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

Librivox ^ | 8/4/23

[ProgressingAmerica]

If the contents of The 1619 Project are getting under your skin, here's a new audiobook for you.

Nothing else need be said, book speaks for itself.

An Historical Research Respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers, by George Livermore

Book summary: Collects the speeches, writings, public statements and legislative acts of the Founding Fathers and Framers of the United States against slavery. (Summary by progressingamerica)

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher: "Racism has not been eliminated but has been greatly reduced.
It is no longer official government policy.
Race pimps such as Al Sharpton just wield race accusations as a political weapon."

I'll repeat, in today's degraded political discourse there is no objective definition of "racism", there is only the weaponized epithet which Democrats use to mean, "you disagree with me about something important and that makes you a racist!" -- or "sexist", "homophobe", etc.
Not so many years ago the all-encompassing insult they used was "mean spirited", sounds almost quaint today.

Indeed, if you even try to make a legitimate effort to objectively define "racism" today, you are soon at questions like, for example, "if Latvians and Lithuanians living in the same city attend different churches because they like worshiping with their own neighbors, does that make them sort of "racists"?

Think about it.

woodpusher: "It is undeniable that the Constitutional union featured slavery as an integral and protected part.
That was done with the unanimous ratification of all the states."

The Fugitive Slave clause and the 3/5 rule were forced on Northern states as compromises to preserve the Union, and they should not be presented or understood as anything else.
Without such compromises, there would have been no Constitutional United States.

woodpusher: "Quotes of a slave owner expressing his desire to eliminate slavery, while never freeing his own slaves in his lifetime, fail to note that the sentiments expressing the desire to be free of slaves was part and parcel of the desire to be free of Blacks.
Those two desires were one and the same, and freely expressed as such from Jefferson to Lincoln."

As always, woodpusher, you misrepresent the facts.
The undeniable fact is that our Founders did pass numerous laws restricting and/or abolishing slavery.
Founders were usually content that abolition should be gradual and orderly, so long as it was also inevitable.

Our Founders also provided for voluntary recolonization of freed-black -- over several decades, beginning around 1820, with Democrats voting large sums of money, in both the US Congress and in many state legislatures, to pay for ships and supplies -- to transport & settle freed-blacks in Liberia and other countries.

The scale & failures of these Democrat recolonization projects were roughly equivalent to today's "green energy" spending.
Of course, not every leader of the American Colonization Society (ACS) was a Democrat, but I cannot find an example of a Federalist or Whig dominated legislature voting money for recolonization before 1861.

woodpusher: "Freeing the slaves in order to remove them from an all-white paradise is not exactly a non-racist sentiment.
That desire was made explicitly clear.
No amount of cherry-picking quotations can make that disappear from history."

And there is it again -- even when you full well know the truth, you just can't stop lying about it!
The truth is, every such law ever enacted and moneys ever authorized were for voluntary recolonization, not forced deportations.

Yes, Jefferson himself did propose both compensated emancipation (paid for from the public treasury) and forced deportations (to central America iirc), but Jefferson's proposal went nowhere.
Every law that was passed and money that was authorized was voluntary.

quoting BJK: "In the minds of our insane Democrats, "racist" simply means "you disagree with me on something important". It has no other meaningful definition or usage."

woodpusher: "If this were true, what would be the purpose of a collection of quotes from the Founders?"

It is certainly not to claim that our Founders were all modern "woke" progressive Democrats!
Rather, it is to prove beyond doubt that they opposed slavery and so restricted or abolished it wherever they could.

woodpusher: "In the case of the really lunatic fringe who argue as if they fought to abolish slavery, and all opposed to their glorious mission from Dog were necessarily insane, it is unfortunate that they must consider the Founders as having been insane for creating a Union which incorporated and protected slavery."

Such utterly insane claims are proof positive that you, woodpusher, are a true Democrat at heart, since only a Democrat could argue so insanely.

So I'll repeat the real truth, even though I know you loathe and despise it, just like all Democrats -- our Founders opposed slavery and wanted it abolished wherever and whenever possible.
They wanted abolition to be gradual and recolonization to be voluntary, but they knew slavery was morally wrong and should not be indefinitely tolerated.

woodpusher: "During the Revolutionary war, we sunk their ships and they sunk ours.
We did not pull into each others ports as welcome guests.
The curtailment of importation of everything was effected by the state of war.
That was not an action aimed at the slave trade."

And yet, and yet... they did restrict imports of slaves during the war and they restricted such imports again in the 1794 Slave Trade Act.

woodpusher: "Over 90% of the African slave trade did not deliver slaves to the English colonies, but to Central and South America, and to the islands.
That was not curtailed by the war.
Upon termination of the war, the African slave trade to the former colonies resumed."

All that is mostly irrelevant, since Americans were not the only, indeed were far from the primary slave traders.
Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, French and Brits all carried more than US ships and they brought the vast majority (well over 90+%) of slaves from Africa to the Americas.

The fact remains, deny it as much as you wish, that our Founders abolished slavery wherever and whenever they could because they knew it was morally wrong and should not be indefinitely tolerated.

woodpusher: "Beginning in 1777, Vermont waged a successful revolution and established itself as a free, sovereign, and independent state, with self-appointed borders; not part of any Union.
It remained a free, sovereign and independent state until 1791 when it joined the constitutional union."

The Vermont Republic was never formally recognized by any foreign government, and only ever discussed with Brits terms and conditions for becoming a province of Canada!

The fact remains that Vermont began to abolish slavery in its first constitution of 1777.

woodpusher: "The Fugitive Slave Clause still applied in Pennsylvania and a slave who escaped and fled to Pennsylvania no more enjoyed free status when than he was on the plantation."

President Washington himself recognized the right of Pennsylvania to abolish slavery and to declare freed any slaves that Washington himself kept too long in Philadelphia while he was President.
That's why he rotated his slaves in and out every few months.

woodpusher: "Rhode Island remained the foremost United States purveyor of slaves from the African coast.
Your unsubstantiated claim has a large clash with reality.
Rhode Island abolished slavery in its constitution of 1842, Art. 1, sec. 4.
That constitution, replacing the charter of 1643, went into effect May 2, 1843."

Rhode Island began abolition in 1784: "In February 1784, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a gradual emancipation law that increased the ratio of the free black population in Rhode Island to 78 percent by the 1790 U.S. Census; slavery was completely eliminated in Rhode Island by 1842."

woodpusher: "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. "

Well over 90% of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas came in ships owned by Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, French and Brits, not US Americans.

woodpusher: "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."

10% of Rhode Island's population in 1755: "The Rhode Island General Assembly legalized African and Native American slavery throughout the colony in 1703, and the slave trade fueled the growth of Providence and Newport into major ports.[14]: 11–13 
By 1755, enslaved people made up 10% of the colony's population.[14]: 24–25 "

Rhode Island began to abolish slavery in 1784.

woodpusher: "Vermont gradually eliminated slavery by selling its slaves south.
It did not eliminate slavery, it ethnically cleansed Rhode Island and relocated its slaves.
It continued to go to Africa, obtain slaves, and deliver them to the colonies, and later states."

You don't mean "Vermont".
You might mean Rhode Island, except that even for Rhode Island your claims are maliciously false.

Your claim of "ethnic cleansing" is utter mindless insanity.
In fact, Rhode Island's freed-black population remained constant, around 3,500, between 1790 and 1830, while slaves slowly dwindled from 958 to zero.
I've seen no evidence confirming that large numbers, or any, Rhode Island slaves were sold off "down the river".

woodpusher: "As stated above, Vermont waged a successful revolution beginning in 1777, and was a free, sovereign and independent state from 1777 to 1791."

As stated previously, Vermont was never formally recognized by any foreign country and only ever discussed with Britain possibilities of becoming a province of Canada.
Vermont was even more of a fake country than the Confederacy.

woodpusher: "Under either the Articles or the Constitution, the Founders or Framers could have elected to make slavery unlawful.
It was a freely made decision by the States to not make slavery unlawful.
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 Territory would have belonged to the one with Virginia."

Regardless of your non-stop pettifogging, the facts remain that our Founders knew slavery was wrong and did gradually abolish it wherever and whenever they could.

woodpusher: "I believe you do not refer to a law but The Ordinance of July 13, 1787.
That was an Ordinance for the Territory, not a Federal law.
It organized the first government of the Territory."

In 1787, "The United States in Congress Assembled passes the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, outlawing any new slavery in the Northwest Territories."

Thus confirming the fact that our Founders abolished slavery wherever and whenever they could.

woodpusher: "The claim is nonsense.
The Act applied explicitly only to exports.
It is impossible to read the act and draw the ridiculous conclusion that it applied to imports.
Rhode Island was synonymous with the American slave trade for a long time after 1794."

Sorry, but as usual, you are confused and disoriented.

"The Slave Trade Act of 1794 was a law passed by the United States Congress that prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in U.S. ports for the international slave trade.
It was signed into law by President George Washington on March 22, 1794.
This was the first of several anti-slavery trade-acts of Congress.
In 1800, Congress strengthened it by sharply raising the fines and awarding informants the entire value of any ship seized, as well as additional prohibitions on American investment and employment in the trade.[1]"

What's certain is that restrictions on international imports of slaves began under President Washington (1794), were strengthened under President Adams (1800) and made total under Presidents Jefferson (1808), Madison and Monroe.
So the fact remains that our Founders opposed slavery, restricting and abolishing it wherever and whenever they could.

woodpusher: "Your list may go on, but you have only documented that you never looked at your claimed source material."

As opposed to woodpusher who always misrepresents whatever documentation you post.
Your documents never prove the points you're trying to make, and the points they do prove all support my arguments.

woodpusher: "Regardless of pull-quotes from selected Founders, history bears one unassailable truth: the Founders never ended slavery in their lifetime.
They talked about it.
They didn't do it. "

That is a total 100% lie, and you know it and yet you keep repeating it, over and over again and there's only one explanation I can think for you -- you're an utterly, stark-raving insane America-hating Democrat.
Nothing else can fully explain your behavior here.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"<>One of the reasons that the 13 slave states rebelled was because the King was threatening to “free the slaves.”

Read your attachment again; for the first time."

Nothing like this is written anywhere in the link I gave. All you are doing is trolling.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"Indeed, the key point to remember here is that neither I nor anybody else has ever found a Founder's quote to the effect that slavery was a good thing and should be both preserved and expanded."

Thank you. This is a good reminder for a point I have made or implied several times here to some of the negativity promoters. And your observation is correct. Not one Founder was on the side of slavery saying "This is the future! Slavery foevah!!!" - that I am aware of.

Forgive me if I do not reply to all of your responses below this one. There is a lot going on here.

I hope this book text (or audio) can help you further keep the Founding Fathers' record accurate even among fellow conservatives, among people who (will listen) you wish to highlight the Founders good name, but also at sparse times when progressives rear their ugly heads.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"but Virginians balked and would not pass the proposed abolition state law."

What was the name of this law or otherwise where can I find specific information about this?

[woodpusher]

[BroJoeK] “The list goes on and demonstrates clearly that our Founders were fully committed to restricting and gradually abolishing slavery wherever they could.”

[jeffersondem] Charles Pinckney.

Start with that.

How about Jefferson's cousin, John Marshall? Framer, delegate to the Virginia ratifying convention; Representative; Secretary of State; and the longest serving and most influential Chief Justice in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/chief-justice-john-marshall-slaves/619160/

A bronze statue of him sits outside the Supreme Court Building, and a marble one stands inside. He has appeared on four postage stamps, a commemorative silver dollar, a $20 Treasury note, and a $500 Federal Reserve note. Two centuries after he wrote them, Marshall’s opinions are still read and cited. Five of the 10 opinions most cited by the Court itself are Marshall’s.

[...]

Marshall not only owned people; he owned many of them—certainly more than 300—across the years of his life. Unlike other major slaveholders, such as his cousin Thomas Jefferson, Marshall did not inherit enslaved people; he aggressively bought them when he could. Whether buying young children, or a mother and one of her children, or selling them to raise cash, he paid little attention to the enslaved families he destroyed in his lifelong quest for more human property. Marshall’s biographers assert that he was not brutal or violent toward the people he owned, and this may well be true. But Marshall had day-to-day contact with only the dozen and a half enslaved people in his household. We have no knowledge about how the overseers on Marshall’s land in other parts of Virginia treated the chief justice’s human property. Nor do we know how two of his sons, who lived about 100 miles from Marshall, in rural Fauquier County, and to whom he lent about 60 people, treated them.

Thirty-eight years after the Framing, we have Framer John Marshall continuing his lifelong effort to fully commit to restricting and gradually abolishing slavery wherever he could. In furtherance of his lifelong effort he issued the Opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66 (1825).

The Antelope, 10 Wheat (10 US) 66 (1825), MARSHALL, CJ (excerpts)

23 U.S. 114

Mr. Chief Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court,

[...]

23 U.S. 114-115

In examining claims of this momentous importance; claims in which the sacred rights of liberty and of property come in conflict with each other; which have drawn from the bar a degree of talent and of eloquence, worthy of the questions that have been discussed; this Court must not yield to feelings which might seduce it from the path of duty, and must obey the mandate of the law.

That the course of opinion on the slave trade should be unsettled, ought to excite no surprise. The Christian and civilized nations of the world, with whom we have most intercourse, have all been engaged in it. However abhorrent this traffic may be to a mind whose original feelings are not blunted by familiarity with the practice, it has been sanctioned in modern times by the laws of all nations who possess distant colonies, each of whom has engaged in it as a common commercial business which no other could rightfully interrupt. It has claimed all the sanction which could be derived from long usage, and general acquiescence. That trade could not be considered as contrary to the law of nations which was authorized and protected by the laws of all commercial nations; the right to carry on which was claimed by each, and allowed by each.

23 U.S. 118-119

In the very full and elaborate opinion given on this case [the Louis] in explicit terms, lays down the broad principle, that the right of search is confined to a state of war. It is a right strictly belligerent in its character, which can never be exercised by a nation at peace, except against professed pirates, who are the enemies of the human race. The act of trading in slaves, however detestable, was not, he said, "the act of freebooters, enemies of the human race, renouncing every country, and ravaging every coun­try, in its boasts and vessels, indiscriminately." It was not piracy.

He also said, that this trade could not be pronounced contrary to the law of nations. "A Court, in the admininistration of law, cannot attribute criminality to an act where the law imputes none. It must look to the legal standard of mo­rality; and, upon a question of this nature, that standard must be found in the law of nations, as "fixed and evidenced by general, and ancient, and admitted practice, by treaties, and by the general ­tenor of the laws and ordinances, and the formal transactions of civilized states; and, looking to those authorities, he found a difficulty in main­taining that the transaction was legally crimi­nal."

23 U.S. 120-122

The question, whether the slave trade is prohi­bited by the law of nations has been seriously propounded, and both the affirmative and nega­tive of the proposition have been maintained with equal earnestness.

That it is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every man has a na­tural right to the fruits of his own labour, is ge­nerally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits, and appro­priate them, against his will, seems to be the ne­cessary result of this admission. But from the earliest times war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced. Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was, that the victor might enslave the van­quished. This, which was the usage of all, could not be pronounced repugnant to the law of na­tions, which is certainly to be tried by the test of general usage. That which has received the assent of all, must be the law of all.

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produ­ced by general consent, cannot be pronounced unlawful.

Throughout Christendom, this harsh rule has been exploded, and war is no longer considered as giving a right to enslave captives. But this triumph of humanity has not been universal: The parties to the modern law of nations do not propagate their principles by force; and Africa has not yet adopted them. Throughout the whole extent of that immense continent, so far as we know its history, it is still the law of nations that prisoners are slaves. Can those who have them­selves renounced this law, be permitted to partici­pate in its effects by purchasing the beings who are its victims?

Whatever might be the answer of a moralist to this question; a jurist must search for its legal solution, in those principles of action which are sanctioned by the usages, the national acts, and the general assent, of that portion of the world of which he considers himself as a part, and to whose law the appeal is made. If we resort to this standard as the test of international law, the question, as has already been observed, is decided in favour of the legality of the trade. Both Europe and America embarked in it; and for nearly two centuries, it was carried on without opposition, and without censure. A jurist could not say, that a practice thus supported was illegal and that those engaged in it might be punished, either personally, or by deprivation of pro­perty. In this commerce, thus sanctioned by univer­sal assent, every nation had an equal right to engage. How is this right to be lost? Each may renounce it for its own people; but can this re­ nunciation affect others?

No principle of general law is more univer­sally acknowledged, than the perfect equality of nations. Russia and Geneva have equal rights. It results from this equality, that no one can right­fully impose a rule on another. Each legislates for itself, but its legislation can operate on itself alone. A right, then, which is vested in all by the consent of all, can be devested only by con­sent; and this trade, in which all have participa­ted, must remain lawful to those who cannot be induced to relinquish it. As no nation can prescribe a rule for others, none can make a law of nations; and this traffic remains lawful to those whose governments have not forbidden it.

If it is consistent with the law of nations, it cannot in itself be piracy. It can be made so only by statute; and the obligation of the statute cannot transcend the legislative power of the state which may enact it.

If it be neither repugnant to the law of nations, nor piracy, it is almost superfluous to say in this Court, that the right of bringing in for adjudica­tion in time of peace, even where the vessel belongs to a nation which has prohibited the trade.

23 U.S. 129-130

These vessels were plundered in March, 1820, and the libel was filed in August of the same years. From that time to this, a period of more than five years, no subject of the crown of Portugal has appeared to assert his title to this property, no individual has been designated as its probable owner. This inattention to a subject of so much real interest, this total disregard of a valuable property, is so contrary to the common course of human action, as to justify serious suspicion that the real owner dares not avow himself.

That Americans, and others, who cannot use the flag of their own nation, carry on this criminal and inhuman traffic under the flags of other coun­tries, is a fact of such general notoriety, that Courts of admiralty may act upon it. It cannot be necessary to take particular depositions, to prove a fact which is matter of general and pub­lic history. This long, and otherwise unaccount­able absence, of any Portuguese claimant, fur­nishes irresistible testimony, that no such claim­ant exists, and that the real owner belongs to some other nation, and feels the necessity of concealment.

[woodpusher]

[BroJoeK #74] The list goes on and demonstrates clearly that our Founders were fully committed to restricting and gradually abolishing slavery wherever they could.

[BroJoeK #79] Yes, in 1819, Pinckney did oppose the Missouri Compromise, which did restrict slavery's expansion in some US territories, however, unlike 1850s era Southern Fire Eaters, Pinckney did not threaten secession over these restrictions.

So, my argument still stands that there was a qualitative difference regarding slavery between our Founders in 1787, even the Southern-most, versus Fire Eating Democrats in 1860.

The Founders were in 1776. The Framers were in 1787.

So, not threatening secession establishes a slave owning Framer as "fully committed to restricting and gradually abolishing slavery wherever they could." That is awe-inspiring logic.

[BroJoeK]

quoting BJK: "...but Virginians balked and would not pass the proposed abolition state law."

ProgressingAmerica: "What was the name of this law or otherwise where can I find specific information about this?"

This article describes debates in Virginia's legislature on several proposals after the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion.

It ends by concluding that this was the last time Southerners seriously debated abolition.

[jeffersondem]

“Nothing like this (slave state grievance against the King because he was threatening to free the slaves) is written anywhere in the link I gave.”

See grievance 27, your link.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

[ProgressingAmerica]

User jeffersondem said: (post 76) "One of the reasons that the 13 slave states rebelled was because the King was threatening to “free the slaves.""

User jeffersondem later said: "See grievance 27, your link. “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”"

I'm looking for the "free the slaves" part. I don't see it. If you mean the domestic insurrections part, no, that's not what that is referring to. The British had to be extremely careful about what promises they made because Loyalist slave owners needed to be taken care of. And yes, hurting loyalist slave interests would've hurt the Crown because of their mercantilist tax generating schemes.

The incitement of domestic insurrections was purely revenge based. Kill your slave masters for enslaving you. Anyone held as a slave seeking freedom (only patriot slave owners, mind you) was encouraged to sneak away in the night and go join the British military.

"The British mobilization of slaves was a double-edged sword. Dunmore had called only on the slaves of patriots to join his troops. There was, however, the danger that the slaves of loyalists would do the same."

War in an Age of Revolution, 1775-1815

You are putting your anti-Americanism on display again - your foolhardy rush to blame everything everywhere slavery related all on the United States completely left you blind to the issue of loyalist slave owning.

Whoops.

Which brings us all the way back to the beginning - the only place you found abolitionism (where it was to be found) was in the Patriot side. There was none of it on the loyalist side. The Brit of the 1700s did not issue blanket proclamations such as that. They were a slave empire - Would it be a complete surprise to you if I were to inform you that Britain had slavery in various parts of the Caribbean?

Sadly, I think that's news to you. All you really seem to be good at is trolling. Why are you still here?

[ProgressingAmerica]

Thank you. I’m gonna send you a PM, no rush to reply.

[jeffersondem]

“I'm looking for the “free the slaves” part. I don't see it.”

Grievance 27 was part of your link; and that is linked to Dunmore’s Proclamation.

Read the link to the Dunmore Proclamation with me: “The proclamation declared martial law[1] and promised freedom for slaves of American Patriots who left their owners and joined the British army, becoming Black Loyalists.”

Perhaps you would now like to argue that information in the link you provided can't be trusted; or argue that “promised freedom for slaves” does not mean “free the slaves.”

Earlier you noted “the empire (who) hurt us in at least (the) 27 different ways listed in the Declaration of Independence.”

The freshly-minted 13 independent slave states did not like the British hurts and they said so in their Declaration. This includes the King's attempt to mess with their slaves and set them free.

As you yourself have said: “the Declaration says that Britain treated Americans badly.”

[ProgressingAmerica]

Cited: "and promised freedom for slaves of American Patriots who left their owners"

Thank you for backing up what I just said, you're not even reading what you're posting.

"or argue that “promised freedom for slaves” does not mean “free the slaves.”"

Look at what you omitted. No, it does not mean that. You are twisting the language by hiding things. What I posted one reply up remains correct, this backs up my assertion, not your own.

[ProgressingAmerica]

All of this finger pointing misses the point, because your track record is to muddy the fingers until nothing is left but an intelligible husk of a former discussion. I’ll put it to you another way to bring this back to simplicity:

The empire forces slavery on the colonies by vetoing successfully enacted colonial laws in the early 1770s’ that would’ve at a minimum reduced the problem in regard to the slave question, then the empire turns around and weaponizes the very same slaves that the American legislatures were trying to put a stop to. Dunmore’s as you pointed out was in 1775. Of course, Dunmore (as governor) dissolved the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1774, to prevent any further “inconvenient” laws.

That’s how nefarious the whole situation got and the timeline couldn’t be more clear.

It’s good to be king. Or as they say in Vegas, the house always wins.

[ProgressingAmerica]

* Unintelligible - spell checker flub.

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher quoting CJ John Marshall from The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66 (1825).: "That it [slavery] is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied.
That every man has a na­tural right to the fruits of his own labour, is ge­nerally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits, and appro­priate them, against his will, seems to be the ne­cessary result of this admission.

"But from the earliest times war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced.
Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was, that the victor might enslave the van­quished. "

The 1825 Antelope was a complicated case, not as famous as Le Armistad in 1841, but like Armistad it resulted in freedom for most of the surviving slaves.

In woodpusher's lengthy quote Chief Justice Marshall declares his repugnance for slavery in principle, but also implies that as a Justice, he cannot simply declare it abolished, because slavery is recognized in, we would say, "settled law".

In that, Marshall was entirely typical of our Founders and in the end, about 80% of the surviving slaves were freed.

So once again, woodpusher's quotes support my arguments.

[BroJoeK]

woodpusher: "The Founders were in 1776. The Framers were in 1787."

And since many were the same people, it would not be incorrect to refer to them as the Founding Generation, or Founding Fathers, or just Founders, for short.

woodpusher: "So, not threatening secession establishes a slave owning Framer as "fully committed to restricting and gradually abolishing slavery wherever they could."
That is awe-inspiring logic."

Certainly, contrasted to 1860 era Fire Eating Democrats, 1787 Federalist Pinckney was indeed awe-inspiring.

In 1787 Pinckney was willing to compromise with Northerners on the issue of slave importations and he did not oppose abolition in Northern states or in the Northwest Territories.
Nor did he seek to impose a Gag Rule on Congress in 1819.

And the key point about Pinckney in 1787 is that he was the most "hard core" of hard core Southern slavocrats, the one who insisted on Fugitive Slave returns in the Constitution.
Other Southern leaders, like Washington, Jefferson & Madison were willing to go a lot further towards abolition than Pinckney.

All of which supports my argument that our Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery in principle and were willing to restrict or abolish it wherever and whenever they could.

Unlike 1860 era Fire Eater Democrats.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem quoting Declaration: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

We have covered this ground before and jeffersondem insists the words, "domestic insurrections" can only refer to slave revolts, nothing else and therefore our Founders were primarily, even exclusively, worried about Brits "freeing the slaves" in their Declaration of Independence.

It's nonsense, of course, because there were no slave revolts in 1776, or later, but there were many "domestic insurrections" -- attacks by British loyalists against American patriots -- and that is the true meaning of this Declaration item.

As ProgressingAmerica points out, slave revolts could just as easily attack slaveholder Loyalists as Patriots and so that is not what Lord Dunmore called for in November, 1775.
Rather, Dunmore called for, in effect, Patriots' slaves to sneak off and join the British army, offering them freedom in exchange.

But Dunmore's & Clinton's proclamations did not help win the war for the Brits because, unlike insane Confederates of the 1860s, during the Revolutionary War Gen. George Washington also offered slaves freedom in exchange for military service.

One result was that at the surrender of Yorktown in 1781, a British observer noted that roughly one in four of US troops was African American, serving in integrated units.

So our Revolutionary War was not about Brits threatening to free American slaves, but rather was about Americans offering slaves freedom in exchange for military service, and that proved to be one of the margins of our victory.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"woodpusher quoting CJ John Marshall from....

There is a rather (both) hilarious and hypocritical commentary in this.

The haters of our Founders, those who would call them racist and thus - everything they ever touched, said, or did, must be deleted, chopped down, and burned to the ground and never spoken of again.

Can't find time to remember that John Marshall was a slave owner. And they quote him regularly and gleefully. Why isn't Marshall a racist? You're quoting a racist? Why shouldn't everything and every aspect of Marshall's legacy be eliminated due to its inherent racism? Did Marshall ever free his slaves? Did Marshall ever agree that all blacks ought to be deported back to Africa?

(I don't support this, mind you, I'm just noting how the haters rely upon that which they purport to hate. They don't actually care about any of this. It's just a convenient cudgel they can use to manipulate discussions. If they actually cared about this, they wouldn't quote Marshall.)

[jeffersondem]

“It's nonsense, of course, because there were no slave revolts in 1776, or later, but there were many “domestic insurrections” — attacks by British loyalists against American patriots — and that is the true meaning of this Declaration item.”

You, and your internet connection to Wikipedia, have repeatedly ran circles around Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia Convention, and all 13 of the original slaves states.

By your account, they didn't know what they were thinking, or what they were doing. It is probably only a coincidence that your explanation of their thinking matches your preferences.

Your problem now is that you have run right smack dab into an equally knowledgeable contemporary historian with access to Wikipedia.

ProgressingAmerica found the smoking gun you claim doesn't exist when he introduced and vouched for the link below. It avers Dunmore’s Proclamation is tied to grievance 27 which begins “He has excited domestic insurrection amonst us . . .”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

Incidentally, like the signed DOI, it does not mention “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens . . .”

I don't think Brother ProgressingAmerica will be as easy for you to bulldoze as Thomas Jefferson; for one thing he is still alive.

Either you or he has been putting forward bad information. Now that you have rejected his offering, I expect we'll see a classic clash between two titans of blue state culture.

[woodpusher]

[ProgressingAmerica #98 to BroJoeK #95] Can't find time to remember that John Marshall was a slave owner. And they quote him regularly and gleefully. Why isn't Marshall a racist? You're quoting a racist?

John Marshall owned over 300 slaves. While Jefferson inherited, Marshall purchased. BroJoeK claims the terms racist and racism have no definition anymore. Of course John Marshall was racist, as was any life-long slave owner. But that undercuts Brother Joe's contention that all Founders fought a lifelong battle for abolition of slavery.

Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Marshall. The most prominent Founders were lifelong slave owners. Not every Founder was a saint. Ten of the first twelve Presidents were slave owners. Presidents number 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17 and 18 were slaveowners. 18 was Grant. 2 and 6 were John and John Quincy Adams who strongly opposed slavery. From 1789 to 1850, for only eight years was there a President who was not a slave owner. That does not have much to do with the state of race relations today, but it does have much to do with history, and how things such as the fugitive slave provisions found their way into the Articles of Confederation, the Ordinance of the Northwest Territory, and the Constitution. The Articles and the Constitution were unanimous consent documents—the Founders and Framers did that. At times, history is messy.

The Antelope was not just Marshall. There is no dissenting opinion.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/chief-justice-john-marshall-slaves/619160/

Paul J. Finkleman, The Atlantic, June 15, 2021, updated Jun 24, 2021

Earlier biographers argued that he did not seek investment profit from slavery; that he owned a “dozen house servants” in Richmond, Virginia; that he disliked slavery but went along with it because he was a practical man focused on strengthening the national government; and that as a justice he heard very few cases involving slavery. He accepted the system and focused on other issues.

None of this is true. I spent three years analyzing every case dealing with slavery that the Marshall Court heard, including many that previous scholars had ignored, brought by people held as slaves who had strong legal claims to being freed, and others involving the illegal African slave trade; examining census and tax records revealing Marshall’s huge personal investment in enslaved people; looking at his private letters that display his attention to buying and selling human beings; scrutinizing business records showing his purchases of enslaved people; and consulting the three versions of his will, which also revealed his commitment to slavery. What I found totally upended the established view: Marshall not only owned people; he owned many of them—certainly more than 300—across the years of his life. Unlike other major slaveholders, such as his cousin Thomas Jefferson, Marshall did not inherit enslaved people; he aggressively bought them when he could. Whether buying young children, or a mother and one of her children, or selling them to raise cash, he paid little attention to the enslaved families he destroyed in his lifelong quest for more human property. Marshall’s biographers assert that he was not brutal or violent toward the people he owned, and this may well be true. But Marshall had day-to-day contact with only the dozen and a half enslaved people in his household. We have no knowledge about how the overseers on Marshall’s land in other parts of Virginia treated the chief justice’s human property.

[...]

Marshall, this great father of American law, was professionally deeply committed to slavery too. His jurisprudence was guided not by justice but by the ideology and worldview of someone who held other humans in slavery. In all of his opinions involving slavery, he always sought “justice” for slaveholders and never for the people they held—sometimes illegally—in bondage.