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Home » The Founders, slavery, and the Times’ 1619 Project

The Founders, slavery, and the Times’ 1619 Project

The New Neo Posted on by

In 1619, slavery was ubiquitous throughout the world. There was nothing surprising or unusual about it being brought to the Americas. Slavery has nothing to do with American exceptionalism or American aspirations or values, unlike the claims of the 1619 Project. .

The British brought slavery here. When the colonists rebelled against the British, slavery was grandfathered in, as it were, because at the time it could not be uprooted. But the Founders realized it was at odds with the values and hopes they had for their new nation, and they had various plans for how it might be eradicated. In fact:

In his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson condemned the injustice of the slave trade and, by implication, slavery, but he also blamed the presence of enslaved Africans in North America on avaricious British colonial policies. Jefferson thus acknowledged that slavery violated the natural rights of the enslaved, while at the same time he absolved Americans of any responsibility for owning slaves themselves. The Continental Congress apparently rejected the tortured logic of this passage by deleting it from the final document, but this decision also signaled the Founders’ commitment to subordinating the controversial issue of slavery to the larger goal of securing the unity and independence of the United States.

Nevertheless, the Founders, with the exception of those from South Carolina and Georgia, exhibited considerable aversion to slavery during the era of the Articles of Confederation (1781–89) by prohibiting the importation of foreign slaves to individual states and lending their support to a proposal by Jefferson to ban slavery in the Northwest Territory. Such antislavery policies, however, only went so far…

…[S]everal individual Northern Founders promoted antislavery causes at the state level. Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania, as well as John Jay and Alexander Hamilton in New York, served as officers in their respective state antislavery societies. The prestige they lent to these organizations ultimately contributed to the gradual abolition of slavery in each of the Northern states…

Although slavery was legal in every Northern state at the beginning of the American Revolution, its economic impact was marginal. As a result, Northern Founders were freer to explore the libertarian dimensions of Revolutionary ideology. The experience of Franklin was in many ways typical of the evolving attitudes of Northern Founders toward slavery. Although enmeshed in the slave system for much of his life, Franklin eventually came to believe that slavery ought to be abolished gradually and legally.

Initially, some of the Founders thought slavery might even fade away over time. But the cotton gin’s invention changed all that and presented a new problem along with new economic opportunities for the South:

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy. While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.

The change was enormous.

The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850. By 1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market…

Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South’s economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.

And then there’s the way the brilliant Thomas Sowell put it [emphasis mine]:

Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century – and then it was an issue only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there. But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.

Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the population.

It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.

Sowell retired from column-writing in late 2016, and he’s almost ninety now. In that farewell column he had this to say, and I certainly can’t blame him:

During a stay in Yosemite National Park last May, taking photos with a couple of my buddies, there were four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program — and it felt wonderful. With the political news being so awful this year, it felt especially wonderful.

This made me decide to spend less time following politics and more time on my photography…

Sorely missed.

But I can only imagine what he would have to say about the 1619 Project, if he could be persuaded to opine on it.

Comments

The Founders, slavery, and the <i>Times’</i> 1619 Project — 44 Comments

  1. Seems the Times was off by over a century: “Slavery in America did not begin in 1619. It began in 1513. Any argument for a 1619 date implicitly suggests that the American project is an inherently Anglo project: that other regions, like Texas, California, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico, have subordinate histories that aren’t really, truly, equal as American origin stories.

    In essence, the 1619 date for the beginning of slavery sets up a story of America as an essentially Anglo project that African-Americans were forced into and now claim their share of. But in reality, our country has many origins: French Cajuns and Huguenots, Swedes in Delaware, Dutch in New York, Russians in Alaska, Mexicans in the southwest, Spanish in Florida and Puerto Rico, and of course Native Americans everywhere.”

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/23/slavery-america-not-begin-1619-things-nyts-project-gets-wrong/

  2. I hope he would say something along the lines of “the 1619 project is an effort to establish a template for NYTimes reporting that keeps that reporting aligned with SJW prejudices. It makes a mockery of the idea that the NYTimes engages bias-free journalism.”

    Well that’s what I’d say, anyway.

  3. Oh, and I miss Sowell but understand completely that he wanted to get as far away as possible from today’s news. I feel that way too.

  4. In 1619, slavery was ubiquitous throughout the world. There was nothing surprising or unusual about it being brought to the Americas.

    Untrue… but everyone knows it is…
    [remember the America we knew was founded by protestants]

    Saint Augustine described slavery as being against God’s intention and resulting from sin.

    but prior to this slavery had to do with profitability… The northern countries had scant use for slaves because living was so hard and it was communal… but once Islam went through, things change..

    in fact… given that Caucasians did not exist prior to about 8,000 years ago (DNA)…
    they were actually kept as slaves by the southern states quite often…

    at one point so much so the females with blonde hair and blue eyes were used as coinage..
    at one point, they had been used to produce children so much, the population got lighter..

    The Arab slave trade is a name used to refer to the intersection of slavery and trade surrounding the Arab world and Indian Ocean, mainly in Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, and Europe. This barter occurred chiefly between the medieval era and the early 20th century. The trade was conducted through slave markets in these areas, with the slaves captured mostly from Africa’s interior, Southern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

    [unlike ROOTS, africans were sold to the arabs, who THEN sold them as indentured servants to the british and spanish… the british, as in the case of anthony johnson, freed them once their travel was paid… once free, johnson got 240 acres and 5 slaves as well… one was his son.. .another was a permanent slave, not indentured (criminal)]

    The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.

    Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were transported by Muslim slave traders via Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert to other parts of the world between 1500 and 1900

    The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.

    THIS is what led to the use of slaves… the trades… the trading… it allowed for above subsistence
    the arabs and their religion that came swept through and they were becoming so economically wealthy
    they even decided to take on AUSTRIA…
    Sept 11…

    there was little choice… unless something came up that replaced the advantage, the advantage would stick
    industry and the industrial revolution did that…

    if you dont focus on the not even 200 years of american slavery, or a bit more for the colonies
    and focus on the other parts, you will find that the stories are quite distorted…

  5. Artfldgr,

    Not everything is about religion. Slavery existed long before the monotheisms.

  8. I’m at a loss to recall a media hoax as bald, bold and rank as this 1619 business. RussiaGate at least was based on a breaking, possibly real news story. Likewise RatherGate — the 2004 story of Bush 43’s improper Air National Guard service based on a forged document.

    But with 1619 the Times pulled 1619 out of the air so they could talk about slavery, it will be an ongoing series, not a one-off, and there is an organized effort to push 1619 into schools.

    “Times’ 1619 Project To Be Taught To Your Kids”
    https://www.redstate.com/joesquire/2019/08/21/want-new-york-times-1619-project-taught-kids/

    Boil that frog!

  9. I believe that the last slave (but for one lone boat during the Civil War – and that boat was just found in LA) was brought to America in the early 1830’s. The British after being in the middle of the trade effectively stopped it, at least here. So it might be that the birth rate and survivability rate of the Slaves was quite high. Yes, I know being out on a limb means that someone with a saw is getting warmed up.

  10. Just to point out that Africans imported into British North America were at the beginning indentured servants. The institution of life indentures and heritable indenture began in Virginia in 1660. The first slave codes in Virginia was enacted in 1705.

    About 4% of those imported into the Western Hemisphere from Africa over three centuries were imported into British North America. Brazil and the Caribbean got the vast bulk of Africans imported. About half of all Africans imported to British North America (later the United States) arrived prior to 1780 and about half after. For the slaves manumitted in 1865, to reach a point where half a man’s pedigree had been born in Africa and half in the Americas, you typically had to walk back about three generations.

    The date 1619 is when Virginia (and, by extension, all of British North America) began to acquire an African population, but it doesn’t have much larger significance.

  11. If you have studied British history you will learn that British common law did not permit chattel slavery. If those British colonists had slaves, that was not legal. In 1833 the British Parliament explicitly banned slavery.

  12. If you have studied British history you will learn that British common law did not permit chattel slavery. If those British colonists had slaves, that was not legal.

    I think you’re confused. There were slaves recorded in Britain at the time of the Domesday Book.

  15. Do not confuse the NYSlimes with facts — they simply wish to slime the US for political purposes. If they were against slavery, they would report on the locations in the world where slavery is practiced today.

    There are a good series of articles at http://www.bookwormroom.com/
    on the 1619 project and the attempt to refrain history.

    The bedbugs at the NYSlimes are not just in its “wellness room”. They are crawling all over the keyboards of the newsroom. I did not know that bedbugs and lice knew how to type until now.

  19. That last excerpt of Sowell’s is absolutely spot on. Following this stuff every day is so depressing. I really have tried to follow this stuff less closely. Unfortunately sometimes it seems unavoidable and that’s not good for any culture.

    And in this messed up environment taking a few days away from the news will mean you are spared from one or two faux hysterias.

  20. It isn’t just the NYTimes. There’s the 400 Years of African-American History Act (HR 1242) signed into law in 2018, with 6 million dollars worth of pork attached:

    http://alturl.com/tos2h

    I saw my tax dollars at work at Great Fall National Park last weekend: a sign (albeit on whiteboard — where did the money go?) about 1619 right up at the entrance. And of course, it’s all cleverly packaged in the resolution. Would you dare vote against commemorating the anniversary? Denying American’s history of slavery?

    But a very evil and divisive project.

  21. The NYT is running a political projection, which indulges color judgments, and paints people in color blocs. They get it wrong on the numerous tribes and nations. They get it wrong on involuntary exploitation, redistributive change, and diversity. They get it wrong with political congruence (“=”). They get it wrong with anti-nativism. They get it wrong with genocidal apologetics. They get it wrong on selective-child, planned parenthood, age discrimination, denial of life deemed unworthy of life. They get it wrong when they conflate logical domains, and pursue prophets (“profits”), in lieu of science. They get it wrong with their Pro-Choice quasi-religion (“ethics”).

    Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism mitigates perturbations. Leftism is monolithic. Rightism is individualistic. Principles matter. #HateLovesAbortion

  22. “England had a body of statutory law. Not sure how you missed it.”
    “Slavery had never been authorized by statute in England and Wales, and Lord Mansfield’s decision found it also unsupported in common law.”

  24. The Stupid! The Stupid! (to misquote Joseph Conrad).

    The Times thinks they’re being oh, so clever, by ignoring all other slavery, even that in places which later became part of the U.S., and starting the whole thing in 1619, when a bunch of hapless slaves, captured from the Portuguese by pirates, were traded for food and water — which shows that first “importation” of slavery into the 13 colonies was by accident, not the diabolical plan to build a country on the backs of African slaves.

    What would these morons be saying if the U.S. had been closer to the Mediterranean than to Africa, and the tobacco and cotton growers had bought white, Christian slaves from the Ottomans who handled the slave trade there? Racism didn’t beget slavery, slavery begat racism, as an excuse for maintaining the “peculiar institution.”

  25. The goals of this project are to delegitimize the Constitution and to blame “Anglos” for every possible sin and problem, ignoring all the Anglos who were responsible for outlawing slavery.

  27. Kate,

    That’s their game and it’s going to backfire on them. Lies that easily refuted cannot withstand the light of examination but wherein the real landmine for the NYT, supporting mass media and progressive left lies is in exposing the corruption of their souls.

    These are people who have embraced evil believing it justified by the righteousness of their cause. But righteous causes stand upon their own merits and need no deceit to demonstrate their veracity.

  28. “Slavery had never been authorized by statute in England and Wales, and Lord Mansfield’s decision found it also unsupported in common law.”

    It was authorized in most of the British colonies, by statutory law. I don’t know why you’re trading in this nonsense.

  29. If those British colonists had slaves, that was not legal.

    This was the story in Massachusetts:

    In 1641, Governor John Winthrop, a slave owner himself, helped write the first law legalizing slavery in North America, the Massachusetts Bodies of Liberty, which the General Court passed on December 10, 1641.

    This was followed by numerous laws governing slaves and their activities, such as marriage laws between slaves, curfews and taxes on slaves imported into Massachusetts.

    According to the Massachusetts Historical Society website, it wasn’t long before Massachusetts became engaged in what was called the Triangle Trade:

    “In 1644 Boston merchants began importing slaves directly from Africa, selling them in the West Indies, and bringing home sugar to make rum, initiating the so-called triangular trade. From 1672-1696 the British Parliament granted the Royal African Company a monopoly in the slave trade. Yankee slavers avoided the monopoly by smuggling slaves in through small coastal harbors. In 1681, John Saffin and other Boston merchants wrote to the shipmaster William Welstead, warning him that the authorities planned to seize a slave ship heading for Rhode Island, and that he should intercept the vessel and direct it to Nantasket to offload its human cargo. In 1696 the British Parliament revoked the monopoly held by the Royal African Company, enabling Massachusetts merchants and shipmasters to engage freely in the slave trade.”

    Link: https://historyofmassachusetts.org/slavery-in-massachusetts/

  30. Richard Saunders on August 27, 2019 at 8:02 pm said:

    Racism didn’t beget slavery, slavery begat racism, as an excuse for maintaining the “peculiar institution.”
    * * *
    Well said, and clearly seen in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

  31. Reparation are owed o the Americans, and “our Posterity”, who stood, when others kneeled, and sacrificed blood and treasure to confront the progress of involuntary exploitation, redistributive change, and diversity.

  32. Surprised no one mentioned that in 1619 slaves were also white. Not just in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire either: in 1606 Scotland established slavery in coal mines by statute. In 1597 England established slavery for convicts in the colonies by Act of Parliament.

    In 1685 in the wake of the Monmouth Rebellion 850 men in Taunton were enslaved and transported to the West Indies.

    In between those two times, the coasts of Britain were raided by slave ships from North Africa, at times daily. Two of Samuel Pepys’ drinking buddies had been slaves, as he recounts in his diary in 1661:

    Here I met with many sea commanders, and among others Captain Cuttle, and Curtis, and Mootham, and I, went to the Fleece Tavern to drink; and there we spent till four o’clock, telling stories of Algiers, and the manner of the life of slaves there! And truly Captn. Mootham and Mr. Dawes (who have been both slaves there) did make me fully acquainted with their condition there: as, how they eat nothing but bread and water. At their redemption they pay so much for the water they drink at the public fountaynes, during their being slaves. How they are beat upon the soles of their feet and bellies at the liberty of their padron. How they are all, at night, called into their master’s Bagnard; and there they lie. How the poorest men do use their slaves best. How some rogues do live well, if they do invent to bring their masters in so much a week by their industry or theft; and then they are put to no other work at all.

  33. We are all slaves now aside, I thought England got rid of slavery with the neo Viking Norman’s after 1066. Then nailed the heart of slavery with habeus corpus in 19th century, actively warring on slave nations…. we should be thanking christians, not begging for alms prodded by revolutionaries.

  34. “The history, magnitude, and metrics, of slavery in North America” opinions are entertaining.

    Slavery no longer has a place in the conversation of American PoliSci, economics, legislature, or “Social” justice.
    Anything else?
    I DEMAND that “we” bring the issue of water wheel powered energy for reintroduction of American domestic manufacturing of recreational hemp byproduct /cotton/ recovered plastic textile fabrication, and invasive wild pig leather footwear/lederhosen manufacture, BACK into the “National Conversation” !!!!!
    …or something.

  35. The NYT wants self-fulfilling (false) accusation – that current whites are white supremacists and white nationalists and bad.

    Because of the false accusations, many whites will feel bad, and many of these will find comfort in white nationalism. The NYT and the Dems want there to be white nationalists, so as to have an Enemy to hate.

    The real purpose is to increase white nationalism, and tribal hate between varying Americans. They lie to themselves to avoid “seeing” their real purpose. In their minds, their pure intentions are better than any impure acceptance of actual reality. (Is lying to yourself “thinking”? … earlier post)

    They have an emotional need to hate Reps, and creating white nationalists is to help satisfy their emotional need to hate the Other.

  36. The logical continuation of Sowell’s thoughts are that once people of European descent are ultimately exterminated from the Earth or reduced to insignificant numbers, people of sub-Saharan descent will once again be enslaved by the remaining races of people. As it is, it’s only because of pressure from the West that slavery is (technically) prohibited in the Muslim world today. China has also been dabbling in pseudo-slavery in Africa for decades, but has found the labor lacking.

  37. The goals of this project are to delegitimize the Constitution and to blame “Anglos” for every possible sin and problem,

    That is one aim but it is also important for the black activists to credit themselves with more importance and potential wealth (reparations) they have not earned. The white leftists who, for example, have established a separate Physics course for “Diversity” allowing the unqualified to pretend they are capable of merit.

    One would hope such “diversity projects” would include a label indicating which bridges or airplanes have been designed by such graduates.

  38. In the meantime a malicious transgender piece of work calling itself a “she”, broke into Capitol One and stole millions of records; which it tried to peddle in the Internet.

    I guess CNN reported it last month. If it was front page news, I missed it.

    Thank Gaia for the mentally, emotionally, and morally ill … they add so much to our lives …

  40. Geez … Capital One. And I consciously tried to avoid doing that “o” thing.. Maybe that is why I did.

  41. Tom G on August 28, 2019 at 9:23 am said:
    …The NYT and the Dems want there to be white nationalists, so as to have an Enemy to hate.
    * * *
    A provocative thought, and for some of the activists I suspect it is true, even if they are not consciously aware that is what they are doing.
    For others, it’s a deliberate outcome.

  42. Frederick on August 28, 2019 at 2:56 am said:
    …
    In 1685 in the wake of the Monmouth Rebellion 850 men in Taunton were enslaved and transported to the West Indies.
    * * *
    You reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Rafael Sabatini, and his historical novel of that period, which I particularly like; I am fond of all of his books.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Blood_(novel)

    Sabatini was a proponent of basing historical fiction as closely as possible on history. Although Blood is a fictional character, much of the historical background of the novel is based on fact.[1] The Monmouth rebels were sold into slavery as described in the book; and the shifting political alliances of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 are used in the novel as a plot device to allow Blood’s return to respectability.

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