Posted on 01/15/2021 4:32:37 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1811, Louisiana planters commenced their executions of rebel slaves involved in the German Coast Uprising.
Also known as the Deslondes rebellion after the surname of its mulatto commander, this was a larger insurrection than the better-known Nat Turner rebellion: in fact, it was the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. Louisiana at this point was still new to the Union courtesy of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase; Congress in 1811 would take up the question of statehood for the former French colony and its liability to slave rebellions stoked by Gallic sugar magnates offered no small store of vehemence for the Republic’s orators. (Louisiana was admitted as a state in 1812.)
On January 8 of that same year of 1811, some 60 to 125 black men and women — slaves of Louisiana’s brutal sugarcane economy, as well as runaways and maroons lurking in nearby river swamps — rebelled at Col. Manuel Andry’s plantation 36 miles from New Orleans. Andry was wounded but miraculously escaped, leaving behind a son whom his slaves were energetically stabbing and axing past death.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Interesting read...thanks!
Notice the Importance of the militias in this article.
I dunno.
When the Global Socialists are pushing to enslave us all, it is hard for me to side with the slave owners over the the slaves themselves.
It is a sad fact that the Declaration of Independence didn’t keep its anti slavery elements, and the Constitution allowed it, given how important the right to liberty was to so many of the Founding Fathers.
I know all about how they had to compromise to placate the Carolinas, but seriously, learned Southern men like Washington, Jefferson and Mason personally opposed slavery and thought it would wither. Then along came the Yankee Eli Whitney...
Interesting read.
Punishment was especially viscious, hands cut off, then shot in legs, then shot and hacked until dead, then head removed and mounted on a pole for display.
Jefferson's contemporaneous notes tell a broader story that some prefer not to acknowledge: “The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia . . . Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures: for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”
Acknowledging the New England Sea Captains role in the slave trade.
But declaring “All men are created equal...” and “endowed by their Creator with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” sholud have dictated what the ENTIRE nation should have done with both plantation slavery AND the slave trade.
What was the purpose of the document?
It had several purposes.
1st of all, to declare independence from the Great Britain.
Secondly, as it stated:
..a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
In other words, to explain WHY they wanted independence.
Secondly, to inform as to the rational of why they had the RIGHT to do so.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
In other words, God has given every person liberty.
The Declaration went deeply into the entire Enlightenment's philosophy of God's direction for Mankind, and not just to separate from the British.
This. All 13 states were slave owning states. They were *NOT* trying to make a political statement on the issue of slavery. They were declaring their own independence was a human right, and they had no interest in side tracking their point by wading into the weeds of a completely separate issue.
This is exactly why the committee removed Jefferson's more clearly stated objections to slavery. It didn't help advance their cause, and it would have in fact blown apart the fledgling coalition they had created.
What was left was a Declaration that was slightly pro slavery, because one of the "causes" it listed was England's efforts to stoke slave rebellions.
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us..."
But the point remains, the purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to justify the Independence of the 13 colonies from a Union that they felt no longer served their best interest.
None of the signers(who represented their states) intended to send a message on the topic of slavery, though I say Thomas Jefferson should be given full credit for the manner in which his words greatly boosted the subsequent anti-slavery movement.
People saw it as hypocritical to demand freedom for themselves why they were keeping other people in bondage.
It should have dictated strict adherence to the Ten Commandments too. But it did not.
Fact is, the DOI was not intended to apply to the “merciless Indian Savages.” The signers of the Declaration did not intend to make Native Americans jurists, electors, or PTA presidents.
I wish the signers had been foresighted enough to look ahead 245 years and write the DOI in a way that would have made me more happy.
Even though they did not, I still love them.
Not just “This”.
People all over the world and throughout history have declared themsevles “free” of whatever power binds them, from the Jews versus the Egyptians to the South Sudanese versus the rest of Sudan.
Some win, some don’t.
What makes the DoI so important and so different is all those ideals and principles it is based on and articulates.
You can’t just relegate it to simple independence.
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