Commentary
By Frances Rice
The New York Times started a “1619
Project” by stating that the project “aims to reframe the country’s history,
understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of
slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the
story.”
As is demonstrated in the below
articles, the real objective of the 1619 Project is to recast America's history
as something hideous with a hypocritical facade of goodness.
The 1619 Project’s historical retelling runs counter to the better,
truer story of America.
In fact, our nation was founded
on good and true principles, realized at the cost of the blood, sweat and death
of many Americans—black and white.
Ex-slave Frederick Douglass
stated that American history remains the most honest, as well as the most
visionary.
Douglass acknowledged that
Independence Day for the American slave represented "more than all other
days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant
victim."
Douglass recognized the
Constitution as a "glorious liberty document" and the Declaration of
Independence as a charter of "saving principles."
A new Ebook, “Black History
1619 to 2019” by Sandra K. Yocum with a release date of December 15, 2019, relates
the truth about the African-American experience from the era of slavery until
modern times.
This Ebook is packed with
fact-based information and primary source references from the Library of
Congress and other educational institutions around the country.
Here is a link to the website with additional
information: www.itsmorningagain.com.
Visit this site on December 15 for a link to purchase the Ebook on Amazon, just $9.95, for yourself, or give a friend or family member a
gift certificate to purchase the Ebook.
Click here to view the Ebook promo: https://youtu.be/E4bMZS0QXaM
It will be published by
Paragon House and according to the company’s website: https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/
“Paragon House lives by its motto, Home of Books
That Make a Difference. It publishes serious non-fiction books that will enable
readers to improve themselves and their societies. Read our blog articles about
how our books make a difference."
_______________
A FOOTNOTE TO TRANSATLANTIC SLAVERY,
VISUALIZED
By JOHN
HINDERAKER | POWERLINE
Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute was inspired by our post Slavery? We Were a Footnote to create an animated chart on his site, Carpe Diem. Mark’s animated chart is taken from the same database at SlaveVoyages.org that we discussed in our post. The animation traces the trans-Atlantic slave trade over time, and reflects the fact that statistically, the American colonies and, later, the U.S. played only a minor role.
African slaves brought to the New World video
at:
https://youtu.be/ItyAH4GPBbs
It also should be kept in mind that the East African
slave trade to the Arab countries was larger in numbers than the trans-Atlantic
trade. Slavery was a great evil that existed from time immemorial on every
continent except Antarctica, and was not seriously opposed, in principle, until
the mid to late 18th century.
The Republican Party was formed mostly to
oppose slavery in the U.S., and ultimately succeeded in abolishing it. That
is a heroic story. But the Left’s attempt to discredit all of American
history with a unique taint of slavery is a gross distortion of reality.
_______________
SLAVERY?
WE WERE A FOOTNOTE
Liberals are trying to rewrite American history, teaching
our children that the only thing that ever happened here–until they came along
a year or two ago!–was slavery. The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which is
being enthusiastically adopted by the nation’s public schools, is the
culmination of years of left-wing propaganda. The liberals’ task is made easier
by the fact that world history is mostly terra incognita to
America’s young people. Thus, there is little fear of anyone putting American
slavery into a global, historical context.
But let’s do it anyway.
Slavery has existed since time immemorial on every
continent except Antarctica, as Thomas Sowell wrote years ago. An estimated
one-third to one-half of the inhabitants of the Roman empire, for example, were
slaves. For more than 1,000 years, slaves (few of them Africans) were one of
the basic commodities of trade across most of the world. But let’s focus
specifically on African slavery.
Sub-Saharan Africa had a slave economy long before
Europeans came along. But the external African slave trade of the early modern
era had two basic components: Eastern and Western. The Eastern slave trade went
to Arab countries. For a long time, the Arabs bought or captured European
slaves, but when that supply dried up, they turned to Africa. Numbers are hard
to come by–weirdly, the Arab slave trade hasn’t been as widely studied as the
Western trade–but this
source estimates that 17 million East Africans were sold into slavery
in Islamic countries. If that number is correct, the Eastern slave trade was
considerably larger than the Western.
To my knowledge, the best data source on the Western, or
trans-Atlantic, slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American
slave trade database, which is a product of the Emory University Center for
Digital Scholarship, the University of California at Irvine, the University of
California at Santa Cruz, the Hutchins Center at Harvard University and the
National Endowment for the Humanities. This chart, from that source, shows how
many slaves disembarked at various locations between 1501 and 1875.
The database shows a total of 10,702,654 slaves
transported in the Atlantic trade. Of those, only 388,747 arrived in mainland
North America, what became the United States–3.6% of the total in the
trans-Atlantic trade, and well under 2% of the total slaves exported from
Africa. Trans-Atlantic slaves went primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean.
Portuguese Brazil imported more than 12 times as many slaves as North America.
Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.
Meanwhile, importation of slaves into what
became the U.S. declined dramatically beginning in 1776 and terminated in 1807,
pursuant to the Constitution, although a few were imported illegally
thereafter.
This graphic, from the same source, shows the magnitude
of the Atlantic slave trade to various regions. You can easily see what a minor
factor the North American colonies and, in the final stage, the United States
were:
Does this mean that slavery, here or elsewhere, was A-OK?
Of course not.
Through all of human history, slavery has been a horror. But
virtually no one seriously opposed slavery in principle (as opposed to hoping
that his own group would not be enslaved) until the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, when Christians in England and America, with a powerful assist from
Jews, argued for the first time that slavery was wrong per se.
Thereafter, the British Navy played the lead role in suppressing the slave
trade. I am going from memory, but I believe the last time a British war ship
chased an Arab slave trader off the coast of East Africa was in 1902. And the
Arab slave trade, and slavery in Arab countries, continued long after that–in
fact, to this day.
Here in the U.S., the Republican Party was founded
principally to combat slavery, which the Democratic Party fought bitterly to
preserve. After the loss of 600,000 lives–far more than the number of African
slaves who were brought to the colonies, although of course others were born
here–abolition was achieved.
When I was growing up, the abolition of slavery
was justly celebrated in America’s public schools. Teachers in those days had a
better grasp of history. Today, American children are being force-fed an
ahistorical narrative in which America is somehow responsible for the entire
phenomenon of African slavery, which extends back into pre-history and in which
we have played a minor role.
By such lies do leftists seek to undermine our country.
We shouldn’t let them get away with it. When it comes to slavery, America,
along with Great Britain, is on the side of the angels. As is manifested by the
fact that most Africans have come to the U.S. not as slaves, but rather
voluntarily as immigrants, seeking freedom and a more prosperous life.
