Slavery in American history has come into vogue among those of much political enthusiasm but the intelligence of box turtles and little knowledge of the matter. I sometimes think that America should institute a system of public education, but apparently this is not going to happen. Anyway, a few thoughts of possible interest:
Whites didn’t enslave blacks. These were captured by black slave traders or bought as prisoners of war, and kept in slave pens on the African coast until slave ships bought them. This may seem a cheap debating point but is how the slave business actually worked.
The slave trade from point of sale on the African coast to the fields of Alabama and thereafter was hideous, very, very documentedly so. This should not need saying but apparently does. A competent overview of the commerce can be found in The Atlantic Slave Trade, by . A contemporary account is American Slavery As It Is,1839. Warning: it is nauseating. A well known and readable account, also contemporary, can be found in A Journal of Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, by Fanny Kemble. Hundreds of others exist.
The current adolescent drumbeat for reparations to blacks for slavery is nonsensical since, as many have noted, it requires whites who never owned slaves to pay reparations to blacks who never were slaves. This is just stupid. I think the Africans who originally captured the slaves should pay reparations to American blacks, and to residents of cities burned by these. People whose forebears arrived in America after 1865 can’t possibly be blamed as neither, presumably, Yankee troops who are (absurdly, but never mind) thought to have fought to free the slaves.
The Atlantic slave trade was not especially American but engaged in by much of Europe–Portugal, Spain, England, Holland, with Jews, Christians, Catholics, and a few Quakers involved. Of the estimated eleven million slaves abducted from Africa (a highly imprecise figure, I suspect) many went to Latin America, Cuba, and the British West Indies, where treatment of them was savage.
In Mexico and further south, black slaves were used because the Indians, enslaved by the Spanish, proved less able to endure hard work in hot regions than were the blacks. Anyone who doubts the brutality of slavery as practiced by Europeans should visit the silver mines of Zacatecas in Mexico–I have–and check things out. Zacatecas also has a museum of instruments of torture used by the Catholic Church. It is nightmarish, sickening. Used by followers of Jesus, you understand.
In America the slave trade was a Northern, not a Southern, business, run out of New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. These states, not Mississippi, constructed the custom-designed slave ships with the chains built in and barely room for the prisoners to lie down. These states, when the slave trade was outlawed in America in 1808, smuggled slaves and continued supplying them to the British East Indian sugar plantations.
With Northern efficiency, the traders developed what is sometimes called the slave triangle. The ships stocked up on rum in America, and sailed to the Slave Coast. Here they exchanged rum, cloths, and other things for, on a large ship, as many as a thousand slaves. They then sailed for the sugar islands of the Caribbean, expecting perhaps twenty percent of the cargo to die on the way largely due to treatment I will not describe. On arrival they would exchange some slaves for molasses, and return to, say, New York. There they sold the molasses to distilleries to be made into rum. All of this was then repeated.
Apart from a few abolitionists, the North did not object to slavery. It was too profitable. Good families bought shares in slave ships as one might buy shares in Lockheed-Martin or Apple Computer. Northern banks financed the cotton plantations.
Northern participation in the trade, and Northern attitudes toward blacks, are covered well in Complicity, by three Northern reporters. (All books mentioned are on Amazon.) A quick read is Wikipedia’s account of the New York draft riots of 1863 in which northern workers, fearing competition from freed slaves, murdered and burned alive blacks.
Lincoln disliked slavery but, as he said repeatedly and clearly, did not want racial integration, did not believe blacks able to live among whites, did not want social equality, and most assuredly opposed intermarriage. He thought, and said many times, that blacks should be shipped back to Africa. Lincoln’s racial views would today make him an extreme White Supremacist.
His Emancipation Proclamation, going into effect on January 1, 1863 and now thought to have freed the slaves, didn’t. In it he conspicuously did not free slaves in the North, where he could have, and did proclaim the slaves free in the South, where the proclamation had no effect. It was a military measure, intended to inspire insurrection by Southern slaves. it didn’t.
The notion that Northern soldiers fought to free blacks is nonsensical. Soldiers typically are men of poor education and low social class unlikely to risk their lives to benefit people they hold in contempt and want nothing to do with, living in far-off parts. This is like saying that Marines in Vietnam, many of whom could not spell the country’s name were fighting to save from Communism, which they could not define, people they disliked (dinks, gooks, zipperheads, rice-propelled paddy maggots) and who often shot at them.
Finally, it is worth pondering how the world looked to a decent and well-meaning white Southerner in, say, 1850. Her name might be Rebecca Venable, living in Prince Edward County, Virginia, territory near that of Washington, Lee, and Jefferson, all of Cavalier Virginia. She is eighteen, has lived all her life on her father’s rural estate, and is accustomed to slavery. She has known nothing else. The house slaves are well treated and, while she knows that field hands are sometimes whipped, well, the minister says that blacks are the sons of Ham and can’t be civilized. Many of the white people she knows, all kindly, seem uneasy with slavery, but–what to do about it?
It was not an easy question. At the end of the Civil War, there were about four million slaves in America. Rebecca would not have known the number, but there were a great many blacks in Cavalier Virginia. If freed, what would they do? Where would they live? They couldn’t read, poor things. Sally would see nothing to contradict the universal view of those around her that they wouldn’t learn. She didn’t listen to NPR.
Where would Rebecca go if the slaves were freed? And her family? They would have no way of making a living. Though uneasy about slavery, Rebecca very humanly might think, well, maybe we should leave things as they are, and manumit in our wills. Many whites did this.
And finally, and important, Haiti. Rebecca would know that around the turn of the century the slaves of Haiti had revolted and killed the island’s whites in horrible ways. She would know that in 1831 the slave Nat Turner and other slaves had rebelled and killed whites unpleasantly–especially if one were a woman. In Southern minds it was not impossible, not at all, that such things might repeat all across the South. In fact they didn’t, but that they wouldn’t wasn’t obvious.
What would you, the reader, have done?
Nice article, Fred. I know many whites with hate has no home here signs who live in the whitest neighborhoods they can afford, send their kids to the whitest schools and have white doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, etc. Facts, and empathy, with other whites, past and present, mean nothing at all.
This is like saying that Marines in Vietnam, many of whom could not spell the country’s name were fighting to save from Communism, which they could not define, people they disliked (dinks, gooks, zipperheads, rice-propelled paddy maggots) and who often shot at them.””
We also called them Charlie, zips, etc.
TF-116 RivRon 59 RivDiv 594 (PBRs)
Fred, you put other historians like Kearns-Goodwin and Beshloss to shame; and you are most readible. Thank you.
Keep calling ’em like you see ’em.
I’m damn glad someone is.
99% of what calls itself “the press” today isn’t worth pissing on.
Thank you for a constructive and concise article, Fred! I am happy to share this on social media and with my direct contacts. I hope that this makes it to the mainstream media.
[…] Slavery, by Fred Reed […]
I think you are trying to have a conversation about something we cannot talk about, at least not among races. The idea of the great coming together that we of the 60s once thought possible has been scrapped for political expedience. The great coming together can no longer happen in this nation. I’m not even sure we can find a way to live peacefully in the same space. Maybe when the political parties dissolve and we reinvent humanity rather than focus on greed?
Politicians have done all they can to prevent the great coming together because if we do we will catch onto their parasitic game. So they set poor against rich against the middle class, black against white, women against men, etc., so our internal squabbles will keep us from noticing that they are in fact the enemy of all of us.
“If freed, what would they do? Where would they live? They couldn’t read, poor things.”
Colin Powell used to point out that when his ancestors – the slaves of Jamaica – were freed, schools had been set up for their children so that they would be taught to read. That the position was v difficult in the US I don’t doubt. I imagine, however, that the ratio of black slaves to white freemen was far higher in Jamaica than Virginia and yet Jamaica coped.
That nothing else could have been done in the US I do doubt: surely only Marxists believe in inevitability in history and in the unimportance of action by individuals?
“Lincoln … thought … that blacks should be shipped back to Africa.” I dare say that would fail on the basis of sheer numbers but I could well be wrong. Has anyone tried the calculation? If not the long journey to Africa, how about shorter journeys to the Caribbean? Or could they have been marched down into Latin America? Or given Florida?
I note that the USA bought Alaska in 1867 so it would have been open to Lincoln’s successors to consider setting that up as a land for blacks. Would that have required shipping or would the British/Canadians have given permission for marching the ex-slaves cross-country? The latter seems most unlikely.
No doubt there were other ideas buzzing about that I’ve never heard of. But I don’t believe in the “arc of history” baloney. Constraints on action can be perfectly real but humans have a tendency to assume that constraints are more burdensome than they need be.
For almost 150 years, the United States has been experimenting. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites. The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?
The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal people with no written language and no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy unfair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since. Decade after decade, the problems persisted, but the experimenters never gave up. They insisted that if they could find the right formula, the experiment would work, and they concocted program after program to get the desired result. They created the Freedman’s Bureau, passed civil rights laws, tried to build the Great Society, declared War on Poverty, ordered race preferences, built housing projects, and tried midnight basketball. Their new laws intruded into people’s lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable. They called in National Guard troops to enforce school integration. They outlawed freedom of association. Over the protests of parents, they put white children on buses and sent them to black schools and vice versa. They tried with money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless handwringing to close the “achievement gap.” They began punishing public and even private statements on race to keep white backlash in check. They hung up Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to “Celebrate Diversity!” and “Say No To Racism.” Nothing was off limits if it might salvage the experiment. Some thought that what W.E.B. Du Bois called the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, educated blacks would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what blacks were capable of. There is a Talented Tenth. They are the black Americans who have become entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work, the ten percent has to be followed by a critical mass of people who can hold middle-class jobs and promote social stability. That is what is missing. Through the years, too many black people continue to show an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them.
Detroit is bankrupt, the south side of Chicago is a war zone, and majority-black cities all over America are beset by degeneracy and violence. And blacks never take responsibility for their failures. Instead, they lash out in anger and resentment. Across the generations and across the country, as we have seen in Detroit, Watts, Newark, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, rioting and looting are just one racial incident away. The white elite would tell us that this doesn’t mean the experiment has failed. We just have to try harder. We need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, more opportunities. But nothing changes no matter how much money is spent, how many laws are passed, how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and who is president.
Some argue it’s a problem of “culture,” as if culture creates people’s behavior instead of the other way around. Others blame “white privilege.” But since 1965, when the elites opened America’s doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India – people who are not white, not rich, and not “connected” – have quietly succeeded. While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and getting top scores on the SAT, black “youths” are committing half the country’s violent crime – crime, which includes viciously punching random white people on the street for the thrill of it, that has nothing to do with poverty.
The experiment has failed, not because of culture, white privilege, or racism. The fundamental problem is that white people and black people are different. They differ intellectually and temperamentally. These differences result in permanent social incompatibility. Our rulers don’t seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. They don’t understand that white people aren’t out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, the reflexive animosity. The elites explain everything with “racism” and refuse to believe white frustration could soon reach the boiling point. They will be the only ones who are surprised when real revolution comes to the United States and that it is white people who lead the revolt.
EXCELLENT review of reality, Sir!!
IMHO, Obama got such a huge vote to be elected due to white guilt. He was selected and groomed by George Soros who has stated very clearly his goal is to destroy the USA with a policy of open borders flooding the country with illegals.
The tiny minority of capable well educated black folks like Collin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and some others are indicative of what a few can accomplish.
As our author has said, “…a spring is being wound…”.
Old fart is at it again. Pay reperations you piece of boomer shit. White folks must pay or we will go medieval on your asses.
Lol anytime you’re feeling froggy, just jump.
Fuck off groid
Your terms are acceptable. Go ahead and go ‘medieval’. Your move.
Unsuprisingly, you misspelled reparations.
Please do. Keep pushing the race hustling. See where that leads.The last Civil War was fought by half the Whites to free people that looked like you. In the next Civil War you will be the target. America is filled with Black fatigue.
Slavery was in extent as far back as human history goes, and probably before. It did not start with America, nor was it limited to America. What do people think happened to prisoners of war in Greek, Persian and Roman history when they were not exchanged? Or all of the women and children survivors after the sack of a city? As far as anyone in the early U.S. knew, it was just one of those constants of history.
Many blacks went to Liberia after the Civil War as part of Lincoln’s plan to send them back. Many then enslaved African Blacks.
Maybe blacks should pay reparations to the families of British Navy sailors who died ending the slave trade.
Another strong dose of excellent truth, Fred.
Here is another great book about the slave trade to and from the USA only: American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865 (published in 2023 and authored by Sean M. Kelley). Kelley focuses on the Rhode Island cities of Newport and Bristol, which were the two ports in the then USA into which a plurality of already enslaved blacks from Africa were brought by wealthy Yankee businessmen who happened to be in the slave marketing business, among many other business interests. One of the ancestors named Brown of the founders of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, made some of his fortune by importing African slaves.
Another source of information on the New York City draft riots in 1863 is featured in the 2002 movie Gangs of New York, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Liam Neeson, inter alia. The movie concentrates on the ethnic gangs centered around The Bowery in lower Manhattan, and the draft riots are depicted because they happened to occur during the time period covered by the movie. The riots were primarily against US President Lincoln’s attempt to draft Yankee men to serve as more cannon fodder in his war against the liberty-enhancing concept of secession. Once the 5-day-long riots began, New Yorkers added anti-Negroism to their lists of grievances for which to riot, as there were many blacks, both free and others still enslaved, still in New York City in 1863. The movie clearly shows that different groups of rioters concentrated on different motives for rioting.
Islam, the religion of peace, lasted perhaps 5 years at most after Mohammed’s death before it had morphed into the religion of non-peaceful activities such as expansion, land conquest, and slavery. Non-Muslims in north Africa and all over the southernmost parts of Europe, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, were kidnapped by raiding Moslems from the north coast of Africa. Some of these were ethnic Arabs and some ethnic Berbers, but all were Moslems. They even sailed as far north as Scandinavia in their quest for slaves. This period in world slavery lasted from about 630 A.D. to the mid-1800s.
As is pointed out in Kelley’s book, the main reason that slavery began to end all over the world in the early 1800s is because Great Britain first saw the light of eliminating slavery in their globe-girdling empire in those years, and Great Britain did not really begin to lose their global grip on power until World War 2. They began to enact laws over more and more of their empire, including the new USA created out of former colonies on the east coast of North America. GB had the power to make this happen, and as their enlightened morality spread throughout their empire, eventually the former colonies on the US’s east coast had to conform as much as they could or suffer financial consequences by having their international (non-slave) trade curtailed. Kelley computed that America’s experiment with slavery only contributed about 2% of its gross domestic product from 1789 to 1865.
The American Government cannot rationally solve problems such as the issue of what to do with former slaves, because its decisions are made by “representatives” of 168 million ignorant voters. A British Supreme Court Justice observed that the founders of the U.S. Government never intended this. Rather, the Founders intended the “representatives” to be endowed with enough smarts and maturity to act as guardians to the masses of voters, finding rational and compromised solutions to problems.
Richard (above) has made excellent points. I have divided his comments into paragraphes for easier reading.
ESSAY BY RICHARD, COMMENTER ON FRED REED’S COLUMN ON SLAVERY
For almost 150 years, the United States has been experimenting. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites. The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?
The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal people with no written language and no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy unfair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since.
Decade after decade, the problems persisted, but the experimenters never gave up. They insisted that if they could find the right formula, the experiment would work, and they concocted program after program to get the desired result.
They created the Freedman’s Bureau, passed civil rights laws, tried to build the Great Society, declared War on Poverty, ordered race preferences, built housing projects, and tried midnight basketball. Their new laws intruded into people’s lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable.
They called in National Guard troops to enforce school integration. They outlawed freedom of association. Over the protests of parents, they put white children on buses and sent them to black schools and vice versa. They tried with money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless handwringing to close the “achievement gap.”
They began punishing public and even private statements on race to keep white backlash in check. They hung up Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to “Celebrate Diversity!” and “Say No To Racism.” Nothing was off limits if it might salvage the experiment.
Some thought that what W.E.B. Du Bois called the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, educated blacks would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what blacks were capable of.
There is a Talented Tenth. They are the black Americans who have become entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work, the ten percent has to be followed by a critical mass of people who can hold middle-class jobs and promote social stability. That is what is missing.
Through the years, too many black people continue to show an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them.
Detroit is bankrupt, the south side of Chicago is a war zone, and majority-black cities all over America are beset by degeneracy and violence. And blacks never take responsibility for their failures. Instead, they lash out in anger and resentment. Across the generations and across the country, as we have seen in Detroit, Watts, Newark, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, rioting and looting are just one racial incident away.
The white elite would tell us that this doesn’t mean the experiment has failed. We just have to try harder. We need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, more opportunities. But nothing changes no matter how much money is spent, how many laws are passed, how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and who is president.
Some argue it’s a problem of “culture,” as if culture creates people’s behavior instead of the other way around. Others blame “white privilege.” But since 1965, when the elites opened America’s doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India – people who are not white, not rich, and not “connected” – have quietly succeeded.
While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and getting top scores on the SAT, black “youths” are committing half the country’s violent crime – crime, which includes viciously punching random white people on the street for the thrill of it, that has nothing to do with poverty.
The experiment has failed, not because of culture, white privilege, or racism. The fundamental problem is that white people and black people are different. They differ intellectually and temperamentally. These differences result in permanent social incompatibility.
Our rulers don’t seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. They don’t understand that white people aren’t out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them.
They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, the reflexive animosity. The elites explain everything with “racism” and refuse to believe white frustration could soon reach the boiling point. They will be the only ones who are surprised when real revolution comes to the United States and that it is white people who lead the revolt.
Why did boys in the north rush to enlist? Same reason as boys in the south. Boredom and war agitating propaganda.
Slavery did not benefit the southern working class. Most white workers did not own slaves and narratives at the time describe how manual labor was seen as beneath white men in the south because of slavery .
The saying “it’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” was true in north and south. Lots of blood shed to keep the cash rolling in from slavery to the elite in both parts of the country.
[…] https://fredoneverything.org/slavery/ […]
“The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. ” Hold it right there Richard. How did they create this “majestic civilization”? Might it have been through slavery and plunder of Latin America’s gold and silver ? That’s what Eduardo Galeano argues in his book OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA.
Majestic? Have you read about what living in London was like for the lower classes in the 1800ś? The child chimney sweeps and the children in the coal mines? The rivers full full of human and slaughter house wastes?
Civilization aren’t built with gold and silver, even if it decorates palaces and cathedrals.
Real civilization is built with manufacturing, science, technology and arts.
Not much of that came from latin american conquest.
Latin America has today built a civilization which owes much to immigrants and its culture, though mainly southern European, has lots if influence from other cultures, including pre colonial. It is also inventive, specially in the arts.
Saw a comedian making the point of your first paragraphs. He described guys from the Dutch Masters cigar box with wooden shoes and belt-buckles on the hats, rowing ashore on the cost of Africa. Then running through lion-country with nets trying to catch the biggest Zulu warriors they could find. The black people in the audience were laughing pretty hard at the ridiculous scene he described.
Not DIRECTLY on topic, but something I’ve been puzzling on. Black folks who choose to live among whites are sacrificing the known for the unknown.
Understanding humanity as I do, this indicates to me that the known truly sucks. It also causes me to suspect a bit of disingenuousness when they are shocked that we’re not enthusiastic about their choice. After all, THEY don’t want to live around black folks – and they are better educated than we to know the good from the bad at a glance.
You can read slavery narratives from former slaves interviewed in the 1930s at Gutenberg.org. The narratives are sorted by state. I would guess that 85-90% of former slaves expressed overall positive emotions toward their former masters. I’ve only read about 200 narratives, but that’s what I found.
Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of Central Park, took a trip through the slave states in the 1850s, one of his remarks was that a free worker in New England could do generally at least twice as much work as a slave.
Booker T. Washington remarked in his book, “Up From Slavery” that most skilled labor in the south was in the hands of former slaves, and that former slaves were much better prepared for freedom than their former masters.
Whites did not start slavery in America. Celtic people did. All the slave plantations that were started in the American south were either Scottish or Irish. The KKK was started by ex-Confederate Generals who were also slave plantation owners and were ALL Irish. Every single one. The 1863 NYC Draft Riots we’re committed by the Irish who refused to fight in the Civil War to free slaves. For days they ran wild, murdering black men, women, and children. Even orphans.
To the “Nigger” that posted who posted August 8, 2023. You should reconsider your threat. You are outnumbered big time. Once this bigger group gets over it’s manufactured guilt you will face an enemy more intelligent and more skilled at defeating its enemy. Your biggest strength is that this bigger group has hampered itself in dealing with you and yours. I would suggest you read my prior post. Seek out your reparations from the Celtic peoples. They may owe you. But as far as myself, not one cent to you and yours.
Slavery was started in the American Deep South by Scottish and Irish immigrants. So the use of the term “white” is not precise. It’s a general term. The KKK was started by ex-Confederate Generals who were all Irish, and all were owners of slave plantations. The 1863 NYC Draft Riots were started by the Irish. They refused to be drafted to free black slaves. Over the course of days they murdered black men, women, and children. Even black orphans. I’m not Irish. My ancestry emigrated to America many decades after the end of the Civil War.
To be specific, the Irish and Scottish are Celtic Peoples.