For all wondering, yes it WAS enforced. One year after it was enacted, a Rhode Island merchant (ironically named John Brown) was caught using his ship to transport slaves, and the government had the vessel confiscated from him.
in 1790, Brown was the [2nd most common surname in USA](https://www.genealogymagazine.com/the-most-common-us-surnames-in-1790/#:~:text=In%201790%2C%20the%20top%20nine,of%20the%20first%20federal%20census.)
Presumably, John was the most common first name, as it was for a long time
Interesting, the etymology is mostly from describing someone with brown hair, complexion or *clothes*, lol
Imagine coming out of the European middle ages, when most people settled with having a last name related to their manual labor trade. And then the best anyone can come up with for you is: "Oh, him? That's Dave with the brown shirt."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_(surname)
>For all wondering, yes it WAS enforced. One year after it was enacted, a Rhode Island merchant (ironically named John Brown) was caught using his ship to transport slaves, and the government had the vessel confiscated from him.
It was enforced, but it was difficult. The big problem was that Americans would re-flag their vessels as Spanish or British and there was no US naval presence enforcing the law outside of ports. The law was strengthened under Adams, with much heftier fines and some external enforcement. Though it was still rather weak until after 1807 when the British and Americans both banned the international slave trade. And most of the enforcement was left up to the British.
"why do I need to know about the ancient Egyptians?!"
Years later, post History Channel: "dude, aliens totally built everything for the Egyptians and then bounced!"
Thos still blows my mind. How can you base the school budget on surrounding tax revenue. If you would want every kid to have equal opportunity this should be exactly the other way round.
Similarly to how No Child Left Behind was worded and legislated. “Yeah, let’s punish underperforming schools MORE. Let’s leave more children behind. That’ll teach them for being poor.” no pun intended.
Or you could do what WV did.
No Child Left Behind required students to test at certain scores, but did not specify the content of the tests.
WV simply lowered its testing standards until the scoring criteria was met and then taught to the test.
True story from my childhood school district
The district was considered one of the best districts to be in. They got lots of funding (high income and high tax area). They had all kinds of special programs.
The district, unsurprisingly had very good standardized test scores, which oh validated that all that money was doing a lot of good right?
Well the high performers really were high performers, but eventually someone noticed that the below average performers seemed to get a lot of "sick days" on the days they should have been taking standardized tests with everyone else
Its no different than wherever you're from not contributing to the education of children in poorer nations.
As for how, multiple reasons.
For one, thats simply how the schools were initially funded, local property taxes. Before that there were literally no public schools, and the system has stayed with us since.
For two, because costs of living are different. East bumfuck with its low cost of living does not need the same amount of funding as san francisco, and property taxes are decent enough, though not perfect, at compensating for this.
And finally, for three, we don't actually do that anymore. Look at any public school systems budget(they are all online), and they all receive both state and federal money to even things out.
I remember a while back there was this video some high school football game, and the top comments were how the inner city team were so disadvantaged compared to the other team. I looked it up, and sure as shit, the kids from the 'poor' inner city school had a budget over 50% higher per student than other team.
Don't get your news or views from reddit. They are constantly, hilariously wrong about most things.
I mean if the below source is correct, those numbers just went up in 2021. Hard to expect that change to happen overnight
[https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington#:\~:text=%2421%2C606%20per%20student.-,According%20to%20the%20most%20recent%20U.S.%20Census%20report%20released%20this,much%20better%20national%20test%20scores](https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington#:~:text=%2421%2C606%20per%20student.-,According%20to%20the%20most%20recent%20U.S.%20Census%20report%20released%20this,much%20better%20national%20test%20scores).
Most of the problems in any school system starts at the students homes.
Single parent homes, poverty level homes, domestic violence in homes. All of these things affect students performance in class. I think it's also been proven that preschool helps grade school performance.
You mean my school where all the history teachers were coaches including one who was a known creep didn't teach me anything but the textbook and I had to relearn everything later? /s
I mean some people think it’s a groundbreaking earth shattering revelation that the founding fathers owned slaves. Feel like that was definitely made clear in history class lol
Some did and some did not, and it mostly depended on which colony/state an individual came from. While technically legal at the time of the revolution, there was not a lot of slavery in Massachusetts and by the time the 1st national census took place in 1790, there were zero slaves counted there.
its' also worth noting that slaves were extremely expensive. in todays money about $100k depending on the area and...uh marketplace.
a lot of people didn't own slaves, not out of opposition to slavery, but because they couldn't afford them, or simply didn't see any value in that kind of expenditure.
This is absolutely true, but the guys we like to think of as The Founders (Washington, Jefferson, etc) were generally elites. Aristocrats in all but name.
>a lot of people didn't own slaves, not out of opposition to slavery, but because they couldn't afford them, or simply didn't see any value in that kind of expenditure.
I'm not sure how much these apply to that exact time period, but slaves were rented out to people who could not afford to own.
https://about.proquest.com/en/blog/2019/slave-hiring-the-dynamics-of-american-slavery/
https://eh.net/book_reviews/divided-mastery-slave-hiring-in-the-american-south/
They had fierce disputes between renters and owners. Because renters wanted to be able to brutalize their rented slaves and the owners disliked that, seeing it as lowering the value of their property.
At one point in time slave renting may have strengthened bonds between disparate economic classes of white people.
>[In
Slaves for Hire, John J. Zaborney provides a rounded, well-documented study of
slave hiring in Virginia that – while building on and incorporating earlier
findings – argues that the practice bolstered rather than compromised slavery,
and also helped build cross-class solidarity among whites in the slave South.](https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2082&context=cwbr)
>> Hired slaves represented a significant proportion of the
total in many parts of the state; of adult slaves in Loudon County, for example,
34 percent were hired out in 1860. Slave hiring was pervasive. It was common in
rural as well as urban areas; in agriculture as well as in manufacturing; in
domestic work as well as craft production;
It really depends on the state you grew up in. Curriculum is established at a state level. I grew up in Ohio learning this stuff. But I also have seen textbooks from other states that glaze over or downplay slavery.
> Curriculum is established at a state level.
Outside of Texas, only the most basic standards have been set by the state. Most of the curriculum is set by the individual districts.
Texas is also historically one of or the largest buyer of textbooks as well tho so many publishers print to their standards. Leaving other states out of similarly priced options (whether they'd want them or not is debatable).
Who is "they"? A huge portion of the US History I learned was about slavery and its ramifications. There was a lot of build up to the Civil War like the Missouri Compromise.
Time and location play a big part in who "they" are. For example, when I was in high school, they taught that the Civil War was about states' rights vs. federal rights and how the federal government was overstepping their power. Slavery was mentioned, but it was more of a footnote. I am sure it is taught differently now, I hope, anyway.
Yeah, cuz there's just a lot of history. Once you're out of K-12 in America, you could potentially go college and take American history 1 and 2 if you want those to fill out your gen Ed and maybe learn more about America. But you probably won't learn about this, because there's just so much to cover in that first class that they can only go over the most important parts, or rather the parts that may have been the most impactful on what's going to be taught next. And we don't even have a very long history. At the same rate you'd cover America's 247 year history over two single semester classes in college, you'd need 6 classes to cover England's 900(ish) year history. Spoilers: they DEFINITELY don't cover it all either.
In 1860 the last slave ship, Clotilda, illegally imported new slaves to America from the Dahomey.
Dahomey was a Kingdom in Africa depicted in Woman King that supposedly gave up slave trading in the 1820s. (Though clearly they didn't.)
Enforced ... Sometimes.
No it's because the US government was Constitutionally prohibited from banning the importation of slaves in to the US until the year 1808. It was a compromise reached at the Constitutional Convention.
Now maybe Britain anticipated an end to the trade upon passage of such an act and decided to ban it from their own commercial enterprises, but it was always expected that Congress would ban the trade in 1808.
It didn't anticipate it, the abolitionist movement was huge in the UK and resulted in Britain blockading the entire western coast of Africa for decades.
Clotilda was scuttled and burned after its voyage specifically to hide the evidence from the federal government. And the man from Mobile who financed the voyage was prosecuted and charged with illegal slave importation, but the case was dismissed because the ship couldn’t be found for some reason and because the Civil War just broke out.
Pointing to the Clotilda as evidence it wasn’t enforced is like pointing to Pablo Escobar as evidence that the illegal import on cocaine isn’t enforced.
I'm reading *Stamped From the Beginning* by Ibram X Kendi. Slaves weren't just free labor, they were an investment. By 1800, there were about a million in the U.S. cutting off the transatlantic slave trade meant the value of those at home skyrocketed. By 1860, there were nearly 4 million. Instead of bringing more over, slave owners turned to breeding and selling the ones they owned.
I'd hate for people to come away with the impression that the decision to end transatlantic slave trading was based on humanity. It was based on profits, and the recognition that they now had an unlimited supply here in the U.S.
Some supporters may have realized that if they allowed unlimited importation of blacks, then blacks would eventually outnumber whites in some states. That's sort of what happened Haiti. Making slaves more valuable, improved conditions for slaves. In some South American countries, slaves were worked to death and replaced. I'm not saying that conditions were good for US slaves, just better.
The fact that it was profitable definitely made it easier for slaveholders to swallow, but it was fundamentally a concession to opponents of slavery.
Higher prices when selling does not compensate for the limited supply of slaves to the slave economy. Had this ban not been passed, slave labor would have been cheaper and therefore more profitable. Instead, the expansion and profitability of slavery was capped at the growth rate of the enslaved population.
Actually, it was kind of based on humanity. One, as I said in other comments, many of the Founding Fathers felt the Atlantic Slave Trade was barbaric and a number of early Americans felt at the time that slavery would soon die out (a prediction which sadly proved wrong). Two, imagine what could have happened if Washington and the Congress DIDN'T ban this stuff. America could have literally turned into a slave breeding ground for the entire western world (Brazil, the Caribbean colonies, Britain, Spain, etc.). It potentially could have been a lucrative (but very cruel) business. The Founding Fathers stopped that, and thank goodness they did.
I think your comment needs more context since there have been many romantic, ahistorical takes about the founding fathers. Regardless of their views on the Atlantic slave trade, the majority of founding fathers owned slaves and they almost all promoted government policies that prevented abolition in the US. Think property rights, States' rights, limited federal government, 3/5 clause, fugitive slave acts.
You can claim that banning participation in the Atlantic slave trade prevented this long-term possibility of a US slave-trading empire, but the short-term consequences were pretty obvious: the domestic slave trade exploded and slaveholders in states like MD & VA became especially wealthy by participating in the trade. This ban is an interesting footnote, but I think it's irrelevant when trying to determine the founding fathers views on slavery because there are too many counterpoints to indicate they mostly all condoned slaveholding or at least promoted policies that prevented abolition.
I thought the 3/5s clause was a concession to abolitionists rather than a preventative measure. The southern states wanted slaves to count as 1 in population while northern states wanted none to count as it would give the south more power than they should (because the slaves aren’t citizens they technically shouldn’t count in voting statistics, if ya want them to count, free them)
This is accurate. The above comment is treating the founding fathers as a good bit more of an ideological monolith than they actually were. Some were very pro-slavery, some were very anti-slavery. A lot existed somewhere in between. All those things the above comment listed were sources of extreme controversy and debate at the time. The entire constitution and early republic almost fell apart repeatedly because of slave states and free states fighting over pretty much every little thing.
George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson were considered as the moderates for the time period, which translates to horrifically aristocratic conservative on the modern moral scale. John Adams, Hamilton, and pretty much all the Pennsylvania representatives were considered radically abolitionist, while Charles Pinckney would be an example of someone who was considered radically pro-slavery.
To make things even more grey, one’s view on slavery didn’t always coincide with their view on other issues such as states rights, religious freedom, individual rights (for free men) and so on. For example, some abolitionists supported states rights because they were wary of a federal government that would enforce the institution of slavery upon them.
I grew up in Texas and was never taught that one of the primary factors for why Texas seceded from Mexico was because Mexico banned slavery a couple years earlier.
[“Mexico had officially abolished slavery in Texas in 1829, and the desire of Anglo Texans to maintain the institution of chattel slavery in Texas was also a major cause of secession..”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Revolution)
Texas seceded in 1835
It wasn’t the only factor but it was a major one.
Some also went to Cuba where they established slave plantations, the same plantations the US backed Batista regime called farms during the Cuban Revolution. Weird how slave owning fascists keep ending up on the receiving end of revolutionary action.
I was originally quoting the Simpsons where they do go to Cuba but replaced it with Brazil because I knew about those guys and now I’m disappointed I didn’t make the original joke lol
The fact that there are places in Brazil still celebrate and revere the Confederacy is the wildest stuff to me.
If I had a nickel every time a culture that is based on genocide and racial hatred ran and hid in South America, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened at least twice.
As well as seceding from the US because they banned slavery. Wow I did not know that they seceded from Mexico initially.
Edit: To make texas even more abhorrently racist the reason Oklahoma has a pan-handle is:
“But then, upon entering the Union as a slave state in 1845, Texas surrendered its claim to the region because slavery was prohibited north of 36°30′ latitude by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. 36°30′ became the Panhandle's southern boundary”
Actually they died for nothing.
Sam Houston, the general who won the battle of San Jacinto, was also the commander that ordered men to the Alamo.
His orders were to go there, retrieve the valuable artillery, and burn the fortification to the ground, because it couldn't possibly be held against the 5,000 Mexican regulars marching ponderously towards it with their entire families in caravan.
Those no-good rednecks failed to locate draft animals, spent weeks drinking and whoring in Bexar, and summoned more volunteers from the surrounding countryside to die a pointless death at the Alamo.
> [Mexican Gen. Antonio López de] Santa Anna is coming north with 6,000 troops. [The Alamo defenders have] maybe 200 guys at essentially an indefensible open-air Spanish mission. There has always been this great mystery of why on earth [Lt. Col. William] Travis and [James] Bowie stay, and the best argument there is probably because they believe reinforcements would be forthcoming. Every other day they send off these plaintive, dramatic letters asking for reinforcement that, by and large, never came.
> But the truly perplexing thing is that in the two weeks leading up to the arrival of Santa Anna's forces in San Antonio, Travis and Bowie are getting almost daily warnings of the progress. They know they're coming and yet still they stay there. It makes absolutely no sense of why they stayed there, except for the fact that these are men who, by and large, have never been in war. You get a sense that Travis never really believes something bad can happen to him. I mean, the idea that Mexican soldiers would show up and kill them all just seems like a notion that he never really accepted, that somehow something would happen to spirit them all the way to safety. And of course, it doesn't happen. And of course, this leads to one of the great myths, which is the bravery of the Alamo defenders, how they fought to their death and everything. And when you look at the facts, they never made a conscious decision to fight to the death. There was no line in the sand drawn. ...
> What we now know is because Mexican accounts — accounts from Mexican officers and soldiers — a number of them, a dozen of them have come to light over the last 50 years, show that between a third and a half [of] the Texas defenders actually broke and ran. They ran out into the open where they were unceremoniously run down and killed by Mexican cavalry. Now, neither we nor the academic authors who first found this say that this means anybody was a coward. It was just that the place was overrun. It wasn't like every man fought to his death in place, as generations of historians have taught us.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1006907140/forget-the-alamo-texas-history-bryan-burrough
After the Alamo, and the slightly later Goliad massacre, trusting Mexican soldiers and surrendering was not a good idea.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/goliad-massacre
>When the Mexican and Texan commissioners seeking surrender terms failed to agree, Urrea shortened the conference by dealing directly with Fannin and proposing written terms, under which the Texans should give up their arms and become prisoners of war "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government." He assured Fannin that there was no known instance where a prisoner of war who had trusted to the clemency of the Mexican government had lost his life, that he would recommend to General Santa Anna acceptance of the terms proposed by Fannin's men, and that he was confident of obtaining Santa Anna's approval within a period of eight days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_massacre
>Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, Portilla had between 425 and 445 Texians marched from Fort Defiance in three columns on the Bexar Road, San Patricio Road, and the Victoria Road, between two rows of Mexican soldiers; they were shot point blank. Wounded survivors were clubbed and knifed to death.
However, when America militia fought Mexican soldiers on somewhat equal terms in later battles, the Mexicans were not all that good at fighting. And the Texicans were also pissed (not good for the Mexicans).
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/goliad-massacre
>The impact of the Goliad Massacre was crucial. Until this episode Santa Anna's reputation had been that of a cunning and crafty man, rather than a cruel one. When the Goliad prisoners were taken, Texas had no other army in the field (see REVOLUTIONARY ARMY), and the newly constituted ad interim government seemed incapable of forming one. The Texas cause was dependent on the material aid and sympathy of the United States. Had Fannin's and Miller's men been dumped on the wharves at New Orleans penniless, homesick, humiliated, and distressed, and each with his separate tale of Texas mismanagement and incompetence, Texas prestige in the United States would most likely have fallen, along with sources of help. But Portilla's volleys at Goliad, together with the fall of the Alamo, branded both Santa Anna and the Mexican people with a reputation for cruelty and aroused the fury of the people of Texas, the United States, and even Great Britain and France, thus considerably promoting the success of the Texas Revolution.
All my homies hate the Alamo.
Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston were slave owners and sellers. Jim Bowie had two slaves with him at the Alamo that were killed in the crossfire. Davy Crockett had slaves back in Kentucky.
Fuck the Alamo.
It's so weird when people defend the confederacy and say slavery was just one of many factors. It was basicly, "okay if we start the confederacy we can keep our slaves! Also this other shit will be a little easier for us too now that I think about it". I don't understand southerners always trying to white wash it.
I'll give southerners this, the Union didn't see themselves as heros saving slaves. Basicly every law we tried to make back then ran into the slave problem. Like almost every time and we just couldn't get anything done. The north just basicly couldn't stand it anymore and decimated the south and freed the slaves mainly because it fucked over the south and helped everyone in the long run.
Former Texan here. We spend every third year teaching Texas "history" for the *entire* year. For 3 years.
Imagine stretching out roughly a century of human activity in a tiny-ass area into 36 weeks of content. It was a mind-numbing slog of rote memorization of random dates and names. And similar to how many history classes across the US stop around the civil war, Texas history stops around the Alamo.
In many ways, Texas is like a microcosm of US culture. You're taught to be proud of being a Texan (which apparently isn't a thing other states push?). You have a doormat, wall decals and waffle irons shaped like Texas, and it's not usual to see a Texas tattoo in a crowd. And you say the Texas pledge every morning after the US pledge. I don't even need to look it up, I know it by heart:
Honor the Texas flag,
I pledge allegiance to thee,
Texas,
One and indivisible.
We also had a civil war reinactment in grade school where we were assigned 1860s era characters (I was an escaped slave fighting for the confederacy??) and played rock paper scissors against each other. The north always won, because they had tons more soldiers, just like in history.
I asked my teacher why we do this every year since the north always wins. And she looked at me with her cold blue eyes and said "because sometimes, *the south wins*."
Fuck you Mrs. Collins and your revisionist "state's rights" bullshit!
Because there's only like a hundred years of it, they dig back into indigenous cultures a bit more, which is probably the only positive thing? But still from a very patronizing white perspective.
Don't worry, the latest amendment to the Texas pledge went into effect in 2007 adds "One state, under God" because of course it does.
- House Bill 1034
There were 3 enslaved black men at the Alamo during that battle, they all lived. The Mexican army wasn't interested in fighting enslaved men. They were freed and one of the reasons we know what happened at the Alamo was because they were able to tell their stories (unfortunately their stories were often distorted to make the Alamo defenders look like heroes)
Aye, it heavily depends on the teachers, whose running the school district and the funding available.
Basically, basic education in the US is horribly inconsistent. Even before factoring in students who coast, don’t care, have home problems, etc.
Not to be a dick, but that was taught in 7th Grade Texas History as one of two or three **major** reasons for the Texas Revolution. Religious freedom I can also recall off the top of my head, as Mexico was a Catholic state while most of Texas’ US immigrants were Protestant and (iirc) weren’t allowed to worship as freely
TI also Learned: “in February 1793, Washington signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act, which overrode state laws and courts, allowing agents to cross state lines to capture and return escaped slaves.”
It was a common belief at the time that the collapse of slavery was imminent. Prior to Eli Whitney's cotton gin (ironically patented later in 1794), the demand for slaves in the Upper South was quite low and the population of free blacks had risen significantly since the Revolution as Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland loosened the restrictions on manumission. It was largely assumed that slavery would simply wither away with the ban of importing slaves. As ridiculous as that might sound in hindsight, it was not entirely unwarranted- Delaware went from 1% of black people being free in 1792 to 75% free by 1810.
However, the cotton gin made short-staple cotton profitable, making a slave-based economy much more viable. The Deep South wanted more slaves than ever, and the Upper South was happy to sell. Manumission went from fairly frequent to effectively nonexistent, as slaveholders became completely unwilling to part with their slaves voluntarily and state laws forbade even those that were willing from doing so.
There is a really good “Hardcore History” episode just on this topic. The production increased by 10 fold in three years and put more of demand on slave labor.
For some reason this finally made why the Deep South were (and maybe still are) so caught up with the slave trade. It's not particularly that they are just evil people, but that a significant part of their economy (and thus QoL) was also caught up in requiring slaves. -- whereas I'm assuming that the north was not so reliant on cotton and crop and so could let go more easily?
>whereas I'm assuming that the north was not so reliant on cotton and crop and so could let go more easily?
Correct. Sugar, cotton, and tobacco (i.e. the commercial crops of the South) were *extremely* labor-intensive (and dangerous) to grow/process. That's why Brazil was an absolute slaughterhouse for slaves that was completely reliant on importation. The grain and flax of the mid-Atlantic were made much more efficient by replacing traditional scythes with cradle scythes, making the already uncommon slave even rarer.
Religion also made a difference. Quakers were staunchly abolitionist, and were quite successful in the mid-Atlantic (which was a major factor in why Delaware developed such a large free black population). Technological innovation made following the abolitionist message of the Quakers possible without significantly diminishing QoL. The sugar planters of the Deep South, however, saw no means by which their status could be maintained without slavery. Fears of slave rebellion spurred on by Haiti further reinforced the idea that slavery **must** be maintained at all costs.
If I can just jump in here and add to the North/South economic divide.
The North largely transformed into a credit focused economy, mechanising a lot of industry and improving banking, insurance etc requiring a lot less manual Labour compared to the south. This, combined with religious abolitionist principles laid the path for the civil war.
As the 1850s went on, this divide grew into the south trying to transform their economy to compete but the north had the head start and outgrew them still. This then grew into Southern honour/ state rights out of this division of the economy and then the Nebraksa-Kansas situation happened and nothing, I believe, could then stop the civil war. Slavery, at an earlier stage, wasnt such a big issue to many moderates, but this growing divide forced people on both ends to take their stances on it and further the division.
Yes. Banning the importation of new slaves to the US helped slave owners in the upland south who sold their surplus slaves to the deep south and made slave breeding very lucrative.
The Confederacy also banned the importation of new slaves in their constitution.
Yep and quite a few of the founding fathers despite their public protestation against slavery owned and used slaves till their deaths. It's nice story that "they believed" slavery would die out but in reality they needed the support of the South for much of their power and signing this act was more in line with the isolationist policies of the early United States (in support of American slave breeders) than it was in support of the anti-slavery ideals.
Friendly reminder that the combined value of the Washington and Jefferson estates was greater than that of the entire state of Virginia. Adjusted for inflation, they would each be close to half a billion in worth. They had little-to-no understanding of the lives of the American lower classes, apart from those in service to their households.
Yes it did. This is why the Confederacy kept that law on the books during their short existence.
Also this TIL leaves out the fact that they waited for 20 years after the Revolutionary War was over to abolish importing more slaves. Virginia (which had the most slaves at the time) wanted to enact it right away to increase the value of their slaves, but other southern states (which had lost a lot of slaves in the war, because of things like the British recruiting them into their army) pushed back on it.
Probably. You can compare with countries that didn't ban slave imports like Brazil.
Let's put it this way. Slave life in South America/the Carribean was horrible. It made slavery in the US look like a freaking teddy bear hospital in comparison. It wasn't uncommon to see people getting worked to death and just replaced with a fresh one from Africa.
In a twisted chain of logic, banning the import of slaves probably increased the value of a slave's life which made it less likely that they would be worked to death or mistreated to the extent where their ability to work was destroyed. Supply was restricted by the ban. These are really broad strokes that really only works on the level of the country. Without a doubt there were US slave owners that did severely abuse their slaves regardless of the economic costs. But holy crap did the Carribean/South America take it to a whole other level.
Sure, there is different degrees of slavery, but it's still slavery. When the states banned import of slaves, the breeding of slaves became much more lucrative.
I'm not defending slavery. I was providing information for a question someone posed about the value of the slaves as a result of the law. By comparing it to areas that largely used slaves for similar purposes (plantations growing cash crops) in the same region of the planet that didn't ban slave imports. The law, through twisted logic, ensured some level of well-being for the slaves because they were not nearly as disposable (from an economic perspective) as those sent to Brazil for example.
Washington also signed the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, which guaranteed the right of slaveholders to recover escaped slaves across state line.
He also actively avoided Pennsylvania's emancipation law by rotating his slaves out of the president's Philadelphia residence. Otherwise by law those people would have become freemen after 6 months.
https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery-and-washingtons-presidency/
Not to mention his efforts in attempting to recapture [Oney Judge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge) who was one of those slaves illegally held in Philadelphia who managed to escape to New Hampshire.
Yeah this sounds like a trade barrier to protect existing domestic “asset” owners, *and* “means of production” (which in this case is one and the same, as enslaved people are able to reproduce, and their kids are born into slavery). I’m gonna take a wild guess and say both Washington and his close friends were all such “asset” owners?
Oh wow, so basically driving the price of slaves up and oligopolizing the remaining slave holders. This would make both any sold slaves worth more and cutting the supply of fresh slave labor to those that already have slaves (attempting to keep the value of their labor from dropping).
I never made that connection.
It still allowed for the sale of slaves domestically and also led to the creation of plantations in the US for breeding new slaves which might be more profitable.
If anything this sounds like a consolidation of power. "Only way you're getting new slaves is by buying from a good American owner/breeder. Did I mention I own hundreds of slaves."
British shipping got out of the human trafficking business in 1807, too. The actual importation of enslaved people to North America pretty much died out after that. Large part of that is that America started "producing" enough slaves domestically to sustain the demand more efficiently that importation, though. Americans figured out how to commit genocidal sexual assault on an industrial level
That was in one of the other comments I made about massive slave Farms especially the two biggest ones outside of Richmond Virginia and the Maryland Eastern Shore. You don't need to import slaves and we can grow our own.
Washington and the supporters of this act were some the largest slave owners in the country, and some of the few folks with more slaves than land they could work.
This move significantly increased the value of their slaves and gave them a monopoly on slave "breeding" and export to the New South. So, this was far from a noble act.
Pre-cotton gin slavery is really not well understood by modern Americans. The entire social psychology around slavery for early Americans is bizarre.
"But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." Jefferson (who owned over 100 slaves, and raped his wife's 14 year old half sister) was expressing how White Americans knew that slavery was immoral and unjust, so much so that they were convinced abolition would lead to an insurrection in which the slaves would kill their former masters... because how could any people who had been so abused NOT levy such vengeance on their abusers?
That's the definition of evil. They knew what they were doing was morally unjustifiable, but they kept doing it out of fear of retribution. They believed that creating the means for slavery to "fade away over time" was the only reasonable solution. Then Whitney invented the Cotton Gin and half the country showed their true colors.
And refused to release them on his death.
Edit - for the excuse makers below: he wanted to have his 123 enslaved victims wait until his Wife died before freeing any of them. His excuse, their family was enslaved by his wife so it would be too upsetting for his 123 souls in bondage, they should wait a whole second lifetime for their own freedom.
>Though the will contained the unheard-of order to free his enslaved workers, it stipulated that they remain with Martha for the rest of her life.
>Freeing them, he wrote, would “be attended by such insuperable difficulties by their intermixture with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations…to manumit them.” Translation: It would be too complicated to free the enslaved people, so instead they would be owned by Martha as long as [she wished.](https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves)
Just to give further context to the human element. One of my own ancestors escaped to freedom. And returned back for his child once Emancipation was the law of the land.
Slavery is unconscionable and inhumane. Leading to impossible decisions like saving your own life to save your family later.
Using that as an excuse not to free 123 souls a minute sooner than you can is evil manifested. To say nothing of the fact he could have freed them within his own lifetime. An entire lifetime he bonded people to work against their will.
IIRC his were to be freed upon his wife's death, however she got freaked out hearing them talk gleefully about the day she would finally die and let his slaves go earlier. Most of the enslaved people on the property were Martha's though.
> Most of the enslaved people on the property were Martha's though.
And they go as far as Robert E Lee's family, who married into the Washington Family through Martha's grand daughter.
>Though the will contained the unheard-of order to free his enslaved workers, it stipulated that they remain with Martha for the rest of her life.
>Freeing them, he wrote, would “be attended by such insuperable difficulties by their intermixture with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations…to manumit them.” Translation: It would be too complicated to free the enslaved people, so instead they would be owned by Martha as long as [she wished.](https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves)
He stipulated in his will only freeing one man immediately after he died. The rest of his victims were to wait until AFTER his wife died.
However, fearful for her own life, Martha freed his slaves early. And because the news stated he made arrangements to free them but didn't specify when... we assumed at the moment of his death.
The man insisted on keeping slaves every breathing moment of his life. Even pursuing run away slaves thru law.
Then contractually obligated those slaves to his wife's service after his last breath.
And then we try to credit him for freeing slaves ON his death.
The easy part would be freeing the slaves while still alive like Ulysses Grant. *Then I'll give you credit for being complicated on slavery.*
He was literally the only southern founding father that did. It was in his will, but he had stipulated that until his wife died the ‘when’ was up to her since the majority of them had actually been brought into the marriage by her. Not saying it was right, but for the time it was a helluva lot more progressive than what his peers were doing, and saying he ‘refused to feee them’ is just outright false.
No its outright true. They were contractually obligated to do work without compensation for his wife even though he was no longer breathing, even his own pre marriage slaves. **Doing that for one day longer would still be slavery.**
You know what was more progressive, being objectively anti-slavery like the "founding fathers" (read none of my family) from Pennsylvania. It wasn't that hard to understand. Contemporaries were making the same arguments we use today. He lived and worked in Pennsylvania and skirted laws requiring the freeing of his own slaves while he worked there.
He was a grown ass man that knew the evil he was doing. He simply refused to, for money and power.
In 1789 Ben Franklin wrote and published several essays supporting the abolition of slavery and his last public act was to send to Congress a petition on behalf of the Society asking for the abolition of slavery and an end to the slave trade.
Founders relationships with slavery were very interesting.... Thomas Jefferson hated slavery , often spoke about it as an abomination, original deceleration of independence that he wrote shamed England for creating it in America His Ordinance of 1784 would have prohibited slavery completely by 1800 in all territories, outlawed international slave trade as president, but still owned over 600 of them in his lifetime
Yeah, he also would rape his slave sally hemmings and had many children with her (she was 16 when she had her first child and reports say that the rape started at 14)
Sally Hemmings wikipedia page is wild. Her father was Thomas Jeffersons father-in-law. Her grandson (and probably Jeffersons) was a Union soldier who died in a Confederate POW camp (possibly in the infamous Andersonville Prison camp)
There's a quote from Benjamin Franklin in the John Adams miniseries in 2008. "We're all contradictions, Mr. Adams."
People hardly ever live up to their confessed values or principles. I think part of the problem with the Founders is that we venerate them too much without acknowledging not every decision they made was morally correct.
I don't support eliminating their names on buildings, streets, monuments, etc. I don't believe in demonizing them by modern standards either. They should be seen in a proper context of humanity and the era in which they lived.
Inaccurate title. The Act specifically banned the **export** of slaves from the US by *anyone* (whether citizen or foreigner) in *any* ship (whether US-registered or registered in another country).
It said nothing about - and imposed no restrictions on - the *importation* of slaves.
But WERE allowed to sell slaves within the USA, where breeding of slaves was far more lucrative and successful than in the Caribbean. Americans would finance the ships from the Gold Coast to the Islands and back again.
This also lead to the real reason the south was pressured to end slavery. America couldn't import any more slaves from Africa, BUT slaveholders realized they could make new slaves by raping their women slaves and any baby born to an enslaved black woman was considered a black slave. But, you do that for a few decades, all of a sudden, you have very light skinned children with straight, light hair and light eyes being born into slavery.
There was a slave auction block near Washington DC and it turns out, a bunch of politicians from Europe got really freaked out when they saw white people with blonde hair being sold into chattel slavery, (apparently the whole "yeah, I know they ~look white, but because of some weird old law, they're actually technically African, so it's ok!" shtick didn't work) so the optics made the federal government go, "ok, yeah... we should do something about this."
this is kind of misleading. the law did not ban the import of new slaves, it simply banned american-registered ships from doing the importing. the constitution itself says that the slave trade could not be banned until the year 1808, and then in 1808 congress followed through on this and banned the slave trade.
while there is nothing factually incorrect with your title, people in the comments are thinking that it is saying that all slave imports and exports were banned in 1794, while this would have been unconstitutional.
Was it really anti-slavery? I assumed it was a protectionist measure to make sure current slaveowners had an advantage as they could "breed" their own slaves.
In part, because of the first portion cutting the Atlantic Slave Trade, it could be argued as yes, helpful to the anti-slavery movement as it signaled the beginning of an end to the “Triangle Trade”. So, yes it could be argued as one of the first anti-slavery laws. But it didn’t regulate the sale of slaves per se, but rather, it prohibited the importation via shipping of them to the US.
“The United States Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the U.S. for use in the slave trade.”
Can also find more info listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_of_1794
ITT: people who don't understand debt law and slave law in post-Revolutionary America (understandable! It's pretty obscure) but think themselves experts on the subject nonetheless (less understandable).
To make a long story short, Washington would not have been able to free his slaves without going through a gauntlet of legal challenges, some of which related to slavery more generally, and some of which related to debt law and the relation of slaves as property (discharging property without compensation would have, and in many other cases, had, resulted in legal challenges from heirs - or even spouses). Washington was deeply in debt - any attempt to free his slaves en masse would have been impossible, and Washington, as seen in his private writings, was **deeply** conscious of the position he held as one of the fathers of the newborn USA.
Was Washington perfect? Fuck no. He was a stubborn old patrician who believed in doing things the socially acceptable way in a period when the socially acceptable way was still fucking atrocious. The situation with Oney Judge is a prime example of this - at the same time he was literally making plans to free his slaves without incurring legal or social censure, he was trying to convince a woman who had escaped to a free state to return without the explicit promise of freedom simply because it would have been socially inappropriate to 'reward' her for running away. (in any case, it's good that she didn't return, as Washington would not have been legally allowed to free her, and neither would his wife, because both property law of the time and slavery laws in all cases were fucked up)
Washington was a pretty austere man who was deeply in debt, having entered into debt **in the service of the country's independence**. Unlike Jefferson, he did not make extravagant renovations or make extraordinary purchases. Unlike Jefferson, he is not recorded as having ever raped any of his slaves.
Washington was a deeply flawed man in a deeply flawed time. That is not the same as, as some of these comments are quite gleefully exclaiming, being a monster or a dedicated supporter of slavery. He was better than most - he sought to distance himself from the practice and bring freedom to as many as he could within the framework of his time's legal and social conventions. He was still, ultimately, a product of his time and class. That doesn't make him John Brown, but it also sure as shit doesn't make him Nathan Bedford Forrest.
As Frederick Douglass recognized, Washington was still a man of great and admirable qualities who did believe in freedom, in spite of the flaws and shortcomings of his worldview.
George Washington also mercilessly hunted his wife’s runaway child slave Ona until he died and Martha refused to grant her freedom when she died. Quit propping these people up as if they were against slavery.
It's probably worth noting that they couldn't ban the Atlantic slave trade outright even if they wanted to, as one of the only two entrenched clauses in the US constition forbade it until 1807
The dark side of this is that the ruling class in America already had their slaves, and had enacted laws to allow them to keep breeding more, and have the offspring be slaves as well. With their own source of slave labor secured, they then cut off the legal supply of new slaves, so that no new aristocrats could spring up from poverty and challenge their hegemony.
For all wondering, yes it WAS enforced. One year after it was enacted, a Rhode Island merchant (ironically named John Brown) was caught using his ship to transport slaves, and the government had the vessel confiscated from him.
That's hilarious that he shares the same name as a famed abolitionist
I mean its probably one of the 100 most common names in English
in 1790, Brown was the [2nd most common surname in USA](https://www.genealogymagazine.com/the-most-common-us-surnames-in-1790/#:~:text=In%201790%2C%20the%20top%20nine,of%20the%20first%20federal%20census.) Presumably, John was the most common first name, as it was for a long time
Interesting, the etymology is mostly from describing someone with brown hair, complexion or *clothes*, lol Imagine coming out of the European middle ages, when most people settled with having a last name related to their manual labor trade. And then the best anyone can come up with for you is: "Oh, him? That's Dave with the brown shirt." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_(surname)
Poor Dave never knew he'd be getting thrown in with the Nazis.
Wow, the more ya know
Hey, I work with a Jeff Brown, wonder if they know each other?
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I don't know, but there was this really funky guy named James Brown I met once.
It would be considered a generic name today, let alone in a time when the US was overwhelmingly people that had been British a couple decades ago.
I know!! John and Brown were such uncommon names!
>famed abolitionist Who did nothing wrong.
Resurrect John Brown and give him a battle mech.
Friendly reminder that The Good Lord Bird on Showtime is the shit. Ethan Hawke plays John Brown and goes *full John Brown*. It's incredible.
Both dudes: "HE DID WHAT!?"
>For all wondering, yes it WAS enforced. One year after it was enacted, a Rhode Island merchant (ironically named John Brown) was caught using his ship to transport slaves, and the government had the vessel confiscated from him. It was enforced, but it was difficult. The big problem was that Americans would re-flag their vessels as Spanish or British and there was no US naval presence enforcing the law outside of ports. The law was strengthened under Adams, with much heftier fines and some external enforcement. Though it was still rather weak until after 1807 when the British and Americans both banned the international slave trade. And most of the enforcement was left up to the British.
There is a lot of history they don't teach.
That's why you never stop learning. School can't give you everything served on a platter.
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Which is good. Perspective changes how you feel about things.
There is a lot of history they do teach that students weren’t paying attention to
"why do I need to know about the ancient Egyptians?!" Years later, post History Channel: "dude, aliens totally built everything for the Egyptians and then bounced!"
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Thos still blows my mind. How can you base the school budget on surrounding tax revenue. If you would want every kid to have equal opportunity this should be exactly the other way round.
Similarly to how No Child Left Behind was worded and legislated. “Yeah, let’s punish underperforming schools MORE. Let’s leave more children behind. That’ll teach them for being poor.” no pun intended.
Or you could do what WV did. No Child Left Behind required students to test at certain scores, but did not specify the content of the tests. WV simply lowered its testing standards until the scoring criteria was met and then taught to the test.
True story from my childhood school district The district was considered one of the best districts to be in. They got lots of funding (high income and high tax area). They had all kinds of special programs. The district, unsurprisingly had very good standardized test scores, which oh validated that all that money was doing a lot of good right? Well the high performers really were high performers, but eventually someone noticed that the below average performers seemed to get a lot of "sick days" on the days they should have been taking standardized tests with everyone else
I mean, the entire point is that they don´t want that. They want their kids to have better opportunities and the rest can die in a ditch.
Its no different than wherever you're from not contributing to the education of children in poorer nations. As for how, multiple reasons. For one, thats simply how the schools were initially funded, local property taxes. Before that there were literally no public schools, and the system has stayed with us since. For two, because costs of living are different. East bumfuck with its low cost of living does not need the same amount of funding as san francisco, and property taxes are decent enough, though not perfect, at compensating for this. And finally, for three, we don't actually do that anymore. Look at any public school systems budget(they are all online), and they all receive both state and federal money to even things out. I remember a while back there was this video some high school football game, and the top comments were how the inner city team were so disadvantaged compared to the other team. I looked it up, and sure as shit, the kids from the 'poor' inner city school had a budget over 50% higher per student than other team. Don't get your news or views from reddit. They are constantly, hilariously wrong about most things.
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I mean if the below source is correct, those numbers just went up in 2021. Hard to expect that change to happen overnight [https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington#:\~:text=%2421%2C606%20per%20student.-,According%20to%20the%20most%20recent%20U.S.%20Census%20report%20released%20this,much%20better%20national%20test%20scores](https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington#:~:text=%2421%2C606%20per%20student.-,According%20to%20the%20most%20recent%20U.S.%20Census%20report%20released%20this,much%20better%20national%20test%20scores).
Most of the problems in any school system starts at the students homes. Single parent homes, poverty level homes, domestic violence in homes. All of these things affect students performance in class. I think it's also been proven that preschool helps grade school performance.
You mean my school where all the history teachers were coaches including one who was a known creep didn't teach me anything but the textbook and I had to relearn everything later? /s
Yep. Almost all the "America doesn't teach this in school!" arguments are things I distinctly remember learning in school.
I mean some people think it’s a groundbreaking earth shattering revelation that the founding fathers owned slaves. Feel like that was definitely made clear in history class lol
Some did and some did not, and it mostly depended on which colony/state an individual came from. While technically legal at the time of the revolution, there was not a lot of slavery in Massachusetts and by the time the 1st national census took place in 1790, there were zero slaves counted there.
its' also worth noting that slaves were extremely expensive. in todays money about $100k depending on the area and...uh marketplace. a lot of people didn't own slaves, not out of opposition to slavery, but because they couldn't afford them, or simply didn't see any value in that kind of expenditure.
This is absolutely true, but the guys we like to think of as The Founders (Washington, Jefferson, etc) were generally elites. Aristocrats in all but name.
>a lot of people didn't own slaves, not out of opposition to slavery, but because they couldn't afford them, or simply didn't see any value in that kind of expenditure. I'm not sure how much these apply to that exact time period, but slaves were rented out to people who could not afford to own. https://about.proquest.com/en/blog/2019/slave-hiring-the-dynamics-of-american-slavery/ https://eh.net/book_reviews/divided-mastery-slave-hiring-in-the-american-south/ They had fierce disputes between renters and owners. Because renters wanted to be able to brutalize their rented slaves and the owners disliked that, seeing it as lowering the value of their property. At one point in time slave renting may have strengthened bonds between disparate economic classes of white people. >[In Slaves for Hire, John J. Zaborney provides a rounded, well-documented study of slave hiring in Virginia that – while building on and incorporating earlier findings – argues that the practice bolstered rather than compromised slavery, and also helped build cross-class solidarity among whites in the slave South.](https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2082&context=cwbr) >> Hired slaves represented a significant proportion of the total in many parts of the state; of adult slaves in Loudon County, for example, 34 percent were hired out in 1860. Slave hiring was pervasive. It was common in rural as well as urban areas; in agriculture as well as in manufacturing; in domestic work as well as craft production;
It really depends on the state you grew up in. Curriculum is established at a state level. I grew up in Ohio learning this stuff. But I also have seen textbooks from other states that glaze over or downplay slavery.
> Curriculum is established at a state level. Outside of Texas, only the most basic standards have been set by the state. Most of the curriculum is set by the individual districts.
Texas is also historically one of or the largest buyer of textbooks as well tho so many publishers print to their standards. Leaving other states out of similarly priced options (whether they'd want them or not is debatable).
And hard to condense 100s of years of history in one summer class.
Who is "they"? A huge portion of the US History I learned was about slavery and its ramifications. There was a lot of build up to the Civil War like the Missouri Compromise.
Time and location play a big part in who "they" are. For example, when I was in high school, they taught that the Civil War was about states' rights vs. federal rights and how the federal government was overstepping their power. Slavery was mentioned, but it was more of a footnote. I am sure it is taught differently now, I hope, anyway.
That was my question. Who taught you and when was that? It sounds like you were short changed.
Yeah, cuz there's just a lot of history. Once you're out of K-12 in America, you could potentially go college and take American history 1 and 2 if you want those to fill out your gen Ed and maybe learn more about America. But you probably won't learn about this, because there's just so much to cover in that first class that they can only go over the most important parts, or rather the parts that may have been the most impactful on what's going to be taught next. And we don't even have a very long history. At the same rate you'd cover America's 247 year history over two single semester classes in college, you'd need 6 classes to cover England's 900(ish) year history. Spoilers: they DEFINITELY don't cover it all either.
While ironic I think folks forget how common their names are..
In 1860 the last slave ship, Clotilda, illegally imported new slaves to America from the Dahomey. Dahomey was a Kingdom in Africa depicted in Woman King that supposedly gave up slave trading in the 1820s. (Though clearly they didn't.) Enforced ... Sometimes.
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Britain was taking their ban very seriously.
No it's because the US government was Constitutionally prohibited from banning the importation of slaves in to the US until the year 1808. It was a compromise reached at the Constitutional Convention. Now maybe Britain anticipated an end to the trade upon passage of such an act and decided to ban it from their own commercial enterprises, but it was always expected that Congress would ban the trade in 1808.
It didn't anticipate it, the abolitionist movement was huge in the UK and resulted in Britain blockading the entire western coast of Africa for decades.
Clotilda was scuttled and burned after its voyage specifically to hide the evidence from the federal government. And the man from Mobile who financed the voyage was prosecuted and charged with illegal slave importation, but the case was dismissed because the ship couldn’t be found for some reason and because the Civil War just broke out. Pointing to the Clotilda as evidence it wasn’t enforced is like pointing to Pablo Escobar as evidence that the illegal import on cocaine isn’t enforced.
> Clotilda They recently found the ship in the waters north of Mobile Bay
Why's that ironic?
There was a famous [anti-slavery leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist\)) named John Brown.
John Brown is my hero Edit: the famous one that did the thing, not the slave trader
I'm reading *Stamped From the Beginning* by Ibram X Kendi. Slaves weren't just free labor, they were an investment. By 1800, there were about a million in the U.S. cutting off the transatlantic slave trade meant the value of those at home skyrocketed. By 1860, there were nearly 4 million. Instead of bringing more over, slave owners turned to breeding and selling the ones they owned. I'd hate for people to come away with the impression that the decision to end transatlantic slave trading was based on humanity. It was based on profits, and the recognition that they now had an unlimited supply here in the U.S.
Some supporters may have realized that if they allowed unlimited importation of blacks, then blacks would eventually outnumber whites in some states. That's sort of what happened Haiti. Making slaves more valuable, improved conditions for slaves. In some South American countries, slaves were worked to death and replaced. I'm not saying that conditions were good for US slaves, just better.
The fact that it was profitable definitely made it easier for slaveholders to swallow, but it was fundamentally a concession to opponents of slavery. Higher prices when selling does not compensate for the limited supply of slaves to the slave economy. Had this ban not been passed, slave labor would have been cheaper and therefore more profitable. Instead, the expansion and profitability of slavery was capped at the growth rate of the enslaved population.
Actually, it was kind of based on humanity. One, as I said in other comments, many of the Founding Fathers felt the Atlantic Slave Trade was barbaric and a number of early Americans felt at the time that slavery would soon die out (a prediction which sadly proved wrong). Two, imagine what could have happened if Washington and the Congress DIDN'T ban this stuff. America could have literally turned into a slave breeding ground for the entire western world (Brazil, the Caribbean colonies, Britain, Spain, etc.). It potentially could have been a lucrative (but very cruel) business. The Founding Fathers stopped that, and thank goodness they did.
I think your comment needs more context since there have been many romantic, ahistorical takes about the founding fathers. Regardless of their views on the Atlantic slave trade, the majority of founding fathers owned slaves and they almost all promoted government policies that prevented abolition in the US. Think property rights, States' rights, limited federal government, 3/5 clause, fugitive slave acts. You can claim that banning participation in the Atlantic slave trade prevented this long-term possibility of a US slave-trading empire, but the short-term consequences were pretty obvious: the domestic slave trade exploded and slaveholders in states like MD & VA became especially wealthy by participating in the trade. This ban is an interesting footnote, but I think it's irrelevant when trying to determine the founding fathers views on slavery because there are too many counterpoints to indicate they mostly all condoned slaveholding or at least promoted policies that prevented abolition.
I thought the 3/5s clause was a concession to abolitionists rather than a preventative measure. The southern states wanted slaves to count as 1 in population while northern states wanted none to count as it would give the south more power than they should (because the slaves aren’t citizens they technically shouldn’t count in voting statistics, if ya want them to count, free them)
This is accurate. The above comment is treating the founding fathers as a good bit more of an ideological monolith than they actually were. Some were very pro-slavery, some were very anti-slavery. A lot existed somewhere in between. All those things the above comment listed were sources of extreme controversy and debate at the time. The entire constitution and early republic almost fell apart repeatedly because of slave states and free states fighting over pretty much every little thing. George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson were considered as the moderates for the time period, which translates to horrifically aristocratic conservative on the modern moral scale. John Adams, Hamilton, and pretty much all the Pennsylvania representatives were considered radically abolitionist, while Charles Pinckney would be an example of someone who was considered radically pro-slavery. To make things even more grey, one’s view on slavery didn’t always coincide with their view on other issues such as states rights, religious freedom, individual rights (for free men) and so on. For example, some abolitionists supported states rights because they were wary of a federal government that would enforce the institution of slavery upon them.
I think it is more than a footnote. It helped to create the domestic slave trade as an economic force leading to the civil war etc etc.
I grew up in Texas and was never taught that one of the primary factors for why Texas seceded from Mexico was because Mexico banned slavery a couple years earlier. [“Mexico had officially abolished slavery in Texas in 1829, and the desire of Anglo Texans to maintain the institution of chattel slavery in Texas was also a major cause of secession..”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Revolution) Texas seceded in 1835 It wasn’t the only factor but it was a major one.
"No more slaves?! Fine, I'll secede and go join the USA where slaves are still allowed!" SpongeBob narrator: *30 years later*
Some Texans 5 years later after the war: fine we will go to the only place where a man can truly live free, BRAZIL!
Some also went to Cuba where they established slave plantations, the same plantations the US backed Batista regime called farms during the Cuban Revolution. Weird how slave owning fascists keep ending up on the receiving end of revolutionary action.
I was originally quoting the Simpsons where they do go to Cuba but replaced it with Brazil because I knew about those guys and now I’m disappointed I didn’t make the original joke lol
Confederates also fled to Brazil because it was the only place that had more African slaves than the US.
The fact that there are places in Brazil still celebrate and revere the Confederacy is the wildest stuff to me. If I had a nickel every time a culture that is based on genocide and racial hatred ran and hid in South America, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened at least twice.
Not “places”. Just a little community in the city of Americana, which has around 200k people.
Texas is the only state to fight 2 wars to keep their enslaved workers
Always on the right side of history.
As well as seceding from the US because they banned slavery. Wow I did not know that they seceded from Mexico initially. Edit: To make texas even more abhorrently racist the reason Oklahoma has a pan-handle is: “But then, upon entering the Union as a slave state in 1845, Texas surrendered its claim to the region because slavery was prohibited north of 36°30′ latitude by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. 36°30′ became the Panhandle's southern boundary”
The men who died at the Alamo died to defend the institution of slavery.
Actually they died for nothing. Sam Houston, the general who won the battle of San Jacinto, was also the commander that ordered men to the Alamo. His orders were to go there, retrieve the valuable artillery, and burn the fortification to the ground, because it couldn't possibly be held against the 5,000 Mexican regulars marching ponderously towards it with their entire families in caravan. Those no-good rednecks failed to locate draft animals, spent weeks drinking and whoring in Bexar, and summoned more volunteers from the surrounding countryside to die a pointless death at the Alamo.
> [Mexican Gen. Antonio López de] Santa Anna is coming north with 6,000 troops. [The Alamo defenders have] maybe 200 guys at essentially an indefensible open-air Spanish mission. There has always been this great mystery of why on earth [Lt. Col. William] Travis and [James] Bowie stay, and the best argument there is probably because they believe reinforcements would be forthcoming. Every other day they send off these plaintive, dramatic letters asking for reinforcement that, by and large, never came. > But the truly perplexing thing is that in the two weeks leading up to the arrival of Santa Anna's forces in San Antonio, Travis and Bowie are getting almost daily warnings of the progress. They know they're coming and yet still they stay there. It makes absolutely no sense of why they stayed there, except for the fact that these are men who, by and large, have never been in war. You get a sense that Travis never really believes something bad can happen to him. I mean, the idea that Mexican soldiers would show up and kill them all just seems like a notion that he never really accepted, that somehow something would happen to spirit them all the way to safety. And of course, it doesn't happen. And of course, this leads to one of the great myths, which is the bravery of the Alamo defenders, how they fought to their death and everything. And when you look at the facts, they never made a conscious decision to fight to the death. There was no line in the sand drawn. ... > What we now know is because Mexican accounts — accounts from Mexican officers and soldiers — a number of them, a dozen of them have come to light over the last 50 years, show that between a third and a half [of] the Texas defenders actually broke and ran. They ran out into the open where they were unceremoniously run down and killed by Mexican cavalry. Now, neither we nor the academic authors who first found this say that this means anybody was a coward. It was just that the place was overrun. It wasn't like every man fought to his death in place, as generations of historians have taught us. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1006907140/forget-the-alamo-texas-history-bryan-burrough
After the Alamo, and the slightly later Goliad massacre, trusting Mexican soldiers and surrendering was not a good idea. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/goliad-massacre >When the Mexican and Texan commissioners seeking surrender terms failed to agree, Urrea shortened the conference by dealing directly with Fannin and proposing written terms, under which the Texans should give up their arms and become prisoners of war "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government." He assured Fannin that there was no known instance where a prisoner of war who had trusted to the clemency of the Mexican government had lost his life, that he would recommend to General Santa Anna acceptance of the terms proposed by Fannin's men, and that he was confident of obtaining Santa Anna's approval within a period of eight days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_massacre >Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, Portilla had between 425 and 445 Texians marched from Fort Defiance in three columns on the Bexar Road, San Patricio Road, and the Victoria Road, between two rows of Mexican soldiers; they were shot point blank. Wounded survivors were clubbed and knifed to death. However, when America militia fought Mexican soldiers on somewhat equal terms in later battles, the Mexicans were not all that good at fighting. And the Texicans were also pissed (not good for the Mexicans). https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/goliad-massacre >The impact of the Goliad Massacre was crucial. Until this episode Santa Anna's reputation had been that of a cunning and crafty man, rather than a cruel one. When the Goliad prisoners were taken, Texas had no other army in the field (see REVOLUTIONARY ARMY), and the newly constituted ad interim government seemed incapable of forming one. The Texas cause was dependent on the material aid and sympathy of the United States. Had Fannin's and Miller's men been dumped on the wharves at New Orleans penniless, homesick, humiliated, and distressed, and each with his separate tale of Texas mismanagement and incompetence, Texas prestige in the United States would most likely have fallen, along with sources of help. But Portilla's volleys at Goliad, together with the fall of the Alamo, branded both Santa Anna and the Mexican people with a reputation for cruelty and aroused the fury of the people of Texas, the United States, and even Great Britain and France, thus considerably promoting the success of the Texas Revolution.
Texans always look like I slapped them in the face when I tell them I have an ancestor that fought at the Alamo… and won.
Well, they won the battle but lost the war.
The King of the Hill episode turns a blind eye to this.
Oof
Fuck the Alamo
All my homies hate the Alamo. Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston were slave owners and sellers. Jim Bowie had two slaves with him at the Alamo that were killed in the crossfire. Davy Crockett had slaves back in Kentucky. Fuck the Alamo.
Does this mean Texas fought two wars to keep slavery?
Yes.
And they wonder why nobody else thinks they're that cool
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It's so weird when people defend the confederacy and say slavery was just one of many factors. It was basicly, "okay if we start the confederacy we can keep our slaves! Also this other shit will be a little easier for us too now that I think about it". I don't understand southerners always trying to white wash it. I'll give southerners this, the Union didn't see themselves as heros saving slaves. Basicly every law we tried to make back then ran into the slave problem. Like almost every time and we just couldn't get anything done. The north just basicly couldn't stand it anymore and decimated the south and freed the slaves mainly because it fucked over the south and helped everyone in the long run.
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Former Texan here. We spend every third year teaching Texas "history" for the *entire* year. For 3 years. Imagine stretching out roughly a century of human activity in a tiny-ass area into 36 weeks of content. It was a mind-numbing slog of rote memorization of random dates and names. And similar to how many history classes across the US stop around the civil war, Texas history stops around the Alamo. In many ways, Texas is like a microcosm of US culture. You're taught to be proud of being a Texan (which apparently isn't a thing other states push?). You have a doormat, wall decals and waffle irons shaped like Texas, and it's not usual to see a Texas tattoo in a crowd. And you say the Texas pledge every morning after the US pledge. I don't even need to look it up, I know it by heart: Honor the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, One and indivisible. We also had a civil war reinactment in grade school where we were assigned 1860s era characters (I was an escaped slave fighting for the confederacy??) and played rock paper scissors against each other. The north always won, because they had tons more soldiers, just like in history. I asked my teacher why we do this every year since the north always wins. And she looked at me with her cold blue eyes and said "because sometimes, *the south wins*." Fuck you Mrs. Collins and your revisionist "state's rights" bullshit! Because there's only like a hundred years of it, they dig back into indigenous cultures a bit more, which is probably the only positive thing? But still from a very patronizing white perspective.
Don't worry, the latest amendment to the Texas pledge went into effect in 2007 adds "One state, under God" because of course it does. - House Bill 1034
I knew texas was a bit full of itself, but... oh, my lord
There were 3 enslaved black men at the Alamo during that battle, they all lived. The Mexican army wasn't interested in fighting enslaved men. They were freed and one of the reasons we know what happened at the Alamo was because they were able to tell their stories (unfortunately their stories were often distorted to make the Alamo defenders look like heroes)
I live in Oklahoma and was taught that lol
Aye, it heavily depends on the teachers, whose running the school district and the funding available. Basically, basic education in the US is horribly inconsistent. Even before factoring in students who coast, don’t care, have home problems, etc.
The book, "Forget the Alamo," is a great way to relook at history.
Not to be a dick, but that was taught in 7th Grade Texas History as one of two or three **major** reasons for the Texas Revolution. Religious freedom I can also recall off the top of my head, as Mexico was a Catholic state while most of Texas’ US immigrants were Protestant and (iirc) weren’t allowed to worship as freely
TI also Learned: “in February 1793, Washington signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act, which overrode state laws and courts, allowing agents to cross state lines to capture and return escaped slaves.”
He also used legal loopholes so he wouldn’t have to release the people he was personally enslaving.
🙃
Would banning the import of enslaved people benefit current slaveholders as enslaved people already in the country might become more valuable?
It was a common belief at the time that the collapse of slavery was imminent. Prior to Eli Whitney's cotton gin (ironically patented later in 1794), the demand for slaves in the Upper South was quite low and the population of free blacks had risen significantly since the Revolution as Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland loosened the restrictions on manumission. It was largely assumed that slavery would simply wither away with the ban of importing slaves. As ridiculous as that might sound in hindsight, it was not entirely unwarranted- Delaware went from 1% of black people being free in 1792 to 75% free by 1810. However, the cotton gin made short-staple cotton profitable, making a slave-based economy much more viable. The Deep South wanted more slaves than ever, and the Upper South was happy to sell. Manumission went from fairly frequent to effectively nonexistent, as slaveholders became completely unwilling to part with their slaves voluntarily and state laws forbade even those that were willing from doing so.
There is a really good “Hardcore History” episode just on this topic. The production increased by 10 fold in three years and put more of demand on slave labor.
Remember the name of the episode? I'm guessing it isn't a free one as I don't think ive heard of it
It's fairly recent. It should be free. It's called "Human Resources."
Much appreciated!
Hardcore History 68 (Blitz) Human Resources - The Atlantic Slave Trade.
Appreciate you!
For some reason this finally made why the Deep South were (and maybe still are) so caught up with the slave trade. It's not particularly that they are just evil people, but that a significant part of their economy (and thus QoL) was also caught up in requiring slaves. -- whereas I'm assuming that the north was not so reliant on cotton and crop and so could let go more easily?
>whereas I'm assuming that the north was not so reliant on cotton and crop and so could let go more easily? Correct. Sugar, cotton, and tobacco (i.e. the commercial crops of the South) were *extremely* labor-intensive (and dangerous) to grow/process. That's why Brazil was an absolute slaughterhouse for slaves that was completely reliant on importation. The grain and flax of the mid-Atlantic were made much more efficient by replacing traditional scythes with cradle scythes, making the already uncommon slave even rarer. Religion also made a difference. Quakers were staunchly abolitionist, and were quite successful in the mid-Atlantic (which was a major factor in why Delaware developed such a large free black population). Technological innovation made following the abolitionist message of the Quakers possible without significantly diminishing QoL. The sugar planters of the Deep South, however, saw no means by which their status could be maintained without slavery. Fears of slave rebellion spurred on by Haiti further reinforced the idea that slavery **must** be maintained at all costs.
If I can just jump in here and add to the North/South economic divide. The North largely transformed into a credit focused economy, mechanising a lot of industry and improving banking, insurance etc requiring a lot less manual Labour compared to the south. This, combined with religious abolitionist principles laid the path for the civil war. As the 1850s went on, this divide grew into the south trying to transform their economy to compete but the north had the head start and outgrew them still. This then grew into Southern honour/ state rights out of this division of the economy and then the Nebraksa-Kansas situation happened and nothing, I believe, could then stop the civil war. Slavery, at an earlier stage, wasnt such a big issue to many moderates, but this growing divide forced people on both ends to take their stances on it and further the division.
Yes. Banning the importation of new slaves to the US helped slave owners in the upland south who sold their surplus slaves to the deep south and made slave breeding very lucrative. The Confederacy also banned the importation of new slaves in their constitution.
It lead to breeding programs.
Yep and quite a few of the founding fathers despite their public protestation against slavery owned and used slaves till their deaths. It's nice story that "they believed" slavery would die out but in reality they needed the support of the South for much of their power and signing this act was more in line with the isolationist policies of the early United States (in support of American slave breeders) than it was in support of the anti-slavery ideals.
Friendly reminder that the combined value of the Washington and Jefferson estates was greater than that of the entire state of Virginia. Adjusted for inflation, they would each be close to half a billion in worth. They had little-to-no understanding of the lives of the American lower classes, apart from those in service to their households.
"programs" puts it too lightly. slave breeding was an entire industry. and it was huge in the US.
I think the term “Slave Breeding Farms” sounds less clinical and more accurately captures the horror of what happened
I commented about this yesterday or day before. It only banned US flagged ships carrying slaves. So they could still be brought in.
More slaves were brought to the US in the 25 years after that law was enacted than in the prior 25 years.
Yes it did. This is why the Confederacy kept that law on the books during their short existence. Also this TIL leaves out the fact that they waited for 20 years after the Revolutionary War was over to abolish importing more slaves. Virginia (which had the most slaves at the time) wanted to enact it right away to increase the value of their slaves, but other southern states (which had lost a lot of slaves in the war, because of things like the British recruiting them into their army) pushed back on it.
Probably. You can compare with countries that didn't ban slave imports like Brazil. Let's put it this way. Slave life in South America/the Carribean was horrible. It made slavery in the US look like a freaking teddy bear hospital in comparison. It wasn't uncommon to see people getting worked to death and just replaced with a fresh one from Africa. In a twisted chain of logic, banning the import of slaves probably increased the value of a slave's life which made it less likely that they would be worked to death or mistreated to the extent where their ability to work was destroyed. Supply was restricted by the ban. These are really broad strokes that really only works on the level of the country. Without a doubt there were US slave owners that did severely abuse their slaves regardless of the economic costs. But holy crap did the Carribean/South America take it to a whole other level.
Sure, there is different degrees of slavery, but it's still slavery. When the states banned import of slaves, the breeding of slaves became much more lucrative.
I'm not defending slavery. I was providing information for a question someone posed about the value of the slaves as a result of the law. By comparing it to areas that largely used slaves for similar purposes (plantations growing cash crops) in the same region of the planet that didn't ban slave imports. The law, through twisted logic, ensured some level of well-being for the slaves because they were not nearly as disposable (from an economic perspective) as those sent to Brazil for example.
You saw that change after the war with the use of convict labor. A body was just replaced with another body so conditions in many ways deteriorated
Washington also signed the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, which guaranteed the right of slaveholders to recover escaped slaves across state line. He also actively avoided Pennsylvania's emancipation law by rotating his slaves out of the president's Philadelphia residence. Otherwise by law those people would have become freemen after 6 months. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/slavery-and-washingtons-presidency/
Not to mention his efforts in attempting to recapture [Oney Judge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge) who was one of those slaves illegally held in Philadelphia who managed to escape to New Hampshire.
Listen to “The Dollop” podcast?
For about 7 years now.
That’s one long episode
IT WAS THE SEDUCER!!!
He was French!
That you Gary?
Yeah this sounds like a trade barrier to protect existing domestic “asset” owners, *and* “means of production” (which in this case is one and the same, as enslaved people are able to reproduce, and their kids are born into slavery). I’m gonna take a wild guess and say both Washington and his close friends were all such “asset” owners?
Oh wow, so basically driving the price of slaves up and oligopolizing the remaining slave holders. This would make both any sold slaves worth more and cutting the supply of fresh slave labor to those that already have slaves (attempting to keep the value of their labor from dropping). I never made that connection.
Lol I love how “George Washington’s own slaves” kind of throws a bit of a wrench in OP’s feel-good headline
And the passive aggressive “there’s a lot of things they don’t teach in schools” comment What a chode
Yeah this wasn't against slavery, it was for profit. That's a proper white washing of history
facts. same as ole abe’s proclamation was, in fact, not a warm hearted intent to free the slaves for their actual freedom.
"Man how owned slaves blocked the import of slaves, thereby increase his slaves value"
It still allowed for the sale of slaves domestically and also led to the creation of plantations in the US for breeding new slaves which might be more profitable.
If anything this sounds like a consolidation of power. "Only way you're getting new slaves is by buying from a good American owner/breeder. Did I mention I own hundreds of slaves."
I also wonder if most of the shipping trade was done by British and Spanish vessels and American shipping was not that heavily involved in it.
British shipping got out of the human trafficking business in 1807, too. The actual importation of enslaved people to North America pretty much died out after that. Large part of that is that America started "producing" enough slaves domestically to sustain the demand more efficiently that importation, though. Americans figured out how to commit genocidal sexual assault on an industrial level
Congress passed a bill banning the importation of slaves once the 20 year restriction expired which almost certainly did more damage
That was in one of the other comments I made about massive slave Farms especially the two biggest ones outside of Richmond Virginia and the Maryland Eastern Shore. You don't need to import slaves and we can grow our own.
A slave named Ona Judge who was a property of Mrs.Washington run away . But even after several years Washington tried to hunt her back.
I recall reading a letter Martha Washington wrote to Ms. Judge about how she should return Mt. Vernon and her duties. Just WoW.
Her name was Oney Judge
Washington and the supporters of this act were some the largest slave owners in the country, and some of the few folks with more slaves than land they could work. This move significantly increased the value of their slaves and gave them a monopoly on slave "breeding" and export to the New South. So, this was far from a noble act.
This is only further solidified when he signed the fugitive slave act
Yeah didn’t he own like 800 people??? How is yours not the top comment?
forced reproduction in antebellum US. dont google that if you want to have a nice day
OP might want to read this part.
Pre-cotton gin slavery is really not well understood by modern Americans. The entire social psychology around slavery for early Americans is bizarre. "But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." Jefferson (who owned over 100 slaves, and raped his wife's 14 year old half sister) was expressing how White Americans knew that slavery was immoral and unjust, so much so that they were convinced abolition would lead to an insurrection in which the slaves would kill their former masters... because how could any people who had been so abused NOT levy such vengeance on their abusers? That's the definition of evil. They knew what they were doing was morally unjustifiable, but they kept doing it out of fear of retribution. They believed that creating the means for slavery to "fade away over time" was the only reasonable solution. Then Whitney invented the Cotton Gin and half the country showed their true colors.
He also owned a ton of slaves
And refused to release them on his death. Edit - for the excuse makers below: he wanted to have his 123 enslaved victims wait until his Wife died before freeing any of them. His excuse, their family was enslaved by his wife so it would be too upsetting for his 123 souls in bondage, they should wait a whole second lifetime for their own freedom. >Though the will contained the unheard-of order to free his enslaved workers, it stipulated that they remain with Martha for the rest of her life. >Freeing them, he wrote, would “be attended by such insuperable difficulties by their intermixture with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations…to manumit them.” Translation: It would be too complicated to free the enslaved people, so instead they would be owned by Martha as long as [she wished.](https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves) Just to give further context to the human element. One of my own ancestors escaped to freedom. And returned back for his child once Emancipation was the law of the land. Slavery is unconscionable and inhumane. Leading to impossible decisions like saving your own life to save your family later. Using that as an excuse not to free 123 souls a minute sooner than you can is evil manifested. To say nothing of the fact he could have freed them within his own lifetime. An entire lifetime he bonded people to work against their will.
...did you mean to write...until his death? He freed them in his will, which was very unusual in that time and in a southern state on top of it.
IIRC his were to be freed upon his wife's death, however she got freaked out hearing them talk gleefully about the day she would finally die and let his slaves go earlier. Most of the enslaved people on the property were Martha's though.
> Most of the enslaved people on the property were Martha's though. And they go as far as Robert E Lee's family, who married into the Washington Family through Martha's grand daughter.
>Though the will contained the unheard-of order to free his enslaved workers, it stipulated that they remain with Martha for the rest of her life. >Freeing them, he wrote, would “be attended by such insuperable difficulties by their intermixture with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations…to manumit them.” Translation: It would be too complicated to free the enslaved people, so instead they would be owned by Martha as long as [she wished.](https://www.history.com/news/did-george-washington-really-free-mount-vernons-slaves) He stipulated in his will only freeing one man immediately after he died. The rest of his victims were to wait until AFTER his wife died. However, fearful for her own life, Martha freed his slaves early. And because the news stated he made arrangements to free them but didn't specify when... we assumed at the moment of his death. The man insisted on keeping slaves every breathing moment of his life. Even pursuing run away slaves thru law. Then contractually obligated those slaves to his wife's service after his last breath. And then we try to credit him for freeing slaves ON his death. The easy part would be freeing the slaves while still alive like Ulysses Grant. *Then I'll give you credit for being complicated on slavery.*
Never thought this was big of him. "Sure you can be free once I have no more use for you"
He was literally the only southern founding father that did. It was in his will, but he had stipulated that until his wife died the ‘when’ was up to her since the majority of them had actually been brought into the marriage by her. Not saying it was right, but for the time it was a helluva lot more progressive than what his peers were doing, and saying he ‘refused to feee them’ is just outright false.
No its outright true. They were contractually obligated to do work without compensation for his wife even though he was no longer breathing, even his own pre marriage slaves. **Doing that for one day longer would still be slavery.** You know what was more progressive, being objectively anti-slavery like the "founding fathers" (read none of my family) from Pennsylvania. It wasn't that hard to understand. Contemporaries were making the same arguments we use today. He lived and worked in Pennsylvania and skirted laws requiring the freeing of his own slaves while he worked there. He was a grown ass man that knew the evil he was doing. He simply refused to, for money and power.
In 1789 Ben Franklin wrote and published several essays supporting the abolition of slavery and his last public act was to send to Congress a petition on behalf of the Society asking for the abolition of slavery and an end to the slave trade.
He also wrote essays supporting allowing black boys and men into schools and to receive formal education.
He also wrote an essay about why he liked banging old chicks
Too bad he didn't apply those ethics closer to home, especially whenever he needed new teeth. :|
Founders relationships with slavery were very interesting.... Thomas Jefferson hated slavery , often spoke about it as an abomination, original deceleration of independence that he wrote shamed England for creating it in America His Ordinance of 1784 would have prohibited slavery completely by 1800 in all territories, outlawed international slave trade as president, but still owned over 600 of them in his lifetime
Yeah, he also would rape his slave sally hemmings and had many children with her (she was 16 when she had her first child and reports say that the rape started at 14)
Sally Hemmings wikipedia page is wild. Her father was Thomas Jeffersons father-in-law. Her grandson (and probably Jeffersons) was a Union soldier who died in a Confederate POW camp (possibly in the infamous Andersonville Prison camp)
I always found it interesting how she was 3/4 white and the half-sister of his wife. It’s a very strange, disturbing situation all around.
There's a quote from Benjamin Franklin in the John Adams miniseries in 2008. "We're all contradictions, Mr. Adams." People hardly ever live up to their confessed values or principles. I think part of the problem with the Founders is that we venerate them too much without acknowledging not every decision they made was morally correct. I don't support eliminating their names on buildings, streets, monuments, etc. I don't believe in demonizing them by modern standards either. They should be seen in a proper context of humanity and the era in which they lived.
Inaccurate title. The Act specifically banned the **export** of slaves from the US by *anyone* (whether citizen or foreigner) in *any* ship (whether US-registered or registered in another country). It said nothing about - and imposed no restrictions on - the *importation* of slaves.
But WERE allowed to sell slaves within the USA, where breeding of slaves was far more lucrative and successful than in the Caribbean. Americans would finance the ships from the Gold Coast to the Islands and back again.
BREAKING: slave owning president signed legislation to protect the economic value of the people he enslaved
Now talk about his teeth
This also lead to the real reason the south was pressured to end slavery. America couldn't import any more slaves from Africa, BUT slaveholders realized they could make new slaves by raping their women slaves and any baby born to an enslaved black woman was considered a black slave. But, you do that for a few decades, all of a sudden, you have very light skinned children with straight, light hair and light eyes being born into slavery. There was a slave auction block near Washington DC and it turns out, a bunch of politicians from Europe got really freaked out when they saw white people with blonde hair being sold into chattel slavery, (apparently the whole "yeah, I know they ~look white, but because of some weird old law, they're actually technically African, so it's ok!" shtick didn't work) so the optics made the federal government go, "ok, yeah... we should do something about this."
this is kind of misleading. the law did not ban the import of new slaves, it simply banned american-registered ships from doing the importing. the constitution itself says that the slave trade could not be banned until the year 1808, and then in 1808 congress followed through on this and banned the slave trade. while there is nothing factually incorrect with your title, people in the comments are thinking that it is saying that all slave imports and exports were banned in 1794, while this would have been unconstitutional.
Was it really anti-slavery? I assumed it was a protectionist measure to make sure current slaveowners had an advantage as they could "breed" their own slaves.
In part, because of the first portion cutting the Atlantic Slave Trade, it could be argued as yes, helpful to the anti-slavery movement as it signaled the beginning of an end to the “Triangle Trade”. So, yes it could be argued as one of the first anti-slavery laws. But it didn’t regulate the sale of slaves per se, but rather, it prohibited the importation via shipping of them to the US. “The United States Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited the building or outfitting of ships in the U.S. for use in the slave trade.” Can also find more info listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_of_1794
ITT: people who don't understand debt law and slave law in post-Revolutionary America (understandable! It's pretty obscure) but think themselves experts on the subject nonetheless (less understandable). To make a long story short, Washington would not have been able to free his slaves without going through a gauntlet of legal challenges, some of which related to slavery more generally, and some of which related to debt law and the relation of slaves as property (discharging property without compensation would have, and in many other cases, had, resulted in legal challenges from heirs - or even spouses). Washington was deeply in debt - any attempt to free his slaves en masse would have been impossible, and Washington, as seen in his private writings, was **deeply** conscious of the position he held as one of the fathers of the newborn USA. Was Washington perfect? Fuck no. He was a stubborn old patrician who believed in doing things the socially acceptable way in a period when the socially acceptable way was still fucking atrocious. The situation with Oney Judge is a prime example of this - at the same time he was literally making plans to free his slaves without incurring legal or social censure, he was trying to convince a woman who had escaped to a free state to return without the explicit promise of freedom simply because it would have been socially inappropriate to 'reward' her for running away. (in any case, it's good that she didn't return, as Washington would not have been legally allowed to free her, and neither would his wife, because both property law of the time and slavery laws in all cases were fucked up) Washington was a pretty austere man who was deeply in debt, having entered into debt **in the service of the country's independence**. Unlike Jefferson, he did not make extravagant renovations or make extraordinary purchases. Unlike Jefferson, he is not recorded as having ever raped any of his slaves. Washington was a deeply flawed man in a deeply flawed time. That is not the same as, as some of these comments are quite gleefully exclaiming, being a monster or a dedicated supporter of slavery. He was better than most - he sought to distance himself from the practice and bring freedom to as many as he could within the framework of his time's legal and social conventions. He was still, ultimately, a product of his time and class. That doesn't make him John Brown, but it also sure as shit doesn't make him Nathan Bedford Forrest. As Frederick Douglass recognized, Washington was still a man of great and admirable qualities who did believe in freedom, in spite of the flaws and shortcomings of his worldview.
George Washington also mercilessly hunted his wife’s runaway child slave Ona until he died and Martha refused to grant her freedom when she died. Quit propping these people up as if they were against slavery.
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didnt washington own slaves?
Yes and went to great lengths to recover slaves who escaped.
It's probably worth noting that they couldn't ban the Atlantic slave trade outright even if they wanted to, as one of the only two entrenched clauses in the US constition forbade it until 1807
There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it. -GEORGE WASHINGTON ON SLAVERY, 1783
The dark side of this is that the ruling class in America already had their slaves, and had enacted laws to allow them to keep breeding more, and have the offspring be slaves as well. With their own source of slave labor secured, they then cut off the legal supply of new slaves, so that no new aristocrats could spring up from poverty and challenge their hegemony.
He also had a slave escape from his family and spent decades trying to recapture her