Ben Franklin: Slaveowner to Slavery Abolitionist

BenFranklin.org ^

[BroJoeK]

x: "Emancipation doesn't happen without government action.
That can be undertaken through democratic and constitutional channels.
It's a great achievement when it happens."

Again, just to put a fine but important point on this -- slavery as an institution simply cannot exist without a strong government "superstructure" (the Marxist term for it) of laws and enforcement actions.
Take away those laws & enforcement, remove the superstructure and slavery is reduced to what we see today -- illegal human trafficking.

That's what happened "organically" in Massachusetts, when John Adams' new state constitution begins with "All men are born free and equal" -- it knocked all the legal underpinnings for slavery away, and the superstructure collapsed.

Massachusetts' juries had no trouble seeing that without legal protections what we call "chattel slavery" of African Americans simply did not exist.

Nothing "sneaky" about that, and so far we've seen no evidence suggesting most Massachusetts' citizens felt differently.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "...but law passed under the wrongful impression that it was just the usual decorative verbiage used in official documents.
People passed it without realizing it would overturn slavery.
If it was their intent to do such a thing, they would have written it much more clearly to accomplish that purpose.
Here is an example of what I mean.

'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' "

And yet in the clear context of the 1776 Declaration which says:

"...all men are created equal and endowed..."

In that 1776 Declaration, its writers -- Jefferson, Adams and Franklin -- clearly intended it to include a condemnation of slavery, calling it:

"...cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty..."

Those are powerful words against slavery from three important Founders -- Jefferson, Adams & Franklin.

In 1778, just two years later the Essex Result complained:

"We feel the absurdity, and would to God... the slave-holder could not be found in the land."

In 1780, just two years after that the Adams' Massachusetts constitution begins with the words:

"All men are born free and equal."

Clearly our Founders well understood that slavery was a stain on their own ideals and should rather soon be put on a path to abolition.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I am beginning to think you only have a veneer of objectivity, and in reality you, like BroJoeK, will simply dismiss things that don't fit within your world view. You want to believe what you want to believe, and you will not let unpleasant facts get in your way of believing it.

Oh, the irony.

[DiogenesLamp]

Oh, the irony.

Accusations are not proof. Do you have some particular point in mind in which you wish to claim I believe something that is contrary to demonstrable facts?

I see myself as quite objective, and I constantly try to see things as they are, and not how I wish them to be.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "To my mind, the greatest injustice of that era was convincing the majority of states to attack other states who had done them no wrong, .
The Leviathan in Washington began with Lincoln, and this massively grown government has simply put yokes on all of us now."

Sorry, but that's a complete misunderstanding of history, only possible in a fact-free mind fully corrupted by Lost Cause lies.

1. "convincing the majority of states to attack other states"

   There was no more "convincing" necessary after Fort Sumter than there was in, for example, 1941 after Pearl Harbor, or in 2001 after 9/11.
   If you wish to call it 1898 "Remember the Maine" or 1964 "Gulf of Tonkin", those don't change the fact that Americans felt attacked and responded with war.
   No more "convincing" required.

2. "...other states who had done them no wrong..."

   Huge wrongs were done by Confederates both before and after Fort Sumter, including:

   • illegal seizing of dozens of major Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals & mints.
   • Threatening & imprisoning Union officials.
   • Firing on Union ships.
   • Attacking Union troops in Union states.
   • Formally declaring war against the United States.
   • Claiming and/or invading Union states.
   
   The fact is no nation since 1781 ever threatened the United States as seriously as Confederates in the 1860s.

3. "...and thereby greatly changing the relationship between the previously sovereign states, and our monster government in Washington DC, that now controls so very much of our lives."

   All brought to us by the same people: Democrats --

   • Opposed ratifying the Constitution in 1788
   • Supported Nullification, slavery, secession, Civil War, Black Laws, KKK enforcement & Segregation.
   • Supported "Progressive" & "New Deal" Big Government taxes, regulations & welfare.
   • Flipped from Southern whites to blacks in order to continue growth of ever bigger government programs.
   
   But typical of Democrats, they love to blame Republicans for their own misdeeds.

4. "The Leviathan in Washington began with Lincoln..."

   Nonsense, Federal non-debt spending was 2% of GDP in 1820 & 1856 under Southern Democrat control and back to 2% in the 1880s under Republican control.
   The growth of Leviathan government didn't begin until the Progressive & New Deal eras.
   Indeed, non-debt Federal spending returned to just 2.5% in 1927 under Republican President "Silent Cal" Coolidge.

   By stark contrast, spending rose to 17% of GDP in 1936 under Democrat FDR's New Deal.
   And no region of the country supported Democrat FDR's spending more solidly than the Democrat Solid South.

   So Lincoln simply cannot be blamed for all that.
   Republicans might be blamed -- even Ronald Reagan -- for failing to even attempt returning to the "good old days" of, say, 2.5% under Silent Cal and the Roaring Twenties.
   Even our current President, for all his great qualities, seems afraid to balance the federal budget, much less reduce the size & scope of government.

   But the true blame belongs to Democrats, certainly not to Lincoln.

[DoodleDawg]

You want to believe what you want to believe, and you will not let unpleasant facts get in your way of believing it.

A lot of that going around.

[DiogenesLamp]

A lot of that going around.

I've noticed it is a constant problem when you argue with people. Not on any particular topic either. There are a range of opinions on every subject, and many are not nearly so well thought out or factually based as others.

I believe in an objective reality; one that exists regardless of how people wish it to look. I think it is our responsibility to try and perceive this objective reality rather than read our own preferences into what we see.

Hard to do, because we all have our own unconscious biases, but at least we should try.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The right to independence exists whether anyone in foreign countries recognize it or not.”

jeffersondem: "I have to agree with you."

I have to disagree because no Founder ever expressed or supported an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure, meaning for any reason or indeed for no particular reasons at all.
Instead all tied their disunion to either:

1. "Necessity" as in their 1776 Declaration or
2. "Mutual consent" as in their 1788 Constitution ratification.

Our Founders all opposed unilateral at pleasure secessions, by military force when necessary.

Of course, everybody here fully understands that DiogenesLamp, jeffersondem and some others here do believe in unlimited rights of secession at pleasure, and you are certainly entitled to your opinions.
But no Founder expressed such opinions, ever, period.

jeffersondem: "In my post 161 I wanted to put a stop to the notion that foreign nations must approve of independence movements within six months of hostilities, or 12 months, or 18, or 48 in order for unalienable rights to be legitimized.
Hopefully we will not see those spurious claims made again anytime soon."

The fact is that international support was critical to US Revolutionary War victory, and lack of it was instrumental in Confederate Civil War defeat.
Our French, Spanish & Dutch allies not only provided us money, weapons & troops, but also kept British forces tied down in other theaters -- away from the US Continental Army.
Overall, our allies contributed nearly 1/3 to the total war effort.

Confederates by stark contrast got nothing significant from other countries and so suffered not just from lack of support, but also from the absence of any distracting forces to keep Union armies away.

Hopefully we will not see jeffersondem making spurious claims to the contrary anytime soon.

[piasa]

Southern Illinois at the time was populated largely by Southerners mostly from the Carolinas, GA, TN and KY loyal to the South and very much pro-slavery, just as the counties in Missouri all along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers were southern and pro-slavery. They even grew cotton there in S. Illinois for a while before the railroad came and made it more profitable to raise fruit to ship to cities. With the exception of Lutherans who settled there after the German Civil War, and the French already there, people in S. Illinois came mostly from old slave-owning families.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I am beginning to think you only have a veneer of objectivity, and in reality you, like BroJoeK, will simply dismiss things that don't fit within your world view.
You want to believe what you want to believe, and you will not let unpleasant facts get in your way of believing it. "

I'd say those words rather well describe DiogenesLamp's own fact-free brain -- willing to accept any Lost Cause lies at face value, unwilling to learn the truth, ever.

DiogenesLamp: "Another such attempt was rejected in Pennsylvania.
Here is exactly how it should have gone in Massachusetts. "

In fact, Pennsylvania passed its first gradual abolition law in 1780, a decade before its 1790 constitution and 15 years before the alleged Flora case -- alleged because I can't find other references to it, for example here.

Already by 1790 2/3 of Pennsylvania's 10,000 African Americans were freed and by 1810 97% of its 27,000 blacks were freed.
But gradual emancipation meant that some few remained slaves as late as 1840.

[DiogenesLamp]

Here is a clue for you. Will you get it? I doubt it.

You will see it regarding Trump. You might even see it regarding Nixon. Will you see the greater "establishment" Washington DC power structure?

Probably not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbrerJACjsI

[Yaelle]

You win the inter webs today!!

[x]

Also, I note that you've had time to digest my point about Pennsylvania doing it in exactly the correct manner, while Massachusetts went the "penumbra" route. Is your silence on the point telling me you have no answer?

It would tell most people that I have other things to do during the day or maybe that I like to get some facts before responding, but most people aren't obsessives.

If this is about the Alabama thing, don't worry about it. Nobody presents themselves on line as they really are. For example, you may not believe it, but I am much handsomer and smarter here than I am in real life.

"On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

How would Tom Jefferson know better than people who were in Philadelphia in 1787 what the US Constitution meant? And who would know better than people who voted for the Massachusetts constitution what that constitution meant? It was the same voters and jurors who approved the state constitution and rejected slavery.

How could it be "obvious" when very similar language existed in the Declaration of Independence, and everyone in 1776 knew it was referring to white christian males, and not slaves?

See my post #218 to BroJoe. As strange as it might seem to 20th and 21st century Americans, the democratic age that Jefferson and Jackson brought in was more focused on the "white Christian male" thing than the 18th century deferential order that it replaced. In the Revolutionary War era, free Blacks who owned property could vote in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut (and possibly other states). Women property owners (necessarily single because married women could not own property) could vote in New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. When "universal suffrage" came in, property requirements were dropped and women and African-Americans lost the right to vote.

Here's the thing: people in government doubtless assumed that the people running things would look more or less like themselves, and voters probably thought the same way. But they weren't saying that only men or Whites could have the right to vote. Just as people who didn't "care deeply" about the slaves and didn't want to get involved in their lives could oppose slavery, people -- even down to our own day -- could assume without even really thinking about it that political leaders should more or less look like themselves without denying the vote or other basic rights to people who didn't.

18th century Americans like the Founders didn't envision what we have today, but neither did they believe as 19th century Americans did that all White men were a privileged class with rights that others didn't have simply by virtue of being White and male. Without resembling 21st century ideals, the age was more concerned with class and achievements than with the brute fact of race.

When 19th century men like Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis and Roger Tawney spoke about what the Declaration and Constitution meant they were talking more about their own generation than about the Founders. Of course the men who wrote and signed the Declaration didn't believe that slaves would be freed by what they wrote, but they weren't thinking primarily in racial terms and they were asserting a principle that was opposed to the institution -- if that principle was taken seriously and followed to its conclusion.

Why would it be "obvious" in the Massachusetts constitution, when this clearly wasn't "obvious" in the Declaration of Independence, from whence that verbiage was borrowed?

I should have said "logical conclusions," rather than "obvious conclusions" It wasn't obvious (i.e. clear to everyone at the time and universally undisputable) that ideas of freedom and equality applied to the slaves - but it was a sensible deduction from the premises of the Declaration and the state constitution. Geometric proofs aren't obvious to everybody, but they do follow logically and make sense once you understand them.

Of course, law and politics aren't geometry. People can still argue based on their different premises and assumptions, but emancipation was certainly a logical conclusion from the idea that men were free and equal, if not the only possible one.

The judges should have instructed the plaintiffs that the words of Article 1 were too abstract, and that unless such a purpose was clearly stated in unambiguous language, they should not be read in such a manner.

Your complaint was that the judges forced abolition on the people. Now apparently, it's that the judges didn't force their opinion on the jurors. Dismissing the case or directing a verdict would be an act of the sort of judicial high-handedness that you claim to abhor.

Did you note how the Abolition society then followed the proper approach of appealing to the legislature for a law accomplishing this?

Because the court rejected their case. "Proper" is your judgment. The abolitionists thought they had a winnable cause and that litigation was the proper move to make. They wouldn't have been doing their job if they didn't try different means of achieving their goal.

I am beginning to think you only have a veneer of objectivity, and in reality you, like BroJoeK, will simply dismiss things that don't fit within your world view. You want to believe what you want to believe, and you will not let unpleasant facts get in your way of believing it.

And you don't? That is very naive on your part. People make rational, evidence-based arguments against your obsessions all the time and they don't get through to you.

Of course, there is no pure objectivity. It's an ideal that can't be obtained, and nowadays it's not very popular even as an ideal. Even philosophers think that the "view from nowhere" may not have much to say about the world.

But there are more and less objective points of view, and if nobody's told you by now, you ought to realize that you're on the less objective end of the spectrum.

It's true that people do get so caught up in arguing things and taking a position that they ignore things that don't agree with the views they already have. But in this case, I don't think I'm avoiding anything.

You bring a lot of preconceived notions to this. For you, a Massachusetts court decision about slavery in 1782 has to be like the abortion or gay marriage decisions over a century later. The rest of us are seeing it for what it is, a unique event which peacefully abolished slavery without serious complaining or rebellion - a case in which things went terribly right for once.

If there had been a high-handed judge or mass outcry against the decision my view might be different, but sometimes (maybe very few times, but sometimes nonetheless) an important question can be resolved in the law courts - and better by a jury than by judges acting on their own.

[jeffersondem]

“I have to disagree because no Founder ever expressed or supported an unlimited “right of secession” at pleasure, meaning for any reason or indeed for no particular reasons at all.”

Standing alone, or in the context of American history, your statement does not make good sense.

You define “at pleasure” to include “for any reason . . .”

Well, ANY reason could mean a bad and weak reason, or it could mean a very good and very strong reason. Did you really intend to say that the founders never intended for independence to be justified by good and strong reasons?

You write from rote and, when combined willy-nilly with rehearsed phrases, you end up posting conflicting ideas in the same sentence.

Still, I can’t help but like you.

[jeffersondem]

“Clearly our Founders well understood that slavery was a stain on their own ideals and should rather soon be put on a path to abolition.”

But first they would enshrine slavery into the United States Constitution. But not until Article I.

However, of the original 13 slave states, only 13 of them would vote to include slavery in the United States Constitution.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I think my points are quite clear.
Article 1 does not clearly state it's purpose is to abolish slavery.
That has to be read into it through creative Penumbra finding.
If the intent behind it was to abolish slavery, then a failure to state this clearly is an attempt to deceive the voters."

Nonsense.
John Adams' 1780 Massachusetts constitution begins with the words: "All men are born free and equal" -- nothing could be clearer.
So, in 1781 the Worcester County Court judge instructed jurors in a slavery case,

"...nowhere is it [slavery] expressly enacted or established.
It has been a usage – a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then Colonies..."

Slavery was previously "usage", not law in Massachusetts.
He went on to say, now:

"...our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal – and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property – and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. "

So now DiogenesLamp tells us African slaves were not mentioned directly in the Massachusetts constitution, therefore, its "flowery language" didn't refer to slaves.
And yet, and yet... the US Constitution also nowhere mentions African Slaves directly, but DiogeneLamp has no problem "decoding" its language to tell us slavery is mandated in the US Constitution.

African slavery is not mentioned directly in either constitution, 1780 Massachusetts or 1787 US.
And yet in "decoding" them DiogenesLamp wants us to think slavery is mandated by the latter but not necessarily abolished by the former?

The key point DiogenesLamp wishes to ignore is that effectively slavery cannot exist without a legal and enforcement superstructure to support it.
Take away the superstructure and slavery must disappear.
That's what happened in Massachusetts.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Did you note how the Abolition society then followed the proper approach of appealing to the legislature for a law accomplishing this?"

x: "Because the court rejected their case.
"Proper" is your judgment.
The abolitionists thought they had a winnable cause and that litigation was the proper move to make.
They wouldn't have been doing their job if they didn't try different means of achieving their goal."

I have looked but cannot find another reference to the alleged 1795 Flora case in Pennsylvania.
But even if such a case existed, it would be irrelevant to the fact that in 1780 Pennsylvania's first Abolition Act began to end slavery such that by 1790 freed-blacks outnumbered slaves two to one and by 1810 nearly 30 to one.
So, the difference between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania is that where Pennsylvania set up a new legal superstructure to gradually abolish slavery, Massachusetts merely removed the old superstructure which had previously supported slavery.

The result was that by 1790 census, Massachusetts reported zero slaves, while Pennsylvania still had a few dozen in 1840.

The metaphor of removing an adhesive bandage quickly or slowly comes to mind -- which is more painful?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I believe in an objective reality; one that exists regardless of how people wish it to look.
I think it is our responsibility to try and perceive this objective reality rather than read our own preferences into what we see.
Hard to do, because we all have our own unconscious biases, but at least we should try."

Such words are absolutely disgraceful coming from brainwashed, Lost Cause kool-aide drinking, "eye of the beholder" shouting DiogenesLamp.
A man who's studied no history except Lost Cause lies tells us he believes in "objective reality"??
In fact he believes in no such thing, only in the Lost Cause madness which seeks to explain the inexplicable and excuse the inexcusable.

The truth is that DiogenesLamp will not even read, much less comprehend and respond to facts which contradict his lunatic Lost Cause mythology.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Here is a clue for you.
Will you get it?
I doubt it."

Sure, I "get" that Democrats have often tried and sometimes succeeded in destroying Republicans, by any means necessary -- literal or political assassination when possible.

In 1861 Democrats declared war on the United States.
In 1865 a Democrat murdered President Lincoln.

So which part of the word "Democrat" do you not "get", FRiend?

[BroJoeK]

x: "Nobody presents themselves on line as they really are.
For example, you may not believe it, but I am much handsomer and smarter here than I am in real life."

Ha!

I'll go with Rush's slogan: "half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair."

;-)