Myths of American Slavery

by Walter Kennedy

  MYTH: Slavery was a system organized by Christians.

  REALITY. The notion that Christianity is somehow responsible for the introduction of slavery in the Western Hemisphere is often promoted by Black Muslims as a means of driving a wedge between African-Americans and their traditional Christian faith. As we have seen, the first movement of slaves from Africa was organized by Muslims from North Africa, the so-called Trans-Sahara slave trade. This movement preceded the Trans-Atlantic slave trade by almost five hundred years and was responsible for as many slaves taken from Africa as the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Also, it must be remembered that today, African Muslims are routinely making slaves of Christian Africans in the Sudan. The earliest efforts to ameliorate the evils of slavery are described in the Bible. Both the Hebrews and the later Christians were given strict instruction about the care and protection of slaves. Unlike the pagans around them, the Hebrews and the Christians could own only the labor of the individual and not the complete individual. This limitation of ownership was a great first step in the final elimination of the institution of slavery.

  MYTH: In America, slavery was a Southern institution.

  REALITY: Slavery existed in Spanish-controlled America for more than a hundred years before it was introduced into the South. Within twenty years of its introduction in Virginia, Massachusetts had passed laws protecting the right of a master in the property of his slaves. Massachusetts also became one of the earliest colonies to become involved in the slave trade. By the time of the War for American Independence, all thirteen colonies were slaveholding colonies, and those of the North were actively engaged in the African slave trade. With the introduction of the cotton gin, cotton production became a mainstay of the planter class of the Deep South. The need for a reliable labor force in the South and the desire to remove African-Americans in the North became the motivating factors for the transfer of a large portion of Northern slaves to the South. At this time the Southern abolition movement was at its pinnacle of power, and most leading Southerners were active in promoting the abolition of slavery. With the advent of the Radical Abolitionists of the North, the cooperative efforts by the North and South in the elimination of slavery were replaced with mistrust and antagonism. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that fewer than 10 percent of Southerners owned slaves at the time of the War for Southern Independence.

  MYTH: Slavery was a self-evident sin and so recognized by the Church.

  REALITY: Slavery existed within the Roman Empire throughout the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet, although he and his followers condemned many acts as sinful, slavery was not condemned. Throughout the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments, God gave laws to regulate slavery but never condemned slavery as a sin. This is not to suggest that slavery as an institution was ever free of evil. The proposition that slavery is not a sin is not a suggestion that slavery is a desirable state. Thus, there are many good reasons to oppose slavery in its various forms, but not on the ground that it is a sin in itself. It was not until the late eighteenth century that the idea that slavery was a sin became prominent. If slavery is an odious sin, how can it be explained that for more than eighteen hundred years the Church never recognized it as such?

  MYTH: Slavery existed in the North for only a very short time and had little economic impact there.

  REALITY: Slavery in the North existed from approximately 1640 to 1840 or for about two hundred years. Actually, there were a few slaves in the North as late as 1850. According to R. L. Dabney, the census of 1850 recorded as many as 236 slaves in the state of New Even after Abraham Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans were held in slavery in areas controlled by the North and were not freed until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. As shown, as long as slavery was necessary for the wellbeing of a colony in the North, it was tolerated. Only after it was no longer needed was slavery eliminated. It should be remembered that even though slavery was abolished, the free people of color were not given equal rights by their liberators. Usually every effort was taken by Northern slaveholders to liquidate their slave property by selling Northern slaves to slave traders who then sold the slaves to slaveholders in the South. As for the economic effects of slavery to the North, it must be remembered that much of the wealth that was accumulated by Northerners was in one way or the other related to the African slave trade or the production and shipping of slave-grown products from the South. If it was evil for Southerners to make money from the production of slavegrown products, the same can be said about Northern factory owners and merchants who also made money on those same slave-grown products. The institution of slavery had a significant impact upon the economic wellbeing of all of the United States, and not just the South.

  MYTH: The North ended slavery because it was offensive to the moral character of Northerners.

  REALITY: In condemning the South because of slavery, many will assert that the North was more virtuous because it ended slavery for the good and wellbeing of the slaves. According to one of America's founding fathers, John Adams of Massachusetts, the main reason that slavery was abolished in the North was because of the increase in the number of white laborers who refused to allow competition from slave labor. Adams stated that if slavery had not been abolished, both the slaves and their slave masters would have been killed by the free white laborers.8 The North was no different from the South when it came to the issue of slavery. As long as slavery was necessary, it was tolerated; during this time a small but growing element began working for its elimination. Nevertheless, slavery in the North was abolished only when it was no longer needed. Also, it was abolished in the North only after the bulk of the slave population could be sold, thus saving Northern slave masters the financial loss suffered by Southern slaveholders.

  MYTH: The North offered the black man equality and brotherhood.

  REALITY: The myth of the North as a land of freedom, equality, and brotherhood for the African-American has been exposed throughout this book. The North was the land of slavery from approximately 1640 until 1840; the land of the African slave trade from the building of the first slave ship, the Desire, in 1637 until as late as 1861 with the capture of the Nightingale, the land of discriminatory laws which prevented African-Americans from attending white schools, excluded free people of color from immigrating into the so-called free states, and excluded them from the rolls of voters. Foreigners and Americans, both Northerners and Southerners, noted the lowly condition that free people of color were assigned in the North. After traveling through the Deep South, Joseph H. Ingraham, a Yankee, made the following observation about the treatment of free people of color in the North:

  A glance at the condition of the free states of the union, as they are called, in this respect, exhibits the proofs of this condition of things. And so long as these startling anomalies [freedom without equal rights] exist-freedom without its enjoyments, equality without its social privileges-we really do not see how the people of the free states can pretend, with any show of propriety or justice, even had they the power by law and constitution, to meddle with the relations between master and slave in the slave-holding states.9

  Ingraham was making an appeal to his Northern brethren not to be critical of the South in its dealing with the slavery issue when they could not deal fairly with the few free people of color in their own so-called free states. Once again we see a Northerner exposing the myth of the North as a land of freedom and equality for African-Americans. Even more telling is Ingraham's opinion of Northerners who insisted on interfering with Southerners who were attempting to bring the institution of slavery to an end.

  The more I see of slavery, the more firmly I am convinced that the interference of our northern friends, in the present state of their information upon the subject, will be more injurious than beneficial to the cause. The physician, like Prince Hohenloe, might as reasonably be expected to heal, with the Atlantic between himself and his patient's pulse, or to use a juster figure, an individual, wholly ignorant o
f a disease, might as well attempt its cure, as for northerners, however sincere their exertions, or however pure their intentions may be, under existing circumstances, to meliorate the condition of the coloured population of the south. When the chains of the slave are broken in pieces, it must be by a southern hand-and thousands of southern gentlemen are already extending their arms, ready to strike the blow.10

  Unfortunately for the slave, the South, and America, those thousands of Southerners who were willing to strike the blow to end slavery saw their efforts destroyed by the Radical Abolitionists of the North. Ingraham warned America about the danger of allowing the radical element of the North to push the nation into a condition far worse than that already existing. Declaring himself as being in favor of emancipation, Ingraham went on to warn of the consequences of pursing the Radical Abolitionists' plan for immediate abolition of slavery:

  Have those who advocate immediate and unconditional emancipation weighed well these several branches of inquiry on this momentous subject? It is to be feared, indeed, by their language and conduct, that they have not. They should beware, while they are denouncing the slave-holder, that they do not themselves incur a still more fearful responsibility, and make themselves answerable for jeopardizing, if not actually dissolving, the Union, and encouraging civil, perhaps servile war, with all its horrors and atrocities.11

  These words, written by a Yankee in 1835, read more like prophecy today than when they were first written. For within twenty-five years, John Brown, the Radical Abolitionist murderer, fired the opening shots of what he hoped would be a slave uprising. Although a failure in his efforts of fomenting a servile war, he was very successful in beginning an even larger war.

  MYTH: Racial discrimination and/or segregation is a legacy of Southern slavery.

  REALITY: In debunking the previous myth about slavery in America, the author has already demonstrated that discrimination against free people of color has a long history both in the North and the South. As a matter of fact, in 1898, in Plessey v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court established racial discrimination (i.e., segregation) as the law of the land. In so doing, the court cited an 1845 Massachusetts law establishing separate schools for white and black children as the foundation of its decision. The majority decision for the court was written by a Federal judge from the state of Minnesota-not Mississippi. By the twentieth century, more than twenty-six states of the Union had established some form of discriminatory laws based solely on color. This represents an equal number of non-Southern states to Southern states. Racial discrimination is a legacy of the commonly held nineteenth-century white supremacy ideology. As shown, this view was held by men of both the North and the South. Whether we look at the words of Vice President Alexander Stephens of the Confederacy or President Abraham Lincoln of the United States, the plain and simple fact remains: They both believed in the nineteenth-century view of black inferiority and white supremacy.

  The Hoax about Slavery

  The several myths about the institution of slavery have made the acceptance of the hoax about life in America for modern African- Americans a sad reality for far too many Americans today. The hoax must be rejected.

  HOAX: The lives of modern African-Americans have been irreparably damaged by the institution of slavery; therefore, various forms of government-backed entitlements and reparations are owed to African-Americans.

  REALITY: While not trying to diminish the sufferings of those held in slavery, the spinning of that historic fact to foster everincreasing demands for white guilt and government-sponsored benefits must not go unchallenged. The continuous assertion by white liberals and African-American civil rights activists that, as a group, African-Americans cannot compete in American society today because of the injustices of the past is self-debasing and utterly false. Furthermore, this hoax is used by too many in the African-American community to rationalize many failures that could be addressed and eliminated. As parents often learn, if a child is given an easy excuse for failure, more often than not he will fail. This fact has nothing to do with race; it has everything to do with human nature. White liberals and quota-blacks are not doing the African-American community a service by promoting the hoax of "slavery injustice" as a cause for present failures. The march of freedom in which each "minority" has participated has made America a land of equality before the law. The success of the struggle for freedom by the African-American community is nothing less than the continuation of the progress toward full abolition of all forms of slavery-chattel, civic, and political. From the bridge at Concord, Massachusetts, to the bridge at Selina, Alabama, the struggle to end government-imposed slavery continues. Continuously repeating the hoax that African-Americans have been placed in a pathetic situation because they are descendants of slaves serves only to further the demands for more government intrusion (civil slavery) into the lives of all Americans. As has been demonstrated, nowhere in the world have Africans made more progress than in the United States of America. There are no African nations or predominately African nations which can claim a lifestyle even close to that enjoyed by America's African population. African-Americans have suffered from injustices, but so have the Irish, Polish, Asians, and most other "minorities" who immigrated to the United States. Each group, in its own way and time, overcame those injustices and made America a freer nation. The laws that once prevented African-Americans from exercising full civic freedom have been repealed; now is not the time to replace those laws with equally egregious laws that infringe upon the freedoms of other Americans; and, now is not the time, while celebrating black history, to deny Southerners (black and white) the right of celebrating Southern history. We must not be tempted by the sirens of liberalism to turn back into the wilderness of civil slavery; rather, we must cross over the River ,Jordan into the land of full freedom and equal opportunity and justice for all-"O who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land."

  ADDENDUM I

  Abstract

  On the State of Slavery in Virginia'

  St. George Tucker

  While most Americans are aware of the efforts of Northern abolitionists in the promotion of the elimination of slavery, few are aware of the same efforts by notable Southerners. In a pamphlet published in 1796, St. George Tucker of Virginia identified the evils of slavery, categorized three different types of slavery, demonstrated that slavery existed in all parts of the United States, and offered a method for its elimination. As noteworthy as all this was, Tucker went even further by criticizing laws that discriminated against free people of color. This fact alone would mark St. George Tucker as an American civil libertarian 150 years before the advent of the modern civil rights movement. Yet, St. George Tucker was a Southerner, an advocate of State's Rights, and a proponent of the right of secession.

  As a modern historian has noted, "Tucker's state rights understanding of the Constitution is not merely a rationalization in the defense of Tucker, joined by many notable Americans such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln, was an advocate of gradual emancipation and the removal of free Africans to their ancestral homeland.

  The following text is a review of Tucker's views on the evils of' slavery, the types of slavery, slavery as an American problem, the method for the elimination of slavery, and discrimination against free people of color.

  1. The evils of slavery

  Among the blessings which the Almighty hath showered down on these states, there is a large portion of the bitterest draught that ever flowed from the cup of affliction. Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa. The genial light of liberty, which hath here shone with unrivalled lustre on the former, hath yielded no comfort to the latter, but to them bath proved a pillar of darkness, whilst it hath conducted the former to the most enviable state of human existence. Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty, and sacrificing hecatombs upon her altars; whilst we swore
irreconcilable hostility to her enemies, and hurled defiance in their faces; whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free, or die, and imprecated curses on their heads who refused to unite with us in establishing the empire of freedom; we were imposing upon our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained ... such that partial system of morality which confines rights and injuries, to particular complexions; such the effect of that self-love which justifies, or condemns, not according to principle, but to the agent.

  II. Types of slavery

  [I]nstead of attempting a general definition of slavery; I shall, by considering it under a threefold aspect, endeavour to give a just idea of its nature.

  1. [Political slavery] When a nation is, from any external cause, deprived of the right of being governed by its own laws such a nation may be considered as in a state of political slave. Such is the state of conquered countries, and generally, of colonies, and other dependent government.... Subjection of one nation or people, to the will of another, constitutes the first species of slavery, which, in order to distinguish it from the other two, I have called [it] political [slavery].

  2. [Civil slavery] Civil liberty being no other than natural liberty, so far restrained by human laws, and no farther, as is necessary and expedient for the general advantages of the public, whenever that liberty is, by the laws of the state, further restrained than is necessary and expedient for the general advantage, a state of civil shivery commences immediately. And this happens whenever the laws of a state respect the form, or energy of the government, more than the happiness of the citizen.