Brown University Scholar Tells the Truth About Slavery

citizenfreepress.com ^ | 12/1/19 | Kane

[LS]

Correct. But the numbers were relatively tiny-—2%, or about 200 by 1676. (We can extrapolate that the number of slaves up to that point was usually less than 100). Eighty years later, the number was only 4,500. By that time, however, slaves were already filing “freedom suits” and by 1780 courts began to rule in favor of slaves. In 1781, the Supreme Court heard a case and ruled slavery “is ... as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence.” Therefore, Massachusetts did not formally abolish slavery until the 13th Amendment, but it was gone essentially after 1781.

Right about the indentures (though no whites were actually called “slaves.”) However, in Mass. law some courts used “indenture” and “slave” interchangeably. There are a number of “white nationalists” who attempt to portray indentures as the same as slaves. While they were badly treated, nevertheless no indentures were branded; they were not prohibited from marrying; it was always “assumed” that they would be free at a certain point.

[LS]

As I posted above, the numbers were tiny: only 200 in all of Mass. in 1676, maxing at about 4,500 in the 1750s. Freedom suits were already being heard in the 1770s, and a court case in 1781 essentially ended slavery in Mass.

It was “there,” but certainly nothing even remotely similar to what was taking place in the South, which had no such thing as a “freedom suit” because slaves were not people and could not bring suits (except in MD and MO).

[Clemenza]

There were no Italian slaves. The Padrone system was exploitative, but it wasn’t slavery. The only problems my Italian ancestors had when they came here were from the racist Irish who ran the cities that they settled in, hence why the Italians preferred voted for WASP Republicans in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Illinois

[kearnyirish2]

I was speaking of the parts of the New World eventually included in the US; I don’t think Portugal applies.

[kearnyirish2]

Sharecropping and indentured servitude are not slavery; they are labor in exchange for something.

[kearnyirish2]

OK - then you pay for “400 years of oppression”.

You can’t raid our taxpayers because of something done by a foreign government.

[ladyjane]

I think Rebelbase was adding to your list of slave trading countries. Portugal was one of the biggest.

[hanamizu]

I have always thought that statistic was BS. For example...

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I don’t know. When you think of the lack of sanitary conditions for armies in the field, the state of medicine at the time—surgeons rarely washed before surgery and wore blood-stained coats as a mark of pride and experience. Many years ago, I had a student do a Civil War report that featured some of her family. I think she tracked four of them. Two of them died from small pox just weeks after arriving in their units. Never got near the enemy.

The ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918-1919 killed many more people (don’t know about soldiers) than the Great War did. Disease typically killed more than combat for most of human history.

[kearnyirish2]

Thanks; I understand. I was just outlining why I omitted them. The Portuguese trade into Brazil was huge, and they kept their African colonies longer than most (giving them up, along with Spain, in 1975).