In honor of Black History Month, I’d like to present some inconvenient truths about the abominable institution of slavery. Because – without discounting in any way the horrible realities of one group of human beings enslaving another – it’s important to keep our uniquely American experience in perspective. Michael Medved does that quite effectively in this 2007 article ~
(T)he current mania for exaggerating America’s culpability for the horrors of slavery bears no more connection to reality than the old, discredited tendency to deny that the U.S. bore any blame at all. No, it’s not true that the “peculiar institution” featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it’s true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans.
An honest and balanced understanding of the position of slavery in the American experience requires a serious attempt to place the institution in historical context and to clear-away some of the common myths and distortions.
Medved’s entire essay is excellent and a very worthwhile read; he makes six key points ~
1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION
At the time of the founding of the Republic in 1776, slavery existed literally everywhere on earth and had been an accepted aspect of human history from the very beginning of organized societies […]
Contrary to the glamorization of aboriginal New World cultures, the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas counted among the most brutal slave-masters of them all — not only turning the members of other tribes into harshly abused beasts of burden but also using these conquered enemies to feed a limitless lust for human sacrifice. The Tupinamba, a powerful tribe on the coast of Brazil south of the Amazon, took huge numbers of captives, then humiliated them for months or years, before engaging in mass slaughter of their victims in ritualized cannibalistic feasts.
In Africa, slavery also represented a timeless norm long before any intrusion by Europeans. Moreover, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch or British slave traders rarely penetrated far beyond the coasts: the actual capture and kidnapping of the millions of victims always occurred at the hands of neighboring tribes.
2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS
Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves. Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% — bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor.
3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT
By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse […]
For slave owners and slave dealers in the New World, however, death of your human property cost you money, just as the death of your domestic animals would cause financial damage […]
Rather than eliminating the slave population, profit-oriented masters wanted to produce as many new, young slaves as they could. This hardly represents a compassionate or decent way to treat your fellow human beings, but it does amount to the very opposite of genocide.
4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES
All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy.
While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage. The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.
5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION
~ In condemning the U.S. for its participation in slavery, myopic critics typically discount the enormous cost of the Civil War in blood and treasure ~
While the United States (and the British colonies that preceded our independence) played no prominent role in creating the institution of slavery, or even in establishing the long-standing African slave trade pioneered by Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other merchants long before the settlement of English North America, Americans did contribute mightily to the spectacularly successful anti-slavery agitation. As early as 1646, the Puritan founders of New England expressed their revulsion at the enslavement of their fellow children of God […]
Julia Ward Howe’s powerful and popular “Battle Hymn of the Republic” called on Federal troops to follow Christ’s example: “as he died to make men holy/let us die to make men free.” And many of them did die, some 364,000 in four years of combat—or the stunning equivalent of five million deaths as a percentage of today’s United States population. Moreover, the economic cost of liberation remained almost unimaginable.
6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA
(T)o bring American blacks in line with their cousins who the slave-traders left behind in Africa would require a drastic reduction in their wealth, living standards, and economic and political opportunities. No honest observer can deny or dismiss this nation’s long record of racism and injustice, but it’s also obvious that Americans of African descent enjoy vastly greater wealth and human rights of every variety than the citizens of any nation of the Mother Continent.
Furthermore, as I pointed out last month – and the anti-America malcontents don’t wish to acknowledge – slavery as hardly been eradicated from the earth. If fact, “despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.”
Medved concluded with this observation ~
In short, politically correct assumptions about America’s entanglement with slavery lack any sense of depth, perspective or context. As with so many other persistent lies about this fortunate land, the unthinking indictment of the United States as uniquely blameworthy for an evil institution ignores the fact that the record of previous generations provides some basis for pride as well as guilt.
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Related:
Democrats’ Racist Roots – a reminder ~ While it’s mostly Leftists who are hypercritical of America’s past experience with slavery, it’s their party that’s been on the wrong side of history for centuries.
