New audiobook release: An Historical Research Respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes

“What else do you need to defend our Founders? You let me know, I'll provide it.”

I would like a gas-tight defense of why George Washington did not free his slaves.

Please provide.

Jokerdem, do you really not know that George Washington freed his slaves in his will?

The problem was his wife didn’t agree and a share of his property went to her by law.

I think Lincoln said that.

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“Jokerdem, do you really not know that George Washington freed his slaves in his will. The problem was his wife didn't agree and a share of his property went to her by law.”

Do you mean his slaves were freed after he was dead? And this is your evidence that Washington is the prototypical American abolitionist?

Do you actually think this discovery will convince even 10 percent of 13 percent of the population to join the GOP and vote for a lower marginal capital gains tax rate?

I guess it could happen that way.

At the Framing, all 13 states undeniably embraced the lawfulness of slavery in the United States.
At the framing? Embraced? No. Deniably. This language is terrible and misleading. Slavery was a huge issue at the convention and it was only in regard to union/compromise that slavery was accepted.

Slavery was embraced as lawful by all thirteen original states. The African slave trade itself was run out of the northern states, notably Rhode Island and New York, and the Constitution protected that trade for twenty years from prohibition or excessive taxation. It was made the organic law, over and above anything Congress could touch.

U.S.Const. Art. 4, Sec. 2

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 9

The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

Do you seriously think you can persuade Black people there was no racism at the time of the Framing? Can you tell Black people that the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution was not racist?

At the Framing, about 20% of the thirteen-state population was slaves.

U.S. Const., Art I, Sec. 2, Cl. 3

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Who were those three-fifths of all other persons? Can you actually keep a straight face and tell Black people that they were not treated differently at the Framing?

At the Founding is a different and much more telling question. By the time of the framing, after slavery had been had around a decade to set in, more states/colonies became embracing colonies whereas in the beginning there were only two. Georgia and South Carolina.

At the Founding, slavery was lawful in all thirteen colonies. English law made it so.

There is a difference between slavery in the states at the Founding and abolition of the importation of slaves via the African slave trade. Virginia was the first of the English colonies to import slaves, and they opposed and eliminated the African slave trade in 1778. They did not eliminate slavery until 1865.

Gradual abolition in the North acted as ethnic cleansing. It didn't free anybody, but would free the children of slaves in the future if they remained. It worked as planned and the slaves were sold South, except in those Union states that retained slavery until after the war and up until the 13th Amendment, with the last holdout being New Jersey which resisted for an extra few weeks after the Amendment into 1866.

Your claim that there were only two embracing slave states at the time of the Framing is patent nonsense.

Your intimation that anyone wanting to free the slaves was not racist is a further example of patent nonsense. Many wanted to get rid of the slaves. They, as Lincoln, wanted to get rid of them to Africa, South America, Central America, the nearby islands, anywhere but here.

Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [Blacks] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers.

Jefferson might have been a little bit racist there.

Maybe that message sounds less racist when coming from Lincoln.

In our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom"

The White Man's Charter of Freedom was Lincoln's description of the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln, October 16, 1854, Peoria, Illinois, CW 2:276

Thenceforward, for sixty-one years, and until in 1848, the last scrap of this territory came into the Union as the State of Wisconsin, all parties acted in quiet obedience to this ordinance. It is now what Jefferson foresaw and intended—the happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people, and no slave amongst them."

Lincoln, October 16, 1854, Peoria, Illinois, CW 2:249

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people.

Lincoln, October 16, 1854, Peoria, Illinois, CW 2:268

Have we no interest in the free Territories of the United States—that they should be kept open for the homes of free white people?

Lincoln, August 27, 1856, Kalamazoo, Michigan, CW 2:363

Sustain these men and negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n------.

Lincoln, August 31, 1858, Carlinville, Illinois, CW 3:78

Is it not rather our duty [as White men] to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?

See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 251. Mr. Bennett was an editor with Ebony magazine for about a half century.

This is a pivotal point, one that has been masked by rhetoric and imperfect analysis. For to say, as Lincoln said a thousand times, that one is only opposed to the extension of slavery is to say a thousand times that one is not opposed to slavery where it existed. Based on this record and the words of his own mouth, we can say that the "great emancipator" was one of the major supporters of slavery in the United States for at least fifty-four of his fifty six years.

- - - - -

If it were left up to the colonies themselves without foreign intervention, at least 4 of the colonies would've at a minimum abolished the slave trade, and probably two would've abolished the whole thing in total by the time the calendar reaches Independence Day.

That is pure fantasy. Upon independence, any State could have abolished slavery. After the Constitution was adopted, the Congress could have abolished slavery in the District at any time on a simple majority vote. It did not happen until 1862. While the war was fought to preserve the Union, slaves were bought and sold at the stocks down the street from the White House. It was not until the war was to be sold as a war to end slavery that the all-Union Congress decided to end slavery in the District.

Do you seriously believe that buying and selling people in the nation's capital was not racist?

Upon independence, all 13 original colonies were free to abolish slavery in their state. What, they were ready to abolish slavery only until there was nothing to stop them from abolishing slavery?

But the empire couldn't help it's meddling. The big slave empire. They didn't start embracing abolitionism until after Franklin was dead.

Benjamin Franklin, d. 17 Apr 1790. That is after the Constitution was adopted and the Fugitive Slave Clause was repeated. Benjamin Franklin signed it.

When I say that slavery was forced on the U.S., I mean it.

Slavery was forced on the Colonies by England. Who forced it upon the States after independence? Were they not free and sovereign states?

The nascent states found themselves with many slaves and did not know what to do with them. They did not welcome them into the community. Even free Blacks were not welcomed into the community. Freeing the slaves could have been accomplished with compensated emancipation, but what to do with the free Blacks? They were not welcome in the States or the Territories. Lincoln was an early officer of the African Colonization Society, but it became obvious there were not enough ships in the world to colonize the slaves back to Africa. Not that Lincoln didn't keep looking for a way until the day he died.

"How do selective quotes from centuries ago speak to the state of racism today?"
That depends on whether or not you fully trust and sincerely respect the headlines published by the New York Times. How about that Ibram X. Kendi, good guy, right? Let us know all about it. I don't know about anybody else but I really want to hear about your friend Kendi. The more paragraphs you can provide the better.
But if you are putting all of your trust and your hopes in the Times or any other outlet of progressive thought, well, that brings up a brand new ball of wax to discuss now doesn't it?

I am not the one identifying with progressing, or anything progressive in my handle. I rather choose to identify as paleo-conservative, where the Constitution does not morph and change with the times to fit the whims of some progressive mind. History is what actually happened, not some fantastic tale of fiction.

I do not read the New York Times or Ibram X. Kendi, but it seems he is your friend. If you choose to be dispossessed of your ridiculous ideas about the absence of racism at the Founding, Framing, and thereafter, read Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

I try not to embarrass conservatives by preaching the absurdity that there has never been any racism in America, and it is not just ani-Black racism.

John F. Marszalek, Sherman's Other War The General and the Civil War Press; Memphis State University Press, 1981, pp. 168-69.

But, to some St. Louis friends, he confided: "I like n------ well enough as n------, but when fools and idiots try and make n------ better than ourselves, I have an opinion."

Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 698

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, as originally framed by the House of Representatives, lacked the opening sentence. When it came before the Senate in May, 1866, Mr. Howard, of Michigan, moved to amend by prefixing the sentence in its present form (less the words "or naturalized"), and reading,
"All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State herein they reside."
Mr. Cowan objected upon the ground that the Mongolian race ought to be excluded, and said:
"Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? . . . I do not know how my honorable friend from California looks upon Chinese, but I do know how some of his fellow citizens regard them. I have no doubt that now they are useful, and I have no doubt that, within proper restraints, allowing that State and the other Pacific States to manage them as they may see fit, they may be useful; but I would not tie their hands by the Constitution of the United States so as to prevent them hereafter from dealing with them as in their wisdom they see fit."
Mr. Conness, of California, replied:
"The proposition before us relates simply, in that respect, to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the Nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States. . . . We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this Constitutional Amendment that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of [169 U. S. 699] the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others."

Still, due to the Chinese Exclusion Laws, Chinese citizens were ineligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens until World War II, when we were at war with Japan. The Chinese Exclusion Acts were slightly racist. Also racist was the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent.

Nor did brown or red people get a pass.

When we shall get Mexico, I don't know whether the Judge will be in favor of the Mexican people that we get with it settling that question for themselves and all others; because we know the Judge has a great horror for mongrels, [laughter,] and I understand that the people of Mexico are most decidedly a race of mongrels.

— Lincoln, October 7, 1858, Galesburg, Illinois, CW 3:235

https://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo9.html

In 1851 the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold twenty-four million acres of land to the federal government for $1.4 million. By August of 1862 thousands of white settlers continued to pour into the Indian lands even though none of the money had been paid to the Santee Sioux. There was a crop failure that year, and the Indians were starving. The Lincoln administration refused to pay them the money they were owed, breaking yet another Indian treaty, and the starving Sioux revolted.
A short "war" ensued, with Lincoln putting one of his favorite generals, General John Pope, in charge of federal forces in Minnesota. Pope announced that "It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux.... They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made." (Similar statements were being made at the time by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who said that to all Southern secessionists, "why, death is mercy").
The Santee Sioux were overwhelmed by the federal army by October of 1862, at which time General Pope held hundreds of Indian men, women, and children who were considered to be prisoners of war. The men were all herded into forts where military "trials" were held, each of which lasted about ten minutes according to David A. Nichols in Lincoln and the Indians. They were all found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the lack of hard evidence was manifest and they were not given any semblance of a proper defense. Most were condemned to death by virtue of the fact that they were merely present during a battle, during a declared (by the Indians) war.
Minnesota political authorities wanted the federal army to immediately execute all 303 of the condemned men. Lincoln, however, was concerned that such a mass execution of so many men who had so obviously been railroaded would be looked upon in a bad light by the European powers who, at the time, were threatening to support the Confederate cause in the War for Southern Independence. His compromise was to pare the list of condemned down to 39, with a promise to the Minnesota political establishment that the federal army would eventually kill or remove every last Indian from the state. As a sweetener to the deal Lincoln also offered Minnesota $2 million in federal funds.
On December 26, 1862, Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution in American history in which the guilt of the executed could not be positively determined beyond reasonable doubt. (The cartel of "Lincoln scholars" actually praises Lincoln for this act, claiming that it is yet another example of his humanitarianism and his "culture of life." He may well have killed 39 innocent people, they say, but it could have been much worse). [I believe the actual number hanged was 38]

Here is the record of one of the trials.

Case 238: Ta-hoh-pe-wa-kan
[The complete record of testimony follows.]
Prisoner states — I went with a party which pick up things which the whites left behind.
Louis LaBelle being sworn says — The prisoner was among those who were on horseback in the battle referred to in case 236 — He had a horse and was up on it when I saw him, belonging to the soldiers. (See case No. 236)
[Ta-hoh-pe-wa-kan was found guilty and was sentenced to be hanged.]

Not to be left out of all this were the Jews or Israelites.

O.R. 17, p.330

LA GRANGE, TENN., November 9, 1862.
Major-General HURLBUT, Jackson, Tenn.:
Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present. The Israelites especially should be kept out.
What troops have you now, exclusive of Stevenson's brigade?
U. S. GRANT,
Major-General.

O.R. 17, p. 337

LA GRANGE, November 10, 1862.
General WEBSTER, Jackson, Tenn.:
Give orders to all the conductors on the road that no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward from any point. They may go north and be encouraged in it; but they are such an intolerable nuisance that the department must be purged of them.
U. S. GRANT,
Major-General.

O.R. 17, p 424

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. 13TH A. C., DEPT. OF THE TENN.,
Numbers 11.
Holly Springs, December 17, 1862.
The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.
By order of Major General U. S. Grant:
JNO. A. RAWLINS,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

It is known that Jefferson's first act as a young legislator (or at least let's say one of his first) in the VA House of Burgesses was to get rid of slavery.

It is still better known that Virginia did not get rid of slavery and neither did Jefferson personally. He remained a slave owner until he died. He freed the family of Sally Hemings, but those were blood relatives. Consult again the quote of Thomas Jefferson supra. And see the estate sale notice following his death.

At least 130 people never believed Jefferson ended slavery. The attempt to sell that line of bilge is an embarrassment to all conservatives.

He of course rips the King a new one in the Declaration Draught....

He, of course, was being tended to by his slave Jupiter at the time.

There's the whole Northwest Ordinance thing previously accounted for above, and finally culminating in the 1808 ban on the trade when he was President.

Yes, there was the heroic effort to keep the territories for free, White people only, free of black or other colors, or as Lincoln said so eloquently, "Sustain these men and negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n------."

What did Article Six of the Ordinance of the Northwest Territories say? Have you ever read it? Its Fugitive Slave Clause speaks loudly to the complete absence of racism. /s

Article the Sixth. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary Servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishent of crimes, wereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.

Just focusing on acts, publicly and verifiable. Can you point to any time Jefferson advanced legislation, got all involved in and worked up about, or otherwise, and was a supporter of the institution of slavery?

When he was boinking 14-year old Sally Hemings. For his entire adult life he owned slaves, lots of slaves.

In the Jefferson draft of the Kentucky Resolutions:

5. Resolved, That in addition to the general principle, as well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated are reserved, another and more special provision, inserted in the Constitution from abundant caution, has declared that “the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808;” that this commonwealth does admit the migration of alien friends, described as the subject of the said act concerning aliens: that a provision against prohibiting their migration, is a provision against all acts equivalent thereto, or it would be nugatory: that to remove them when migrated, is equivalent to a prohibition of their migration, and is, therefore, contrary to the said provision of the Constitution, and void.

Try to be serious.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 by Senator Lyman Trumbull, and the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause by Senator Jacob Howard, and the relevant Congressional debate explicitly indicate the authors' intent to include people of all colors.
And Article 4 of the Confederation.(1777-1789) Don't act like it's new.

Not a problem. Why you cite a document that contained a Fugitive Slave Clause is a bit of a mystery.

Art. of Confed., Art. 4, Sec 1

Article IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from Justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any state, to any other State of which the Owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any state, on the property of the united states, or either of them.

Can you keep a straight face while telling Black people that does not refer to Black slave property? Who were the people who were not free citizens?

Denying a history of racism is simply embarrassing. It happened. We have gotten better. It is not official government policy any more. That does not mean it never existed, or that it has been totally eradicated.

I would like a gas-tight defense of why George Washington did not free his slaves.

In his Last Will and Testament, Washington stated it was his will and desire that his slaves be freed upon the death of his wife, and explained the insuperable difficulties he encountered. Martha freed these slaves after George died.

https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/george-washingtons-last-will-and-testament-july-9-1799/

Item Upon the decease of my wife, it is my Will and desire, that all the slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life, would, tho' earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties on account of their intermixture by Marriages with the Dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy or the same Proprietor; it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the Dower Negroes are held, to manumit them. And whereas among those who will receive freedom according to this devise, there may be some, who from old age or bodily infirmities, and others who on account of their infancy, that will be unable to support themselves; it is my Will and desire that all who come under the first and second description shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live; and that such of the latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable, or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the age of twenty-five years; and in cases where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be ascertained, the Judgment of the Court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate & final. The negroes thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses), to be taught to read and write; & to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of orphan & other poor Children. And I do hereby expressly forbid the sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the survivors of them, to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged & infirm; Seeing that a regular & permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the uncertain provision to be made by individuals. And to my Mulatto man, William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment.) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, which shall be independent of the victuals and clothes he has been accustomed to receive, if he chooses the last alternative: but in full with his freedom, if he prefers the first: & this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War

I have no time left for chicanery. Have a good day.

Wasn’t it Jefferson Davis that made the following quote? Or, was it someone else?
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:20.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

It is from the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate, Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858; Lincoln speaking. CW 3:145-146, at link above.

See also, Seventh Debate, Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858; CW 3:317

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:33.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

I suppose most of us, (I know it of myself,) believe that the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional fugitive slave law—that it is a right fixed in the Constitution. But it cannot be made available to them without Congressional legislation. In the Judge's language, it is a "barren right" which needs legislation before it can become efficient and valuable to the persons to whom it is guaranteed. And as the right is constitutional I agree that the legislation shall be granted to it—and that not that we like the institution of slavery. We profess to have no taste for running and catching n****** — at least I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.

Can you identify who said what?

- - -

[1] Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of their territory as they inhabit.
- - -
[2] What is the particular sacredness of a State? I speak not of that position which is given to a State in and by the Constitution of the United States, for that all of us agree to---we abide by; but that position assumed, that a State can carry with it out of the Union that which it holds in sacredness by virtue of its connection with the Union. I am speaking of that assumed right of a State, as a primary principle, that the Constitution should rule all that is less than itself, and ruin all that is bigger than itself. But, I ask, wherein does consist that right? If a State, in one instance, and a county in another, should be equal in extent of territory, and equal in the number of people, wherein is that State any better than the county?
- - -
[3] The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law, and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence, and their liberty. By conquest, or purchase, the Union gave each of them, whatever of independence, and liberty, it has. The Union is older than any of the States; and, in fact, it created them as States.
- - -
[4] What is a confederation of states? By a confederacy, we mean a group of sovereign states which come together of their own free will and, in virtue of their sovereignty, create a collective entity. In doing so, they assign selective sovereign rights to the national body that will allow it to safeguard the existence of the joint union.
This theoretical definition does not apply in practice, at least not without some alterations, to any existing confederation of states in the world today. It applies the least to the American Union of States. Most of these individual states never possessed any sovereignty whatsoever. They were gradually brought into the framework of the union as a whole. Therefore. the various states of the American Union constitute, in most instances smaller or larger territories that were formed for technical administrative reasons and their borders were frequently drawn with a roler. These states never possessed any previous sovereignty of their own because that would have been impossible. These states did not come together to create the Union, but it was the Union that created these so-called states. The extensive rights of independence that were relinquishcd, or rather rights that were granted, to the different territories are in harmony with the whole character of this confederation of states and with the vastness of its area and overall size which is almost as large as a continent. So, in referring to the states of the American Union, one cannot speak of their state soverignty, but only of their constitutionally guaranteed rights, which we could more accurately designate as privileges.
- - -
[5] All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

"Slavery was embraced as lawful by all thirteen original states."

You keep using that word embraced when it has no place here. The fact that states like Pennsylvania tried before Independence to do something about the slavery problem only to be stonewalled by the empire, then pretty much immediately got to the business and abolished(gradually) slavery afterwards is by itself enough to permanently destroy the use of this word.

Slavery was default because it was enforced by the empire. Default doesn't make it popular nor acceptable. Your attempts to paint it as popular are as terrible as any propagandistic garbage that the progressives could cook up.

"The African slave trade itself was run out of the northern states, notably Rhode Island and New York."

That is grossly incorrect. The African slave trade itself was run out of England's port cities, notably Bristol and Liverpool. To whatever extent trading came to exist in the colonies, they were very little competition for the two elephants in the living room over there. And even after Independence, they still provided only paltry deliveries. Liverpool's and Bristol's dominance didn't just go poof and disappear on July 4th, 1776.

That's why known slave imports aboard British ships number well over three million, on American ships it barely scratches past 300,000. Once again, you're on the side of the progressives, trusting that the evil America actually did all the slaving and blaming what the empire did on the U.S. Next you're going to tell me that the United States had slavery for 246 years. Perhaps you'll say that America invented it and forced it on the poor defenseless empire.

"Do you seriously think you can persuade Black people there was no racism at the time of the Framing?"

Define it. It is 100% clear you and I are using different definitions of the word racism. So you need to drop your cloaking device and lay your playing cards face upward on the table so I can see them.

"Who were those three-fifths of all other persons?"

The three fifths isn't what matters. It's the two fifths withheld. The two fifths is everything.

"Can you actually keep a straight face and tell Black people that they were not treated differently at the Framing?"

What kind of foolish idiot would make such an argument to begin with? There are at times, actually, a confusion as to who you are really replying to. This is one of them.

"At the Founding, slavery was lawful in all thirteen colonies. English law made it so."

This is the logical place to begin. At least within the years of 1765 to 1782, Americans no-longer-British as well as the U.S.A are themselves(ourselves) also the victims of colonialism. They did publish a Declaration with a list of grievances in it, so there's that.

"There is a difference between slavery in the states at the Founding and abolition of the importation of slaves via the African slave trade."

Historically speaking, this is untenable and factually incorrect. This is based on loads of propaganda pitched for decades by the progressive movement within this country. Even most British citizens living today wouldn't believe this bilge because they (if they're aware enough of their own history) should know that Thomas Clarkson's organization, the original organization, was aimed at abolishing the slave trade. It was called the "Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade". But I guess under the auspices you suggest, Clarkson's early efforts ought to be thrown out just as you've attempted to throw out early American efforts. That wasn't real, he was just playing kiddie games right? Clarkson was garbage until the 18xx-somethings, I take it?

This bilge is purely progressivism, purely dogma, and it's pure trash to see repeated on a place like Free Republic. Truly, truly shameful.

"Virginia was the first of the English colonies to import slaves, and they opposed and eliminated the African slave trade in 1778"

It would've been earlier if not for the kingly veto.

"Your claim that there were only two embracing slave states at the time of the Framing is patent nonsense."

The evidence could not be more clear. The same two troublemaking states - Georgia and South Carolina - not only did they have their precious word "white" stripped out of Article 4 of the Confederation, they were also the primary ones who insisted in eliminating the clause out of the Declaration of Independence that mocked the CHRISTIAN King who would enslave millions who never offended him.(Caps belong to Jefferson's original draught)

"Your intimation that anyone wanting to free the slaves was not racist is a further example of patent nonsense. Many wanted to get rid of the slaves.?"

I will only defend my words. I'm not interested in your mischaracterization. I said: "Many of the most hardcore abolitionist came from the prior slave-owning ranks, and that's true both on the American and the British side." I stand by my own words, should you decide in the future that you'd like to reply to them.

"See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 251. Mr. Bennett was an editor with Ebony magazine for about a half century."

I'm well acquainted with Lerone Bennett, who wrote quite a detailed article about how black slavery in the 13 colonies was preceded by white slavery in the 13 colonies, in that very same magazine. "White Servitude in America"

"That is pure fantasy. Upon independence, any State could have abolished slavery."

It's pure reality. Upon independence, they had a war to fight that in any number of ways they could have easily lost. The fact remains that those British vetoing of American abolitionist laws set the abolitionist movement here back by at least a decade. After independence, after the long war, abolitionism was much, much greater a difficult prospect.

"Slavery was forced on the Colonies by England. Who forced it upon the States after independence?"

Yes, one and the same. Even during the Convention the point was made that the Founders didn't set out to make the best constitution they could devise, they set out to make the best constitution the people would receive. (The point was also made that slaving originated with the empire, which is true.) By vetoing American abolitionist laws coming out of the colonies, and setting abolitionism back at least a decade, it was never going to happen that any of the 13 colonies would've been an abolitionist society, and more to the point, having been a slave society for so long, things don't just flip on a dime. Even communist countries cannot stop cold blooded murder, nor can the islamists burying women up to their necks in the dirt and throwing stones at their head stop adultery. At issue isn't what one or even some many individuals acted in the ways that some corrupt individual people can act If this were a courtroom I would swear up and down that all of these strawmen and gotchas that you keep using, you must, MUST be someone employed by the New York Times. There's no other way you could be this hateful of our country. Like this gem of a strawman:

"I try not to embarrass conservatives by preaching the absurdity that there has never been any racism in America."

You're only beclowning yourself by mischaracterizing my words in such a bizarre context. Keep tilting at those windmills, you're definitely experienced at this task. I certainly couldn't compete with this oddity.

"When he was boinking 14-year old Sally Hemings."

See, I knew this was coming. Who needs to watch CNN when they can just read what you're posting and receive the same thing. The high trust you place in progressives and what they promote is offensive. There isn't a shred of trust in you for our Founding.

I typed: "Just focusing on acts, publicly and verifiable. Can you point to any time Jefferson advanced legislation, got all involved in and worked up about, or otherwise, and was a supporter of the institution of slavery?"

Reply: "When he was boinking 14-year old Sally Hemings. For his entire adult life he owned slaves, lots of slaves."

Looks like we have concluded with your failure here. At no point did Jefferson ever advance any legislation, get involved otherwise, nor act or public whatever. At all times, Jefferson was firmly on the abolitionist/anti-slaving side. It was your stipulation for acts, not words. Now you want to shift goal posts back to personal drama and at that, something which ultimately can't be definitively proven. It just goes on and on. No, you don't get to do that. At all times as a legislator, Jefferson was firmly on the abolitionist/anti-slaving side. You said it. Acts speak louder than words.

If you would stop watching CNN long enough you would know that since they didn't have actual Thomas Jefferson DNA, they couldn't possibly have proven anything by a DNA test. Herbert Barger, who was for years the Genealogist at Monticello looked for any evidence he could find and concluded the accusation is false. The most likely culprit is Randolph Jefferson, not Thomas. The report of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society was very different from those promoted by your friends in the liberal media.

"In the Jefferson draft of the Kentucky Resolutions:"

What about them? Who are those "alien friends"? Of course he isn't talking about Martians. As to 1808? Who thinks some resolution is tantamount to a constitutional amendment? It is not. This is not contrary to anything. Did you mean to say Jefferson wanted the 1808 date in the constitution extended to 1818 because he loved slavery? That is not what your document states. This is nothing more than recognition of what is already law at the time. You do know that Kentucky was established in 1792, right? A resolution several years later cannot affect this change, and this document does not appear to attempt that, nor was the Kentucky Resolutions really about slavery one way or the other. These Kentucky resolutions were about the alien and sedition laws. But go ahead and keep taking things out of context.

When Jefferson was involved with his first legislative act, it was about slavery. When Jefferson was involved with the Northwest Ordinance, he went out of his way to make it about slavery. And 1808 is self evident.

Oh, wait. I get it. I need to remember here, you're poisoned by the progressives in your views. I see what you're doing here. You're setting up a strawman that when I said always, what I really deviously meant was that Jefferson never did anything ever in his lifetime ever, except fight against slavery is the only thing he ever did. Something I never stated. Honest context will prove that. I see what you're doing. Go ahead, set up your windmill and tilt at it. And no, I won't change my wording just because you're abusing it.

"Who were the people who were not free citizens?"

The question is who were the free citizens. Again, you with this goalpost shifting stuff. Included in free citizens, were blacks. Did you even read your own prior post? You clearly haven't read the source given.

"Denying a history of racism is simply embarrassing. It happened."

We were not having a discussion about Jim Crow.

I don’t think people are saying he was an abolitionist, just that he had serious qualms about slavery.

“I don't think people are saying he was an abolitionist, just that he had serious qualms about slavery.”

Well, it sounded like it a little bit in post 50: “At all times, Jefferson was firmly on the abolitionist/anti-slaving side.”

Acknowledged: this was not your post.

Note to all: In my post 51 I conflated Washington with Jefferson.

Strike my post 51 with apologies.

No, nor was I. But Jefferson's legislative career is strikingly if not exclusively one-sided.

"just that he had serious qualms about slavery."

I do not believe this sentiment goes far enough. Having spent decades in the public light and not once found promoting slavery legislatively is a little more than "serious qualms".

George Washington had serious qualms about it. He did far less than Jefferson did.

I was talking about Washington, not Jefferson.

Your response is interesting as it required no research. That is accomplished by your ability to say nothing like your icon, Kamala Harris. It is an innate ability of radical progressives such as yourself who, when they do not like history, they just change it.

"Slavery was embraced as lawful by all thirteen original states."
You keep using that word embraced when it has no place here. The fact that states like Pennsylvania tried before Independence to do something about the slavery problem only to be stonewalled by the empire, then pretty much immediately got to the business and abolished(gradually) slavery afterwards is by itself enough to permanently destroy the use of this word.

Slavery was legal in all 13 original states. Pennsylvania freely joined a slave union. Learn to deal with it. The mysterious "empire" didn't do that. The unanimous ratification of the States did that. You watch too much Star Wars. Darth Vader does not appear in this movie.

Slavery was default because it was enforced by the empire.

Overt discrimination against Blacks, Chinese, and Indians was official United States Government policy. Lincoln called Brown people from Mexico mongrels.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:282.1?rgn=div2;submit=Go;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=281

Lincoln Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854, CW 2:281

In the course of his reply, Senator Douglas remarked, in substance, that he had always considered this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too.

Gideon Welles Diary, Vol. 1, pp. 150-151

As early as May, 1861, a great pressure was made upon me to enter into a coal contract with this company. The President was earnest in the matter; wished to send the negroes out of the country. Smith, with the Thompsons, urged and stimulated him, and they were as importunate with me as the President. I spent two or three hours on different days looking over the papers, — titles, maps, reports, and evidence, — and came to the conclusion that there was fraud and cheat in the affair. It appeared to be a swindling speculation. Told the President I had no confidence in it, and asked to be released from its further consideration. The papers were then referred to Smith to investigate and report. After a month or two he reported strongly in favor of the scheme, and advised that the Navy Department should make an immediate contract for coal before foreign governments got hold of it. Mr. Toucey had investigated it. Commodore Engle had been sent out to examine the country and especially in relation to coal. The President was quite earnest in its favor, but, satisfied myself it was a job, I objected and desired to be excused from any participation in it. Two or three times it has been revived, but I have crowded off action. Chase gave me assistance on one occasion, and the scheme was dropped until this question of deporting colored persons came up, when Smith again brought forward Thompson's Chiriqui Grant. He made a skillful and taking report, embracing both coal and negroes. Each was to assist the other. The negroes were to be transported to Chiriqui to mine coal for the Navy, and the Secretary of the Navy was to make an immediate advance of $50,000 for coal not yet mined, — nor laborers obtained to mine it, nor any satisfactory information or proof that there was decent coal to be mined.

Gideon Welles Diary, Vol. 1, page 152

On Tuesday last the President brought forward the subject and desired the members of the Cabinet to each take it into serious consideration. He thought a treaty could be made to advantage, and territory secured to which the negroes could be sent. Thought it essential to provide an asylum for a race which we had emancipated, but which could never be recognized or admitted to be our equals. Several governments had signified their willingness to receive them. Mr. Seward said some were willing to take them without expense to us.
Mr. Blair made a long argumentative statement in favor of deportation. It would be necessary to rid the country of its black population, and some place must be found for them. He is strongly for deportation, has given the subject much thought, but yet seems to have no matured system which he can recommend. Mr. Bates was for compulsory deportation. The negro would not, he said, go voluntarily, had great local attachments but no enterprise or persistency.

Allen T. Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, New York, 1888, pg 61

Few subjects have been more debated and less understood than the Proclamation of Emancipation. Mr. Lincoln himself opposed to the measure, and when he very reluctantly issued his preliminary proclamation in Septermber 1862, he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his mind, inseparably connected with the policy. Like Mr. Clay and other prominent leaders of the old Whig party, he believed in colonization, and that the separation of the two races was necessary to the welfare of both. He was at that time pressing upon the attention of Congress a scheme of colonization in Chiriqui, in Central America, which Senator Pomoroy espoused with great zeal, and in which he had the favor of a majority of the Cabinet, including Secretary Smith, who warmly endorsed the project.

In July 1853, Rev. James Mitchell of Indiana desired to organize the state of Illinois for the cause of colonization. In an interview published in the St. Louis Daily Globe Democrat, August 26, 1896, Mitchell told of how a Presbyterian pastor recommended a local man to help him organize Illinois for the American Colonization Society. The pastor recommended Abraham Lincoln.

It would appear that Mitchell was quite successful in recruiting Abraham Lincoln to the cause. On August 30, 1853, the Illinois State Register said that Lincoln would speak that night on “colonization” at the First Presbyterian Church. Lincoln became one of the founding members of the Illinois State Colonization Society and one of its 11 managers.

https://archive.org/details/ASPC0001878200

Note the following from Page 4:

Being grateful for the positions you have assumed, and the recommendations you have made, we herein respectfully submit a few reflections intended to sustain (thought feeble may be the effort) the policy proposed, and asking that, so long as God grants you place and power at the head of this great nation, you will continue to this subject the care its magnitude merits and our national dangers demand.

James Mitchell refers to the positions Lincoln had assumed, and he refers to the recommendations made by Lincoln, and identifies his own effort as one intended to sustain the Lincoln policy proposed. Being well-known to Abraham Lincoln, James Mitchell was quickly hired and made part of the administration. Mitchell’s profound reflections were seen to have such merit as to warrant being turned into a pamphlet with copies produced by the Government Printing Office. The below example of the Lincoln position on race was submitted to Lincoln by that James Mitchell. Mitchell was promptly appointed as Commissioner of [Black] Emigration. The letter of Mitchell was made into a pamphlet and copies were printed by the Government Printing Office (GPO) at taxpayer expense. Mitchell remained in the administration until Lincoln’s death. He was removed by Andrew Johnson. However, this is what was written to sustain the positions, recommendations, and policies proposed by Lincoln.

From page 25:

It further suggests that our legislation should cover the wants and well-being of both races, and that statesmen should consider, first, the good of the white race, then, the good and well-being of the black; making at least as liberal appropriations for the colonization of the Indian, upon whom millions on millions have been expended with but imperfect success in the cause of civilization, whilst the slender means of the friends of the African civilization have produced lasting results. Some affect to fear that the man of color will not remove to a separate locality. It is not to be expected that a race, which has hardly attained a mental majority, will rise in a day to the stature of the men who found empires, build cities, and lay the ground work of civil institutions like ours; nor should they be expected to do this unaided and alone. They should receive the kind attention, direction, and aid of those who understand such things; nor will the world condemn a gentle pressure in the forward course to overcome the natural inertia of masses long used to the driver’s will and rod. Let us do justice in the provision we make for their future comfort, and surely they will do justice to our distracted Republic. If they should fail to do this, there would then be more propriety in weighing the requirement of some to remove without consultation, but not till then. The more intelligent men of color can now see the necessity that rests upon us, and they will aid us in this work. We know that there is a growing sentiment in the country which considered the removal of the freed man, without consulting him, “a moral and military necessity” — as a measure necessary to the purity of public morals and the peace of the country; and this unhappy war of white man with white man, about the condition of the black, will multiply this sentiment. But we cannot go further now than suggesting, that the mandatory relation held by the rebel master should escheat to the Federal government in a modified sense, so as to enable his proper government and gradual removal to a proper home where he can be independent.

Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, Johnson Publishing Company, Chicago, 2000, pg. 514:

More ominously, Lincoln said he was still committed still committed to an all-White nation, with a transitional period of quasi-freedom followed by the deportation of the freedmen. This is what he said:
Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race.
Here then in unexpurgated language, is Lincoln's blueprint for the American future. It's all there, all of it—his gradualism, his racism, his deeply rooted belief that this land was the White man's land—and there is no possibility of understanding him or the Proclamation without an understanding of the official plan for a new White America he unfolded in this State of the Union message.
Despite its thrice-repeated calls for deportation of Blacks, despite its passionate plea for a continuation of slavery for thirty-seven years, despite its official projection of the notion of an all- white nation, the whole American cultural structure—historians, curators, writers, editors—has endorsed this message.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:1.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, CW 3:14-15

Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters.
When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south.

To which I would add, ProgressingAmerica adds his endorsement to Lincoln's plan for deportation of the Black race. Not that it's racist or anything.

The African slave trade itself was run out of the northern states, notably Rhode Island and New York.
That is grossly incorrect. The African slave trade itself was run out of England's port cities, notably Bristol and Liverpool. To whatever extent trading came to exist in the colonies, they were very little competition for the two elephants in the living room over there. And even after Independence, they still provided only paltry deliveries. Liverpool's and Bristol's dominance didn't just go poof and disappear on July 4th, 1776.

You are certifiable. From July 4, 1776 until the Paris Peace Treaty of September 3, 1783, the united states were at war with Great Britain. You must have missed that part of history. YES, all British imports went poof on July 4, 1776, slaves included.

About 94% of all slave trade did not go to the United States, but to South and Central America, and to the islands. All of that is irrelevant to this discussion.

https://www.the74million.org/article/slave-money-paved-the-streets-now-this-posh-ri-city-strives-to-teach-its-past/

Some 60% of all slave trading voyages that launched from North America — amounting to 945 trips between 1700 and 1850 — began in tiny Rhode Island. In some years, it was more than 90% and most of those journeys set out from Newport, making it the most trafficked slaving port of origin on the continent.
“The streets of Newport were paved with the duties paid on enslaved people,” said the UW-Madison scholar, who wrote the book Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.
[...]
Although the city of 25,000 people is now over 80% white and only 8% Black, in the mid-1700s, approximately a quarter of Newport’s population was Black or African, the second-highest share in the U.S. at the time behind Charleston, South Carolina.

http://smallstatebighistory.com/rhode-island-dominates-north-american-slave-trade-in-18th-century/

African enslaved persons were sparse in the colony of Rhode Island throughout the 17th century, with only 175 in total in 1680. Prior to 1696, the English Royal African Company monopolized the Atlantic slave trade. However, when this was lifted, Rhode Islanders aggressively expanded into the Atlantic trading system, and therefore, the slave trade.
Within 30 years the colony of Rhode Island, and in particular Newport, came to dominate the North American slave trade. Even though it was the smallest of the colonies, the great majority of slave ships leaving British North America came from Rhode Island ports. Historian Christy Clark-Pujara, in her book Dark Work, The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island, indicates that during “the colonial period in total, Rhode Island sent 514 slave ships to the coast of West Africa, while the rest of the colonists sent just 189.” Historian Jay Coughtry in The Notorious Triangle, argues that “the Rhode Island slave trade and the American slave trade were virtually synonymous” and that “only in Rhode Island was there anything that can properly be termed a slave trade.”

http://southcountyhistorycenter.org/slavery-southern-rhode-island

The owners of these larger farms became known as “Narragansett Planters,” referencing southern Rhode Island’s nickname at the time, “Narragansett Country.” Through their connections to the Atlantic slave trade, these men began to buy enslaved African people from colonies in the Caribbean (and eventually directly from Africa) to work on their farms and increase production of goods for export. At the height of the Narragansett Planter’s operations in the mid-18th century, there were 25 – 30 large plantations, and it is estimated that between 15% and 25% of Washington County’s population was enslaved. The plantations in southern Rhode Island were very profitable. Their owners were some of the wealthiest people in the colony of Rhode Island, allowing them to develop a leisurely lifestyle that mirrored that of the upper classes in England.

That's why known slave imports aboard British ships number well over three million, on American ships it barely scratches past 300,000.

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-resources/historical-context-facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery

Well over 90 percent of enslaved Africans were sent to the Caribbean and South America. Only about 6 percent of African captives were sent directly to British North America. Yet by 1825, the US population included about one-quarter of the people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere.

In a discussion of U.S. history, nobody gives a good crap about the 90+ percent of the slave trade that went to other places.

Do you seriously think you can persuade Black people there was no racism at the time of the Framing?
Define it.

Define it yourself. Use a dictionary if you don't know what it means. If you don't know what that is, it is a big book with definitions of words. Perhaps you should have learned the word before producing a spiel about it.

Who were those three-fifths of all other persons?
The three fifths isn't what matters. It's the two fifths withheld. The two fifths is everything.

Some of it, plus the rest of it, is all of it.

The three-fifths and the two-fifths are the same persons. Each five-fifths of the slave population was counted in the census. For representation, each state was penalized by counting only three-fifths of its census count of enslaved inhabitants. Aliens were still counted as five-fifths of their total, then as now. Even illegal aliens are fully counted in the census and for purposes of representation.

The three-fifths and the two-fifths refer to the total slave population of a state, not to individuals.

Abbott: Strange as it may seem, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.
Costello: Funny names?
Abbott: Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the St. Louis team we have Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third--
Costello: That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team.
Abbott: I'm telling you. Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third--
Costello: You know the fellows' names?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: Well, then who's playing first?
Abbott: Yes. Costello: I mean the fellow's name on first base. Abbott: Who.
Costello: The fellow playin' first base.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first base.
Abbott: Who is on first.
Costello: Well, what are you askin' me for?
Abbott: I'm not asking you--I'm telling you. Who is on first.
Costello: I'm asking you--who's on first?
Abbott: That's the man's name.
Costello: That's who's name?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?
Abbott: Every dollar of it. And why not, the man's entitled to it.
Costello: Who is?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: So who gets it?
Abbott: Why shouldn't he? Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.
Costello: Who's wife?
Abbott: Yes. After all, the man earns it.
Costello: Who does?
Abbott: Absolutely.
Costello: Well, all I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name on first base?
Abbott: Oh, no, no. What is on second base.
Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.
Abbott: Who's on first!

Can you actually keep a straight face and tell Black people that they were not treated differently at the Framing?
What kind of foolish idiot would make such an argument to begin with?

You are the only such foolish idiot I know who would make such an absurd argument. Do you now admit there was racism at the Framing, and that Blacks were treated differently because of their race? That's raciss.

At the Founding, slavery was lawful in all thirteen colonies. English law made it so.
This is the logical place to begin. At least within the years of 1765 to 1782, Americans no-longer-British as well as the U.S.A are themselves(ourselves) also the victims of colonialism. They did publish a Declaration with a list of grievances in it, so there's that.

Lord only knows what the year 1765 has to do with anything. The list of grievances complained about what the king did. It hasn't got much to do with their subsequent racist acts.

The victimhood was having a load of Blacks who were not welcome among us, and not having a solution to make them disappear. From Jefferson to Lincoln, they clearly stated the desire for an all-White nation.

Again I will let you hear from a Black man. Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, 2000, pg. 315-316:

Lincoln said he had never tried to apply the principal rights of the Declaration of Independence to slavery for the political rights of Blacks in America. On at least fifteen occasions, he said publicly that the principles of the Declaration didn't require him or anybody else to do anything about slavery in the South ad Jim Crow in the North.
How in the world did the Lincoln patrol miss these statements? How in the world did they overlook the repeated assertions (CW 2:266, 274, 385, 501, 520; CW 3:16, 222, 249, 255, 276, 300) in which Lincoln said publicly that the "necessities" of whiteness negated any and all eloquent statements he made about the Declaration of Independence and made it necessary to enslave Blacks in the South and to subordinate them in the North.
How is it that I am the only one to read these words?
How is it that I am the only one to report in this context that Lincoln said—you read the words—"Negroes have natural rights... although they cannot enjoy them here."

There is a difference between slavery in the states at the Founding and abolition of the importation of slaves via the African slave trade.
Historically speaking, this is untenable and factually incorrect. This is based on loads of propaganda pitched for decades by the progressive movement within this country.

Notwithstanding your meandering mealy mouthed Kamala-esque nonsense, ending the importation of slaves did not end slavery. The number of slaves in the United States grew without importation by making babies.

Thomas Clarkson's organization, the original organization, was aimed at abolishing the slave trade. It was called the "Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade".

The topic is the United States. Thomas Clarkson was English.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/03/emancipation-day-reminder-caribbean-still-needs-justice-repair

Emancipation Day – A Reminder That Caribbean Still Needs Justice, Repair
Published in: Jamaica Gleaner
On August 1, Anglophone Caribbean nations commemorate Emancipation Day, marking the 1834 abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the 1838 abolition of apprenticeship, a system which forced formerly enslaved people to continue to work uncompensated for their former masters. Emancipation was not a gift. The Slavery Abolition Act, which banned slavery in the British colonies, followed a shift in the British Empire’s economic interests and sustained resistance by enslaved people through massive slave revolts, like Bussa’s Rebellion in Barbados, and guerilla warfare, as in the case of Jamaica’s Maroons.
While resistance helped pave the way for emancipation in the 1800s, the Caribbean was not free from British colonial rule for another century. For centuries, Caribbean people fought for liberation from slavery and colonization. Today, amid new calls for the UK to tackle systemic racism and reckon with the crimes of the British Empire, Caribbean people are still fighting for justice and repair.
[...]

What Clarkson has to do with racism in the United States in the Founding era, or at any time, is a mystery. I guess you found it better to babble than to address anything I wrote.

Virginia was the first of the English colonies to import slaves, and they opposed and eliminated the African slave trade in 1778
It would've been earlier if not for the kingly veto.

In your typical slimy manner, you ignored the part about Virginia keeping slavery until 1865. It's not like they freed slaves. They just stopped importing more from Africa.

Your claim that there were only two embracing slave states at the time of the Framing is patent nonsense.
The evidence could not be more clear.

You accidentally said something correct. The Constitution was ratified unanimously by all thirteen original states. The Constitution protected the slave trade for twenty years and placed the Fugitive Slave Clause beyond the power of Congress.

Your intimation that anyone wanting to free the slaves was not racist is a further example of patent nonsense. Many wanted to get rid of the slaves.?
I will only defend my words. I'm not interested in your mischaracterization. I said: "Many of the most hardcore abolitionist came from the prior slave-owning ranks, and that's true both on the American and the British side." I stand by my own words, should you decide in the future that you'd like to reply to them.

As you have denied that your statement even intimated that someone who wanted to free the slaves was not racist, your statement is now meaningless for this discussion.

See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 251. Mr. Bennett was an editor with Ebony magazine for about a half century.
I'm well acquainted with Lerone Bennett, who wrote quite a detailed article about how black slavery in the 13 colonies was preceded by white slavery in the 13 colonies, in that very same magazine. "White Servitude in America"

I referenced a 652 page book, not a magazine article. Your response babbles with meaningless drivel.

The Bennett quote you avoided responding to was:

This is a pivotal point, one that has been masked by rhetoric and imperfect analysis. For to say, as Lincoln said a thousand times, that one is only opposed to the extension of slavery is to say a thousand times that one is not opposed to slavery where it existed. Based on this record and the words of his own mouth, we can say that the "great emancipator" was one of the major supporters of slavery in the United States for at least fifty-four of his fifty six years.

That is pure fantasy. Upon independence, any State could have abolished slavery.
It's pure reality. Upon independence, they had a war to fight that in any number of ways they could have easily lost.

In reality, they won the war in 1783 and waited until 1865 to pass the 13th Amendment. Get real.

Slavery was forced on the Colonies by England. Who forced it upon the States after independence?
Yes, one and the same.

It was a freely made decision by the States to ratify the Constitution. Neither the British nor the Evil Empire made the Framers or the States do anything. The North could have chosen differently, but then there would have been two Unions, and the Northwest Territories would have belonged to the one with Virginia.

I typed: "Just focusing on acts, publicly and verifiable. Can you point to any time Jefferson advanced legislation, got all involved in and worked up about, or otherwise, and was a supporter of the institution of slavery?"
Reply: "When he was boinking 14-year old Sally Hemings. For his entire adult life he owned slaves, lots of slaves."
Looks like we have concluded with your failure here. At no point did Jefferson ever advance any legislation, get involved otherwise, nor act or public whatever. At all times, Jefferson was firmly on the abolitionist/anti-slaving side. It was your stipulation for acts, not words. Now you want to shift goal posts back to personal drama and at that, something which ultimately can't be definitively proven. It just goes on and on. No, you don't get to do that. At all times as a legislator, Jefferson was firmly on the abolitionist/anti-slaving side. You said it. Acts speak louder than words.

That is common knowledge and an act of Thomas Jefferson. I do not know what is on CNN as I do not receive it. However, it is at the Monticello site, among many other places.

https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/

Madison Hemings recounted that his mother “became Mr. Jefferson’s concubine” in France. When Jefferson prepared to return to America, Hemings said his mother refused to come back, and only did so upon negotiating “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her future children. He also noted that she was pregnant when she arrived in Virginia, and that the child “lived but a short time.” No other record of that child has been found.
We don’t know if she tried to negotiate for her personal freedom, or why she trusted Jefferson would keep his promise.
1789 Hemings arrived back in Virginia and slavery at the age of 16. According to Madison Hemings, she was pregnant with Jefferson's child.
[...]
The historical evidence points to the truth of Madison Hemings’s words about “my father, Thomas Jefferson.” Although the dominant narrative long denied his paternity, since 1802, oral histories, published recollections, statistical data, and documents have identified Thomas Jefferson as the father of Sally Hemings’s children. In 1998, a DNA study genetically linked one of Hemings’s male descendants with the male line of the Jefferson family, adding to the wealth of evidence.

Jefferson was a Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from Albemarle County, October 7, 1776 – May 30, 1779, and December 10, 1781 – December 22, 1781. Do tell whatever he notably did in the Virginia House of Delegates during the revolutionary war.

Jefferson is not known for being a legislator.

Jefferson was a slave owner his entire adult life.

If you would stop watching CNN long enough you would know that since they didn't have actual Thomas Jefferson DNA, they couldn't possibly have proven anything by a DNA test. Herbert Barger, who was for years the Genealogist at Monticello looked for any evidence he could find and concluded the accusation is false. The most likely culprit is Randolph Jefferson, not Thomas. The report of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society was very different from those promoted by your friends in the liberal media.

I do not receive CNN, you goofy clown. And read my post again:

It is still better known that Virginia did not get rid of slavery and neither did Jefferson personally. He remained a slave owner until he died. He freed the family of Sally Hemings, but those were blood relatives. Consult again the quote of Thomas Jefferson supra. And see the estate sale notice following his death.

As you admit, they found Jefferson DNA in the male line of the Hemings family. I said he freed blood relatives. That is what he did. You only raise a doubt whether they would be Thomas Jefferson's children or nephews and nieces.

If you were not addicted to MSNBC, you might not be such a crackpot. Turn off the boob tube and work on your reading and research skills as you do not evidence any. You really shouldn't even try to tackle DNA. You seem to still be struggling to figure out where babies come from.

In the Jefferson draft of the Kentucky Resolutions:
What about them?
I'll repeat the quote again because you seem to have missed it.
In the Jefferson draft of the Kentucky Resolutions:
5. Resolved, That in addition to the general principle, as well as the express declaration, that powers not delegated are reserved, another and more special provision, inserted in the Constitution from abundant caution, has declared that “the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808;” that this commonwealth does admit the migration of alien friends, described as the subject of the said act concerning aliens: that a provision against prohibiting their migration, is a provision against all acts equivalent thereto, or it would be nugatory: that to remove them when migrated, is equivalent to a prohibition of their migration, and is, therefore, contrary to the said provision of the Constitution, and void.
In his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson wrote that for the Federal government "to remove them [the slaves] when migrated, is equivalent to a prohibition of their migration, and is, therefore, contrary to the said provision of the Constitution, and void." Not exactly abolitionist. And then there were all his slaves that he diodn't free, not even in his will. Nope, the Jefferson estate put them up for sale. Except for the Hemings who were his blood relatives.
When Jefferson was involved with the Northwest Ordinance, he went out of his way to make it about slavery.
And as stated, the Ordinance said this: which I will repeat just for you:
Article the Sixth. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary Servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishent of crimes, wereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
There was a Fugitive Slave Clause in it!
I can see how you found that to be abolitionist. Take the words, add Bidenesque dementia, and there ya go.
Who were the people who were not free citizens?
The question is who were the free citizens.
No the question was clear. You were just unable to answer it. You know the answer, you just don't want to say it.
Denying a history of racism is simply embarrassing. It happened.
We were not having a discussion about Jim Crow.
No we are not. We are having a discussion featuring, in relevant part, your denial of the existence of Jim Crow.

All of the heavy gotcha questioning is taking a toll on the forum discourse. I see I did not scroll back far enough to the post in question(45), that is my fault.

We are being seriously Alinsky'd here, this is rule 4 that's being applied. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules" Taken one step further though.

We are being hammered to live up to stratospheric claims we aren't even making, under the guise that we did in fact make them and it's our rule now to live up to.

Gotcha question: "And this is your evidence that Washington is the prototypical American abolitionist?"

Nothing in post 42 warrants such a grossly aggressive mischaracterization, and in regard to Jefferson I'm facing the same sort of distortions. But since we cannot live up to this rule then all earlier statements and evidence are brushed aside as irrelevant.

"We are having a discussion featuring, in relevant part, your denial of the existence of Jim Crow."

All you're doing is creating a bunch of chaos. I'm not going to participate.

Have a nice day.

“All of the heavy gotcha questioning is taking a toll on the forum discourse.”

Well, you have taken a shelling in the last couple of days that would have shaken a lessor person.

It seems to me you want to develop a narrative that will convince 10 percent of 13 percent of the voters to switch over to the GOP. That is a valorous idea.

However, like the first-generation American Dinesh D’Souza you have made emphatic claims that don't hold up.

Remember when D’Souza boasted that no Republican ever owned a slave? I think he even offered a $10,000 reward for anyone that could prove otherwise. You don't hear D’Souza make that boast anymore.

You have bought into the leftist claim that America can't be admired - can't be allowed to continue - if it ever had slavery.

So you argue Americans never voluntarily owned slaves. And if they did own slaves they intended to do away with slavery the day after July 4. And if the nation didn't do away with slavery on July 5 then, well, it was the fault of one or two bad operators - the King of England; or my favorites Georgia and South Carolina. All their fault.

The 13 slave states wrote: “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.”

Blue state culture rejects this (the Declaration of the slave states). I'd be interested to hear if you reject it too.

I don't know about D'Souza's claim nor why I'm guilty by association here.

"You have bought into the leftist claim that America can't be admired - can't be allowed to continue - if it ever had slavery."

No. What I have bought into are the historical claims made by well established historians before progressives started re-writing the history books that slavery was the domain of the British Empire. Well the old historians do have a damn good point. Who else would it be?

Who else would it be? There was no United States prior to the rhetorical nuclear bomb that is known as the Declaration of Independence, which was dropped on July 2nd. We can all clearly establish that there's no U.S. of A. prior to 1776. That's not an arguable point, it flatly didn't exist.

So who is left? Be specific. You have plenty of choices. You got Portugal, there's Switzerland, there's France, Spain, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and I suppose you could throw Russia in there for good measure if you need.

Who brought the slaves here? This is the most dead simple question ever. The U.S. doesn't yet exist, it's 1775 or some earlier date. Who brought the slaves here? Who's doing this garbage?

And who operated those plantations? This is another dead simple question, almost as dead simple as the one just asked. The U.S. doesn't yet exist, it's 1775 or some earlier date. Who is operating these plantations? Who's doing this garbage? You got Portugal, there's Switzerland, there's France, Spain, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and I suppose you could throw Russia in there for good measure. If I missed an answer, list it. But it's 1775. The U.S. doesn't exist yet. Yes, I'm repeating myself about 1775 because you have a documented dishonesty streak that we need to deal with.

"So you argue Americans never voluntarily owned slaves."

No. I argue that colonies as crown-subject organizations lacking in free will when attempting to do away with slavery were halted by a royal veto, a claim I an prove with the original source. The actual text of the veto. Historians have noted several occasions, in several colonies, where royal forces directly or on behalf of royal forces as empowered representatives,(such as governors) stonewalled attempts against that "nefarious traffic" as it was called.

The colonies were involuntarily against their will forced to keep slavery going. Both historians and the original sources state this. It is inarguable as it can be proven both ways. But being the curmudgeon that I am, I recorded the original sources into audio for several different occasions including such as this, since so many people are in refusal to read the original sources and act like they know everything, and you've proven that you engage in deceptive practices.

I did the hard work. All you have to do is press the play button, now how super convenient is that?

https://www.archive.org/download/snf093_2209_librivox/snf093_onslaverypart2_kinggeorgeiii_pga_128kb.mp3

Yes. The British did do this.

It doesn't get more convenient than this, does it? Now, once you have either chosen to read the original sources or listened to them, you have little reason to continue saying that I'm making it up and falling for some left wing shill games.

"And if they did own slaves they intended to do away with slavery the day after July 4."

Why do you do this? What benefit do you derive from continually engaging in duplicity?

"well, it was the fault of one or two bad operators - the King of England; or my favorites Georgia and South Carolina. All their fault."

I can't help it what the actual recorded history states. Be sarcastic all you want.

You can hide from it or you can learn from it.