America: Founded to Protect Slavery

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

That's the contention of UH professor Gerald Horne:

 

Excerpts...

Quote

 

"We should understand that July 4th, 1776, in many ways, represents a counterrevolution. That is to say that what helped to prompt July 4th, 1776, was the perception amongst European settlers on the North American mainland that London was moving rapidly towards abolition. This perception was prompted by Somerset’s case, a case decided in London in June 1772 which seemed to suggest that abolition, which not only was going to be ratified in London itself, was going to cross the Atlantic and basically sweep through the mainland, thereby jeopardizing numerous fortunes, not only based upon slavery, but the slave trade. That’s the short answer."

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (taped): On July 4th, 1776, a small band of patriots declared that we were a people created equal, free to think and worship and live as we please, that our destiny would not be determined for us, it would be determined by us. And it was bold, and it was brave. And it was unprecedented. It was unthinkable. At that time in human history, it was kings and princes and emperors who made decisions. But those patriots knew there was a better way of doing things, that freedom was possible, and that to achieve their freedom, they’d be willing to lay down their lives, their fortune and their honor. And so they fought a revolution. And few would have bet on their side. But for the first time of many times to come, America proved the doubters wrong. And now, 237 years later, this improbable experiment in democracy, the United States of America, stands as the greatest nation on Earth.

HORNE AGAIN:

"Well, with all due respect to President Obama, I think that he represents, in those remarks you just cited, the consensus view. That is to say that, on the one hand, there is little doubt that 1776 represented a step forward with regard to the triumph over monarchy. The problem with 1776 was that it went on to establish what I refer to as the first apartheid state. That is to say, the rights that Mr. Obama refers to were accorded to only those who were defined as white. To that degree, I argue in the book that 1776, in many ways, was analogous to Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the country then known as Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in November 1965. UDI, Unilateral Declaration of Independence, was in many ways an attempt to forestall decolonization. 1776, in many ways, was an attempt to forestall the abolition of slavery. That attempt succeeded until the experiment crashed and burned in 1861 with the U.S. Civil War, the bloodiest conflict, to this point, the United States has ever been involved in."

It seems to me that it’s very difficult to reconcile the creation myth of this great leap forward for humanity when, after 1776 and the foundation of the United States of America, the United States ousts Britain from control of the African slave trade. Britain then becomes the cop on the beat trying to detain and deter U.S. slave traders and slave dealers. It seems to me that if this was a step forward for humanity, it was certainly not a step forward for Africans, who, the last time I looked, comprise a significant percentage of humanity.

New York City was a citadel of the African slave trade, even after the formal abolition of the U.S. role in the African slave trade in 1808. Rhode Island was also a center for the African slave trade. Ditto for Massachusetts. Part of the unity between North and South was that it was in the North that the financing for the African slave trade took place, and it was in the South where you had the Africans deposited. That helps to undermine, to a degree, the very easy notion that the North was abolitionist and the South was pro-slavery.

What I say to the people in the United States is that you have proved that you can be very critical of what you deem to be revolutionary processes. You have a number of scholars and intellectuals who make a good living by critiquing the Cuban Revolution of 1959, by critiquing the Russian Revolution of 1917, by critiquing the French Revolution of the 18th century, but yet we get the impression that what happened in 1776 was all upside, which is rather far-fetched, given what I’ve just laid out before you in terms of how the enslaved African population had their plight worsened by 1776, not to mention the subsequent liquidation of independent Native American polities as a result of 1776. I think that we need a more balanced presentation of the foundation of the United States of America, and I think that there’s no sooner place to begin than next week with July 4th, 2014.

 

This ties up some loose ends in my thinking...I am not sure if I am willing to go along with the idea that protection of slavery was the sole reason behind the Declaration of Independence, but its role certainly has been entirely too hushed up since then. As Horne points out, it was not just slavery but the slave trade that colonists saw at risk, and all of the colonies were complicit in one or both of those aspects of the economy. That is one thing they all agreed on at the time. 

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19093]

I find this hypothesis to be complete and utter horseshit.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Just now, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I find this hypothesis to be complete and utter horseshit.

Well, show your work. 

[ztejas 43266]

This reads like a conspiracy theory. I'd like to think I'm well versed in US and World history - including alternate sources and theories that go against the grain - but I have never heard this argument.

Congress abolished the slave trade in 1808 - a year after the British did. Every northern state in the US had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805. Pennsylvania passed an act to gradually abolish slavery in 1780 - 8 years before the Constituion was ratified. Every state in the United States had already abolished the slave trade by 1790 - the federal abolition was only needed because South Carolina reversed it's stance in 1804. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery for the Northwest Territory in 1787.

Britain didn't abolish slavery until 1833. So if the founding fathers were banking on Britain abolishing it across its colonies they were making a pretty horribly informed assumption since most of them would have been dead by the time they saw the end of slavery in Britain. 

Benjamin Franklin became an abolitionist by 1775 at the latest. Thomas Jefferson - you know, the guy that wrote the fucking Declaration of Independence - had planned to abolish slavery and included language suggesting as much in the original draft of the Declaration. Washington freed all of his slaves as part of his 1799 will.

The idea that our founding fathers and the first American citizens would enter a full on revolution to protect slavery- only to have most of it go out the window within 20 years - is pretty ridiculous and honestly insulting. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

And Lee Harvey Oswald had Mafia, and Cuban help to kill JFK.  This is another of those conspiracy theories where every single person involved in protecting slavery had to keep their mouths shut. I believe there were more than just a few people moving for independence.  Besides we saw the true meaning of independence in The Patriot.

Oh, and What Penelope said up thread.

 

Wait!!!!!  WAIT !!................was it the .....................Free Masons ??!!!

EDIT: So washparkhorn has some confusion that maybe this was a real thing ?  I'm sorry, did I ruffle your feathers ? WTF are you confused about ?  This BS theory could be true?

Edited June 11, 2020 by Onboard 2.0

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

30 minutes ago, ztejas said:

This reads like a conspiracy theory. I'd like to think I'm well versed in US and World history - including alternate sources and theories that go against the grain - but I have never heard this argument.

Congress abolished the slave trade in 1808 - a year after the British did. Every northern state in the US had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805. Pennsylvania passed an act to gradually abolish slavery in 1780 - 8 years before the Constituion was ratified. Every state in the United States had already abolished the slave trade by 1790 - the federal abolition was only needed because South Carolina reversed it's stance in 1804. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery for the Northwest Territory in 1787.

Britain didn't abolish slavery until 1833. So if the founding fathers were banking on Britain abolishing it across its colonies they were making a pretty horribly informed assumption since most of them would have been dead by the time they saw the end of slavery in Britain. 

Benjamin Franklin became an abolitionist by 1775 at the latest. Thomas Jefferson - you know, the guy that wrote the fucking Declaration of Independence - had planned to abolish slavery and included language suggesting as much in the original draft of the Declaration. Washington freed all of his slaves as part of his 1799 will.

The idea that our founding fathers and the first American citizens would enter a full on revolution to protect slavery- only to have most of it go out the window within 20 years - is pretty ridiculous and honestly insulting. 

Congress did abolish the international slave trade but it went on right up to the Civil War. Dudes like Bowie, Fannin, Lafitte and Travis were all involved in it, as well as, I suspect, an ancestor of mine who came to the mouth of the Sabine in 1838 and was involved in smuggling something or other into Texas by sea. (Arms to Sam Houston, goes the family legend. Yeah, that's the ticket...)

Banning something is not the same as eradicating something and Congress only did so because of world opinion and the Royal Navy. We were less than rigorous in enforcement here and if you weren't caught on the high seas by the Brits, you were golden. You could say the slaves were from Cuba or something like that. The entire cargo of the Amistad was illegal, lest we forget, and some Alabama swells smuggled a cargo into Mobile as late as 1861, I think. 

So after 1808 it was like the drug trade, a source of dark (no racist) money, and lots of it. 

Are we going to also argue that slavery was not a prominent component of the causes of the Texas Revolution too?

[Bateshorn 9899]

It wasn’t the only reason, but it was a reason. 
 

If you still think that the Declaration of Independence was actually about freedom, I have a series of developable ocean front properties in Arizona you may be interested in.

Edited June 11, 2020 by Bateshorn

[F250 28682]

I get a historical materialism vibe from what I've read so far, market forces of slave trade, and some speculative conjecture where one must assume certain trends as a fact yet it cannot be really falsified.

I don't deify the founders and I am familiar with the ugly history that occurred at the time but the claim that the American Revolution was counter-revolutionary is a specious claim.

 

[Anastasis 23395]

Founded to protect?  Not so sure about that. I'd like to live in the delusion of the noble underpinnings. Enslavement of black people and genocide of brown people just happened to be parallel actions totally unrelated. 

 

 

Sarcasm. 

[kopp0e 1135]

Did George Washington Chopping Down the Cherry Tree Symbolize the Denationalization ...

In 1786 the Empire of Morocco formally recognized the United States when they signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Mohammed III, Sultan of Morocco, ...

Meh, odd the of the "cherry tree" actually meant the nation that was here before America, isn't told...

[Poolflood 845]

11 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Founded to protect?  Not so sure about that. I'd like to live in the delusion of the noble underpinnings. Enslavement of black people and genocide of brown people just happened to be parallel actions totally unrelated. 

 

 

Sarcasm. 

Read this somewhere recently. 

[Mole 4320]

So everyone is on the same page, this interview is from 2014; it’s interesting and provocative nonetheless.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Seems like treason for slaves was systemic problem in American history. 

[TwiceHorn 31274]

If the purpose of the Union was to protect slavery, one might think the northern colonies/states would have gone ahead and done it, too, but they didn't.

Most of the rest of the world had slaves in their colonies, also.  While they may have banned slavery within their borders earlier than the US, most colonial powers did not ban it in their colonies until the mid-19th century, within a decade or two of the US.  Of course, all those countries were fully populated and had developed economies, except in their colonies. And the US itself was a colony and had an underdeveloped, colonial economy.

The grisly truth is that where slaves were economically expedient, they existed and were mostly legal.  The US compromised on the issue like most of the rest of the world.

It doesn't make it any less ugly, 

[Hookah Horns 3080]

The fact that slavers benefitted from independence isn't proof or even evidence that it was a major motivation for doing so.

The DOI seems pretty candid and thorough about their reasoning. 

[ztejas 43266]

46 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Congress did abolish the international slave trade but it went on right up to the Civil War. Dudes like Bowie, Fannin, Lafitte and Travis were all involved in it, as well as, I suspect, an ancestor of mine who came to the mouth of the Sabine in 1838 and was involved in smuggling something or other into Texas by sea. (Arms to Sam Houston, goes the family legend. Yeah, that's the ticket...)

Banning something is not the same as eradicating something and Congress only did so because of world opinion and the Royal Navy. We were less than rigorous in enforcement here and if you weren't caught on the high seas by the Brits, you were golden. You could say the slaves were from Cuba or something like that. The entire cargo of the Amistad was illegal, lest we forget, and some Alabama swells smuggled a cargo into Mobile as late as 1861, I think. 

So after 1808 it was like the drug trade, a source of dark (no racist) money, and lots of it. 

Are we going to also argue that slavery was not a prominent component of the causes of the Texas Revolution too?

I have no qualm with any of this. Obviously slavery in the US persisted for 100 years or more after independence (depending on where you draw the line - many would contend that certain sharecropping practices in addition to "black codes" effectively enslaved Americans long after federal abolition).

I'm disputing the notion that the American Colonies and founding fathers declared independence primarily as a means to protect a slave trade economy - a notion that I frankly think is utterly absurd. Great Britain was not threatening any slave practices in the colonies. They were still too busy enslaving, subjugating and killing thousands if not millions of native, indigenous and foreign peoples across the globe.

I mean is he really positing that Great Britain was so far ahead of the curve when it came to protecting and guaranteeing inalienable rights that Americans were forced to declare independence 60 years before it was even abolished in the British Empire? 

And then after it was abolished, they did this shit:

"The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn.

The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission."

I might buy the argument if we declared independence in like, 1825, but we didn't.

 

[TwiceHorn 31274]

My hypothesis as to why slavery has left such a lasting mark on the United States is not because we were particularly slow to ban it, but rather, unlike the rest of the world, our slaves were among the population of the nation itself -- not a colony -- and 2-3 million of them had to be assimilated virtually overnight, when a substantial segment of the population, including abolitionists, considered them a lesser species of humanoid.

I am not aware of any nation that has ever had to contend with such an awkward and fraught situation.  That, I believe, is the truly exceptional part about American slavery and its legacy.

[JBJ 3649]

We have to have thousands of papers, correspondence, and publications on the various reasons for colonial dissent.  Is there even a single one mentioning abolitionism as a threat?

[Hookah Horns 3080]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

It wasn’t the only reason, but it was a reason. 
 

If you still think that the Declaration of Independence was actually about freedom, I have a series of developable ocean front properties in Arizona you may be interested in.

It was about freedom for the people who made the decision. I don't think it's fair to say it wasn't "actually about freedom" simply because they declined to also emancipate their slaves at the same time - if that is, in fact, your argument. 

[TwiceHorn 31274]

7 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I have no qualm with any of this. Obviously slavery in the US persisted for 100 years or more after independence (depending on where you draw the line - many would contend that certain sharecropping practices in addition to "black codes" effectively enslaved Americans long after federal abolition).

I'm disputing the notion that the American Colonies and founding fathers declared independence primarily as a means to protect a slave trade economy - a notion that I frankly think is utterly absurd. Great Britain was not threatening any slave practices in the colonies. They were still too busy enslaving, subjugating and killing thousands if not millions of native, indigenous and foreign peoples across the globe.

I mean is he really positing that Great Britain was so far ahead of the curve when it came to protecting and guaranteeing inalienable rights that Americans were forced to declare independence 60 years before it was even abolished in the British Empire? 

And then after it was abolished, they did this shit:

"The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn.

The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission."

I might buy the argument if we declared independence in like, 1825, but we didn't.

 

France, too, was cited in another thread as a bastion of enlightened thinking around the time of the founding.  Well, the frogs didn't ban slavery in Algeria and its other colonies until 1848 and the ban was extremely laxly enforced to the point that it persists today.

[F250 28682]

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Are we going to also argue that slavery was not a prominent component of the causes of the Texas Revolution too?

It was and there is plenty of documentation to support this claim but does the same claim about the American Revolution have similar documentation supporting such a claim?

[ztejas 43266]

13 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I am not aware of any nation that has ever had to contend with such an awkward and fraught situation.

Brazil.

[TwiceHorn 31274]

 

Just now, ztejas said:

Brazil.

Well, it could be worse, I guess.

[gmr548 16512]

1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Cuban help to kill JFK.

[softlynow 1783]

12 minutes ago, JBJ said:

We have to have thousands of papers, correspondence, and publications on the various reasons for colonial dissent.  Is there even a single one mentioning abolitionism as a threat?

That’s where I get hung up. Somewhere, someone would’ve said the quiet part loudly. 

[Hookah Horns 3080]

2 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Well, show your work. 

I'd say the one who needs to show his work is the professor/author making this rather outlandish claim. The entire argument in the OP's link is post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Perhaps in his book he has some actual primary sources supporting his claim, but if so it's a bit weird he doesn't say anything in the interview along the lines of "oh yeah, there's also the writings of colonist XYZ that indicate this was a major concern at the time."

[David Dennison 18656]

2 hours ago, ztejas said:

The idea that our founding fathers and the first American citizens would enter a full on revolution to protect slavery- only to have most of it go out the window within 20 years - is pretty ridiculous and honestly insulting. 

Well, some of them did, specifically southerners. Once the Articles of Confederation proved untenable, concessions to the southern slave states is the only way the Constitution got ratified.

[washparkhorn 9935]

4 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

I find this hypothesis to be complete and utter horseshit.

The British were freeing all the enslaved if they fought as Loyalists during the expected military domination of the American Colonies in 1775. That might have motivated some, but not as a primary motivation. The economics are off. The Colonial South enjoyed the commerce with Britain. Britain didn't want an end to slavery; they were looking for troops to fight the revolutionaries of the Enlightenment. A war was coming already. 

He blames the banks who profited off financing slavery and suggest revolutionaries would be willing to die for bankers. The financier class finances everything that will make them money. Including Revolutions. I don't buy that either. 

The Revolution was a determination of who will rule - Home Rule or Monarch Rule. They read and wrote a lot, since that was the sport of that set of Colonialist society. US independence was a radical shift. The Scots had done it, but it did not hold. The French Revolution was another Enlightenment War. This was the bleeding edge of Western Philosophy at the time. It is also an example of how far we have progressed and danger spots to look out for. 

The primary motivation came from the then-radical liberty coalition in my opinion. We had Founders who were schooled in the Enlightenment. The United States was founded on the "freedom" of a people from an arbitrary and capricious Monarch. He pushed the line. The United States pushed back and bloodied the bully's nose. Simple stuff but radical back then.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Having not read his book (which I have read is well-researched and sourced, to whoever was wondering) I do think Horne has tunnel vision if he believes America was founded solely to protect slavery.

However, I do think it was far, far, far more significant a factor than we've been taught in school. He stressed that it was not just slavery but the slave trade -- thereby uniting South and North -- that felt threatened, and he presents a far more nuanced argument than that of imminent abolition. He places the 13 Colonies in the context of the Caribbean colonies, firmly in the triangular trade economic zone in which they in actual fact did exist. We are not taught how influential the Caribbean slave islands were on American history -- you have to dig deep to find nuggets like how South Carolina was basically Barbados reproduced in America, or how a slave revolt on that same island, along with Bacon's Rebellion (which found indentured servants, freed slaves, and mixed raced people scaring the bejesus out of the Tidewater elite) inspired Virginia's Slave Code pf 1705, basically the divide and conquer tactics the rich have used to divide the poor along racial lines ever since. That code placed all blacks firmly beneath all whites, and stipulated that only blacks could be slaves. 

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” -- LBJ, almost 300 years later. Those wily old Brits knew what they were doing. 

If you've ever watched a California prison documentary, it's basically America in its starkest terms. Racism is rigorously enforced by the inmates and encouraged by the administration. At any given time, the inmates, if the ALL acted together, could riot and take the prison over, but they don't, because they are too distracted by black vs white vs Asian vs Mexican. And when the Mexicans became too numerous, they were divided into Surenos and Nortenos. Warring tribes, fighting over nothing.

Respect, I guess.

 

[Sawbonz 27429]

[Bateshorn 9899]

8 hours ago, Hookah Horns said:

It was about freedom for the people who made the decision. I don't think it's fair to say it wasn't "actually about freedom" simply because they declined to also emancipate their slaves at the same time - if that is, in fact, your argument. 

I’m saying that it wasn’t about freedom as modern American’s tend to think of it.  It was about maintaining the existing Capitol structures of the colonies while allowing for “home rule” for the lack of a better term.

Depending on where you lived in the colonies, they weren’t even talking freedom for other white people, beyond something more than being property or serfdom.

There’s a massive difference between Locke’s “liberty” and Rousseu’s vision of freedom. For example,  the northern states were already barreling towards universal male suffrage, a concept that horrified Jefferson, and wasn’t even a concept to the southern slave lords. 
 

The regional structure of colonies lead them to Philadelphia in 1776 for vastly different reasons.  For the South Carolinians, it was the preservation of slavery.

[formermav43 4599]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

I’m saying that it wasn’t about freedom as modern American’s tend to think of it.  It was about maintaining the existing Capitol structures of the colonies while allowing for “home rule” for the lack of a better term.

Depending on where you lived in the colonies, they weren’t even talking freedom for other white people, beyond something more than being property or serfdom.

There’s a massive difference between Locke’s “liberty” and Rousseu’s vision of freedom. For example,  the northern states were already barreling towards universal male suffrage, a concept that horrified Jefferson, and wasn’t even a concept to the southern slave lords. 
 

The regional structure of colonies lead them to Philadelphia in 1776 for vastly different reasons.  For the South Carolinians, it was the preservation of slavery.

I buy that for the most part. Certainly the Somerset case increased support for independence in the South.

His book may be more nuanced, but the problem with the interview is he treats the Colonies as monolithic. And it’s not like agitation suddenly emerged from nowhere in 1773.

Always be skeptical of historians presenting their new interpretation as “the” truth. It’s a good way to get published, but history is seldom that neat.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

I buy that for the most part. Certainly the Somerset case increased support for independence in the South.

His book may be more nuanced, but the problem with the interview is he treats the Colonies as monolithic. And it’s not like agitation suddenly emerged from nowhere in 1773.

Always be skeptical of historians presenting their new interpretation as “the” truth. It’s a good way to get published, but history is seldom that neat.

The truth changes, facts remain the same....

[David Dennison 18656]

"Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes."

Truth.

[TwiceHorn 31274]

Gotta hand it to Horne, though.  From an academic standpoint, you have a controversial, but not altogether implausible premise that you can spend a career supporting and debating with other academics.

[Surly Bevo 24696]

You got this from Vickers....Work in Essex County page 98 didn't you