The Connection Between Abolitionists and the War of 1812

The War of 1812 might not have happened without the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

In 1807, the British Parliament passed a law against the slave trade, although not against slavery itself.

This law came after many years of a campaign for the abolition of slavery that had been fought in England, led by William Wilberforce. The abolitionists really wanted the end of slavery, but their motions were defeated year after year.

In 1807, Britain was at war with France, and no British ships were allowed to trade with the French. Many British slave ships had converted to the US flag in order to continue selling slaves to French colonies. The slave trade was particularly important to the French Colonies, because the slave ships that sold the slaves also transported the sugar that the colonies produced.

The abolitionists backed an anti-slave trade law that was promoted as a way to cripple France's trade. The Slave Trade Law of 1807 said (among other things) that it was illegal for any British subject to be involved with the slave trade.

While researching this aspect of history, I was confused about the actual enforcement. On the internet, I found references to slave captains being fined a fixed amount for each slave aboard their ship, which apparently led to slave ship captains throwing slaves overboard to avoid fines. On the other hand, the Slave Trade Act of 1807 clearly states that any slave ship shall be forfeit.

http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm

Also confusing was the fact that the Americans passed their own law against the slave trade the same year. But they were not in a position to vigorously enforce their law, like the Royal Navy was. Also, the war between Britain and France encouraged the enforcement of the anti slave trade law by Britain.

In any case, it resulted in increased searches and seizures of ships flying the American flag, by the British navy.

There is also a connection with Sierra Leone, as the city of Freetown was the place that slaves on seized ships were set free by the Royal Navy.

Royal Navy ships continued to stop and search American ships for several more years, and became one of the well-known causes of the US government declaring war on Britain in 1812. What is not so well known is that there was a connection between the war of 1812, and the campaign to abolish the slave trade.

The abolitionists' campaign carried on, and eventually, the actual practice of slavery would be declared illegal.

Mythbusting for Haiti

It is pretty overwhelming to see what is going on in Haiti. But absolutely revolting to see the heartless attitudes some people take toward this tragedy. I especially despise Rush Limbaugh saying that nobody should give a penny to the Haitians. 

I saw some comment like:
"What do they expect, they live in little tin roof shacks, of course they are going to be killed in an earthquake"

Fact: You are actually far less likely to die in an earthquake when you live in a miserable shack held up by broomsticks and twine, than you are to be killed when a larger multi story cement structure, probably built during the American occupation, collapses on your head.

Pat Robertson made a lot of errors in his condemnation of Haiti. The "Pact with the devil" they made to get free from France? I have gone over the pact with the devil contract before, it does not hold up to any scrutiny. I don't expect any truth from someone who believes in Adam and Eve anyway. But please, they were not fighting to be free of France. They at first wanted to remain a colony of France, and only to be free of slavery. Toussaint Louverture, their early and successful leader, wanted to negotiate for the end of slavery and remain a colony of France. But he was captured at the official negotiation, by the French, and sent to France where he died of disease in captivity. He was actually lucky, almost every other leader who stood up to the French was burned alive or tortured to death upon capture. It was only after these talks broke down, that the Haitians were forced to choose new leaders and decided to fight again for complete independence, against the treacherous French.

Another big question Pat raised, why are Haitians so poor, when right next door in Dominican Republic people are wealthy and happy? He reasons it's all about the "pact with the devil" which I actually find an improvement over many of the racist slurs other people make to explain the poverty.

Why is Haiti poor? After Haiti's independence, the French refused to trade with Haiti, and no other country would or could trade with them either. Either for revenge, or because of the so-called pact with the devil, of for pure racism. Anyway, no trade, no money. After a number of years of near mass starvation, the Haitians negotiated with the French, who were also hurting a little by this time, as Haiti had been a major source of wealth for them. The French offered a deal, take it or leave it, that the Haitians would have to repay France for every bit of land they took (the entire island of Hispaniola), and the full market price for every slave on the island who was freed by the rebellion, (almost the entire population) and all damages cause by either side in the rebellion. Ask yourself how this compares to the terms England gave to America after the war of independence. You may have to read up on that history again, but I'm sure you will not find reparations or trade embargoes. The Haitians were saddled with paying off a staggering debt, including extremely high interest rates from 1826 to 1879. So don't make disparaging comments about Haitian poverty if you don't know anything about their history.

Is there more? Of course. The entire Island of Hispaniola, for a time was under one government, but in 1844 considering the burdensome deal made with France, half the island split away, leaving the people in the Western half of the island (today Haiti) to pay the entire war reparations to France without the help of the Eastern half, now called Dominican Republic. That's the "wealthy" part that Pat Robertson compares to Haiti to "prove" there was a pact with the devil. Apparently, in Pat Robertson's eyes, poverty proves you have a pact with the devil, even when people are taking money from you unfairly. And by the way, the Dominican Republic is not actually paradise on earth either.

Another myth to dispel is this: That the people of Haiti are congenitally incapable of running a decent country. Either through stupidity, or pacts with the devil or whatever, the myth is, the Haitians just can't do it. Well just read up on their history, and you will find there was a period of time (approximately 1867 to 1911) when the Haitians actually were turning their little country into a nice place to live, even with with a growing intellectual class, arts and literature. Peace and stability were the norm. But after about forty years of this, the Germans thought Haiti might be a possible colony in about 1911, and the Americans retaliated by invading and brutally occupying the Haiti. Since then it has been either outright American control, or American puppet dictators, more or less steadily. Later in this dictatorship phase (especially in the last 20 years), many of the most wealthy and educated Haitians emigrated to Canada or the USA, leaving the rest to deal with it. Not the best of conditions to try to run a good country.

Then this earthquake, and all of a sudden racists pop out of the woodwork with their opinions that do nothing but show their own ignorance and lack of either education or heart.

Now I see a video on CBC News  of a Canadian teenage girl in Haiti crying. Why? Because she and a group from her church were in Haiti during the earthquake, on one of these volunteer trips, doing some humanitarian work while visiting a developing country. She was crying, overcome with emotion of seeing all the dead bodies, hearing the screaming people trapped in the buildings, and yet in the middle of all this, their Haitians hosts were still doing their very best to make sure the Canadian guests were safe and taken care of.

How about if we just give these people a break for once?

Top picture: Haiti, taken from a travel blog here:

http://jeffandlauratravel.wordpress.com/category/travel/haiti/

Slavery and Race War

I am fairly sure there is connection between slavery and the support for war in the middle east and that it is important to understand it.

Looking at the electoral map of the USA, it is easy to see geographically the support for the Republicans who favour war is based in the south, especially the old slave owning states. And politically they are supported by the right wing Christians, especially the large Southern Baptists church. Coincidentally the Southern Baptist church was formed to promote slavery.

Maybe these are just coincidences so far, but there is more.

Slavery and the war in Iraq are both racist. The war is not against Moslems, in which case it would be a Holy War. This is more of a "Race War" against Arabs. There are several non-Arab, but Moslem countries in Africa and Asia that are not generally targetted by the pro-war faction, and happen to have little or no oil. Racism worked well in the days of slavery, it was impossible for black slaves to escape - even if they made it to Canada, they still faced life-long racism of a more subtle kind. To be fair, not all slavery is racist, but the type in the southern USA definitely ended up being overtly racist. No whites were ever owned by blacks.

The second similarity is the economic underpinning of slavery and middle east war. Imported slaves were needed to do the work to make America wealthy, because manpower was in short supply. Slavery was doomed from the moment that slaves could be replaced by industrial machinery. The machinery now needs oil which is getting to be in short supply. The oil has to be imported from the middle east, where there are a lot of Arabs. Slavery in 1800 was the way to get work done, and oil in 2009 is the way to get work done.

The third element to consider is cruelty. Slavery was cruel, not by accident, but by American law. No mercy was permitted to the slaves. This element is present in today's race/oil war, where torture of prisoners is the debate of the day. Pro-war people generally approve - especially the southern conservatives and formerly pro-slavery churches. And I guess it's not too surprising that General Petraeus has come out against torture. But he is from New York, with a Dutch-American background. And by the way, for southern Christians still arguing that waterboarding is not torture, the US government executed Japanese soldiers for war crimes where they were waterboarding US soldiers, and it was called torture.

Canada is not really free of the pro race war propaganda. Our very own Mark Steyn, who no longer lives here, has written another piece in MacLeans Magazine, called (if I remember "What Price Empathy") in which he argues that we cannot know for sure that most Moslem mother don't want their sons to grow up to be suicide bombers. This comment by Mark was to refute Condoleeza Rice's statement that most Arab mothers want their sons to get a University education. Although this may be a stupid argument from Mark, as usual it's hard to prove he's wrong. Well I'm going to give my support to Condoleeza for once. That's right, I think that Moslem mothers want their sons get an education rather than to be blown up. On this very question may rest the fate of world peace.

Cartoon by Steve Bell
Guardian
19 July 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Is Abortion Like SLavery?

I was recently Googling the words slavery and abortion and came up with 2,020,000 hits. All the pages I read were comparing abortion to slavery and saying why abortion is as evil as slavery (hint: both treat a person as a non-person).

It is interesting that the religion pushing hardest against abortion, the Southern Baptist, is also the religion that justified slavery based on the teachings of the Bible. Not only justified it, but made it morally wrong to oppose slavery.

Since the same religion is involved in both supporting slavery and opposing abortion because they say it is like slavery, my guess is that even to this day, they don't "get" why slavery was wrong. Although they did issue an apology for supporting slavery in 1995,

Why is slavery not like abortion?

1. With abortions, nobody is profiting by causing the misery of others.
2. Abortion is not a form of State sponsored terrorism against one race of people.
3. No babies are being taken away from their loving mother and sold as slaves.
4. No women are being used as "breeders" to produce "goods" to be sold.
5. Abortion does not promote rape, it tries to correct the results of rape.
6. No people are kidnapped on the streets or in their homes to be sold into abortion.

Now for some speculation on the the attitudes toward abortion back in the "good" old days of the Southern Baptists. African women knew how to do abortions, because they had been doing it for thousands of years and still do it in Africa. I am speculating that it must have galled the slave owners that they could not stop or even detect most of these abortions. The only time they could punish a black woman was if she decided to let the masters know she was pregnant, and then later on didn't produce the baby. As a pregnant slave, she would qualify for a little extra food, and was given a slightly less burdensome workload. Many women told their masters they were pregnant for these advantages, and carried on the pretense as long as possible before getting the inevitable whipping.

African women, as accustomed as they were to infants dying shortly after childbirth, did not consider the fetus to be a person even when the umbilical cord was cut. They would wait a while until they were more certain it would live. This contrasts with the current religious view that the first meeting of a sperm cell and an egg constitutes a "person" with all their protections and rights. Ironically, without the despised scientists, today's religious extremists would not have a clue that a sperm even met an egg, let alone when it happened.

Slave women used their ability to perform abortions to gain some control over their lives, and this was maybe the only thing that the slaves ever successfully pulled off that the slave owners could not find any way to control through terror and violence. The slave women had created a bargaining chip, and used it with some finesse. Even to admit that the slave women were intelligent enough to get away with this scam undermined the current slave owner view that slaves were less intelligent than the white owners. So I am assuming this game was tacitly understood but never clearly stated. In 1808, the importing of any new African slaves was prohibited, this gave the slave women even more power. Which I am again going to assume they knew, even though the slave owners took great pains to prevent the slaves from learning anything. I would bet that that the slave women figured out that no new African slaves were being imported. they would know that this made their breeding work more valuable to the slave owners. If you don't think that African women understand the law of supply and demand, go shopping at a market in Sierra Leone.

Now this brings us to today, when the original slave owners religion is trying to make abortion the most important issue for American voters. You have to wonder whether it isn't a little bit of payback for their impotence in the old days. In my opinion, that is the real connection between slavery and abortion.

If the anti-abortion crowd was actually interested in saving lives, about a million infants die each year in Africa, along with 250,000 mothers in childbirth (in Sierra Leone, one mother in eight). It has been estimated that about a billion dollars a year would save 800,000 lives a year in Africa. That's equal to all the abortions in one year in the USA.

Giving Slavery a Bad Name

Right now, a battle is going on in the Swat Valley of Pakistan that has important ramifications for the rest of the world. Pakistan is a democratic country which contains within it a large Islamic fundamentalist faction. Both are struggling for control of the country, and as Pakistan now has a nuclear arsenal, the stakes are high not only within Pakistan, but for the rest of the world.

But Pakistan is not the only country to worry about. Very few commentators on US affairs spend much time analyzing the racist/fundamentalists in the USA, or wondering what is going on in between the former confederate slave states that support the Republican party, and the former free states of the union that support the Democratic Party. Is there a battle for control similar to Pakistan? Maybe not outright fighting yet, but politically, the US is boiling.

I am going to try to explain how the legacy of slavery still has an influence on policy in the USA. And why that is important to the fate of not only the USA but the rest of the world.

Slavery in the USA was violent and perverted. I know you might think violent slavery is redundant, but it is not. Racism existed before slavery in the USA, and slavery existed before the slave states of America. However, there was something about the southern USA that brought racism and slavery together and produced something that had not been seen before, and it's unfortunate that we don't really have a word for it.

The old definition of slavery is simply a person being forced to work without wages, and that person's labour can be bought or sold as economic conditions change. Although not necessarily part of the definition, physical coercion is often required. Hence the stereotypical galley slave and the guy with the whip walking up and down the gangplank making sure nobody is getting a free ride.

Slavery existed all over the world, often involving prisoners of war. The Bible accepts slavery as a fact of life. Almost every race on earth did some of it.

But there were some subtle and not so subtle changes that occurred in the southern USA where slavery mutated to a new and perverted level.

What were some of the mitigating factors of old style Biblical slavery? For one thing, there was a way out. Usually there was a time limit, or a generational limit. If you were a slave, you, or your children could be free one day. Although you had to work as a slave, you could go home and plant a vegetable garden. If you had life long slavery, you were still permitted to marry and have children and raise those children. You still had the possibility of human interaction where you could earn the respect of your master. Say, for example that a slave saved his master's life through some act of bravery. Although still a slave, you could see there might be some human gratitude and respect. These things are important. And if conditions became too unbearable you could run away or commit suicide or abort your babies.

What types of things happened in the Southern USA that turned nice Biblical slavery into sick and perverted slavery. Well there were a few simple things. First we need to remember that southern slavery evolved into a combination of racism and slavery. While it was theoretically possible for blacks to own whites, in practice this did not happen.

Here is one seemingly little thing. Slave owners in the south were required by law to punish their slaves for certain offences, and I don't mean a fine of a few dollars, which they didn't have anyway. Mandated punishments included mutilation and whipping. If you think about the ramifications of this for a few minutes, you will realize that no matter what kind of rapport might be built up on a human level between master and slave, it was utterly destroyed by this external requirement of brutality. Not only was mercy rare, it was not even permitted.

Here is another seemingly little thing, which was degrading both to the slave and the slave owner. The child of a female slave had to also be a slave. Two things here. First, it meant slavery was unending, even to the children of the children. But far worse, it allowed slave masters to breed with their female slaves without concern about illegitimate offspring. Rape was common. And contributing to the inhumanity, was that the slave master's own children were born into perpetual slavery.

The people in the southern USA justified their sick and twisted form of slavery by pointing to the Bible, and reminding people that the Bible condoned slavery. Yes, it did, you sick perverts, but not that kind of slavery.

Also, the slave states of the southern USA also pointed the finger at Africa, where they said the black people were involved in slavery themselves. Yes, they did have slavery, but not your kind of slavery.

Unfortunately there has never been a real distinction made between different types of slavery. And Douglas Blackmon argued that the "neoslavery" following the Civil War was even worse than the "slavery" before emancipation. And this carried on until the civil rights era, where northern liberals finally put an end to segregation in the south.

http://www.radioopensource.org/douglas-blackmon-neo-slavery-in-our-times/

What made this all the more devastating to the world was the context of this perversion of classic slavery took place in the first important democratic country of modern times, and was done on such a devastatingly large scale.

This problem has not gone away, we still have the United States of America approximately divided along slave states/free states lines, with the corresponding different world view with respect to violence and to people of other skin colour. One example of this is the controversy about torture, and treatment of prisoners. Also a major difference on the idea of war - JFK, a northern liberal, said "America will never start a war", but the conservative former slave owners add "unless we feel threatened". And at this point, everyone needs to understand there are two very different ideas of civilization still competing for control of a military machine that can lay waste to the rest of the world.