The Brutality of Slavery

[Draggingtree]

The Brutality of Slavery
Mises Daily: Monday, January 28, 2013 by Murray N. Rothbard
[This article is excerpted from Conceived in Liberty, volume 1, chapter 6, "The Social Structure of Virginia: Bondservants and Slaves".  
Until the 1670s, the bulk of forced labor in Virginia was indentured service (largely white, but some Negro); Negro slavery was negligible. In 1683 there were 12,000 indentured servants in Virginia and only 3,000 slaves of a total population of 44,000. Masters generally preferred bondservants for two reasons. First, they could exploit the bondservants more ruthlessly because they did not own them permanently, as they did their slaves; on the other hand, the slaves were completely their owners’ capital and hence the masters were economically compelled to try to preserve the capital value of their human tools of production. Second, the bondservants, looking forward to their freedom, could be more productive laborers than the slaves, who were deprived of all hope for the future.

As the colony grew, the number of bondservants grew also, although as servants were repeatedly set free, their proportion to the population of Virginia declined. Since the service was temporary, a large new supply had to be continually furnished. There were seven sources of bondservice, two voluntary (initially) and five compulsory. The former consisted partly of “redemptioners” who bound themselves for four to seven years, in return for their passage money to America. It is estimated that seventy percent of all immigration in the colonies throughout the colonial era consisted of redemptioners. The other voluntary category consisted of apprentices, children of the English poor, who were bound out until the age of twenty-one. In the compulsory category were: (a) impoverished and orphaned English children shipped to the colonies by the English government; ( colonists bound to service in lieu of imprisonment for debt (the universal punishment for all nonpayment in that period); © colonial criminals who were simply farmed out by the authorities to the mastership of private employers; (d) poor English children or adults kidnapped by professional “crimps”—one of whom boasted of seizing 500 children annually for a dozen years; and (e) British convicts choosing servitude in America for seven to fourteen years in lieu of all prison terms in England. The last were usually petty thieves or political prisoners—and Virginia absorbed a large portion of the transported criminals. http://mises.org/daily/6347/The-Brutality-of-Slavery

[Pepper]

@Draggingtree

 

History always repeats itself. Obama is on his way forcing 40+% of the population working as fiscal slaves to support the slackers

[Draggingtree]

Slavery in Pennsylvania

By Brion McClanahan

Indentured servitude is one of the more neglected elements of American labor history. Most historians gloss over the subject in route to African slavery. This is largely due to the impact of long standing issues of race in America, but Southerners understood Northern complicity in the institution of African slavery and often pointed to Northern hypocrisy in regard to the treatment of indentured servants and Indian slaves and their ongoing profits from the African slave trade. Indentured servitude even affected one of the more famous members of the founding generation. Benjamin Franklin was once a runaway, and had his brother pursued him, Franklin would have been rounded up and sent back to work for his brother as bonded labor. It is also rumored that Franklin dabbled in slave trading at one time.

 

The life of an indentured servant was not easy. From the following 1750 description of indentured servitude in Pennsylvania by German Gottlieb Mittleberger, it becomes clear that there was very little difference between the slave markets for African slaves and those of European serfs in America. Additionally, Northerners paid a hefty price to reacquire runaways. As late as the 1770s, Philadelphia newspapers ran advertisements for runaway indentured servants, and such ads were commonplace across the North in the middle of the 18th century. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/slavery-in-pennsylvania/

[Geee]

@Draggingtree - if you read the English papers when something involving Blacks takes place here - they picture this country as horribly racist and it seems to me, they go out of their way to even find these stories because they are stories that I don't even see in our one-sided press. But THEY, as well as most people here, ignore their part in the history of slavery in this country. England owned the ships that brought the slaves here. It was England that in many cases forced them on many states under their protest. The colonies were not producing product that the they used in THEIR country from THEIR colonies, so they sent the slaves here to speed it up. The states were getting nervous, because the population of Black slaves was getting so numerous. When they refused to take anymore, they were forced to. If left to their own devices, plantations etc would have grown at a slower pace i.e. the other family farms did over time from large families - but it was not fast enough for the King. Picking my shabby memory, I seem to think that in 1800 the population of the US was just under 6 Million, with 800,000 being blacks that we did NOT voluntarily bring here. Families and indentured servants were our workers of choice.

[Draggingtree]

Posted 31 August 2014 - 10:23 AM

The Trans-Atlantic Slavers

By: Skook

 

@Draggingtree - if you read the English papers when something involving Blacks takes place here - they picture this country as horribly racist and it seems to me, they go out of their way to even find these stories because they are stories that I don't even see in our one-sided press. But THEY, as well as most people here, ignore their part in the history of slavery in this country. England owned the ships that brought the slaves here. It was England that in many cases forced them on many states under their protest. The colonies were not producing product that the they used in THEIR country from THEIR colonies, so they sent the slaves here to speed it up. The states were getting nervous, because the population of Black slaves was getting so numerous. When they refused to take anymore, they were forced to. If left to their own devices, plantations etc would have grown at a slower pace i.e. the other family farms did over time from large families - but it was not fast enough for the King. Picking my shabby memory, I seem to think that in 1800 the population of the US was just under 6 Million, with 800,000 being blacks that we did NOT voluntarily bring here. Families and indentured servants were our workers of choice.

See another post on this subject below

[Draggingtree]

Posted 31 August 2014 - 10:23 AM

28Aug

The Trans-Atlantic Slavers

By: Skook

http://floppingaces....lantic-slavers/

[Draggingtree]

[Draggingtree]

The Cultural Appropriation of Slavery

Posted on December 30, 2016 by The Political Hat

 

The combination of ignorance and indoctrination in modern education has but one aim: Delegitimize America and its civic heritage as a unique evil to be overcome. Case in point: The belief that America invented slavery, which was wholly confined within.

 

The truth of the matter is that slavery was an actual act of “cultural appropriation”. Slavery and the slave trade was widespread in Africa before the arrival of Europeans. Indeed, Europeans originally sailed to sub-Saharan Africa not with the intention of imposing racism, but to simply find trade routes to the Indies that didn’t involve the Arabs as middlemen, the same Arabs that enjoyed centuries long slave trading with not only sub-Saharan Africa, but also the trade in White slaves!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zM_MzkLKPY

http://politicalhat.com/2016/12/30/the-cultural-appropriation-of-slavery/

[Draggingtree]

Rhode Island’s Record of Slaving

 

The British Royal African Company was primarily responsible for populating North America and the West Indies with African slaves, and despite being near bankrupt from exorbitant expenses was considered too big to fail. After the Revolution, British-imposed slavery was set on a potential track toward abolition, but the cotton gin of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney in the mid 1790’s, along with the rise of New England cotton mills, perpetuated African slavery.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com The Great American Political Divide

Rhode Island’s Record of Slaving

“The [british] slave trade was carried on by means of “factories,” or trading establishments, defended by forts on the west coast of Africa. In 1750, the Royal African Company had nine factories, the chief of which was Cape Coast Castle, with a strong fort built on a huge rock that projected into the sea. It was expensive to maintain these forts and trading posts. In fact, the company was prevented from going bankrupt by an annual grant of [10,000 pounds].

The competition of French slave traders, who paid more for their human merchandise than the English company, was especially formidable since the French African Company was heavily subsidized by its government.

https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2017/01/rhode-islands-record-of-slaving.html

[Draggingtree]

Resisting England’s (and New England’s) Slave Trade

It was “English merchants and factors” and New Englanders who traded their goods for Africans near the coast of West Africa; as few white men could survive entering the interior, Europeans depended upon African tribes to sell them their already-enslaved brethren. At the feet of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French can also be laid the introduction and perpetuation of slavery here. Both the Virginia and North Carolina colonial legislatures pleaded in vain to the British Crown to cease the importation of Negroes to their shores.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com The Great American Political Divide

Resisting England’s (and New England’s) Slave Trade

“On account of the dangers of navigation off the coast of North Carolina . . . ships engaged in the African slave trade seldom, if ever, brought their cargoes direct to the colony. Relative to these conditions, [Royal] Governor Burrington said:

https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2017/01/resisting-englands-and-new-englands.html

[Draggingtree]

The Southern Yankee

By Bernard Thuersam on Feb 2, 2017

 

Beyond the New England slave trade which populated the American South with millions of enslaved Africans, there were many Yankees who moved South before 1861 to engage in agriculture and the holding of slaves. And they had a Southern counterpart who learned the Yankee’s close-fisted ways. During the War and after Northern bayonets had conquered Southern regions, many industrious and profit-minded Yankees came South to try their hand at revolutionizing Southern agriculture and labor with experiments at Hilton Head and Louisiana.

 

The following is an excerpt on the subject from Social Relations in Our Southern States, D.R. Hundley, Henry B. Price, 1860, pp. 130-136.

The Southern Yankee

 

“The name “Yankee” was originally bestowed upon New-Englanders alone, but for what reason it would be difficult perhaps to determine at this time. At present, however, with all foreigners it is used to designate the natives of any of the Anglo-Saxon States of our republic. In our Southern States all Northerners are regarded as Yankees, while the Southerner will not consent to have the name applied to themselves. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-southern-yankee/

[Draggingtree]

February 9, 2017

Not So Fast, UN: The US Owes No 'Reparations' to Blacks

By George De Vries lll

A September 2016 United Nations panel in Geneva decided the U.S. owed blacks reparations for a history of ‘racial terror.’

Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post notes:

 

In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent. Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.

This UN action, of course, was followed by last December’s resolution against Israeli settlements. Interestingly, in the same December time period, the UN could not bring itself to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on a South Sudan that is plunged into ethnic conflict in which thousands have already been killed. It seems the newer, anti-colonial, anti-West members suffer from a case of moral schizophrenia.

 

A thumbnail review of the real history of slavery is in order here. First, to be clear, there is no doubt many injustices and human tragedies have occurred throughout our history because of slavery; but that is true everywhere slavery has occurred. For a real accounting, thousands of slavery-related transactions that open the curtains on the history of slaves and the slave trade have been recorded and are available on a CDROM prepared by Harvard University. Two other worthy sources include Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade and Robin Blackburn’s The Making of New World Slavery.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/02/not_so_fast_un_the_us_owes_no_reparations_to_blacks.html

[righteousmomma]

"Beyond the New England slave trade which populated the American South with millions of enslaved Africans, there were many Yankees who moved South before 1861 to engage in agriculture and the holding of slaves. And they had a Southern counterpart who learned the Yankee’s close-fisted ways"

 

On a side note - and this is something I have said before - In the 16, 17 and early 1800s most "Southerners" were immigrants from the Netherlands, the UK (England, Scotland, Ireland) and France, Germany AND a vast number of settlers moved down from NY, NJ and parts of New England bringing their foods, customs and traditions with them. (Like NCT's ancestors - arrived from the Netherlands, England and France in the 16 and 1700s and started migrating South and to the islands). Sadly S.C. had a HUGE slave population by the late 1700s. Many of the owners were from Europe and unqualified or equipped to work the large areas of wild unsettled terrain.

 

I should add - that though it was a way of life and needed in certain ways - today I in no way justify nor want the practice ever brought back - indentured or slavery. Not excusing the slavery but not all slave owners were the wicked stereotypes one sees in the movies. I often think about the verse - what man meant for evil (Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers) God meant for good. (Saved Israel)

Then I think of the great jazz family, the great inventor the great civil rights leader, the great teacher, the great doctor on and on who would never have been born or never made the impact on our history if their "roots" were left in Africa. God does bring good out of any situation.

[Draggingtree]

White Slaves

By Roger McGrath - MAY 05, 2017

For many years I taught a U.S. history survey course.  One of my lecture topics was American slavery.  I made a real effort to put the peculiar institution into historical perspective.  I noted that slavery was not something reserved for blacks here in America but was as old as man himself and recognized no racial bounds.  There had been slavery in Asia, slavery in Africa, slavery in Europe, and slavery in the Americas.  Yellow man enslaved yellow man, black man enslaved black man, white man enslaved white man, and red man enslaved red man.  This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to college students, but, as the years went by, more and more incoming freshmen were surprised to learn that slavery was not uniquely American and not uniquely a black experience.

Shortly before I retired from teaching I began running into something more stupefying than sheer historical ignorance: victimology.  I encountered black students whose worldview was formed by a sense of victimhood.  They were not willing to concede that suffering enslavement was universal.  If I were black, I would have been elated to learn that slavery was not something reserved for blacks only—     http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2017/June/41/6/magazine/article/10839553/       

[Draggingtree]

August 2, 2017

Positive Lessons from Indentured Servants in Colonial America

By James Arlandson

It is commonplace that the left take out cudgels and bash nearly everything about America, and the seventeenth century is for them a rich target.  For them, it is not America the Beautiful (different from America the Perfect), but America the Suckiful.

But she was not a bad place back then.

Though abuse of indentured servants did happen, America was a land of opportunity.  The vast majority of them moved up the social scale to become landowners and artisans in their own right.

An indentured servant signed a contract (or indenture) to serve his master or mistress for a certain number of years.  When the service was expired, he got clothing and some money.  Servant had rights, as the following sample evidence will show, beginning with Virginia and then Pennsylvania.

With 32 other people, Samuel Wilbourn landed in Westmoreland County, Virginia, bordering the Atlantic (where, incidentally, George Washington's ancestors arrived a little later) by October 5, 1654.  He was poor because he left no other record, and this indicates that he was an indentured servant.  (We should not expect these importation records to announce indentured servants.)        http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/08/positive_lessons_from_indentured_servants_in_colonial_america.html

[Draggingtree]

Islam, Europe, and Slavery

By Philip Jenkins - FEBRUARY 08, 2018

At Midsummer 1631, Barbary pirates from North Africa raided the Irish village of Baltimore, and took several hundred local people into lifelong captivity.  Such a distant projection of Islamic power might seem extreme and even bizarre, but it was no such thing.  Forgotten today, the danger of Arab and Turkish assault remained a nightmare for the vast majority of Europeans throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, and well beyond that date in some regions.

By way of chronology, the critical dates were 1525-26, when the pirate Barbarossa took Algiers and pledged allegiance to the Ottoman Empire.  At the same time, the Ottomans smashed the once great Christian state of Hungary, making Budapest a border city.  At least until the 1680’s, thoughtful Europeans speculated just how much farther the Ottomans might extend their rule.  The Christian victory at Vienna in 1683 provided some security, but Ottoman-sponsored banditry and slave-raiding deep into the Holy Roman Empire persisted long afterward.

But the danger extended far beyond Central Europe, and was considerably worse in Mediterranean lands.  Many of the worst perpetrators were themselves Europeans, ex-Christians who converted to Islam to take advantage of the rich opportunities in piracy and slaving.    https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2018/March/43/3/magazine/article/10843353/

[Draggingtree]

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Tampering with New England’s Slave Trade

 

Much of Britain’s difficulty with its American colonies came from New England smuggling and dependence upon French West Indies molasses which it distilled into rum, which in turn fueled its slave trade. In his last years, Boston’s John Adams “saw the Revolution, at least in part, as a struggle over molasses. He said “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.
It takes no great imagination to conclude that without British and New England populating the American colonies with African slaves, and perpetuating this into the mid-nineteenth century, the war which destroyed the American republic in 1861 might not have occurred.
www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide

Tampering with New England’s Slave Trade

“[The Molasses Act of 1733 enacted by the British Parliament] was introduced as a result of complaints from the British islands in the West Indies, whose economy was based on the production of sugar, against the competition of the French sugar islands – St. Dominique, Guadeloupe and Martinique. The British West Indies – Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Monserrat and St. Christopher – were such an immense source of wealth that they were considered at the time to be more important to the empire than the North American colonies.: 

[Draggingtree]

The Bad Theology of America’s “Original Sin”

By William J. Watkins on Jan 28, 2021

Slavery, we are repeatedly told, is America’s “original sin.”  But unlike the effects of Biblical original sin, there is no possible atonement.  The Left and its racial Grievance Factory will never let original sin be blotted out or separated from American politics.  In the words of Yale historian David Blight, there exists a “the living residue” connected to African slavery that is “ever-present yet ever-changing in our world.”[1] 

According to research by Heartland Institute scholar Duke Pesta, students entering American colleges “are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”[2]

This focus is not by accident or an example of dogged American insistence on national uniqueness.  By casting slavery as an American sin with an eternal legacy, power is exercised over a guilt-ridden citizenry.  The Grievance Factory can convince otherwise intelligent people that “the living residue” of slavery is responsible for the death of George Floyd and that monuments to heroes—some of whom helped end American slavery—      https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-bad-theology-of-americas-original-sin/