Slavery a necessary evil or What an Idiot

Jim Klag

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sorry this guy should be behind bars
He said it horribly, but his approach is not much worse than the whitewashing that Project 1619 is propounding. Unlike removing offensive CSA monuments and symbols, Project 1619 actually says that the American Revolution came about primarily to preserve slavery. That it was a slave holder's revolution, completely ignoring the fact that the revolution was ignited in anti-slavery New England. In fact, at the time in Congress, the slaveholders of the south criticized New Englanders for dragging them into the struggle against the king. There is zero doubt that slavery was very important in the shaping of the early USA and that anti-black racism exists to this day. But let's not rewrite history in our zeal to right the wrongs of racism.
 

diane

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Sen Cotton stuck his big fat foot in his mouth for sure but I don't wish to see that particular project put in place. The cycle in the South became land, slaves, cotton. Land was the issue! If Indians had held up, we'd have been the slaves - Columbus thought so! (But that tendency to sit down and die cut into the profits.) If land wasn't the real objective, what was Dan'l Boone doing?
 

byron ed

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...If Indians had held up, we'd have been the slaves...
True. From 1503 African slaves were being sent into the New World by Spain for the express purpose of substituting their labor in the place of that of the "less hardy" natives of America who couldn't "hold up." (euphemisms that an escaped native-American could easily stay escaped, survive well in doing so, well-knowing the geographical and societal landscape of their own native lands and nations).

A French mercantile corporation was established in 1701, the Assiento Company, which was contracted to supply the then Spanish-American settlements. The privileges of this company were later transferred to the English, with Philip V of Spain and Queene Anne each assuming one-quarter of the Company's capital. The contract spelled out importing 140,000 negroes over 33 years.

It is on this basis -- that the legacy Spanish, French, and English settlers in America and their evolved American constituent had been heavily involved in slavery for centuries before the slave South. That's something that today's Confederate apologists trot out in their attempt to ameliorate the "blame" for the kind of chattel slavery that remained in the slave South by 1860. It's the "Mommy Billy did it too" justification, to push that the CW wasn't about slavery because everyone in the New World had been practicing it. But of course that's to ignore that those of the slave South were the only ones left practicing slavery, and a much more virulent form of it to boot.

This is the kind of information consistently banned from the "other" site, btw.
 
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diane

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Bryon ed, you have a point. When it comes to slavery there's everybody to point to for blame. Very ancient blight. Not usually mentioned is the type practiced by the conquistadors in the Southwest. It's really hard to argue slavery was not the cause of the CW. All the arguments put forth otherwise have threads that follow right back to slavery. It was the destructive weed in the foundation of our country.
 

jgoodguy

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He said it horribly, but his approach is not much worse than the whitewashing that Project 1619 is propounding. Unlike removing offensive CSA monuments and symbols, Project 1619 actually says that the American Revolution came about primarily to preserve slavery. That it was a slave holder's revolution, completely ignoring the fact that the revolution was ignited in anti-slavery New England. In fact, at the time in Congress, the slaveholders of the south criticized New Englanders for dragging them into the struggle against the king. There is zero doubt that slavery was very important in the shaping of the early USA and that anti-black racism exists to this day. But let's not rewrite history in our zeal to right the wrongs of racism.
OTOH had the Slave Owners remained loyal, the revolution would have sputtered out. Without the revolution, slavery in the colonies would have been outlawed in the 1830s because imperial power was in London. Only with the ability to control local government was slavery safe.
 

Matt McKeon

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If North America had remained in the British Empire, there was an excellent chance it could have influenced the British government to retain slavery.
 

Matt McKeon

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I think most of the people who rail on about the 1619 project haven't engaged with it, but are repeating media reports. Cotton(a little on the nose, don't you think), wants to claim "the Union"(meaning all the states at the time of the Constitution) was somehow designed to eventually eliminate slavery. Hardly. But it plays better than:

We instituted slavery in North America.
We enslaved millions of people for 200 years.
It eventually sparked a terrible civil war.
We fumbled the peace with 90 years of Jim Crow enforced by grotesque violence, and racial discrimination that impoverished generations.
We still wrestle with racial prejudice and white supremacy in the 21st century.
 

rittmeister

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If North America had remained in the British Empire, there was an excellent chance it could have influenced the British government to retain slavery.
how? no taxation without representation - if they stayed they stil wouldn't have had representation
 

diane

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I think most of the people who rail on about the 1619 project haven't engaged with it, but are repeating media reports. Cotton(a little on the nose, don't you think), wants to claim "the Union"(meaning all the states at the time of the Constitution) was somehow designed to eventually eliminate slavery. Hardly. But it plays better than:

We instituted slavery in North America.
We enslaved millions of people for 200 years.
It eventually sparked a terrible civil war.
We fumbled the peace with 90 years of Jim Crow enforced by grotesque violence, and racial discrimination that impoverished generations.
We still wrestle with racial prejudice and white supremacy in the 21st century.
My main beef with it, Matt, is it does the same thing all the other programs have done in American education. It ignores the nations already here. John Smith arrived in New England three years earlier in 1616, and the plantations were already being established in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I believe John Winthrop or maybe his son was one of the first slave owners and the slave wasn't African!
 

jgoodguy

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If North America had remained in the British Empire, there was an excellent chance it could have influenced the British government to retain slavery.
All we know from this timeline was that the Brits outlawed slavery. We also know that weak local government along the lines of the AOC facilitate slavery.
 

jgoodguy

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My main beef with it, Matt, is it does the same thing all the other programs have done in American education. It ignores the nations already here. John Smith arrived in New England three years earlier in 1616, and the plantations were already being established in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I believe John Winthrop or maybe his son was one of the first slave owners and the slave wasn't African!
OTOH if they did, they would note that Native Americans practiced slavery.
 

diane

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OTOH if they did, they would note that Native Americans practiced slavery.
It would have to! And, by that criteria, does it mean future areas of the country where slavery was practiced by others have the beginning there instead of New England? The Pueblo Revolt, for instance....which ended up with a lot of footless Pueblos... I've always held that slavery was the snake the US took to bed with it and it bit 'em, poisoned the whole foundation. Maybe the new date should be when Lyman, Stevens and company rewrote the Constitution. Several states said 'amen' but continued to operate under the 'old flag' as Forrest called it. What amendments... Did the US as a nation actually start 100 years after the Civil War?
 

jgoodguy

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History is as crooked as a snake's path.
I am here because of the path history took.

Economists argue if capitalism would exist without slavery, the consensus seems to be yes, but much different.

The US was built on blood, swords, conquest and slavery. Luckily it seems to be shambling on toward some sort of perfection.
 

jgoodguy

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There's indications that the US started as a nation just a few months ago...
Naw. Too dramatic for me, just another evolution in its path. We are witnessing, IMHO just another generational change of the guard. The difference this time is that there will be more at the table of government.
 

Wehrkraftzersetzer

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History is as crooked as a snake's path.
I am here because of the path history took.

Economists argue if capitalism would exist without slavery, the consensus seems to be yes, but much different.

The US was built on blood, swords, conquest and slavery. Luckily it seems to be shambling on toward some sort of perfection.
also on agression
 
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