Posted on 07/04/2013 12:55:38 PM PDT by Osage Orange
Of course today we believe blacks are “Homo Sapiens”. Years ago many did not. Like all great people White Americans from 1776 to the 1960’s were very exclusive and said exclusionary attitudes were often expressed in laws. Exclusive peoples are not nice, warm fuzzy beings. I would have to be shown that when the words were drafted for The Declaration the authors(Jefferson, who despised blacks, largely authored the Declaration.) meant to include blacks, Asians and American Indians in their meaning of equality. The Constitution would be a better index of the turn against slavery. It is tempting to impute todays democratic prejudices to the attitudes of peoples of a different time. The term for doing so is anachronism if I remember correctly.
Today it’s all of us who work and pay taxes. As Abraham Lincoln put it, from one time to another, they call it a different thing, serfdom or slavery, but it’s the same thing. That some work and others takes. Today it’s called socialism.
Mr. Douglass addresses your issue eloquently.
“Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.”
And so on. Nobody passes laws to punish cattle.
Well said. Looking back at the 19th century with a 21st century eye will give a distorted view. It isn't fair to the people of the 19th century and makes one look a fool.
In South American countries at the time, slaves had 1/3 the lifespan of slaves in the USA.
In 1852 there were only three or four South American countries that still held slaves. All but Brazil emancipated by 1855.
You are I think generally correct, though I think your dates are a bit off. The heyday of working slaves to death in the Brazilian and Caribbean fields was the 17th and 18th centuries.
In all these countries the conditions were so atrocious that slaves had to constantly be imported to keep the numbers up. Only in what is now the USA did slave numbers grow by natural increase.
In fact, AFAIK, this is unique in world history for a slave society. Which I believe tells us something positive about the conditions.
There were plenty of barbarous places at that time (including in Africa), and members of in-groups who exploited members of out-groups -- while celebrating their own freedom or power (as had been the case throughout history).
I read Frederick Douglass's autobiography decades ago, and found some interesting things in it, but that passage and the speech in general are rhetorical excess. Freedom is not an either-or thing. It's a matter of degree. The Fourth of July represented a great step forward in its pursuit -- admittedly, for only part of the population -- and a statement of ideals that could only be approached over time.
I can understand the bitterness felt by slaves and former slaves at the thought of slaveholders celebrating freedom while so many persons were held in captivity. I agree that slavery deserved to be denounced. The ideals of the Declaration of Independence, though, were not empty words. Those ideals helped lead to the freedom of those who were still slaves. I would contend that the descendents of those American slaves are now freer and better off in general than most of the blacks in Africa (or in Haiti, where in Douglass's time they were already supposedly "free" -- from white slaveholders, anyway. Freedom isn't an either/or thing.)
It's pretty clear that "all men are created equal" didn't refer to equality in abilities. Even within a race all of us have different abilities, and the Founders certainly knew that. I think it means created equal in rights (that is, deserving of equal rights -- history shows that rarely if ever have "all men" had them).
Jefferson definitely considered blacks to be human beings. In his first draft of the Declaration, he referred to them as "MEN" with the word written in all caps to emphasize it. Recognizing slavery as a moral evil, though, and finding a way to end it on a large scale without disastrous results are two different things. The example of Haiti had a sobering effect on Jefferson and other Southern slaveholders who wished to see an end to slavery (gradual, not abrupt -- and I see nothing hypocritical about condemning slavery while still not wanting to end up like the whites in Haiti).
"Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture [he leaves even the mental part open to revision], that nature has been less bountiful to them [blacks] in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense." [Notes on the State of Virginia]
Notes on the State of Virginia (sections 288, 289) also contains one of his most ardent denunciations of slavery: "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 [to which all men are entitled] 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..."
Today Douglass would have to make up an "African" name for himself and deliver his speech the way Ubama's son, if he had a son, would deliver it - - in ebonics, with lots of "bitches and ho's" thrown in, along with, "Not 'God bless America' - - 'God damn America' ".
You know - - like Ubama's reverend.
I wonder who helped him. Who nurtured him.
Rhetorical excess? I dunno....Many speeches are quite full of "themselves"...so to speak.
Either you have freedom...or you don't.
Degree's?
I'd have to ask those that have been slaves.
Of course freedom is a matter of degree. Laws prevent all of us from doing things that we might choose to do otherwise. And when blacks ceased to be “slaves”, were they entirely free? Of course not. A century of Jim Crow oppression showed otherwise.
> I wonder who helped him [Douglass]. Who nurtured him.
If I recall correctly from his autobiography, among others, some of his masters. I believe the wife of his final master, from whom he escaped, was in particular sympathetic toward him and helped him in various ways.
Fair enough...
As I said, I believe the wife of his last master helped him too, though it's possible I'm confusing that with what happened when he was 12 (I don't think so, though).
Nevertheless...., many white folks saw a young man that was sharp....and obviously helped him.
I will say again...I wish I could have known him.
You’re welcome. You might like his autobiography. I’m having trouble recalling the details now, but found it interesting at the time, and I sympathized with his struggle.
I also liked Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, which covers the later period after emancipation (but under Jim Crow). The story of how he got a college education is especially impressive. When he “went to college”, he simply “went” there — traveled to the college, slept under one of the buildings, got a job (sweeping somewhere, I believe), and somehow managed to get educated. What determination! Under those conditions I wouldn’t even have tried.
I read both autobiographies at about the same time (on my own and before Black Studies came along).
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