This blog is dedicated to the average voter that isn't as stupid as Washington portrays them to be. For the great Americans around us who love this country more than their own lives and HATE what Liberals, Socialists, and the Un-American media outlets are tearing down.....our Constitution and History!
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, it is fitting to reflect upon the tortured experience of blacks in this country. Looking back upon four centuries of African-American history two things are undeniably clear: for the greatest part of America’s history, blacks were grossly mistreated and the country has come a long, long way since the first slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619.
It must also be mentioned that slavery was very popular in the Countries where our slaves were gathered, so it wasn't invented in America, it has gone on since time in SIN began:
The slave trade in Africa was officially banned in the early 1880s, but forced labor continues to be practiced in West and Central Africa today. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from this region are sold into slavery each year. Many of these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon.
Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter–gatherer populations, as slavery is a system of social stratification. Mass slavery also requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable.
Due to these factors, the practice of slavery would have only proliferated after the invention of agriculture. The earliest records of slavery can be traced to the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), and the Bible refers to it as an established institution.
Slavery was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as almost every other ancient civilization, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, and the pre-Colombian civilizations of the Americas. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves. Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece.
Two-fifths (some authorities say four-fifths) of the population of Classical Athens were slaves. Aristotle accepted the theory of natural slavery, that is, that some men are slaves by nature, while the Stoics advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all human beings, and consistently critiqued slavery as against the law of nature.
As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Illyrians, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls, Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves).
This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts ; the Third Servile War led by Spartacus being the most famous and severe.
By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. It is estimated that over 25% of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved. According to some scholars, slaves represented 35% or more of Italy's population.
In the city of Rome alone, under the Roman Empire, there were about 400,000 slaves. During the millennium from the emergence of the Roman Empire to its eventual decline, at least 100 million people were captured or sold as slaves throughout the Mediterranean and its hinterlands.
Since slavery has always existed and since Black's have made slaves of other Blacks for Centuries (Something Progressives don't want you to understand, slavery is a HUMAN CONDITION not just a White Man thing!) it is very hard to pin down specific blame to a certain people group (No Matter What The progressive movement that actually propagated it as a way to control Blacks says), the truth is that slavery was and is ANTICHRIST in nature no matter which people group perpetrates it.
" There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Ashanti of Ghana also Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade.
African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans."
Most astounding, is the seismic shift in popular attitudes regarding blacks since the Civil Rights movement began. It’s hard to believe that Mad Men depicts a world that is less than fifty years removed from us.
Yet for all the progress the country has made—the abolition of slavery, the end of segregation, and the change in hearts and minds—not everyone draws inspiration from this admirable story of overcoming. The persistence of stark socio-economic disparities between black and white Americans, the extraordinarily high incarceration rates of black men, and the desolation in many inner cities have led many to “wallow in the valley of despair,” to borrow a phrase from Dr. King’s most famous speech.
Such despair in turn has fueled a radical critique of America that is increasingly prevalent among scholars and activists who deal with race relations. America, we are told, is founded on a racial contract that excludes all non-white males.
As former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall explained: “the prevailing opinion of the Framers regarding the rights of Negroes in America” was, and here he goes on to cite approvingly the infamous Dred Scott decision “that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” From there, it’s a straight line to the conclusion reached by John Hope Franklin, author of the standard history of African Americans, From Slavery to Freedom: “Racial Segregation, discrimination, and degradation… stem logically from the legacy that the Founding Fathers bestowed upon contemporary America.”
While Dr. King reminded us that the country was built on the “promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” leading voices today instead reject the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as racist documents and turn away from the traditional goal of integration. If America is built on a foundation of racist ideas, then no real change is possible within the existing conditions, and the solution to the African-American predicament must lie beyond the country as we know it. America must be fundamentally transformed if the promise of justice for all is to be realized.
This critique of America, which feeds off the despair among impoverished black Americans, is particularly pernicious for fostering an even deeper alienation among those who most need to believe in the American Dream to improve their lot. Indeed, it is very difficult to see how the upward-looking labor required to lift blacks out of endemic urban poverty is to be sustained if those most in need of help have accepted the idea that America has no place for them. This critique will only worsen the problems it refuses to answer.
Today, as we honor Martin Luther King, we have a moral duty to re-affirm the promise of justice for all at the heart of the American Founding and make the case, as forcefully as we can, for the integrationist faith in America. To do so, we turn to a former slave: the great 19th century abolitionist and indefatigable advocate of civic and political equality, Frederick Douglass.
As Peter Myers explains in a new First Principles essay entitled “Frederick Douglass’s America: Race, Justice, and the Promise of the Founding”: Douglass endures unequalled as the invincible adversary of racial despair and disaffection—the pre-eminent exemplar and apostle of hopefulness in the American promise of justice for all. At the heart of all that he learned and taught were these simple propositions: that the natural-rights principles epitomized in the Declaration of Independence were universally and permanently true; that the everlasting glory of America’s Founding lay in its dedication to those principles; and that the salvation of the nation lay in its rededication to them.
Myers goes on to recount the story of how Douglass, who as a former slave initially sided with the abolitionists of the day in rejecting America and its Constitution “for supporting and perpetuating this monstrous system of injustice and blood,” eventually developed, through a careful study of the Founding, an “irrepressible faith in America.” In America’s dedication to principles of natural human rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence, Douglass found reason to love and identify with his country, despite the injustices that he and his people had suffered.
Douglass’s uplifting journey from alienation to a “rationally grounded hopefulness” should embolden all those of us who believe in America and her dedication—shaky at times, but always eventually triumphant—to the natural equality of men.
The Founding Fathers and Slavery
David Barton - 01/01/2001
Even though the issue of slavery is often raised as a discrediting charge against the Founding Fathers, the historical fact is that slavery was not the product of, nor was it an evil introduced by, the Founding Fathers; slavery had been introduced to America nearly two centuries before the Founders. As President of Congress Henry Laurens explained:
I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British Kings and Parliaments as well as by the laws of the country ages before my existence. . . . In former days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest; the day, I hope, is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the Golden Rule ["do unto others as you would have them do unto you" Matthew 7:12]. 1
Prior to the time of the Founding Fathers, there had been few serious efforts to dismantle the institution of slavery. John Jay identified the point at which the change in attitude toward slavery began:
Prior to the great Revolution, the great majority . . . of our people had been so long accustomed to the practice and convenience of having slaves that very few among them even doubted the propriety and rectitude of it. 2
The Revolution was the turning point in the national attitude–and it was the Founding Fathers who contributed greatly to that change. In fact, many of the Founders vigorously complained against the fact that Great Britain had forcefully imposed upon the Colonies the evil of slavery. For example, Thomas Jefferson heavily criticized that British policy:
He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. . . . Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce [that is, he has opposed efforts to prohibit the slave trade]. 3
Benjamin Franklin, in a 1773 letter to Dean Woodward, confirmed that whenever the Americans had attempted to end slavery, the British government had indeed thwarted those attempts. Franklin explained that . . .
. . . a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America, that many of Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed. 4
Further confirmation that even the Virginia Founders were not responsible for slavery, but actually tried to dismantle the institution, was provided by John Quincy Adams (known as the "hell-hound of abolition" for his extensive efforts against that evil). Adams explained:
The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself [Jefferson]. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country [Great Britain] and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves. 5
While Jefferson himself had introduced a bill designed to end slavery, 6 not all of the southern Founders were opposed to slavery. According to the testimony of Virginians James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Rutledge, it was the Founders from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia who most strongly favored slavery. 7
Yet, despite the support for slavery in those States, the clear majority of the Founders opposed this evil. For instance, when some of the southern pro-slavery advocates invoked the Bible in support of slavery, Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress, responded:
[E]ven the sacred Scriptures had been quoted to justify this iniquitous traffic. It is true that the Egyptians held the Israelites in bondage for four hundred years, . . . but . . . gentlemen cannot forget the consequences that followed: they were delivered by a strong hand and stretched-out arm and it ought to be remembered that the Almighty Power that accomplished their deliverance is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. 8
Many of the Founding Fathers who had owned slaves as British citizens released them in the years following America’s separation from Great Britain (e.g., George Washington, John Dickinson, Caesar Rodney, William Livingston, George Wythe, John Randolph of Roanoke, and others). Furthermore, many of the Founders had never owned any slaves. For example, John Adams proclaimed, "[M]y opinion against it [slavery] has always been known . . . [N]ever in my life did I own a slave." 9
Notice a few additional examples of the strong anti-slavery sentiments held by great numbers of the Founders:
[W]hy keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil. 10 CHARLES CARROLL, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
As Congress is now to legislate for our extensive territory lately acquired, I pray to Heaven that they may build up the system of the government on the broad, strong, and sound principles of freedom. Curse not the inhabitants of those regions, and of the United States in general, with a permission to introduce bondage [slavery]. 11 JOHN DICKINSON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION; GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA
That men should pray and fight for their own freedom and yet keep others in slavery is certainly acting a very inconsistent, as well as unjust and perhaps impious, part. 12 JOHN JAY, PRESIDENT OF CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, ORIGINAL CHIEF JUSTICE U. S. SUPREME COURT
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. . . . And with what execration [curse] should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other. . . . 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 forever. 13 THOMAS JEFFERSON
Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts . . . by agreeing to this duty. 14 RICHARD HENRY LEE, PRESIDENT OF CONTINENTAL CONGRESS; SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
I hope we shall at last, and if it so please God I hope it may be during my life time, see this cursed thing [slavery] taken out. . . . For my part, whether in a public station or a private capacity, I shall always be prompt to contribute my assistance towards effecting so desirable an event. 15 WILLIAM LIVINGSTON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION; GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY
[I]t ought to be considered that national crimes can only be and frequently are punished in this world by national punishments; and that the continuance of the slave-trade, and thus giving it a national sanction and encouragement, ought to be considered as justly exposing us to the displeasure and vengeance of Him who is equally Lord of all and who views with equal eye the poor African slave and his American master. 16 LUTHER MARTIN, DELEGATE AT CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
As much as I value a union of all the States, I would not admit the Southern States into the Union unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade [slavery]. 17
Honored will that State be in the annals of history which shall first abolish this violation of the rights of mankind. 18 JOSEPH REED, REVOLUTIONARY OFFICER; GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA
Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity. . . . It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men. 19 BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
Justice and humanity require it [the end of slavery]–Christianity commands it. Let every benevolent . . . pray for the glorious period when the last slave who fights for freedom shall be restored to the possession of that inestimable right. 20 NOAH WEBSTER, RESPONSIBLE FOR ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, 8 OF THE CONSTITUTION
Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law. . . . The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all. 21 JAMES WILSON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION; U. S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
[I]t is certainly unlawful to make inroads upon others . . . and take away their liberty by no better means than superior power. 22 JOHN WITHERSPOON, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION
For many of the Founders, their feelings against slavery went beyond words. For example, in 1774, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded America’s first anti-slavery society; John Jay was president of a similar society in New York. In fact, when signer of the Constitution William Livingston heard of the New York society, he, as Governor of New Jersey, wrote them, offering:
I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the society in New York] and . . . I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity. . . . May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. 23
Other prominent Founding Fathers who were members of societies for ending slavery included Richard Bassett, James Madison, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, William Few, John Marshall, Richard Stockton, Zephaniah Swift, and many more. In fact, based in part on the efforts of these Founders, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts began abolishing slavery in 1780; 2425 Vermont in 1786; 26 New Hampshire in 1792; 2728 and New Jersey did so in 1804. 29 Connecticut and Rhode Island did so in 1784; New York in 1799;
Additionally, the reason that Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery was a Congressional act, authored by Constitution signer Rufus King 30 and signed into law by President George Washington, 31 which prohibited slavery in those territories. 32 It is not surprising that Washington would sign such a law, for it was he who had declared:
"I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]. "33
The truth is that it was the Founding Fathers who were responsible for planting and nurturing the first seeds for the recognition of black equality and for the eventual end of slavery. This was a fact made clear by Richard Allen.
Allen had been a slave in Pennsylvania but was freed after he converted his master to Christianity. Allen, a close friend of Benjamin Rush and several other Founding Fathers, went on to become the founder of the A.M.E. Church in America. In an early address "To the People of Color," he explained:
Many of the white people have been instruments in the hands of God for our good, even such as have held us in captivity, [and] are now pleading our cause with earnestness and zeal. 34
While much progress was made by the Founders to end the institution of slavery, unfortunately what they began was not fully achieved until generations later. Yet, despite the strenuous effort of many Founders to recognize in practice that "all men are created equal," charges persist to the opposite. In fact, revisionists even claim that the Constitution demonstrates that the Founders considered one who was black to be only three-fifths of a person. This charge is yet another falsehood.
The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress. Based on the clear records of the Constitutional Convention, two prominent professors explain the meaning of the three-fifths clause:
[T]he Constitution allowed Southern States to count three-fifths of their slaves toward the population that would determine numbers of representatives in the federal legislature. This clause is often singled out today as a sign of black dehumanization: they are only three-fifths human. But the provision applied to slaves, not blacks. That meant that free blacks–and there were many, North as well as South–counted the same as whites. More important, the fact that slaves were counted at all was a concession to slave owners. Southerners would have been glad to count their slaves as whole persons. It was the Northerners who did not want them counted, for why should the South be rewarded with more representatives, the more slaves they held? 35 THOMAS WEST
It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South. 36
WALTER WILLIAMS
Why do revisionists so often abuse and misportray the three-fifths clause? Professor Walter Williams (himself an African-American) suggested:
Politicians, news media, college professors and leftists of other stripes are selling us lies and propaganda. To lay the groundwork for their increasingly successful attack on our Constitution, they must demean and criticize its authors. As Senator Joe Biden demonstrated during the Clarence Thomas hearings, the framers’ ideas about natural law must be trivialized or they must be seen as racists. 37
While this has been only a cursory examination of the Founders and slavery, it is nonetheless sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity of the insinuation that the Founders were a collective group of racists.
Endnotes
1. Frank Moore, Materials for History Printed From Original Manuscripts, the Correspondence of Henry Laurens of South Carolina (New York: Zenger Club, 1861), p. 20, to John Laurens on August 14, 1776.
2. John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1891), Vol. III, p. 342, to the English Anti-Slavery Society in June 1788.
3. Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1903), Vol. I, p. 34.
4. Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks, editor (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore, and Mason, 1839), Vol. VIII, p. 42, to the Rev. Dean Woodward on April 10, 1773.
5. John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), p. 50.
6. Jefferson, Writings, Vol. I, p. 4.
7. Jefferson, Writings, Vol. I, p. 28, from his autobiography; see also James Madison, The Papers of James Madison (Washington: Langtree and O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. III, p. 1395, August 22, 1787; see also James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, editor, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), Vol. IX, p. 2, to Robert Walsh on November 27, 1819.
8. The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834), First Congress, Second Session, p. 1518, March 22, 1790; see also George Adams Boyd, Elias Boudinot, Patriot and Statesman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 182.
9. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854), Vol. IX, pp. 92-93, to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley on January 24, 1801.
10. Kate Mason Rowland, Life and Correspondence of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York & London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898), Vol. II, p. 321, to Robert Goodloe Harper, April 23, 1820.
11. Charles J. Stille, The Life and Times of John Dickinson (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Company, 1891), p. 324, to George Logan on January 30, 1804.
12. John Jay, The Life and Times of John Jay, William Jay, editor (New York: J. & S. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p. 174, to the Rev. Dr. Richard Price on September 27, 1785.
13. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, pp. 236-237.
14. Richard Henry Lee, Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee, and His Correspondence With the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe, Illustrative of Their Characters, and of the American Revolution, Richard Henry Lee, editor (Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and I. Lea, 1825), Vol. I, p. 19, the first speech of Richard Henry Lee in the House of Burgesses of Virginia.
15. William Livingston, The Papers of William Livingston, Carl E. Prince, editor (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), Vol. V, p. 358, to James Pemberton on October 20, 1788.
16. Luther Martin, The Genuine Information Delivered to the Legislature of the State of Maryland Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention Lately Held at Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Eleazor Oswald, 1788), p. 57; see also Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Jonathan Elliot, editor (Washington: Printed for the Editor, 1836), Vol. I, p. 374.
17. Elliot’s Debates (Washington: Printed for the Editor, 1836), Vol. III, pp. 452-454, George Mason, June 15, 1788.
18. William Armor, Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (Norwich, CT: T. H. Davis & Co., 1874), p. 223.
19. Benjamin Rush, Minutes of the Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies Established in Different Parts of the United States Assembled at Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, 1794), p. 24.
20. Noah Webster, Effect of Slavery on Morals and Industry (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1793), p. 48.
21. James Wilson, The Works of the Honorable James Wilson, Bird Wilson, editor (Philadelphia: Lorenzo Press, 1804), Vol. II, p. 488, lecture on "The Natural Rights of Individuals."
22. John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), Vol. VII, p. 81, from "Lectures on Moral Philosophy," Lecture X on Politics.
23. William Livingston, The Papers of William Livingston, Carl E. Prince, editor (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), Vol. V, p. 255, to the New York Manumission Society on June 26, 1786.
24. A Constitution or Frame of Government Agreed Upon by the Delegates of the People of the State of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston: Benjamin Edes and Sons, 1780), p. 7, Article I, "Declaration of Rights" and An Abridgement of the Laws of Pennsylvania, Collinson Read, editor, (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, 1801), pp. 264-266, Act of March 1, 1780.
25. The Public Statue Laws of the State of Connecticut (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1808), Book I, pp. 623-625, Act passed in October 1777 and Rhode Island Session Laws (Providence: Wheeler, 1784), pp. 7-8, Act of February 27, 1784.
26. The Constitutions of the Sixteen States (Boston: Manning and Loring, 1797), p. 249, Vermont, 1786, Article I, "Declaration of Rights."
27. Constitutions (1797), p. 50, New Hampshire, 1792, Article I, "Bill of Rights."
28. Laws of the State of New York, Passed at the Twenty-Second Session, Second Meeting of the Legislature (Albany: Loring Andrew, 1798), pp. 721-723, Act passed on March 29, 1799.
29. Laws of the State of New Jersey, Compiled and Published Under the Authority of the Legislature, Joseph Bloomfield, editor (Trenton: James J. Wilson, 1811), pp. 103-105, Act passed February 15, 1804.
30. Rufus King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Charles King, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894), Vol. I, pp. 288-289.
31. Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States of America (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1791), p. 104, August 7, 1789.
32. The Constitutions of the United States (Trenton: Moore and Lake, 1813), p. 366, "An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio," Article VI.
33. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XXVIII, pp. 407-408, to Robert Morris on April 12, 1786.
34. Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Right Rev. Richard Allen (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), p. 73, from his "Address to the People of Color in the United States."
35. Principles: A Quarterly Review for Teachers of History and Social Science (Claremont, CA: The Claremont Institute Spring/Summer, 1992), Thomas G. West, "Was the American Founding Unjust? The Case of Slavery," p. 5.
36. Walter E. Williams, Creators Syndicate, Inc., May 26, 1993, "Some Fathers Fought Slavery."
37. Williams, May 26, 1993, "Some Fathers Fought Slavery."