#Slavery and Emancipation

[deadpresidents]

James K. Polk was rare among Presidents in that he didn't just inherit slaves. Polk, like [Andrew] Jackson, actively -- but secretly -- bought slaves while President. Unlike Jackson, however, Polk didn't buy them in Washington, D.C., but secretly back down south. Why the secrecy? Because during his career, Polk straddled the lines between slaveholders and abolitionists, never completely joining either side. Polk was already a major slave owner when he became President but was very cautious about letting people know about his ownership of other people. Perhaps he was afraid of the American people -- especially abolitionists -- finding out that he was buying children. "Of the nineteen slaves Polk bought during his Presidency, one was ten years old, two were eleven, two were twelve, two were thirteen, two were fifteen, two were sixteen, and two were seventeen," said William Dusinberre, author of the great Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk (BOOK | KINDLE). "Each of these children was bought apart from his or her parents and from every sibling. One or two of these children may possibly have been orphans, but it would strain credulity to suggest many of them were." So Polk, who needed more labor for his plantation, did what most rich politicians would do in his situation: he found a way to increase his personal wealth without his constituents finding out about it. He set up agents to buy the slaves in their names and then transferred them to his possession at home... ...He even made sure he had plausible deniability. Dusinberre noted that Polk -- living in a pre-Civil War America -- made sure that while he bought slaves in the White House, he never used his Presidential salary. "He used his savings from his salary to pay campaign debts, to buy and refurbish a mansion in Nashville, and to buy U.S. Treasury certificates, but never to buy slaves," Dusinberre said. "Evidently he distinguished (between) his private income -- from the plantation --(and) the public salary he received from government revenues. Thus, if the public had ever learned of his buying young slaves, he could always have truthfully denied that he had spent his Presidential salary for that purpose. Polk may have been careful about how he bought his slaves because he knew slavery was an evil institution. But Polk kept his slaves throughout his life and didn't even free them upon death, leaving that for his wife.

-- A closer look at the extent of President James K. Polk's record as a slave owner while he was in the White House, including a troubling tendency towards buying children and separating them from their families.

This excerpt is from Jesse J. Holland's excellent and very revealing book, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).

[jamaicahomescom]

Faith, Freedom, and Property: Christianity and the Role of Jesus Christ in Jamaica's Journey from Slavery to Empowerment

[whenweallvote]

Many of us are taught that slavery came to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but for enslaved people in Texas, freedom didn’t come until June 19, 1865.

Swipe to learn about the history of Juneteenth, and why it’s a celebration of freedom, culture, and progress.

[alwaysbewoke]

—Did you know that Juneteenth is also celebrated in a part of Mexico? Nacimiento Mexico was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the US. As many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. —To date, many Black Mexicans from the Texas area retrace a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery. —Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions in the village of Nacimiento. —Slave hunters would patrol the southern border for escapees, led by the Texas Rangers but the Mexican army would be there waiting for them (the slave hunters) to turn them away.

x

[readyforevolution]

Juneteenth (19 June), or Emancipation Day, commemorates the day US troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the government had abolished slavery, more than two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on 1 January 1863.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed at least 3.5 million enslaved people in Confederate states (states supporting slavery) during the US Civil War (1861-65). Although Lincoln initially freed enslaved Africans so they could join the US military, the goalpost moved when he decided saving the Union (non-slaveholding states) meant abolishing slavery.

Many enslavers took refuge in Texas with their enslaved people, seeing it as a haven for slavery. As Union states gained the upper hand, many Black people gained freedom, but not those in Texas.

While local Juneteenth celebrations saw a resurgence in the late 20th century, US President Joe Biden made it a federal holiday in 2021.

Unfortunately, freedom did not come with reparations and equality. To this day, descendants of enslaved Africans suffer physical and mental ailments—such as high blood pressure and kidney disease, to name a few—are nine times poorer than their white counterparts, and Black men are four times more likely to be imprisoned than white men.

Could the payment of reparations for US slavery complete the memory of Juneteenth? Let us know in the comments.

[scotianostra]

August 1st 1834 saw the abolition of slavery, an abhorrent thing, and something Scotland can't just wash its hands of.

Many of you will have walked through St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh, and some, myself included will have taken the obligatory pics, most of which will be dominated by a sort miniature Nelson's Column, but atop is the statue of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, the 'Uncrowned King of Scotland'. You can just see him in the pic. Your eyes will fall also on several buildings that would have been homes or business premises of Scots who made their fortunes in the transatlantic slave trade. Many of the houses in the New Town were owned by people with investments in the slave trade.

Back to Mr Dundas, with his immense power he held at the end of the eighteenth century, he was able to use his influence to almost single handedly delay the abolition of slave trade a further 15 years to 1807 and the subsequent abolition of British slavery in 1834. He was impeached in 1806 (then acquitted) for the misappropriation of funds, and he never held office again. Who knows how much more suffering was inflicted on African people in the Middle Passage during those 15 years?

There has been much controversy recently about his statue. What words on his plaque would be appropriate to reflect this unsavoury side of his legacy and give necessary context to his role in Scottish society?

The magnificent Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters, Dundas House, was the original home of Lawrence Dundas, cousin to Henry Dundas. His brother George Heneage Lawrence Dundas owned plantations in Grenada and Dominica.

The 4th Earl of Hopetoun, the nephew of Henry Dundas’ second wife, and the vice governor of the bank, is immortalised in the bronze statue outside the bank. He was second in command to fellow Scot, Ralph Abercromby, commander-in-chief of the British forces in the West Indies. Together, the men helped to end the two year slave revolution led by French-African Julien Fedon in Grenada in 1795-6 in the fight against the French for islands in the West Indies. Fedon was a highly skilled strategist, and his men executed 40 British, including Scottish governor Ninian Home at his home in Paraclete.

After 15 months of fighting the rebels were captured and executed in the Market Square. Yet Fedon was never found. Legend says he escaped to a neighbouring island on a canoe, aided by either the Amerindians or ‘Black Caribs’ in St.Vincent.

The suppression of this revolution resulted in slavery continuing for almost another 40 years in Grenada.

And when the eventual abolition came it was Dundas and his cronies who profited further with compensation deals running into what today would be billions of pounds.

I'm turning of commenting on this as it can attract some comments that I would end up having to delete, you can vent your opinions through emoticons

Read more on this despicable man and the trade helped lengthen here. https://historycompany.co.uk/.../henry-dundas-lofty-hero.../

[odinsblog]

Today in 1865, Union forces occupying Texas issue General Order No 3, officially informing all slaves in the former Confederate state that they are henceforth free in accordance with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The occasion would later be celebrated as Juneteenth, Freedom Day.

The general order was issued by Union General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, upon arriving at Galveston, Texas, at the end of the American Civil War and two and a half years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation.

General Order No. 3 states:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” (source)

While the order was critical to expanding freedom to enslaved people, the racist language used in the last sentences foreshadowed that the fight for equal rights would continue.

[todaysdocument]

Marguerite Thompson, a previously enslaved woman who had purchased her freedom in 1851, petitioned the U.S. Provisional Court to officially recognize her emancipation on June 30, 1863. 

The Court declared her “henceforth and forever free.” 

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States Series: Case Files

Transcription: 

To the Honorable Chas A. Peabody, Judge of the US Provisional Court for the State of Louisiana.

The petition of Marguerite Thompson, a woman of color residing in this City respectfully showeth

That on or about the 26th of December 1851 she became entitled to her freedom by purchasing herself from her master H R W Hill for which she obtained a receipt as will appear by the notarial certificate hereto annexed and made part of this petition.

That her said master long since died and although up to the time of his death and since she has been in the financial enjoyment of her freedom, yet she has suffered much inconvenience and embarrassment in the management of her affairs and property for the want of a formal declaration of the freedom from some important authority.

Wherefore she prays that after due proceedings and satisfying the Court of the truth of her allegations and the justice of her claim, that a judgement be rendered recognizing and declaring her freedom and her status as a free person of color and she will ever pray &c

Alfred Shaw

Attorney for Petitioner

[page 2]

Marguerite Thompson herein duly sworn deposes and says that all the allegations of the foregoing petition are true.

Sworn to and Subscribed before

Me this 30th June, 1863

Her

Marguerite  +  Thompson

MarK

A.N. Murtagh

Assistant Deputy Clerk

Witness

Henry McIntire

[page 3]

The Court Considering the within petition of Marguerite Thompson and the document accompanying the same that she be declared to be henceforth and forever free and that as such she be entitled to see the rights and privileges and immunities of a free person under the laws of the United States

[sideways, as would show when the page is folded to be filed]

No. 189

U.S. Prov’l Court

Marguerite Thompson

Praying for her Emancipation

Petition &c

Filed June 30th 1863

A.N. Murtagh

J.Clerk. 

[fifty-cent Internal Revenue Conveyance stamp attached] 

[eelhound]

"'Republican' theorists — as in ancient Greek and Roman republics — emphasized freedom from domination, and argued that this was a more fundamental kind of freedom than freedom from interference.

Think about the most extreme form of nonfreedom, slavery. A slave who’s whipped every day is certainly less lucky than one whose master hardly ever strikes him. His body is interfered with less. But is he more free? Proponents of republicanism would say no, because in each case the slave is at the mercy of the master and the same underlying relationship of domination persists.

Of course, ancient republican philosophers had no objection to slavery. They just wanted a class of citizens to be free from the whims of any emperor or oligarch. But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, abolitionists, labor organizers, and socialists advocated a society in which everyone would be robustly free from domination. Even the elimination of extreme unfreedom through the Union’s victory in the Civil War wasn’t enough to satisfy these radicals, who saw disturbing patterns of domination in Northern industrial capitalism:

Emancipation may have eliminated chattel slavery, but, as eight-hour campaigner Ira Steward once put it, the creation of this new form of economic dependence meant 'something of slavery still remains . . . something of freedom is yet to come.'

Under capitalism, the vast majority of people who are directly involved in the economy don’t own what Marxists call 'the means of production.' They don’t own factories, for example, or book-packaging warehouses or grocery stores, and they can’t afford to buy any of these things. So they have no realistic option except to rent themselves out for eight hours a day — and it’s only eight hours due to the efforts of people like Steward — to people who do own them.

There’s a profound power imbalance in this relationship. Many workplaces are run as petty dictatorships where the boss can tell workers when they have to smile, when they are or aren’t allowed to talk to each other, and when they can and can’t go to the bathroom. In the vast majority of cases — exceptions include workers with rare and highly valued skills, and periods of especially low unemployment — it’s much easier for a company to replace a worker than for the worker to replace her livelihood. She has to fret about her boss’s opinion of her in a way that he doesn’t. Even if he is a benevolent boss, she is still subject to his whims."

- Ben Burgis, from "Socialism Is All About Expanding Freedom." Jacobin, 10 March 2023.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The Hidden Truth Behind The End Of Slavery - Thomas Sowell

Slavery was destroyed within the United States at staggering costs in blood and treasure, but the struggle was over within a few ghastly years of warfare. Nevertheless, the Civil War was the bloodiest war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, and more Americans were killed in that war than in any other war in the country’s history. But this was a highly atypical—indeed, unique—way to end slavery. In most of the rest of the world, unremitting efforts to destroy the institution of slavery went on for more than a century, on a thousand shifting fronts, and in the face of determined and ingenious efforts to continue the trade in human beings.

Within the British Empire, the abolition of slavery was accompanied by the payment of compensation to slave owners for what was legally the confiscation of their property. This cost the British government £20 million—a huge sum in the nineteenth century, about 5 percent of the nation’s annual output.38 A similar plan to have the federal government of the United States buy up the slaves and then set them free was proposed in Congress, but was never implemented. The costs of emancipating the millions of slaves in the United States would have been more than half the annual national output—but still less than the economic costs of the Civil War,39 quite aside from the cost in blood and lives, and a legacy of lasting bitterness in the South, growing out of its defeat and the widespread destruction it suffered during that conflict.

While the British could simply abolish slavery in their Western Hemisphere colonies, they faced a more daunting and longer-lasting task of patrolling the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, in order to prevent slave ships of various nationalities from continuing to supply slaves illegally. Even during the Napoleonic wars, Britain continued to keep some of its warships on patrol off West Africa. Moreover, such patrols likewise tried to interdict the shipments of slaves from East Africa through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Brazil capitulated to British demands that it end its slave trade, after being publicly humiliated by British warships that seized and destroyed slave ships within Brazil’s own waters. In 1873, two British cruisers appeared off the coast of Zanzibar and threatened to blockade the island unless the slave market there shut down. It was shut down.

It would be hard to think of any other crusade pursued so relentlessly for so long by any nation, at such mounting costs, without any economic or other tangible benefit to itself. These costs included bribes paid to Spain and Portugal to get their cooperation with the effort to stop the international slave trade and the costs of maintaining naval patrols and of resettling freed slaves, not to mention dangerous frictions with France and the United States, among other countries.40 Captains of British warships who detained vessels suspected of carrying slaves were legally liable if those vessels turned out to have no slaves on board. The human costs were also large.

[..]

None of this means that the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade should be ignored, downplayed, or excused. Nor have they been. A vast literature has detailed the vile conditions under which slaves from Africa lived—and died—during their voyages to the Western Hemisphere. But the much less publicized slave trade to the Islamic countries had even higher mortality rates en route, as well as involving larger numbers of people over the centuries, even though the Atlantic slave trade had higher peaks while it lasted. By a variety of accounts, most of the slaves who were marched across the Sahara toward the Mediterranean died on the way.53 While these were mostly women and girls, the males faced a special danger—castration to produce the eunuchs in demand as harem attendants in the Islamic world.

[..]

On the issue of slavery, it was essentially Western civilization against the world. At the time, Western civilization had the power to prevail against all other civilizations. That is how and why slavery was destroyed as an institution in almost the whole world. But it did not happen all at once or even within a few decades. When the British finally stamped out slavery in Tanganyika in 1922 it was more than half a century after the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, and vestiges of slavery still survived in parts of Africa into the twenty-first century.

==

This video pairs visual elements with Sowell's audiobook reading of his own book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa

The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron

The West Africa Squadron, also known as the Preventative Squadron, was a squadron of the British Royal Navy whose goal was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England, it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867.

[alwaysbewoke]

In 1865, enslaved people in Texas were notified by Union Civil War soldiers about the abolition of slavery. This was 2.5 years after the final Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved Black Americans. But Slavery Continued… In 1866, a year after the amendment was ratified, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor. This made the business of arresting black people very lucrative, thus hundreds of white men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility being to search out and arrest black peoples who were in violation of ‘Black Codes’ Basically, black codes were a series of laws criminalizing legal activity for black people. Through the enforcement of these laws, they could be imprisoned. Once arrested, these men, women & children would be leased to plantations or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor. It’s believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Black people were part of that system of re-enslavement through the prison system. The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish the Black Codes.

[soapdispensersalesman]

Happy Keti Koti everyone, Switi Manspasi🇸🇷💛

Today marks the 160th anniversary of the abolishment of slavery on Suriname and the Antilles, or actually the 150th as most enslaved worked until 1873 as they couldn't go anywhere.

[jamaicahomescom]

The Rich History of Emancipation Day and Independence Day in Jamaica

Jamaica’s history is a vibrant tapestry of resilience, struggle, and triumph. Central to this story are two pivotal celebrations: Emancipation Day and Independence Day. These holidays commemorate Jamaica’s journey from colonial rule and slavery to freedom and self-governance. Understanding these days offers a glimpse into the spirit of the Jamaican people and their enduring quest for liberty and…

[reasoningdaily]

Jamaica - Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery

Adolphe Duperly’s lithograph titled Commemorative of the Extinction of Slavery on the First of August 1838 (fig. I.1) records the apparent blaze of jubilation with which the city of Kingston inaugurated the period discussed in this book: the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The slow and painful process of emancipation had finally brought an end to slavery, the condition of most Jamaicans for the previous two centuries. By historical coincidence, emancipation occurred at the beginning of the reign of a monarch almost five thousand miles away.

Victoria’s special status in the Jamaican imaginary is recalled in a Bruckins song performed in 1887, on the fiftieth anniversary of her accession:

Jubalee, jubalee This is the year of jubalee Augus’ mornin’ come again (×2) Augus’ mornin’ come again This is the year of jubalee Queen Victoria give we free.2

Victoria, queen of a worldwide empire that had included Jamaica since 1655, had been crowned just a month earlier, on June 28, 1838.1 Victoria’s name would become identified with the dominant ideologies, social codes, and aesthetic tastes of the second half of the nineteenth century, even beyond the wide reach of her titular domain.

The long period of her reign has attained the status of a historical unit principally because of the emblematic character of the Queen herself. Victoria was to be remembered by black Jamaicans as the Queen who set them free, despite enslaved Jamaicans’ long history of resistance (most recently the Christmas rebellions of 1831–1832) that had precipitated the passing of the Emancipation Act and the fact that the legislation predated her reign

[deadpresidents]

Just wondering, do you still think that John Brown was evil like you said several years ago?

I never said John Brown was evil. I said he was a terrorist and I think the way I worded my answer made it sound like I didn't think he was a hero. He was a terrorist by the literal definition of his actions: he was using violence to achieve specific political objectives. That's exactly what a terrorist does. But he was a "good" terrorist (I think I even have a book about him called The Good Terrorist). He was a terrorist whose aims I agreed with and would have 100% supported if I had been alive at the time. And while he fit the literal, textbook definition of a terrorist, he also was the literal, textbook definition of a freedom fighter. And I do think he was a hero; he was genuinely, physically fighting to abolish slavery and on behalf of equal rights at a time when almost nobody else in the country was doing so. He not only continuously risked his life (and the lives of his family members) on behalf of the cause, but ultimately gave his life in the pursuit of freedom for all. Again, I think the way I worded that answer a few years ago made it sound like I disagreed with what he did, but that was not the case and certainly not my intended answer. I even said that what he did was admirable in the answer, but I wasn't clear enough with my wording at the time.

To be clear, I believe John Brown was a hero and a martyr. He's always been a personal hero. I don't have very much art on my walls, but one of the few pieces I do have in my home is actually a copy of this Jacob Lawrence print of John Brown and Frederick Douglass:

So, no, I never thought John Brown was evil. Quite the opposite, in fact. I made the mistake of answering that question a few years ago like a historian instead of as the human being with strong personal beliefs about the subject that I've always had. Hopefully this clears up that misconception.