Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

On Slavery
Article V Blog ^ | January 25th 2018 | Rodney Dodsworth

Posted on 01/25/2018 1:50:17 AM PST by Jacquerie

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois slammed President Trump for using the term, “chain migration.” Like any good Leftist, Durbin never misses the opportunity, no matter how shallow and silly, to exploit racial cracks in our society. He asserted that chain migration conjured images of the white man’s past enslavement of blacks.

I will take Durbin’s bait, but will look at slavery from the viewpoint of our Founding generation.

Beginning in the 1640s, chattel slavery in English North America eased an agricultural labor shortage in the mid and southern colonies. While slavery was necessary to economic well-being, everyone recognized the evil, including the leading lights of our Revolution. The open display of abject slavery, of men in chains, explains in part the sensitivity of colonial Americans to their own condition. Unlike the subjects of kingdoms in mainland Europe, whose condition often resembled that of serfs, Englishmen proudly boasted of their hard-won liberty from the authoritarian Stuart monarchs of the 17th Century.

Englishmen in England never saw black slavery. With labor always in excess, no monarch dreamed of introducing it. But, to the American Englishman, slavery was endemic. Modern historians long believed the repetitive reference in colonial literature to impending bondage through nefarious plots hatched in England and put into motion by royal governors were gross exaggerations. Yes, there was tension over the right to colonial self-government v. the power of the King-in-Parliament, but most 20th century historians scoffed at the notion American colonists feared the mainland European serfdom sort of slavery under an absolute monarch.

Where liberty is to live on one’s own terms, slavery is to live at the mercy of another. Colonials knew the loss of attachment to a free constitution plunged Rome from the summit of her glory into the black gulf of

(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...


TOPICS: Government; History
KEYWORDS: cos; durbin; slavery

1 posted on 01/25/2018 1:50:18 AM PST by Jacquerie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

A thinker is given to wonder whether a boom due to modern chattel slavery (however lesser arrangements like indentured servitude for passage persisted) was ever worth it. Because the cries of our modern secular left became plausible. Chattel slavery is now the tar baby of history that is impossible to walk away from once punched. If it’s really what made America viable economically, it served as proof that economics wasn’t all there was to life. Perhaps a different economy could have flourished till an industrial revolution gave us the cotton gin and the like. Even today we flirt with things elsewhere in the world close to slavery, which is why no American underwear, etc. That morally questionable commercial pursuit of dollars has exported away wealth that could have been ours. It has in fact punished us.


2 posted on 01/25/2018 2:07:48 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

“I will take Durbin’s bait”

Never do that. Never.


3 posted on 01/25/2018 2:08:24 AM PST by LouieFisk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: LouieFisk

The problem with answering small thinkers is that you have to try to teach them larger premises.


4 posted on 01/25/2018 2:12:14 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: LouieFisk

But yet. Even the guilt monger would have nothing to sell without enough truth to sound plausible.

Satan has told American Christendom that it nodded and winked for sake of dollars. Satan has however refrained from uttering a peep about the magnitude and generosity of God’s salvation and grace. Instead He sold the secular left to us. An apologia concerning slavery is incomplete without pointing out how blessing in a true sense may redound upon races that were once in bondage. And that takes the particular kind of good will bestowed by a God who forgives when He could have damned.


5 posted on 01/25/2018 2:23:51 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: LouieFisk

Instead [lowercase h] he sold the secular left to us.

Sorry. I ought to proof read better for bloopers. The devil tempts us to let him masquerade as God to us.

I don’t say what a bad thing chattel slavery wasn’t. Instead I say that in the process of forgiving us our evil and teaching us righteousness in the generous form of His Son, God brings good out of chattel slavery’s legacy. If it brought wealth, let us see how the wealth may redound to the benefit of a new Christian black movement, for example.


6 posted on 01/25/2018 2:31:57 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: HiTech RedNeck

So true. Reason rarely beats passion. Rats are immune to it.


7 posted on 01/25/2018 2:52:24 AM PST by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

And yet some of the things that passion has reigned in, are things that thinkers have evaded for decades. A screaming liberal might be the last warning God lets us see.


8 posted on 01/25/2018 3:03:12 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Tryin' hard to win the No-Bull Prize.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

What is going to happen to all those miles of chain link fences? Will the racist structures be torn down?


9 posted on 01/25/2018 3:46:03 AM PST by odawg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

10 posted on 01/25/2018 8:18:24 AM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson