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Our kids today don’t know anything about the Civil War, where it happened or why...

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Good point .. neither did we apparently have all the historical facts and the truth.

FYI .. and for what it's worth, Glenn Beck just replayed an earlier show on this chapter of our history that I'd missed. I knew nothing of this .. never heard any of this info in any of my American History classes.

He's got a huge, crack team of researchers, and they use original documents .. not history books after the 40-50's, when the progressives started altering our history, and painting America as nearly satanic in its practices.

It was a common practice all over the globe at the time. As he always recommends on all the factual data his team unearths ... don't depend on him, do your own research from original documents. But I've sure been impressed with the distortions and lies he's uncovered that I'd accepted as fact .. and it's done with tons of references and backup data.

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*snip*

Well, tonight, I want to take you over here. Let me bring over here on three, I want to bring you over here. I want to bring you into the 17th Century. We're going to talk a little bit about slavery.

We all learned about slavery in school. We all know the horrors of it. I mean, I remember watches "Roots" as a kid and thinking, oh, my gosh!

The fact that whites enslaved blacks in this country built on the idea of all men being created equal is beyond hypocritical. We know that. So, how did it happen? We know that it's a national tragedy. We also know the treasure that is Abraham Lincoln. We know how it ended with the Civil War.

But I asked the other day when we were in these meetings, does anybody know how slavery started? We know the ending, how did it start? I mean, nobody came in and said, hey, everybody, let's have slaves! That doesn't sound like that could happen.

The real insidiousness lies in the fact that it all started small and advanced into one of the worst scars in American history and global history. I mean, it's a human atrocity and it's happened time and time again.

At first, slavery wasn't full blown slavery. In fact, in the early colonial America, it wasn't slavery. It was indentured servitude.

Now, what is indentured servitude? Well, indentured servitude is not the same as slavery. I mean, there are some important differences here.

In fact, I think it shares many of the same things — where are we? Over here? — it shares many of the same things that we have in common with today's illegal immigration. I believe that illegal immigration is modern-day slavery — I've said that on the program before. But that's not quite right. Illegal immigration, the way it's happening now, is more like indentured servitude.

For instance, if you're an illegal and you're working here in New York, you're barely getting paid enough to rent a bed — not a room — a bed for eight hours. Somebody else is going to rent that same bed for the next eight hours. You have enough time to go sleep in it and then you got to go back to being at the mercy of your employer.

You don't have any real rights. The government is not going to help you. Nobody is going to help you because you don't exist. You're not in the records.

In theory, indentured servitude is like that, but indentured servitude promised a light at the end of the tunnel, because after your contract with the master was up, you got what were called at the time, "freedom dues." That was usually a little bit of land and a gun.

The most important part of freedom dues was freedom.

Indentured servitude was a common can practice throughout the globe at the time. The English, the Spanish, the Portuguese — everybody was using this indentured servitude. It was like slavery — like slavery — but not quite. And it's not an American problem — it's a human problem that happened all over the world.

Now, there were criteria in which people were used as early indentured servants. But here's what's not taught. If I said to you, who — was it a white man or a black man that was the master and indentured servant? You would say, it was like this. But the criteria at the beginning was not based on color. It was based on creed. It was non-Christians that were used as servants.

Colonists didn't identify themselves as white. They identified themselves as Englishmen or Christians. Whites, blacks, you name it — they were all used for this earliest form of slavery. In fact, if an indentured servant broke a contract, they got the same punishment regardless of color. I mean, if this guy was the owner, this guy ran away, same thing, as if this guy ran away.

It was Christianity. And that's how it was. And if you were Christian, you were a Christian, and you just said, "I accept Jesus," you could get out. I — I honestly don't know why more people didn't say, "I accept Jesus." I mean you really didn't want to do it.

Now, this is bad. But this isn't slavery. How did it happen? Nudge, a shift, slight shift, bit by bit. We shifted, we nudged, we moved just little bit from servitude to slavery — but how?

Well, here's Massachusetts, the first colony to legalize and recognize slavery. Other states soon followed. Why? Because it was profitable — like Virginia.

Now, do you know who owned the first state-sponsored slave in America? Who owned? Who was it? Who was this guy that put a slave?

You know who it was? His name was Anthony Johnson. Except, he wasn't a — he wasn't a black — he wasn't a white man. He, believe it or not, wasn't a white man. You ever heard that?

How did a black man own a black man? Well, let's start with him. Before he was an owner, what was he? He was an indentured servant. He was a black indentured servant. Not a slave.

He worked in Virginia, 1621. It's recorded in the Census. His name was Antonio. He just recorded his first name and his race.

Well, he wasn't considered a slave. He was an indentured servant. He worked in Virginia on a tobacco farm.

And his master allowed him to use his own plot of land. So, he perfected his skills on that plot of land for 15 years on that plantation. And during that time, he married. He had four children.

After all — after all of those years, Antonio finally negotiated and bought his own freedom. So, he gave money to this man and he bought his own freedom.

And that's when he decided that he was going to become an owner. He changed his name to Anthony Johnson. In 1640, Anthony and his wife bought a plot of land and hired not slaves, because there weren't slaves yet. He hired indentured servants. Got it?

Now, that same year, same year, in another place, there was another guy. Anthony was — while Anthony was doing all these things, there was a court case involving three indentured servants who had escaped. There were three. And here, there are two white guys and a black guy. Got it? This is different than Anthony, who is over here.

Now, these guys ran away. They escaped. They were caught.

Well, two of them had their servitude extended by four years and the third one had it extended for life. Can you guess which one got life? Which means you no longer can buy your freedom, so you in effect become a slave. This one.

Are you asking the same question I asked? Why did these guys only get four years and this guy got life? Oldest story of time, this was the beginning of slavery. He was black. This is the beginning of the real, real nightmare that took a long time to get out.

Now, back here, these guys. Over here, here's Anthony again. He's got his indentured servants.

Well, Anthony's slave was John Caster. John Caster, who is also black, complained to a court that Anthony had unfairly extended his terms of servitude. The court emancipated Caster and said, "You're a free man. You can go."

But Anthony went back and tried to convince a court that Caster belonged to him and should be his for life. He won the court case, believe it or not. He won the court case. And he became a slave. Do we have it? He became a slave, the first one.

I tell you this story to show you that it's a human problem. It doesn't matter — it's not a white condition or a black condition. It's a human condition. Man will enslave any man when he can.