Today I was reading this post at Booker Rising, where Shay was commenting on this post by La Shawn Barber. La Shawn was speaking of how great America’s founding was and Shay mentions that she feels slavery is America’s “original sin”.

Here are my thoughts on America’s founding and the issue of slavery.

Not all of America’s founding fathers felt slavery was a good thing. It was very much a divided issue like abortion is today. The similarities are pretty striking!

After America’s founding, some slave owning Christian Quakers realized that the document they just agreed to was counter to owning slaves and released theirs. These same Christian Quakers pressed people like George Washington on the issue. Washington began trying to rid himself of slaves via trade, but could not find a way to do it without breaking up families. Washington never wanted to break up a family. He did eventually rid himself of the burden of slavery via granting those under his direct ownership freedom upon his death. (The real irony here is that a slave that ran away from Washington told him she would come back if he would grant her freedom at his death. Washington refused, because of his ego. She never returned.) It is better that they were freed this way, than via his efforts to trade them away, since that would have meant they would have remained slaves. Prior to his death in his later years, his plantation was at times doing more to feed the families on the plantation than actually producing goods for sale. He had more old, sick and children on his plantation than actual workers. Not saying slavery was good, but it ended up being a situation for Washington where he was actually doing a lot to provide for slaves’ needs. He found the system of slavery to even be unworkable from a financial standpoint, in addition to the moral issues. Benjamin Franklin was against slavery for some of the same reasons, before Washington had any ill feelings towards the practice. (Be sure to read the write-up at that link about Benjamin Franklin!)

Abolitionist Christian Quakers eventually got a foothold in the Republican party, which was a party started by slaveholder Republicans Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Despite Madison’s ownership of slaves, he realized it was evil and sought to end it. The Republican party became the party of abolition and once Abraham Lincoln was elected President more states joined the Confederacy, out of fear that slavery would soon end. Initially, Lincoln simply did not want to expand slavery to new states, but was going to allow old slave states to continue the practice. But after the secession of states like Georgia and others over the issue of slavery, Lincoln could not allow the Union to break up. And the Civil War started after that. During the war Lincoln needed to gain leverage, signed the Emacimation Proclamation to grant slaves freedom and the rest is history.

I often debate the main cause of the Civil War with others. I am a FIRM believer that slavery was the main issue, while others point out all the other issues. Having reviewed all the issues, I remain firm in my feeling that slavery was the main issue. And states that left the Union were not at all “politically correct” about their reasons for leaving the Union. States like Georgia made it clear.

Their letter speaks of much that I’ve mentioned here and their honesty about why they joined the Confederacy is why I am no fan of anything related to the Confederacy. (Confederate symbols and such.) I moved to Georgia by choice, given things have changed. Other Confederate states’ letters of secession are very similar. While they all point out many issues with the North, the first and foremost issue was slavery. They made it plain that slavery was the core issue.

America’s founding is what caused America to look at it’s own actions and eventually change. People like Washington were trying to see the change come without bloodshed. Those founders knew a Civil War over slavery after being weakened in a war with Britain would have resulted in all being lost. And during the Revolutionary War England offered freedom to any slave that fought against America. This did not result in a massive slave uprising to join with England, although some slaves did side with England.

The real irony of the debate over America’s history, is when we talk about the greatness of ancient Egypt, we all just look at the pretty pyramids. Nobody says much about the massive slave labor required to build them.

Interesting how we can view the greatness of other societies, while not spending so much time focusing on their flaws.

America’s original sin was not slavery. I think the American Indian would beg to differ on who experienced the first sin, given settlers were breaking land agreements. And that is also a very twisted matter, that I won’t detail in this post other than to say nobody was a saint. (Maybe I’ll touch on this in another future post.)

Lastly, I also must say I find it interesting that nobody ever calls slavery “Africa’s Original Sin”. Although America would never have had a “slave trade” without Africans who were willing to “trade” human beings.