Posted on 02/19/2021 7:49:50 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
So now they're going to conduct a reparations commission in congress. Where is everybody pointing out that Britain's Empire was the one who brought the slaves here?
The Founders didn't ignore their role across the ocean. Why do we? Shouldn't we do what our Founders did? That's all.
“The Founding Fathers of our nation don’t get the credit they deserve in trying to eliminate slavery here. “
That’s the issue at hand. In the timeline, the Royal Navy did not do what you are referring to until decades later after Independence.
At the time of Independence, the Royal Navy did the opposite of what you claim - or at “best” was indifferent because the king/parliament told them to be.
This:
“The Founding Fathers of our nation don’t get the credit they deserve in trying to eliminate slavery here.”
Which is why the original question was asked.
“Shouldn’t conservatives stop ignoring The British Empire’s role in slavery?”
It’s a VERY fair question lacking any reasonable responses. The 1830s are decades later.
I’ll draw you an analogy. The Czech Republic has been a great place for decades since they threw off the yoke of communism. We still condemn the communism of the prior era.
Virtually all the Founders were dead by the 1830s.
I don’t want to humor them. I want to fight them.
The history doesn’t match up to the claims. The Founders were on the correct side of history at the time of independence, even on the issue of slavery.
America isn’t guilty here, and shouldn’t pay the price for it. Those are the very simple facts.
That’s fine. The Brits can pay reparations to all slaves imported prior to 1776. We have to pick up the tab for those imported up to 1808 and all of their offspring. About 4 million in 1860.
True, I was thinking post 1776 since prior to that, or 1881 or 1883, we were colonies. I wouldn’t necessarily say England forced it on us, but it was a key to the economy of the Empire. And in many colonies it was simply replaced by indentured servitude. Indentured servitude didn’t end in the Empire till 1917 after many Asians were “relocated” to the Carribean.
The British were primarily slave traders to the US and others. If we focused more on the slave traders, it would tend to illuminate the activities of many New Englanders during roughly the same time period. I’m not sure there is a lot of pressure to open those doors any further.
America doesn’t need to apologize for slavery.
Neither do the Brits or Portuguese who brought the first slaves to the US, or Blacks who sold their fellows into slavery, or anyone else, even the Moslems who took more slaves than everybody else combined and still practice slavery when they can get away with it.
Slavery has simply been a fact of life since before the dawn of history. It is still being practiced in various forms today, such as camps in the PRC or simple chattel slavery in Africa, or Filipino maids the Middle East.
But not in the West.
That fact that we have managed to (at least temporarily) suppress slavery here in the West for the last century and half is an achievement of our culture and our ancestors that we should laud. The idiots that talk about slavery like it was some sort temporary aberration should be ridiculed and condemned. The descendants of former slaves should simply be happy that they are here and that they are free. They are not owed a damn thing. Not money. Not even an apology.
I am not going to accept blame for anything I personally didn’t do and I am not going to blame people in the past for not living up to ridiculous modern standards. So I am not going accept the idea of blaming anybody for slavery, nor am I going to buy into guilt for anyone over something a hundred and fifty years dead here in the West and which still practiced over much of the rest of the world.
Go peddle it somewhere else.
The Europeans point the finger at everyone else in the hope that their guilt will be ignored. It was they who invented the transatlantic slave trade.
But look at the positive side of history: More than a century ago, Europeans and Americans abolished the slave trade and outlawed slavery--at least in the nations enlightened by Western (i.e European) Civilisation. In other nations, the evil of slavery is alive and thriving today.
Slavery is one of the greatest evils ever devised by man or the devil. We must not stop fighting it until it is completely abolished forever and a stake driven through its black heart.
When the transatlantic slave trade still existed, countless Europeans were enslaved by Africans and the Ottoman Empire.
In the early decades of the 20th century, anyone could buy a man, woman, or child in the parts of Europe dominated by the Ottoman Empire and do with him/her whatever one wanted; slavery still existed in that part of Europe. It was abolished when the Ottoman Empire was conquered by the more enlightened and Christian Europeans and Americans.
The American Anti-Slavery Group, of which I am proudly a member, is an abolitionist organisation working tirelessly to free those enslaved today and to expunge this evil from the face of the earth. For those who want to help, this is their webpage: https://www.iabolish.org Those who self-righteously fantacize that, were they alive in the 19th century, they would have worked for the Underground Railroad can take heart: now's their big chance; they can put their money where their mouth is and work for it today.
Those outraged by slavery in America and Europe would be wise and benevolent to give thanks for its long ago abolition, give thanks for Christianity and Western Civilisation which brought about its abolition, let the past go, and work today for the abolition of slavery now and forever.
Conservatives seem to have become “other” to you . . .
Yes, they allowed and participated in the slave trade.
But if you go by that argument, you have to go back to the Spanish.
If you want to stick to “Europeans”.
The British Empire were the bad guys who forced it on us.
Bet if no one in the colonies bought any of the slaves brought here, the trade would have ended quite quickly.
How about condemning the slavery in Africa of Africans by other Africans that goes on to this day?
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/02/africa/ghana-child-slaves-intl/
I am so sick of all this guilting and self flagellation by stupid ignorant whites. Enough with the guilt trips!
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!
Vermont banned slavery in 1777, by 1804 all northern states had banned slavery.
Vermont was not a state of the United States in 1777. It was part of New York until, in 1777, Vermont declared its independence, seceded, and waged a successful rebellion. In so doing, Vermont became a free and independent state (aka Vermont Republic or Commonwealth of Vermont) until it joined the union in 1791. It was as an independent state or republic that Vermont did, indeed, prohibit slavery in 1777.
Vermont v. New Hampshire, 289 U.S. 593, 607-608 (1933)
Vermont was admitted to the union in 1791 as "an independent state with self-constituted boundaries."
To bring up the other side of this argument.
What is the value of the goods the progeny enjoys/benefits from because they are not in Africa?
The same questing goes for anyone who came over to the USA and has stayed. Though I’m not a fan of Cassius Clay, I agree with the idea behind his famous quote from his time in Africa with the rumble in the jungle, “man I’m glad my grandfather was on that boat”
The reward outweighs the negative.
Here is my unpopular and unpleasant discussion.
Yes...the British, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the African tribes who sold their enemies to the Europeans and others, the Muslims.....how far back do we go in time?
Is that America’s fault or Britain’s fault?
I won't mention the fact that Hutchinson wasn't Governor of Massachusetts in 1765.
England ended the institution of slavery in 1772. Slavery continued in Massachusetts until 1781.
"Without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is ... as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence." Commonwealth v. Jennison (1781)
Now what was the point you were making?
Barack Obama had one white parent and one black.
Does he pay or receive reparations?
Asking for a friend.
This is a bizarre argument. Slavery had been abolished in England in 1772, prior to the Declaration of Independence. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, slavery was legal in all states, including Massachusetts.
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