[CondoleezzaProtege]

- Excerpt from a good article. Yes, Christians owned slaves and plenty defended the institution, with some half-defending it. And still others who came to regret their views later, even freeing their slaves to reflect this.

Regardless, the ideological and theological origins of the abolition movement (both in USA and UK) are not discussed enough in historical discourse.

The debate about slavery far preceded the 19th Century as is noted by the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution and such -- but the seeds of abolition were very much present even before the USA's official founding. And it's because these seeds were rooted in the highly religious soil of the 13 colonies.

[Fai Mao]

The Christian Byzantine Empire was the first nation to abolish slavery

[Nifster]

A very good read

[fso301]

plantations, organized in a business-like fashion with their “gang system,” had an assembly line-like efficiency. Hence Southern slavery was fantastically profitable.

Which meant in agriculture, you were either a slave owner, or a poor subsistence farmer unable to do much more than feed the family. This fundamental inequality IMO had much to do with the deterioration in race relations over the ~200 years that slavery had been legal.

The devastation throughout the South the carnage of the Civil War caused many of the same whites to mistakenly regard blacks as the cause of their suffering rather than the immorality of the antebellum system.

[SkyPilot]

Throughout human history, there have been very, very few "social safety nets", and even those were no where near the scale of freebies that people in the US and Europe can receive today. If the freebies we dole out in America were to dry up overnight, just imagine what people would do?

The Romans provided free bread for Roman citizens and also for part of the slave population, depending on the reliability of grain shipments from Egypt and elsewhere.

There are other examples. There were charity houses in Colonial America and in Europe, but the "poor houses" barely gave people anything. The common theme throughout human was that you either worked or were supported by their family. Otherwise, you starved to death.

The slavery system was evil in a myriad of ways (separating family members, denying human dignity, cruel treatment at the hands of some owners, etc.) However, it also provided food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc. to slaves because slaves were valuable, and the owners were financially (and also socially) motivated to take care of them. I know that sounds controversial today, but it is mostly true.

Moreover, American slavery gets all the press, from both the left and the globalists. The truth is that American slaveholders were among the most congenial and caring of the bunch compared to the Muslim slavers, whose cruelty and genocidal tendencies were legendary.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Robert Fogel (1922-2013), the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was president of Cornell University’s American Youth for Democracy, investing eight years promoting communism. Meanwhile, he married Enid Morgan, an African-American woman, consequently suffering the ugliness of American racism personally. Eventually, he rejected communism. Apparently, the data didn’t support it.

---

Data apparently, did not support communism? Body count too high (millions), with respect to the good achieved (nil)?

People who lose their religious faith often transfer that faith to a secular cause, with the same religious fervor (communism, environmentalism, anti-Trumpism, etc.). They are just not rational, and it is harmful to bring toward a secular goal.

[BroJoeK]

from the article: " 'Christians ended slavery.'
Do you think that’s a conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us with his black-and-white, unapologetic caricature of American history?
No."

ping

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "During one after-class chat, he told me that he was astounded to discover that Christians ended slavery.
He said something like, 'Here I was, a professor in some of America’s leading universities and I had no idea that Christians had done that.'
Fogel concluded that it was not economic forces that brought about the end of slavery but a moral revolution rooted in Puritanism. Christians, mainly from Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania, turned the tide of popular opinion in the North against slavery.
Remember, originally every state was a slave-state.
Slavery was normalcy for America too at its founding.
That changed because Christians increasingly agreed that slavery was evil, transforming what had been a slave-holding country into a house divided."

[Carriage Hill]

Very good article.

[Flag_This]

“the South would have continued to outpace the North, adapt slavery to industrialization, been unconquerable if a later Civil War had broken out”

Sure.

During the war, what was the South’s second largest city?

Any place the Army of the Potomac happened to be on any given day.

[EasySt]

Thanks for posting this!

[sphinx]

Furthermore – and here it sounds scandalous – most Southern slaves were treated materially well by their “owners.” The average slave consumed more calories and lived longer than the average, white, Northern city-dweller.

This is the argument that Democrats make for socialism today: "you are better off surrendering your freedom and being a ward of the state …." And a lot of people buy it.

[RoosterRedux]

Good article. I am going to send this to friends.

[Pikachu_Dad]

sorry, stopped reading after the second insulting sentence!

“conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us”

really?!?

really?!?

really ?!?

[mostly_lies]

Thank you for this article. Apparently the author pastors a small church in a small town not too far from me. I will have to drive up some Sunday a.m.

Again, this is the kind of research and documentation that is the most likely to have impact in the current social environment.

I do not mean an impact on the most vocal (both sides of the culture wars). Frankly, most of the tribalists are too busy shaking their spears and screeching “yay for MY team” to actually pay much attention, but there is a large crowd of lurkers who are not so vocal, watching what is going on, and more serious. This is for them, and again, I thank you.

[Alas Babylon!]

The moral question: If Southern slavery was profitable, even providing for the slaves a relatively decent material life, then why is it evil?

Because in a country formed with these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Slavery just did not fit with those words, and people knew it, especially the Founding Fathers. They REALLY should have dealt with it then rather than kicking the can down the road.

I do appreciate that winning Independence was the primary goal, and later forming a Union, but being true to oneself, sort to speak, was fundamentally important.

In our history, because of those words in the Declaration, and the fact that slavery was necessarily still allowed, meant we would have to face the music at some point. 650,000 Americans died in that war, and that should have been the end of it, but we have had racial fire fanners at it ever since.

[AppyPappy]

The premise of Christians propping up slavery would have to hinge on “Union forces were atheists” which was not true. As a matter of fact, Southern slave owners didn’t appear to be a very religious people.

[DoodleDawg]

Furthermore – and here it sounds scandalous – most Southern slaves were treated materially well by their “owners.”

Why is owners in quotation marks? Is he saying slaves weren't really owned?

[Pajamajan]

Bookmark

[jmacusa]

Many times I've asked here “If the South won the war would it have ended slavery?’’. And always the Johnny Reb wannabes and modern day Fire Eaters said “Yes’’. And they'd give the shop worn arguments about it being a ‘’dying institution’’ and how ‘’industrialization’’ would have replaced it. I never thought so were valid arguments. This article tends to refute that view.

[loveliberty2]

Thank you!

The clueless "Progressive Regressives" often claim that Thomas Jefferson and other Founders were "slave owners."

When countering that claim, it is well to ask those know-it-all 21st Century "elitists" to consider the historical context within which those Founders found themselves, as well as the enormous contributions they and their generations made toward eradicating slavery from these shores and creating a constitutional republic which could, ultimately, affirm and protect the rights of ALL people:

Of special interest in that regard is Jefferson's “Autobiography,” especially that portion which states:

"The first establishment in Virginia which became permanent was made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes in the colony until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were by a Dutch ship; after which the English commenced the trade and continued it until the revolutionary war. That suspended...their future importation for the present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the (Virginia) legislature, this subject was not acted on finally until the year 1778, when I brought a bill to prevent their further importation. This passed without opposition, leaving to future efforts its final eradication."

Jefferson also observed:

"Where the disease [slavery] is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the northern States, it was merely superficial and easily corrected. In the southern, it is incorporated with the whole system and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process."

He explained that,

"In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of the county in which I live [Albemarle County, Virginia], and so continued until it was closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected: and indeed, during the regal [crown] government, nothing [like this] could expect success."

Below is another quotation, cited in David Barton's work on the subject of the Founders and slavery, which also cites the fact that there were laws in the State of Virginia which prevented citizens from emancipating slaves:

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. . . . The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded who permits one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep for ever. . . . The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. . . . [T]he way, I hone [is] preparing under the auspices of Heaven for a total emancipation."

A visit to David Barton’s web site (www.wallbuilders.com) provides an essential, excellent and factual written record of the Founders' views on the matter of slavery. One source he does not quote, I believe, is the famous 1775 Edmund Burke "Speech on Conciliation" before the British Parliament, wherein he admonished the Parliament for its Proposal to declare a general enfranchisement of the slaves in America.

Burke rather sarcastically observed that should the Parliament carry through with the Proposal before it: "Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation (England) which has sold them to their present masters? from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic?"

He continued: "An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty and to advertise his sale of slaves." Ahhh, how knowledge of the facts can alter one's opinion of the revisionist history that has been taught for generations in American schools (including its so-called "law schools"!!)

Human beings are allotted ONLY A TINY SLIVER OF TIME ON THIS EARTH. (Pardon shouting) Each finds the world and his/her own community/nation existing as it is.

If lawyers and judges cared enough to educate themselves (in this day of the Internet) on the history of civilization and America's real history, and if they used that knowledge and the resulting understanding, to do as much on behalf of liberty for ALL people as did Thomas Jefferson and America's other Founders, the world in the next century would be a better place.

Remember: Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he penned our Declaration of Independence which capsulized a truly revolutionary idea into a simple statement that survives to this day to inspire people all over the world to strive for liberty!