Vanity - Some facts I didn't know about slavery

Due to the recent hullabaloo involving Wright's sermons and liberation theology, I did some reading about slavery in the US, and discovered a number of things I hadn't heard before.

1 - Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence criticized King George for permitting the slave trade:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.(3)

Jefferson's committee wanted to keep this passionate paragraph, and Adams considered it the best part. But Congress struck it from the Declaration, substituting the vague and self-serving charge "He has excited domestic insurrections among us."

2 - Just 4 years after winning the Revolutionary War, the Constitutional Convention debated slavery in the US. Many wanted to immediately ban the importing of slaves, but that would cost the votes of the southern states. As a compromise, importing slaves was permitted for another 20 years. In 1808, as soon as Congress could legally do so, importing slaves was outlawed.

"The Founding Fathers, however, could not resolve the issue of Slavery which divided the Colonies and was preventing agreement on the remainder of the Constitution. Accordingly, they made the decision to keep the status quo and leave it to future generations to resolve this issue.[12] As a result, the original Constitution contained four provisions tacitly allowing slavery to continue for the next 20 years. Section 9 of Article I allowed the continued "importation" of such persons, Section 2 of Article IV prohibited the provision of assistance to escaping persons and required their return if successful and Section 2 of Article I defined other persons as "three-fifths" of a person for calculations of each state's official population.[13] Article V prohibited any amendments or legislation changing these provisions until 1808, thereby giving the States then existing 20 years to resolve this issue. The failure to do so led to the Civil War.[14]"

Note the slave holders outsmarted the anti-slavery forces. In most places, banning the importing of slaves ended slavery - the death rate was too high for it to be self-sustaining. Slaveholders in the south, however, adjusted the proportions of male/female and improved living conditions. This allowed them to breed more slaves, and the slave population increased greatly after importing slaves was banished.

3 - The 3/5th person rule was NOT a statement that blacks were not really people. Slaveholders WANTED blacks counted as people, because their states would be represented in Congress based on the number of people present. Anti-slavery folks were appalled, and wanted no slaves to be counted as people, since they couldn't vote for themselves. Again, this was a compromise position.

4 - Very few of the slaves taken from Africa ended up in the USA - only about 600,000 out of 10 million or more. The vast majority went to South America or the Caribbean. It is a bit of a reach to criticize the US Government for failing to end slavery in Brazil!

5 - Independent US government really began with victory in 1783, with the last British troops leaving New York City on November 25, 1783.

25 years later, importing slaves became illegal. By that time, many northern states had outlawed slavery.

It has now been 143 years since slavery was outlawed. 36% of the USA's history allowed slavery, although it was strongly contested.

This year, 2008, celebrates 200 years since it became illegal to import slaves. It was only legal for 11% of our total history.

"In the 1870s, Democrats regained power through affiliated militia terrorism of black and white Republicans, assassination of community leaders and political activists, and intimidation and restriction of voters at the polls. Even after the Democrats regained power throughout the South, between 1880 and 1951 the Tuskegee Institute recorded lynchings of 3,437 African-American victims, as well as 1,293 white victims.

...After increased immigration to the US in the late 19th century, Italian-Americans also became lynching targets, chiefly in the South. On March 14, 1891, eleven Italian-Americans were lynched in New Orleans after a jury acquitted them in the murder of a New Orleans police chief [16] David Hennessy. The eleven were falsely accused of being associated with the Mafia. This incident was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.[17] A total of twenty Italians were lynched in the 1890s. Although most lynchings of Italian-Americans occurred in the South, Italians did not immigrate there in great numbers. Isolated lynchings of Italians also occurred in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.

Particularly in the West, Chinese immigrants, East Indians, Native Americans and Mexicans were also lynching victims. The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest was long overlooked in American history. Attention became focused on the South. The Tuskegee Institute, which kept the most complete records, noted the victims as simply black or white. Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims were recorded as white.[18]

Researchers estimate 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928. Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic was second only to that of the African American community, which endured an average of 37.1 per 100,000 of population during that period. Between 1848 and 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population.[19]"

During a 70 year period, roughly 3400 blacks were lynched. That was undoubtedly evil, but how does its impact compare to this:

"WASHINGTON - Nearly half of the nation’s murder victims in 2005 were black, and the number of black men who were slain is on the rise.

A majority of the black murder victims were relatively young — between 17 and 29, the Justice Department said in a study released Thursday.

The department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics report offers a snapshot of racial disparities among violent crime victims. Black people represented an estimated 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, the latest data available, but were the victims of 49 percent of all murders and 15 percent of rapes, assaults and other nonfatal violent crimes nationwide.

Most of the black murder victims — 93 percent — were killed by other black people, the study found. About 85 percent of white victims were slain by other white people."

From other statistics presented in the story, nearly 8000 blacks were murdered in 2005 alone. This means some 7400 blacks, mostly young men, were murdered by other blacks in just one year.

During the 70 years without a federal anti-lynching law, 3400 black men were murdered by whites. In 2005 alone, over twice that number were murdered by other blacks.

It is truly unbelievable the revisionist history that has been dumped on so many ignorant people about the reality of the Republicans role in Civil Rights from the beginning. Instead they follow the lead of their false ‘Emancipators’ of the likes of “Sheets” Byrd and a host of other Southern Democrats.

Such ignorance and cynicism on the part of so-called Black Leaders.

I am from North Alabama and had family on both sides in the Civil War. My father’s great uncle was in first Alabama Union Army was captured and sent to Danville Virginia where he died in Late 1863. The brother, my dad’s GF, never went to war and hid out during the war. North Alabama was mixed in the decision of which side to support.

I think that question, the opinion on reparations, is too hot to handle for either of the Dems so they have an unspoken truce on the issue. However, I'm certain it will come up in the General Election if Obama is the Dem nominee.

first Alabama Union Army

Was this an actual Union Army unit? (i.e., 1st Alabama Regiment,USA?)

I probably had some distant relatives on my maternal great grandmother's side involved in the Civil War. (Probably on the confederate side since they lived in south central Virginia.) But she didn't come into our family line until the 1890's.

My maternal family line is from various parts of the United Kingdom and started arriving in the North either just prior to or, more likely, just after the Civil War. Proceeded by bounds across the northern US (Minnesota, Nebraska, etc.) before settling in Idaho.

My paternal line arrived as a penniless 15 year-old WWI refugee from Belgium in 1915 and settled in Michigan.

If we would, as human beings, approach every situation with simple love and compassion for our fellow beings, it would have gone and would go so very far in making a better world. If the slave masters had all agreed to free their slaves before that war, or at the very least after the war, educated and tried to help them by organizing everyone to now work together with FAIR sharecropping offers and looking at the freed slave as a human being, teaching him to read and offering him the same education as his own children received - with love instead of condescending behavior in many instances - perhaps things might be different. I think we need to heed the same lesson in our zeal against the Latino immigrants while demanding that our porous borders be sealed and our immigration laws be enforced as much as possible.

If Christian people don’t minister to the Latino population as well as the black population, we can be sure the Muslims will. Sometimes the truth may be the best ministry of them all.

The Pyramids are awesome! Quit whining about reparations! :O)

At least they should have the courtesy not to charge me admission when I visit.....

The Constitutional compromise on apportionment was not that the slaves were in any way less than human.

The state proportional power was based upon the number of people to be represented who lived there. The slave States thought the slaves should count, for they ‘represented’ their interests inasmuch as wishing to retain their value as a commodity. The compromise was that they only represented 3/5ths of that persons interests, not that the person was less than a person.

“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.)” From Article I.

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