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Common historical fallacies: Difference between revisions
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=== | === Colonial and early Republic southern white slave owners & manumission === | ||
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==== Fallacy no. 1: white slave owners did not think the institution was wrong ==== | |||
* while there was extensive racism and expansion of slavery, southern whites were not unaware of the evils of the institution | |||
* slave-owner Thomas Jefferson famously emancipated his slaves only after his death | |||
** (which was a common practice) | |||
** however, Jefferson recognized that slavery was wrong | |||
*** and that the "wrath" of God would punish those who violated the "liberties of the nation", which he believed should include those of slaves to be freed ("total emancipation") | |||
click EXPAND to read passage by Jefferson on liberty, slavery and emancipation from the Notes on the State of Virginia, 1790: | |||
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<pre>And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep for ever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may be come probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one=s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation. | |||
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII</pre> | |||
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==== Fallacy no. 2: white slave owners did not free their slaves ==== | |||
* slave owners did free slaves and sometimes all of their slaves, as did Virginia plantation owner Robert Carter III | |||
click EXPAND to read the Wikipedia entry on Robert Carter III's manumission (freeing) of his slaves: | |||
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<pre>Manumission<br> | <pre>Manumission<br> | ||
In the years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia's legislature (having barred the slave trade in 1778) passed several laws sympathetic to freeing slaves, although it did not pass a law legalizing manumission until 1782, and throttled many petitions for wider emancipation. Numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake Bay area freed their slaves, often in their wills (like Quaker John Pleasants) or deeds, and noted principles of equality and Revolutionary ideals as reason for their decisions. The number of free African Americans increased in the Upper South from less than one percent before the Revolution, to 10 percent by 1810. In Delaware, three-fourths of the slaves had been freed by 1810. In the decade after the act's passage, Virginians had freed 10,000 slaves, without visible social disruptions. The price of slaves reached a 20-year low as the percentage listed as "black, tithable" (i.e. slaves) fell below 40%, the lowest point in the century. However, Virginia's courts sidestepped issuing appellate decisions ratifying emancipation until 1799, and the methodology of within-life emancipation was not established.</pre> | In the years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia's legislature (having barred the slave trade in 1778) passed several laws sympathetic to freeing slaves, although it did not pass a law legalizing manumission until 1782, and throttled many petitions for wider emancipation. Numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake Bay area freed their slaves, often in their wills (like Quaker John Pleasants) or deeds, and noted principles of equality and Revolutionary ideals as reason for their decisions. The number of free African Americans increased in the Upper South from less than one percent before the Revolution, to 10 percent by 1810. In Delaware, three-fourths of the slaves had been freed by 1810. In the decade after the act's passage, Virginians had freed 10,000 slaves, without visible social disruptions. The price of slaves reached a 20-year low as the percentage listed as "black, tithable" (i.e. slaves) fell below 40%, the lowest point in the century. However, Virginia's courts sidestepped issuing appellate decisions ratifying emancipation until 1799, and the methodology of within-life emancipation was not established.</pre> | ||
* from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carter_III#Manumission | |||
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