Posted on 11/27/2010 6:45:03 AM PST by Eddie01
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nworder.asp
As for “Virginia's policy of manumission” that would have been accomplished by Virginia simply abolishing slavery within its boundaries, or alternatively by a law simply stating that any slave brought into the state from anywhere else was free the moment they set foot on Virginia's soil. I can't think of a more efficient manner of ending the importation of slaves than voiding the importing merchants' property rights in the slave at the moment of importation. The idea that Massachusetts was forcing slaves on an unwilling southern population is ridiculous and laughable. Someone was buying the goods that Massachusetts was importing - and those people were southerners.
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 if he ever runs again, I would probably support him again (and he’s recently begun to talk about just that).
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 slavery 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.
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 off 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
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 (reupped 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-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
Maybe not in the U.S., but do some research on the Barbary Pirates.
There were free blacks in the US. Some former slaves, and some who had never been slaves. They would be counted as whole persons, since the Constitution said “which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons”.
There were white indentured servants, as others have mentioned. They would count as whole persons, as the Constitution continued “including those bound to Service for a Term of Years”.
I’m not sure if there were white slaves, but if there were, they would be covered under the rest of that sentence, “and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons”.
But no where in that section does it mention black or white.
Someone was enslaving and shipping human beings in chains for profit, and that was parsimonious, judgmental New Englanders.
It takes two to tango.
The observations of Booker T. Washington explain why this is not the case.
Booker T. Washington, who rose from slavery to become the nation’s first widely recognized black leader, once warned against what he called "problem profiteers" among our nation’s black community.
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public," observed Washington. "Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."
Whose names immediately come to mind after reading Booker T. Washington’s observation?
Blacks hated the Constitution because of their belief that the Constitution promoted slavery.
Even after the most prestigious black leader told the Negros that the Constitution was not an instrument for slavery they allowed themselves to be persuaded otherwise.
To this very day and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary the majority of black people in America choose to remain ignorant on the subject of the Constitution and slavery .
Frederick Douglass held the view that the Constitution was a slave document … until he read it. Then Frederick Douglass, the escaped former slave, self-taught author and editor, and leading abolitionist orator, said, "Take the Constitution according to its plain reading," he challenged the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. "I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it." In fact, Douglass told the crowd gathered to hear his Independence Day address, "Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document." Douglass echoed this point in his Independence Day address, asking, "if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it?"
Fredrick Douglass also warned black people to never vote for Democrats.
Excerpts from Frederick Douglass speech delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 3-4, 1863
While we had in this State a majority of but 15,000 over this pro-slavery Democratic Party, they have a mighty minority, a dangerous minority
Your Democracy will clamor for peace, and for restoring the old order of things, because that old order of things was the life of the Democratic Party. "You do take away mine house, when you take away the prop that sustains my house," and the support of the Democratic Party we all know to be slavery. The Democratic party is for war for slavery; it is for peace for slavery; it is for the habeas corpus for slavery; it is against the habeas corpus for slavery; it was for the Florida war for slavery; it was for the Mexican war for slavery; it is for jury trial for traitors, for slavery; it is against jury trial for men claimed as fugitive slaves, for slavery. It has but one principle, one master; and it is guided, governed, and directed by it. I say that, with this party among us, flaunting its banners in our faces, with the New York World scattered broadcast over the North, with the New York Express, with the mother and father and devil of them all, the New York Herald, [applause,] with those papers flooding our land, and coupling the term Abolitionist with all manner of course epithets, in all our hotels, at all our crossings, our highways and byways and railways all over the country, there is work to be done — a good deal of work to be done.
I believe this speech came to be known as the “Our Work is Not Done” speech.
And I will note that my prior post was in error. Massachusetts as a state was not importing slaves, certain shipowners living in Massachusetts were using their ships to import slaves directly to southern states, said slaves never seeing Massachusetts at all. Massachusetts could not stop commerce that occurred entirely outside its borders and was entirely legal in the states in which it was performed. The preceding in no way minimizes the immorality of the acts of said shipowners.
CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." -- March 21, 1861
There were a small number of Irish brought here as chattel slaves.
In so far regarding your comments on Massachusetts, ie. “The idea that Massachusetts was forcing slaves on an unwilling southern population is ridiculous and laughable.”
Well, of course that is, if it were true. Massachusetts, as well as many other New England states continued in the slave trade after 1808, shipping them to the Caribbean for Central and South American consumption.
“Someone was buying the goods that Massachusetts was importing - and those people were southerners.
Again, wrong.
It seems that it is bias, not truth, that interests you. If you need a change, please advise.
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