Posted on 06/20/2013 11:09:10 AM PDT by zeestephen
Thomas Walker, a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush, was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18th century along the coast of West Africa.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Was he a muslim too?
This is a preemptive strike on JEB—who just started running this week.
looking in wrong place...think “Jeb”
I had a hunch that Bush was going to eventually be held responsible for slavery.
When it comes to slavery, no Democrat should ever throw stones.
No muslim either.
Actually, it’s regrettably paranoid.
But around islam, total paranoia is total awareness.
Just gotta run bump up the bloodsugar. BRB.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program after bring you this breaking news story.
It was not only one of the most ancient but also one of the most long-lived forms of economic and social organization.
The ancient world was built and maintained by slaves and enjoyed by patricians. The monuments of antiquity, the magnificence of the modern world, the power of states, the position of nobles, and the fortunes of individuals, were partially the results of slave labor.
From the time of King Solomon to the eve of the American Revolution, virtually every major statesman, philosopher, theologian, writer, and critic accepted the existence and legitimacy of slavery. It did not occur to them to excuse or pardon the institution, because they considered it to be part of the natural scheme of things.
Aristotle had said, “From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection.”
It is documented that the Arabs were the people who first began the slave trade in Africa.
Later, European states that claimed to be Christian-first the Portuguese and Spaniards, then the Dutch and the English-joined in the slave trade. It is factual to state that the Christian states of Europe were the last in and the first out of what Jefferson called that “execrable commerce [that violated] the human rights of unoffending Africans.”
Modern slave history began with the Kingdoms of the Congo which were the tribal homes for blacks brought into the slave trade.
Around 1460, Portugal established posts along the West African coast to engage in the Negro slave trade. The slaves came from the coastline stretching from the Senegal River to the north to Biafra in the South. Slaves came from as far inland as the savannah areas beyond the rainforest.
Slaving forts were built to serve as clearing houses where slavers could exchange material trade goods for slaves. At one time, thirty-six of the forty-two known slaving forts were located in Ghana.
When slave ships arrived on the African coast with goods to trade, ship captains usually offered gifts to local kings and merchants. In many cases they also paid a tax to gain the right to trade in that area. Most slavers from Europe and the Americas were not allowed to venture into the African interior to find captives, but rather left this part of the business to African middlemen.
Some items of trade were more valuable than others. A specially distilled variety of rum became their admission ticket to the exclusive European trading clique that had been serving the African market for a century.
Sales of rum from the early American colony of Rhode Island to slave brokers on the African Coast spurred the growth of the colony's only major industry, and eventually accounted for 35 percent of all rum retailed outside the colony. Rum served equally well as a drink, currency, or barter.
Most of those that were enslaved were condemned criminals, debtors, prisoners of war, people despised or feared by a local leader, political foes, or persons accused of witchcraft. Some were simply kidnapped because of their value as slaves.
These Africans had been taken into custody, imprisoned, and enslaved by the local dominant African ruling classes. Selling these people to European and Arabian shipping merchants for transport to foreign destinations essentially solved their social and political problems.
Slavery first spread West from Africa to the Iberian peninsula, Cape Verdes, the Madeiras, and Sao Thome off the coast of Africa. Later, during the last half of the sixteenth century, the center of sugar production and black slavery workforces shifted across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere.
Slave trafficking in the Western hemisphere began with the importation of Negroes into Hispaniola in by the Spanish. Hispaniola, an island of the West Indies east of Cuba, was later divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
In 1503 African Black slaves were first brought to the Caribbean and later were introduced to the mainland in 1510. Black slavery spread rapidly because the Indians collapsed physically when subjected to forced labor. The hardiness of the Blacks may have been due to immunity to malaria.
England was the first of the great European nations to reap the benefits of the commercial and industrial revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. She did this through her exploitation of India and the development of the continental and West Indian colonies through forced labor of more than two and one half million Negro slaves.
The English had entered the Western hemisphere trade in 1562, when Sir John Hawkins fitted out three ships and sailed to Guinea. He exchanged his goods for Negroes, and sailed on, selling his Negro cargo in the Caribbean. All the commercial nations of Europe became involved in the trade, but England became the world leader.
The center of sugar production and, therefore of black slavery had now shifted across the Atlantic. Eventually 9,500,000 African slaves were brought to the New World. Of the total shipped to the New World, Brazil was by far the greatest importer of Negroes, accounting for 38% of the total.
British and French owned colonies in the Caribbean, and the far-flung Spanish-American colonies were the destination of another 50% of the trade. Dutch, Danish, and Swedish colonies took another 6 percent.
The remaining 6% represent the share shipped to the American colonies.
It was Europe's sweet tooth, rather than its addiction to tobacco or its infatuation with cotton cloth, that determined the extent of the Atlantic slave trade. Sugar was the greatest of the slave crops. Between 60 and 70 percent of all the Africans who survived the Atlantic voyages ended up in one or the other of Europe's sugar colonies.
In 1619 the first Africans arrived in the colony of Virginia at Jamestown. Twenty Africans were sold to the settlers from a Dutch ship for foodstuffs and supplies. They were not considered as slaves for life, but indentured for a period of time to payback their transit. They would eventually earn their freedom through their labors. However, this did mark the beginning of slavery in Colonial America.
Among this first group was a black man named Anthony Johnson. After working off his indenture, he was not only a free man, but became a landowner with a prosperous plantation.
When the people of the South settled on the shores of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, some had no intention of encouraging or even tolerating the trade in slaves.
Beginning in the mid 1700’s, and neglecting fishing and whaling, many New England shippers, with specially constructed slave ships, financed by local and New York bankers, departed New England loaded with trinkets, weapons, and rum for the African slave brokers.
These were the items of barter for payment to the African tribal leaders for their slaves.
Once loaded with the human cargo, ships would then sail to the West Indies, off load most of the slaves, and take sugar and molasses in trade. The ships would then return to Colonies and eventually New England, where the sugar and molasses were used to produce rum.
Then the cycle would repeat. This sailing avenue was known as the Middle Passage.
Before their separation from England, many of the colonies wanted a cessation of the slave trade due to the fact that there was no adequate employment at that time for the Negro population. The British Crown refused.
When the separation took place, from that moment the New England States assumed the position, in regard to slavery, which Great Britain had previously occupied.
The evil of this traffic had become apparent to the people of the South, and when the Constitution was being framed in 1787, the South demanded that the fundamental law of the land should inhibit this traffic of importing human beings from Africa.
The New England slave-traders resisted the South. The New England States owned the shipping and distilleries, and were profiting greatly from the slave trade. They accumulated much capital in both.
As the appointed author of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson had developed and included an anti-slavery clause in this first draft of the Declaration. The clause was removed by the rest of the drafting committee, John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (MA), Robert R. Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT). Thomas Jefferson, the first nationally recognized author of Independence, introduced the scathing denunciation of, and protest against the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence, but withdrew it upon the insistence of Adams and other New Englanders, and he indulged in the following little bit of sarcasm at their expense:
“Our Northern friends... were tender under these censures, for, though their people have very few slaves, yet they had been considerable carriers of them to others.”
According to records, of the 202 slave ships entering the port of Charleston, S.C., in the four years, 1796 to 1799 inclusive, 91 were English, 88 Northeastern American owned, 10 were French and 13 of Southern operation.
As a compromise, it was agreed that the trade should be restricted, and after the year 1800, entirely prohibited. By the persistency of New England, the provision was finally extended to the year 1808.
Therefore, it was as a concession to New England interests that the trade was continued to 1808.
The number of slaves imported annually had dropped to approximate average of 18,000 during the decade 1770-1780. However, for the decade of 1780-1790, the yearly average increased to 55,000.
Even though the United States imported only a small fraction of the total population of slaves, by 1825 36% of the slave population in the Western hemisphere lived there. This was due to a much larger birth and survival rate than comparative Negro populations in the islands and Central America.
The US became the dominant slave holding country, not through its importation of slaves, but due to the relative high rate of natural increases in populations, resulting from a more favorable life style.
This valid point reminds me of the sketch of the cave man with an arrow through his head saying, “Ha, you missed the vital spots!”. So it is with Slate.
But on your point, the African Muslims were prohibited from enslaving Muslims. So the people they sold for slave exportation were animists. That had to have delayed the arrival of Islamist to the Americas and Western Europe in any noticeable numbers for several centuries. Thus, BHO’s progenitors stayed in Africa after they sold his wife’s ancestors to GHW/GW’s. Sort of interesting how all the treads of history work out.
A decendant of a NOTORIOUS slave trader.
I know slavery is bad. But how rotten of a person must you be to be NOTORIOUS?
As opposed to just a "run of the mill" slave trader.
Stories like this were bound to pop up since W now polls higher than Dumbo. This is just the media being their icky selves.
People back then have to be judged by the standards of back then. Natural rights was a relatively new theory, and they were still confusing to many, and slavery was considered to be acceptable by Aristotle and condoned by the Bible.
If you read half way down the article, it mentions Mareen Duvall of Anne Arundel County in the 1600s, a Hugenot immigrant from France. That Duvall is also an ANCESTOR OF MINE. Oooooh I feel so impure LOL
George W. Bush’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was A Slave Trader
And he obtained the slave from the Muslim wholesaler in Africa, who was Barack Hussein Obama's Great-great-great-great-great Grandfather.
There must be a truly transcendental point in all that.
You see Duvall’s son John is my ancestor, and his son Samuel is Obama’s ancestor (as well as Dick Cheney)... John was Mareen’s oldest son, and had a wife and a mistress... I have a copy of the Duvall book, and have seen a transcript of the will.
The Slave Trade -1440 to 1870, Hugh Thomas, Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Appendix Three
Slaves delivered to:
British North America and the U.S. - 500,000
British West Indies - 2,000,000
Portugal (including Brazil) - 4,000,000
Spanish Empire (including Cuba) - 2,500,000
France (including West Indies) - 1,600,000
Of course, with folks who feel entitled to make up their own facts, the figures may vary.
No shark populations or (their) Atlantic routes were documented.
Reparations for slavery?
When a black woman is one of the richest people in America?
When a black man was Secretary of State??
When a black woman was Secretary of State?
When black men have sat — and do sit — on the Supreme Court??
When a black would-be despot sits in the White House?????
When countless black men have risen to the top of the ranks of the richest in professional sports and show business?? Men like Hank Aaron. Men like Bill Cosby who... (Never mind. As we all know, Bill’s either an Uncle Tom or Oreo Cookie, depending on which black race pimp you listen to.)
And, how about Liberation Theology?
Liberation from WHAT? The chance to achieve and succeed??
Give me a break!!
Let me make it clear right up front: I am NOT a racist. I supported Herman Cain in his run for the Senate and supported him in his run for the WH. And if Allen West goes for it, he, too, has my support.
I also consider Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams two of the finest economists and minds extant today. In case you don’t know them, both are black.
Sowell, Williams and Cain – among others — have spoken out against those fellow blacks who castigate and vilify America for a slave system now long in our past. And ALL thinking men and women oppose the periodic calls for reparations. (When he ran, I supported Alan Keyes. I even spoke in his stead on the RTKABA at a Capitol rally and was asked to fill in for him on his radio show at the time. Sadly, while I still consider Alan a good man, I have had to rethink my support since he came out FOR reparations.)
The fact is that the modern descendants of slaves brought here in chains in admittedly miserable, soul-gutting conditions now calling for reparations need to remember something:
They should not only be glad to be in America, they should be glad to be ANYWHERE!
Had their ancestors NOT been brought OUT of Africa – many by Muslim slave raiders —the blood of those ancestors would have run into the earth over there several centuries ago, victims of the OTHER black tribes that captured them in one of the interminable tribal conflicts STILL ravaging that sad continent and these modern day would-be “plaintiffs” would not even exist.
And I would remind you that slavery is STILL practiced in parts of Africa (mainly by – American BLACK muslims LISTEN UP!! — MUSLIMS) and Asia today. How ironic that disgruntled American blacks are embracing a system that participated mightily in their initial bondage – and would, if Islam takes root here, probably put any who cling to their Christianity back INTO BONDAGE – or to the sword. In fact, as the majority of muslims consider black folks as “sub-human”, many of you black muzzies will get the axe.
95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration.
And should the great-great-great grandchildren of SLAVE OWNING BLACKS also be subject to PAYING these reparations? If so, how do we find THEM?
And I have traced MY family back to the SLAVS. Although the term looks to be related to “slave”, depending on your source, it either means “glory” or “worshipper.” But my family research indicates that many of my of my ancestors LIVED lives of virtual slavery to some despot or other. Do I qualify for reparations? From whom?? And it begs a question: Are most of us now living here headed into a modern form of that servitude? But that’s a topic for another discussion.
The official US Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr. Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-”Selling Poor Steven”, American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90
Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a recitation of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers’ Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378
A few more salient points on the subject:
Until the US declared independence, the Colonies were REQUIRED by the King of England to embrace slavery.
The Northwest Ordinance (1789) prohibited slavery in federal territories.
A law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the US became effective in 1808.
Beginning in 1820, the Democratic Congress started passing laws allowing and encouraging slavery.
It was only after the Republican Party (many of whom were southern Blacks) was formed some 40 years later that the anti-slavery movement was able to move forward.
And the holier-than-thou Northern liberals are strangely silent on recent archeological evidence from NEW YORK CITY clearly tracing the financing of the slave trade to NORTHERN BUSINESSMEN!!
At the height of his remarkable boxing career, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), once declared, “I’m glad my great-grandpa got on that boat.”
And speaking of ancestors, my paternal grandmother’s daddy joined with the 80th Ohio Volunteer Infantry early in the War Between the States (re-upped twice) and fought on the Union side at Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Jackson then joined up with Sherman for that infamous march to the sea through Georgia. My wife’s great grandpappy ALSO fought for the Union. While I revere the memory of my ancestors, inasmuch as that conflict was less about slavery than it was the economic exploitation and abuse of the South by the North, I fear they MAY have been on the wrong side.
Author Robert Hitt Neill tells of attending a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s Conference years ago with several other authors. Among them was Alex Hailey, celebrated author of “Roots.” Watching a TV news show, a group of them watched a demonstration in a Southern state against the “Rebel” flag incorporated into that state’s flag. The very next report covered a famine in Africa. Graphic images showed dead bodies, starving children with distended tummies and runny noses and dying people covered with flies, too weak to brush them away.
Mr. Hailey intoned in a low, serious voice, “Every time an American black sees a story like that, they should find a Confederate flag and kiss it.” He then pointed to the TV screen and continued, “Because these would be me and my descendants, except for American slavery. I thank God that my family and I are here instead of there.”
Next problem!
Dick Bachert (Original created circa 2008 with edits/additions as required
The Luo, Obama’s tribe, were active in the slave trade ~ bought and sold people like you might buy and sell pigs.
Of course, there is a loophole. If they are apostates (as Shiite consider Sunni, Sunni consider Shiite and Alawite and Wahabbi consider every other Muslim sect), then they really aren't Muslim and said prohibition doesn't apply.
But you make an interesting point. More than likely BO's forefathers never saw a need to emmigrate from Kenya because they were at or near the top of the heap.
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