in Virginia which became permanent was made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes in the colony until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were by a Dutch ship; after which the English commenced the trade and continued it until the revolutionary war. That suspended...their future importation for the present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the (Virginia) legislature, this subject was not acted on finally until the year 1778, when I brought a bill to prevent their further importation. This passed without opposition, leaving to future efforts its final eradication."
Jefferson also observed:
"Where the disease [slavery] is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the northern States, it was merely superficial and easily corrected. In the southern, it is incorporated with the whole system and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process."
He explained that,
"In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of the county in which I live [Albemarle County, Virginia], and so continued until it was closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected: and indeed, during the regal [crown] government, nothing [like this] could expect success."Below is another quotation, cited in David Barton's work on the subject of the Founders and slavery, which also cites the fact that there were laws in the State of Virginia which prevented citizens from emancipating slaves:
"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; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. . . . The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded who permits one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of 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 for ever. . . . The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. . . . [T]he way, I hone [is] preparing under the auspices of Heaven for a total emancipation."A visit to David Barton’s web site (www.wallbuilders.com) provides an essential, excellent and factual written record of the Founders' views on the matter of slavery. One source he does not quote, I believe, is the famous 1775 Edmund Burke "Speech on Conciliation" before the British Parliament, wherein he admonished the Parliament for its Proposal to declare a general enfranchisement of the slaves in America.
Burke rather sarcastically observed that should the Parliament carry through with the Proposal before it: "Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation (England) which has sold them to their present masters? from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic?"
He continued: "An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty and to advertise his sale of slaves." Ahhh, how knowledge of the facts can alter one's opinion of the revisionist history that has been taught for generations in American schools (including its so-called "law schools"!!)
Human beings are allotted ONLY A TINY SLIVER OF TIME ON THIS EARTH. (Pardon shouting) Each finds the world and his/her own community/nation existing as it is.
If lawyers and judges cared enough to educate themselves (in this day of the Internet) on the history of civilization and America's real history, and if they used that knowledge and the resulting understanding, to do as much on behalf of liberty for ALL people as did Thomas Jefferson and America's other Founders, the world in the next century would be a better place.
Remember: Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he penned our Declaration of Independence which capsulized a truly revolutionary idea into a simple statement that survives to this day to inspire people all over the world to strive for liberty!
Bump for later
This is the type of material that should be posted to FR, not the latest outrageous quote from Scarborough, AOC, Hogg, Maxine Waters, etc. Congratulations.
TIME TO BRING THIS UP
During the period after the civil war known as reconstruction black legislators who were Republican were elected in the south To stop this democrats came up with segregation poll taxes and Jim Crow laws and the KKK
did the indians enslave each other pre-1492?
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