Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 09:50 AM Jul 2020

75%

Every man with a red dot on his face who signed the Declaration of Independence OWNED Africans, and enslaved Africans.

Yes, they were the elite of their time, and aware of the debates on slavery.

Over 75% of them.

American mythology has got to go.

Why? Because only children can handle only a story when they can't handle the truth.

Adults expect true history -- history that tells objective truth, not some well intended version of the truth.

True history -- the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth -- is the solid foundation of our patriotism. Not myths.

Myths never help to form a more perfect union. Never.


49 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
75% (Original Post) ancianita Jul 2020 OP
Their legacy today: All Lives Matter ancianita Jul 2020 #1
I always watch 1776 on July 4 Freddie Jul 2020 #2
And yet they were the best of their time -- disenfranchised slaves, women, and all. ancianita Jul 2020 #5
Jefferson missed Martha greatly, and to deal with his grief... NNadir Jul 2020 #9
looking back on history thru modern eyes is not accurate or deserving to be done beachbumbob Jul 2020 #3
Modern eyes see the inaccuracy of history and change it ancianita Jul 2020 #4
If those coming behind them left things as they did, where... brush Jul 2020 #34
Please adjust your picture for New England representatives bucolic_frolic Jul 2020 #6
Absolutely. My Maine ancestors live on Penobscot land. They've made a peace. How just, I don't know. ancianita Jul 2020 #10
As Paul, quoting Psalms, said to the Romans, "there is no righteous man, not even one". jaxexpat Jul 2020 #13
Ah...but there were slaves in Connecticut... Demsrule86 Jul 2020 #42
Also, many in the NE were involved in the slave trade, even if they did not own any themselves. Coventina Jul 2020 #44
There were also slaves in Massachusetts - until the state constitution went into effect csziggy Jul 2020 #47
There is an important caveat about one of those red dots, however. NNadir Jul 2020 #7
And thank you for your post, particularly the link. I will watch this and spread it around. ancianita Jul 2020 #11
Very Important Post Kid Berwyn Jul 2020 #12
The Union won the war but the traitors won the peace Ponietz Jul 2020 #15
IMO trump is indeed karma. brush Jul 2020 #35
I just watched Robinson. You're onto something with the heuristic malpractice idea. ancianita Jul 2020 #41
I'm very glad you watched it. It is true that European Imperialism was very much... NNadir Jul 2020 #46
Thank you so much. I've learned a lot from you the last few days. ancianita Jul 2020 #48
I watched Hamilton last night, gab13by13 Jul 2020 #8
Totally Agree With the Premise Roy Rolling Jul 2020 #14
And we can operate on two premises at the same time. Smart democracies do that. ancianita Jul 2020 #17
Maybe It's like Covid 19 testing BannonsLiver Jul 2020 #40
And countless white soldiers fought and died so African Americans could be free. HotTeaBag Jul 2020 #16
Yes. Yet we still fight the white history revisionists who still think only in zero sum terms. ancianita Jul 2020 #19
What? HotTeaBag Jul 2020 #20
How so? They fought so that slavery would end. It did, but it's taken on new forms of psychological ancianita Jul 2020 #24
Ah, I misunderstood. HotTeaBag Jul 2020 #25
While we at discussing slavery..... Historic NY Jul 2020 #18
You're right. It's been a global problem of history. Still is. How other nations ancianita Jul 2020 #22
Because it didn't start here in 1619 doesn't make it any less evil... brush Jul 2020 #36
As a black man, I look past this for their incredible accomplishments Polybius Jul 2020 #21
I hear you. Yet the seeds were sown, innocently or not. I say not. ancianita Jul 2020 #23
Did they sow seeds or reap the harvest? I would like to put forth a differing viewpoint. cayugafalls Jul 2020 #29
Thank you for your thoughtful post. ancianita Jul 2020 #32
But it was "frowned upon" GarColga Jul 2020 #27
It was frowned upon by many but not most Polybius Jul 2020 #33
They knew it was evil. See post 34. brush Jul 2020 #38
Many of them wanted to abolish slavery, but couldn't because of Southern conservatives... dsharp88 Jul 2020 #26
True. That "good fight" has seen several iterations over 200 years, all of them violent. ancianita Jul 2020 #31
One thing they did right. They made it so the Constitution could be amended. demigoddess Jul 2020 #28
+1000, that is the seeds they sowed. cayugafalls Jul 2020 #30
So true, maybe the most important thing. brush Jul 2020 #39
White Male Landowners 100% JustFiveMoreMinutes Jul 2020 #37
100% is always a setup. ancianita Jul 2020 #45
Crickets...You can see above that not all the signers have red dots, though. Anyway, I looked into ancianita Jul 2020 #49
K&R Jamaal510 Jul 2020 #43

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
1. Their legacy today: All Lives Matter
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 10:34 AM
Jul 2020

Perhaps the founders were as innocent and as good as it got for those days. Fine. Now, we need to take it from there.

Even the average white guy with a gun can figure out that civil war isn't worth all the death dealing and murder it takes to keep a people unfree.

We need to either get on with the founders' problem that kept us from a more perfect union, or we ourselves are on the road to unfreedom.


Freddie

(9,232 posts)
2. I always watch 1776 on July 4
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 10:40 AM
Jul 2020

Part of the plot is the newlywed Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha who couldn’t stand to be apart. Heartwarming and all.
Martha died young trying to give Thomas a son. She had at least 8 pregnancies, all but 2 ending in miscarriage, stillbirth or a baby that died in infancy. Her body simply wore out from all that childbearing - pretty common back then. Their 2 surviving children were daughters. One of those daughters died in childbirth herself at 21.
Just saying that the Founding Fathers weren’t that great with women.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
5. And yet they were the best of their time -- disenfranchised slaves, women, and all.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:04 AM
Jul 2020

As Obama says, "Better is good." We can do better now. It's not only up to today's disenfranchised to show us how. We know how, and it's up to us, no matter how the aggressively stupid and fearful fight us.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
9. Jefferson missed Martha greatly, and to deal with his grief...
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:25 AM
Jul 2020

...he started raping her half-sister, the 14 year old slave Sally Hemmings.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
4. Modern eyes see the inaccuracy of history and change it
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 10:59 AM
Jul 2020

in order to change society toward a better future.

We know these were men of their time, elite men of the Enlightenment who were the "modern eyes" of their time.

If they constituted our nation based on the inaccuracy of their "modern eyes," the truth of our "modern eyes" makes our seeing deserving to be done.

Any fixing of the past deserves to be done.

If the founders were alive today, they'd agree with that.

brush

(53,474 posts)
34. If those coming behind them left things as they did, where...
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 02:37 PM
Jul 2020

would the nation be? They knew slavery was evil, but it's what got them their wealth and elite positions in society.

Search Results
Featured snippet from the web
Jefferson wrote that maintaining slavery was like holding “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”17 He thought that his cherished federal union, the world's first democratic experiment, would be destroyed by slavery.

Jefferson's Attitudes Toward Slavery | Thomas Jefferson's ...
www.monticello.org › ... › Jefferson & Slavery


Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” and yet enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life. ... Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot,”

bucolic_frolic

(42,676 posts)
6. Please adjust your picture for New England representatives
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:08 AM
Jul 2020

The Wampanoag are not understanding their difference from slave owners.

jaxexpat

(6,703 posts)
13. As Paul, quoting Psalms, said to the Romans, "there is no righteous man, not even one".
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:38 AM
Jul 2020

Precludes imbuement of saintliness on any fathers, founding or otherwise. One of the gates to wisdom or something.

Demsrule86

(68,352 posts)
42. Ah...but there were slaves in Connecticut...
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 02:32 PM
Jul 2020

I did a paper on it long ago and was surprised to learn that slaves were held in the North as well as the south...obviously few.

Coventina

(26,874 posts)
44. Also, many in the NE were involved in the slave trade, even if they did not own any themselves.
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 03:38 PM
Jul 2020

I watched a fascinating documentary about this a few years ago.

Many NE families pat themselves on the back for being in the "Abolitionist North," when, if they did just a little genealogy, would find out that their ancestors were partners in the business of slave-trading.

csziggy

(34,120 posts)
47. There were also slaves in Massachusetts - until the state constitution went into effect
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 08:37 PM
Jul 2020
“Finding Your Roots”: Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon
By Diane Haddad

On last night’s “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” Gates revealed the roots of Hollywood couple Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. (You’ll be able to catch it online if you missed it.)

I was relieved to learn at the very beginning of that Kevin Bacon’s caveman hair is for a movie role. Wondering about it would’ve been distracting.

Both come from distinguished New England families. A few years back I read the book In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family by Sedgwick’s uncle John Sedgwick. I was glad to see him interviewed for this episode, and unsure what work the show’s researchers would have left to do.

But they did discover something new: Family patriarch Theodore Sedgwick, a prominent lawyer in Colonial Massachusetts, owned a slave. This was surprising because he took on the case of a slave named Mumbet who sued for her own freedom, claiming that the new Massachusetts constitution made all men free—and she won.

More: https://www.familytreemagazine.com/blog/news/finding-your-roots-kyra-sedgwick-and-kevin-bacon/


Elizabeth Freeman (c.1744 – December 28, 1829), also known as Bet, Mum Bett, or MumBet, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution. Her suit, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.

Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth [sic] a free woman— I would.
—?Elizabeth Freema


<SNIP>

In 1780, Freeman heard the newly ratified Massachusetts Constitution read at a public gathering in Sheffield, including the following:[1]

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.
—?Massachusetts Constitution, Article 1.


Inspired by these words, Bett sought the counsel of Theodore Sedgwick, a young abolition-minded lawyer, to help her sue for freedom in court. According to Catherine Sedgwick's account, she told him, "I heard that paper read yesterday, that says, all men are created equal, and that every man has a right to freedom. I'm not a dumb critter; won't the law give me my freedom?"[1] After much deliberation Sedgwick accepted her case, as well as that of Brom, another of Ashley's slaves. He enlisted the aid of Tapping Reeve, the founder of Litchfield Law School, one of America's earliest law schools, located in Litchfield, Connecticut. They were two of the top lawyers in Massachusetts, and Sedgwick later served as US Senator. Arthur Zilversmit suggests the attorneys may have selected these plaintiffs to test the status of slavery under the new state constitution.[5]

The case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley was heard in August 1781 before the County Court of Common Pleas in Great Barrington.[6] Sedgwick and Reeve asserted that the constitutional provision that "all men are born free and equal" effectively abolished slavery in the state. When the jury ruled in Bett's favor, she became the first African-American woman to be set free under the Massachusetts state constitution.

The jury found that "...Brom & Bett are not, nor were they at the time of the purchase of the original writ the legal Negro of the said John Ashley..."[7] The court assessed damages of thirty shillings and awarded both plaintiffs compensation for their labor. Ashley initially appealed the decision, but a month later dropped his appeal, apparently having decided the court's ruling on constitutionality of slavery was "final and binding."

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Freeman

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
7. There is an important caveat about one of those red dots, however.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:22 AM
Jul 2020

This would be Benjamin Franklin, who owned two slaves at one point, but freed them, and became an abolitionist, founding and heading the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society, and advocated strongly - but was defeated in the effort - at the Constitutional Convention for the abolition of slavery.

However, your point is well taken, and this weekend, I watched, and have been watching this incredibly lucid lecture by Jeff Robinson, usefully produced here: The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States (FULL Version)

The only (extremely minor) flaw in this lecture is its title: It is not really about the Confederacy; but is rather about the undeniable truth that the United States was founded on the principle of White Supremacy and legally sanctioned this principle until 1954.

From my perspective despite being aware of this lecture myself for less than 48 hours, as this lecture exists, any overview course in American History anywhere that does not assure familiarity with this lecture, represents heuristic malpractice.

Arguably, the United States is expiating for its sin by committing suicide, having allowed a virulent racist to assume the office of President of the United States in 2017.

Thank you for the note. I just wanted to clarify, even in the earliest of times, at least one American, arguably the inventor of this country, taught himself that human slavery was a crime against humanity. Franklin was very bitter about the inclusion of slavery in the US Constitution, mused that it would destroy the country - which it almost did in the period between 1861-1865 - and is doing right now.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
11. And thank you for your post, particularly the link. I will watch this and spread it around.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:33 AM
Jul 2020

There is no absolute denigration of our founders struggling to live up to their ideals. I'm glad for Franklin; also John Adams, who himself never owned slaves or was involved in slave trade investments.



Much later, and a bit off topic: to me, the use of the word confederacy as adjacent to American or patriotism, can no longer be accepted from any level of understandings of its previous use.

There need never again be a confederate reality in the minds of Americans. Confederate may sit, dead, in some museum.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
41. I just watched Robinson. You're onto something with the heuristic malpractice idea.
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 02:28 PM
Jul 2020

Last edited Sun Jul 5, 2020, 03:10 PM - Edit history (1)

When Robinson says the South "won the peace," what I take him to mean is that they only won it through a white cultural war that made monuments to the slavers and confederate tools who fought for the false "noble cause" that was seldom called slavery or owning other humans.

And so they suppressed black history as American history by promoting their own STORY of themselves through the public "culture" buildout of monuments, that propagated the idea that what they had was "heritage." It was false, but who knew enough about the past to challenge this buildout.

And now that this fake president says we are in a war, it's not about CANCEL, it's about demolishing monuments to the lies the confeds told their kids, grandkids and America, and about bringing forward the honest truth to demolish the lies and fake victimization stories they had told themselves.

White supremacy sickness came from their European forebears, and from that sickness we've been chronically warped into thinking we're well. We're still sick from the European hyperrationalizing of racial superiority. So much that we think the medicine is worse than the disease we deny having.

That European nations helped fund the South's side of the Civil War is one evidence of how they felt connected to that false "cause."

We'll recover. Those who believe Trump will just have to face America's slave times, and the whole truth of our nation's history. The president's American carnage speech in S. Dakota was one Big Projection on the rest of us who know there could never be a culture built on any rationalizing of Indian genocide and African slavery.

Protesters are owning it all, and we must keep supporting them so that we get to finalize the truth of our past so that we can honestly face this nation's and people's future.

NNadir

(33,368 posts)
46. I'm very glad you watched it. It is true that European Imperialism was very much...
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 08:23 PM
Jul 2020

...a founding principle of White Supremacy in the US. I do think however that some among the so called "founding fathers" were at least taking the first baby steps toward, at least, questioning slavery.

No one explained this quite as well as Abraham Lincoln in the speech that brought him into serious consideration as a candidate for the Presidency, the very famous Cooper Union Address.

There is a reason slave holding states seceded from the Union when Lincoln won the Presidency.

Much has been made of Lincoln's endorsement of White Supremacy, but before anything, Lincoln was a politician.

No one understood this better than the member of the triumvirate that set America on its long struggle to achieve the high ideals it set for itself while failing for centuries to realize them, Fredrick Douglass, who defined the moral element of the Civil War. In a speech about Lincoln years after Lincoln's assassination:

...He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose...

...I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.


Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln

I believe Douglass has appropriately defined this seond member of that triumvirate, Lincoln, in the political sphere.

The third member of that grand triumvirate, largely in the military sphere, was Ulysses S. Grant.

In each sphere, the others overlapped, to be sure.

I personally regard Ulysses S. Grant to have been the second greatest President of the 19th century, despite much traditional malignity directed at his Presidency by traditional historians, much of it generated by the so called "reformers," who attacked his administration, almost all of whom were in fact White Supremacists.

In the marvelous lecture I thank you for watching, Robinson noted that Reconstruction was well on its way to providing economic and legal equality as citizens up until 1877, when Rutherford B. Hayes - the forgettable President whose name Robinson forgot - pulled troops from the South. Without President Grant, there would be no 14th and 15th amendment, and he smashed the Ku Klux Klan much as he smashed the Confederacy. Without those amendments, the constitutional basis for the work of Thurgood Marshall, Dr. King, and untold others would have had no legal standing to proceed as it did.

Without any of these three Americans, our history would have been even worse, and the thre of them together changed America, and arguably the entire world for the better.

As we re-evaluate our history, the figure surely deserving of re-evaluation, some of which is clearly under way, is that of our great 18th President, President Grant. For a military man, his stature as a humanitarian was transcendent, and he, and he alone, worked to not lose the peace, but was overwhelmed by the strength of White Supremacy that our most brutal war only mildly dented, it being so strong.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
48. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot from you the last few days.
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 09:41 PM
Jul 2020

I was an English teacher -- taught African American Lit (slave narratives, Douglass, Harlem Renaissance writers and all the moderns), World Lit, college prep writing for 35 years; along with them, two sections of Film Studies for the last ten years. History came as context for it all, but nothing as detailed as you've eloquently presented here.

When we strip the public sphere of the old white supremacist monuments, stop the visual pain, rewrite American history -- because Black history is American history -- we'll be more honestly prepared to pay reparations long overdue, and more honestly remember how the first culture war was to keep humans in bondage either through slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, the Electoral College, rule of law and every other underhanded fight full of lies and propaganda against the vote. Our ignorance of all that white supremacy culture war by stealth has been our bondage, too.

I'm happy to say that we have a big statue of Ulysses S. Grant by the lakefront of Chicago's north side, in Lincoln Park. I'll never again drive by it without remembering what you've told me. And I hope at least half of what you've written here finds its way into U.S History books.

Reparations paid through public education (and through other means, of course) is another key toward the Jeffersonian ideal of the enlightened citizen.

We have got to get there. I always love DU for being a space of mutual sharing and courage building toward that future.





gab13by13

(20,865 posts)
8. I watched Hamilton last night,
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:25 AM
Jul 2020

it was so prophetic. I'm positive that Trumpers would never understand it.

Roy Rolling

(6,853 posts)
14. Totally Agree With the Premise
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 11:52 AM
Jul 2020

They were slaveowners.

Then what?

An ad hominem campaign to erase their names from history, exactly at the point when we should be confronting the ugly past to come up with a better future? Not go back and fight the personalities of 1776, but ignore the substantive issue of a legacy of economic inequality?

The greedy business class that was all-in for slavery in the 1800s would like nothing better than to brand the conflict a cultural war rather than an economic struggle. Then, they can buy public opinion against protestors, rather than earn it in the marketplace of ideas.

Don’t fall for it, it’s a trap. Protest smartly, not for just for the sake of protest, but to keep attention diverted from substantive changes being made. It’s a struggle for peace, not just for dominance.



ancianita

(35,813 posts)
17. And we can operate on two premises at the same time. Smart democracies do that.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:06 PM
Jul 2020

The smart thing about the Founders is that they loathed the rise of corporations as coequal with humans before the law.

Our charge for the future is to keep equality where it belongs, in the human sphere only, while forcing corporate entities in the place where the Founders put them so that those entities would not wage economic war on humans. There was enough landbase space to not confront economic struggle at that time.

But now we're in it. And the question is still, "then what?" The answer: we'll fight on two fronts.

BannonsLiver

(16,162 posts)
40. Maybe It's like Covid 19 testing
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 02:47 PM
Jul 2020

If we don’t test it will go away. Similarly, if we don’t talk about them the founders will go away. Or something like that.

 

HotTeaBag

(1,206 posts)
16. And countless white soldiers fought and died so African Americans could be free.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:06 PM
Jul 2020

That too is our history.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
19. Yes. Yet we still fight the white history revisionists who still think only in zero sum terms.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:18 PM
Jul 2020

As if freedom and equality is pie.

History must be told for maximizing freedom and truth, and white soldiers who died so African Americans could be free, would today be angry to see that their deaths appear to have been in vain.

 

HotTeaBag

(1,206 posts)
20. What?
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:21 PM
Jul 2020

You're actually saying that the Union Soldiers who died for a cause greater than any we've fought before or since would be 'angry' to see their deaths would have been in vain?

Talk about a twisted view of history, and quite honestly a rather racist and offensive view at that.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
24. How so? They fought so that slavery would end. It did, but it's taken on new forms of psychological
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:26 PM
Jul 2020

warfare.

So how is that a twisted view of history? Please proceed.

Historic NY

(37,449 posts)
18. While we at discussing slavery.....
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:17 PM
Jul 2020

just remember how and from where it came from. There are many forms of slavery still operating in society today.

There are no holier than thou's here.

To say slavery was just brought here in 1619 is not factual either.

Every civilization, every culture, every country had some form in practice since the beginning of time its not a modern invention. The bible speaks of it, history speaks of it. The great civilizations from the Greeks to the Romans, and even indigenous had it.

To wipe it away means one must wipe out World History...

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
22. You're right. It's been a global problem of history. Still is. How other nations
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:24 PM
Jul 2020

handle their histories can still be influenced by how we handle ours.

We can talk about "slavery by any other name" when we speak of corporate wage slavery, for instance. The economic basis of this country has been slavery. The economic basis of Western wealth was colonial slavery. The basis of capitalism is free labor -- forced by gender work roles in the home or slavery and human trafficking as "just business."

Reparations needn't just be an American decision. It's a compelling global decision.

brush

(53,474 posts)
36. Because it didn't start here in 1619 doesn't make it any less evil...
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 02:43 PM
Jul 2020

including it's continuing aftermath. And the slavery here was based on white supremacy. That can not be defended.

Polybius

(15,238 posts)
21. As a black man, I look past this for their incredible accomplishments
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:22 PM
Jul 2020

I also don't judge someone for something that what was not frowned upon in 1776.

cayugafalls

(5,631 posts)
29. Did they sow seeds or reap the harvest? I would like to put forth a differing viewpoint.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:56 PM
Jul 2020

They were merely reaping the harvest of a millennia old practice of slavery/indentured servitude. The document they produced in creating this nation was the seeds they sowed and it has brought forth a great harvest of new ideas and allowed for changes to occur, albeit some with the spilling of great amounts of blood.

Yes, it has taken a long time and we still have a way to go in true equality, but progress has been made in ridding the world of a practice that existed for all time.

We can talk about economic slavery and all that, but it is far from true slavery where beatings and death were daily occurrences.

I think we have to acknowledge that without the enlightenment thinkers and their document holding up this nation, none of this would have come to pass. They did what they could for their time in trying to form a more perfect union and they created a living document that has served us well for quite some time, perhaps it is slow to change and it has been abused by corporations to gain personhood, but it has allowed change to happen, nonetheless.

I do not disagree with you. I just wanted to present a different view. We need to do more and teach true history, that I know. It is OK to teach the good with the bad, no one is perfect. Humankind is flawed. We are working on making ourselves better each and every day.

With love and understanding, peace and compassion, we will bridge the divide and learn to live together and make the world so much better.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
32. Thank you for your thoughtful post.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 01:09 PM
Jul 2020

We have to foreground all the seeds that have led to our evolving history. And we're called to pull the weeds that try to choke our harvest.

GarColga

(122 posts)
27. But it was "frowned upon"
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:53 PM
Jul 2020

As early as 1776 the British House of Commons debated a motion 'that the slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and the rights of men'. The wealthy slave-owners in the Colonies sensed that Britain's participation in the slave trade was soon to end and that was the major reason for the Revolution. Not really about "taxation without representation", but about the right to own other human beings.

Polybius

(15,238 posts)
33. It was frowned upon by many but not most
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 01:43 PM
Jul 2020

The vast, vast majority of whites also thought they were more intelligent then us in 1776 too. They didn't have the proper science in their time.

dsharp88

(487 posts)
26. Many of them wanted to abolish slavery, but couldn't because of Southern conservatives...
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:53 PM
Jul 2020

opposing the measure. Without their inclusion there would be no United States declared on this date in 1776, so the red-dotted Northern representatives had to give in on slavery to fight the good fight another day. Their first priority was to break away from mad King George III.

demigoddess

(6,640 posts)
28. One thing they did right. They made it so the Constitution could be amended.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 12:54 PM
Jul 2020

they allowed for us to progress. They knew things would change.

cayugafalls

(5,631 posts)
30. +1000, that is the seeds they sowed.
Sat Jul 4, 2020, 01:00 PM
Jul 2020

They knew we would need to grow out of our current bonds and become something greater than even they could imagine. They had the foresight to acknowledge that the future was open to change, just as they sought change from their rulers.

Progress has not been fast, but to break millennia old practices it takes time. We are still working on it. We have a long way to go.

We need to vote out the current creep in the house and get back to progress.

ancianita

(35,813 posts)
49. Crickets...You can see above that not all the signers have red dots, though. Anyway, I looked into
Sun Jul 5, 2020, 09:56 PM
Jul 2020

the point I think you're making...

Slavery and the American Revolution

In the 2019 issue of the New York Times Magazine on the topic of slavery in America,[62] the occasion being the fourth centenary of the arrival of the first Africans at Jamestown in 1619, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for the magazine, asserted that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery."[63]

The wealth and prominence that allowed Jefferson, at just 33, and the other founding fathers to believe they could successfully break off from one of the mightiest empires in the world came from the dizzying profits generated by chattel slavery. In other words, we may never have revolted against Britain if the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.[63]

Four months later, although others declined to join them,[64] five distinguished historians (Victoria Bynum, James M. McPherson, James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, and Gordon S. Wood), in a Letter to the Editor, took issue with this and other points in Hannah-Jones' article:

On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.[65]

In response, Jake Silverstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Magazine, defended the article and stated that he did not believe this criticism was warranted. He wrote:

The work of various historians, among them David Waldstreicher and Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen, supports the contention that uneasiness among slaveholders in the colonies about growing antislavery sentiment in Britain and increasing imperial regulation helped motivate the Revolution.... [T]he [Somerset] ruling caused a sensation.... Numerous colonial newspapers covered it and warned of the tyranny it represented. Multiple historians have pointed out that in part because of the Somerset case, slavery joined other issues in helping to gradually drive apart the patriots and their colonial governments. ...[L]arge numbers of the enslaved came to see the struggle as one between freedom [under the British] and continued subjugation. As Waldstreicher writes, “The black-British alliance decisively pushed planters in these [Southern] states toward independence.” The culmination of this was the Dunmore Proclamation.... A member of South Carolina's delegation to the Continental Congress wrote that this act did more to sever the ties between Britain and its colonies "than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of." The historian Jill Lepore writes in her recent book, These Truths: A History of the United States, "Not the taxes and the tea, not the shots at Lexington and Concord, not the siege of Boston; rather, it was this act, Dunmore's offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence."[66]

Wilentz later argued there were many more anti-slavery activists in the colonies at the time of the Revolution than in Britain, and Hannah-Jones, while she stood by her piece, conceded she phrased the contention too strongly in a way that might mislead about all the colonies and people involved. She said subsequent materials based on the series would later be better contextualized.[64]


Constitution of the United States

Slavery was a contentious issue in the writing and approval of the Constitution of the United States.[67] In it the words "slave" and "slavery" do not appear, although several provisions clearly refer to it. The Constitution did not prohibit slavery.[68]

Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government from preventing the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for 20 years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808).

The delegates approved Section 2 of Article IV, which prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required the return of chattel property to owners.
[69]

Three-Fifths Compromise

In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section 2 of Article I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to the total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of Congressional representation and federal taxation.[70] This disproportionately strengthened the political power of Southern representatives, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for Congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College.

In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As the historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said,

in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slaveholder as president of the United States, and, for that whole period of time, there was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder.[26]


The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the Civil War, affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments.[26] One result was that justices appointed to the Supreme Court were also primarily slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern Congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly 50 years.[26]


Historians are now moving to clarify American history to drive the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth. They will no longer 'officialize' a mythology originating from the myths and coverups of white supremacists.
Latest Discussions»General Discussion»75%