Posted on 07/04/2010 6:58:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
HOW IS it,’’ the great English man of letters Samuel Johnson taunted Americans 235 years ago, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’’ His fellow Englishman Thomas Day remarked in 1776 with equal scorn: “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independency with the one hand and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.’’
That America’s founders were hypocrites, above all on the subject of race, is an enduring charge.
Examples are legion. At a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society rally in 1854, William Lloyd Garrison condemned the Constitution — which extolled “the blessings of liberty,’’ yet permitted slavery — as “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.’’ When a bill requiring public school students to recite parts of the Declaration of Independence was proposed in the New Jersey legislature in 2000, it was denounced as insulting. “You have nerve to ask my grandchildren to recite the Declaration,’’ one black lawmaker erupted angrily. “How dare you?’’
In 1975, in an essay marking the approach of the nation’s bicentennial, the eminent historian John Hope Franklin accused the Founders of “betraying the ideals to which they gave lip service.’’ Obviously, he wrote, “human bondage and human dignity were not as important to them as their own political and economic independence.’’
Are the Founders guilty as charged? There is no denying that the patriots who proclaimed it “self-evident’’ that “all men are created equal’’ tolerated black slavery. It is true that the Declaration of Independence, which so stirringly affirms that God endows every human being with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’’ was the work of a Virginia planter who owned 200 slaves.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The Founders weren’t stupid. Of course they knew that the universal ideals embraced in the Declaration were not matched in reality across the colonies. The controversy over slavery was intense; but even more intense was the need for a united front against England. The urgent choice in 1776 was not between slavery or abolition. It was between hanging together, as Benjamin Franklin supposedly quipped in Philadelphia, or most assuredly hanging separately. They chose to hang together, and the confrontation over slavery was left for later.
But in that confrontation, the lofty ideal of equality enshrined in the Declaration — precisely because it was enshrined in the Declaration — imparted enormous moral authority to the abolitionists’ cause. Those who indict the Founders because their treatment of African slaves didn’t come up to the standard of “all men are created equal’’ should be asked: Would the Declaration of Independence have been improved if those words had been omitted? Would slavery have ended sooner had abolitionists not been able to invoke that “self-evident truth’’?
Those who would do away with the Declaration and the Constitution would enslave us all.
Marxism is hell!
Rebellion is brewing!
The race issue has been ridden to death and no longer has any impact.
When I see, read or hear references to race and slavery I automatically tune it out much like I do when I hear the voices of Barack and Michelle Obama.
The Founders did everything they could to eradicate slavery by the time of the signing of the Constitution. The problem was that the Southern economy would collapse without slaves, as this was the era before the cotton gin and other mechanical inventions. It’s not that the problem was purely pragmatic, of course - the slaver mindest was a huge problem as well. In the end, their choice was to have a country with slavery, or not have a country at all.
Also, what few people know, is that the Northern States all had slaves, and merely managed to outlaw slavery by the time of the Civil War. While they’ve always claimed the moral high ground, that high ground existed for only a matter of decades across over a hundred years.
Well apparently Boston Schools are still showing sex poodle algores big lie an inconvienient truth (Britain refuses to alow their students to see it). I no longer think ANYTHING that comes out of Boston can be taken seriously.
The idea that all men are created equal comes from the Greeks, Aristotle or someone.
The idea is that you, I, anyone has the ability to kill you, I, anyone. That is the equalizer.
That is why man created laws.
Laws are agreements between parties that prohibit murder and such.
Fortunately the founders of this country rejected the idea you just presented. Instead, they grounded the belief that all men are created equal on the foundation that our CREATOR endowed these rights to us, not mere man.
They did not reject it. They incorporated it as justification of endowed rights.
Most excellently said.
Much slower than some want.... much faster than some think, but most assuredly, the storm is coming.
We are created equal BEFORE THE LAW. We are not
equal in nearly every other aspect than can be
measured. To claim that we are equal in all
respects is an intentional lie.
Our Creator created us as equal at birth, which we are. I don’t believe we were created to all have an equal outcome.
It isn’t possible
That's far from true, but it doesn't have to be true before we can stand up for what is reasonable and right.
Perhaps they were hypocrites some of them, but at least a hypocrite is half-right.
My advice, read the Declaration and the Costitution!
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