I am sorry you do not know what racism is, but I am sure you are on a lifelong crusade to stamp out whatever it is of which you profess no knowledge."
Seriously, woodpusher, what's wrong with you?
Why do you insist on falsely equating slavery with "racism", they are two very different subjects?
Historically, not all slaves were Africans and not all slaveholders were Europeans.
In many cases, it was the reverse -- Africans owned European slaves, notably the Barbary Pirates.
Even in the 13 Colonies there were European slaves, prisoners or captives shipped here from Britain to serve out their sentences as slaves.
Plus a huge percentage of the white population suffered under a form of slavery called "indentured servitude", to pay off their debts.
So, for our Founders, slavery was not about "racism" but rather was about the immorality of holding innocent people in bondage.
woodpusher: "You mean they could not say "no."
Poor babies.
It was a union of compulsion, they were forced into it.
It was not of their own free will.
Had they said no, there would have been two unions, and Virginia held the Northwest Territory."
Right, it was a compromise to preserve the Union, forced on Northern states at Southern insistence.
To claim anything else is to distort the actual history.
woodpusher: "Slavery was abolished after the 13th Amendment when New Jersey finally caved in.
As for your icons, we have their own words as to their meeting your Democrat BLM progressive ideals."
No, in fact, slavery was restricted and abolished in many places long before the 13th Amendment, and regardless of your Democrat BLM progressive ideals, our Founders knew slavery was wrong and did what they could against it.
woodpusher: "The Founders abolished slavery, then grew old and died, and then there was a war to end slavery. Got it!"
Seriously, woodpusher, why are you lying about this?
Is it just your trained Democrat mind-set which forces you to always miss the truth when a lie sounds better?
In this case, I'll repeat, our Founders legally abolished slavery in Northern states, in Western territories and in international imports.
Their practice was gradual abolition and it worked until roughly 1835 when Southerners began to defend slavery as not just a necessary evil, but as a positive good thing which should be protected and expanded wherever possible.
woodpusher: "As is firmly documented in the statements of the historical characters, they were firmly committed to removing the Black presence from the country and its territories.
As Jefferson stated it, "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's proposals for government paid compensated emancipation and forced recolonizations were never approved.
What was approved and voted by Congress and several state legislatures were large sums of money to support voluntary recolonizations.
It turned out that the vast majority of freed-blacks preferred to stay in their homes in the USA, despite allegedly intolerable "racism", rather than to "return" to their "homelands" in Africa, or elsewhere.
woodpusher: "What did Lincoln say?
- quoting: "I have said a hundred times and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all.
I have said that always. (CW 2:492, italics added)."
In 1848, Congressman Lincoln did try to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which was under Congress's authority to do so.
Lincoln's attempt failed in 1848, but succeeded in 1862.
I see now that you are largely just repeating quotes you've posted before, and at the same time descending into insane nonsense like this:
woodpusher: "Nobody ever claimed they could all be like you, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Marshall on the slavery issue.
Not many could meet your standards, but that great pre-eminent conservative Willard Romney rose up and proposed "voluntary deportation."
That is like separate but equal, but different.
I had the same reception in the 21st century as it had in the 19th century."
Nothing rational there for me to respond to.
woodpusher: "What is insane is arguing that verified, factual history, with quoted words and recorded deeds, never happened.
But, here you are.... sounding like an idiot liberal Democrat."
And here you are simply accusing me of your own behavior.
woodpusher: "You stated, quite mindlessly, 'Beginning in 1775 the Atlantic slave trade was banned or suspended during the Revolutionary War.
It was only the 6% that had been going to the former colonies that was affected."
Even when there is no disagreement, you present it as if there is.
woodpusher: "The fact is that the Founders did not even abolish slavery in Washington, D.C. where it only required a majority vote of Congress.
The Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution remained the Supreme Law of the Land until after the Civil War.
Before the Constitution, the Founders put a Fugitive Slave Clause in the Articles of Confederation and the Ordinance of the Northwest Territory.
Neither Dog, nor the Evil Empire forced them to do that.
Slavery was abolished after the 13th Amendment when New Jersey finally capitulated."
No, the truth is that slavery was 99% abolished before ratification of the 13th Amendment.
Of roughly 4 million slaves in 1860, only around 50,000 remained to be freed in December 1865.
Even by 1860, when US total territory was roughly 3 million square miles, slavery was abolished from all but 1 million square miles. Even by 1860, slavery was abolished in 2/3 of the territory and also 2/3 of the population.
Those are facts, Democrat, deny them all you wish.
woodpusher: "Prior to May 2, 1843, the first constitution had not gone into effect.
As I stated, Rhode Island prohibited slavery in 1843, Wikipedia and its faithful slave, BroJoeK notwithstanding."
Here you are simply driving yourself crazy by refusing to look at the actual facts, which include Rhode Island's 1784 gradual abolition law resulting in the reduction of R.I. slaves to near zero by 1830, while the R.I. freed black population remained constant around 3,500.
Rhode Island's census slave population numbers are:
- 1790 -- 958
- 1800 -- reduced 60% to 380
- 1810 -- reduced 90% to 108
- 1820 -- reduced 95% to 48
- 1830 -- reduced 98% to 17
- 1840 -- reduced 99% to 5
- 1850 -- reduced 100% to 0
To me those numbers suggest actuarial declines and natural longevities.
woodpusher: "Perhaps we are to believe that when they were freed, the freed blacks no longer reproduced."
Or, we might well believe what logic tells us, which is that some freed-blacks did what any freed people sometimes do, they moved to a different state to find a better life.
There were soon several they could choose from with no risk of being re-enslaved.
woodpusher: "Your insane assertion that the Founders "restricted such imports again in the 1794 Slave Trade Act" will be shown to be another turd excreted from your imagination.
I will provide the entire Act from the Statutes at Large, with footnote."
And you will yet again post endless irrelevant facts to support your ridiculous argument that the 1794 Slave Trade Act was not intended to restrict the slave trade.