Freed slaves' letters to their former owners

[Rach3]

Letters of former US pre- Civil War slaves to their former masters:

https://wapo.st/3PJBDoA

Sobering ; at the very least.

[Belle]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

[jserraglio]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

Spoken like a woolly reactionary.

[Rach3]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

That these letters would not evoke some empathy, emotion from you is beyond my comprehension.

As many have noted, those who do not learn from history make the same mistakes in the modern world.

[jserraglio]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

That these letters would not evoke some empathy, emotion from you is beyond my comprehension.

Some folks pride themselves on being tough-minded. ‘Slavery? Long time past. Get over it’, saith the Lady.

Two poignant slave narratives I have read recently — Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1860 & Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 1853.

[Rach3]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

Some modern MAGA World and TrumpReich holidays, from AxiosAm today:

Ten states — all in the South — observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day + at least one Confederate holiday, Axios' Shoshana Gordon, Jacque Schrag and Russell Contreras report.

Why it matters: All U.S. states honor King — a federal holiday. But the number of states also honoring the Confederacy highlights the country's struggle to reconcile its racial past.

Today, Alabama and Mississippi celebrate King-Lee Day — honoring both King and Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general and slaveholder.

Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas all have at least one day commemorating the Confederacy on other days of the year.

Mississippi and Alabama each celebrate a total of three Confederate holidays every year — Robert E. Lee Day, Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis' Birthday — all paid holidays for state employees.

In 2000, when South Carolina became one of the last states to honor MLK with a state holiday, the legislature also voted to create Confederate Memorial Day.And there it is on the official 2023 state calendar — May 10.

[Belle]

Why do you live in the past? The modern world has so much more to offer, except morality.

That these letters would not evoke some empathy, emotion from you is beyond my comprehension.

As many have noted, those who do not learn from history make the same mistakes in the modern world.

They have and do evoke empathy etc. I wrote an Honours thesis on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" over 30 years ago and did all the requisite additional reading, including the noble Frederick Douglass.

You on the Left haven't given this up because it's an ongoing political cause - yet another in the endless victimhood narrative. Time to let it go, acknowledging the hurts of the past but celebrating the victories of the present. Take the advice of Professor Glenn Loury with regard to this matter; it's all freely available on his show on U-tube, with John McWhorter.

It seems the Left and its predilection for propaganda and authoritarianism isn't interested in 'learning the lessons of history'. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I feel empathy for the 55 men in 617 Squadron who fought and died in the Battle of Britain in 1943 only to be herded, for their sacrifice and by their gender, into the cohort of 'toxic masculinity'. I feel empathy for 6 million Jews slaughtered in Europe during WW2, the survivors and families of which formed a new homeland where they face annihilation from their surrounding sworn enemy nations. These days it's hard to hear anybody from the Left supporting Israel. So, empathy and sympathy aren't equal opportunity sentiments.

[Rach3]

These days it's hard to hear anybody from the Left supporting Israel. So, empathy and sympathy aren't equal opportunity sentiments.

It's hard to support a country whose PM is under indictment for criminal fraud, a PM who could not form a government with even centrist parties thus had to throw in with Right-wing crazies who are already proposing to annex the West Bank and drastically limit the authority of Israel's Supreme Court, among other actions.

[Rach3]

You on the Left haven't given this up because it's an ongoing political cause - yet another in the endless victimhood narrative. Time to let it go, acknowledging the hurts of the past but celebrating the victories of the present. Take the advice of Professor Glenn Loury with regard to this matter; it's all freely available on his show on U-tube, with John McWhorter.

“Victories of the present” ??!! “ Lessons of history “ ???!!:


The 2016 election ? Rise of MAGA ? The GOP control of the House now ? Overturn of Roe ? The ascendency of gun “ rights” amid school killings ? George Floyd ? Big Pharma ? Big Oil ? Lee Day in the South ? The ascendency of autocratic regimes World wide ? Book banning ? LBGTQ hating ? Arizona GOP : https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reido ... -rcna65776 ? New Mexico GOP : https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/a ... rrest.html ? U.S. House Republicans included in the new rules for the chamber they passed this month a provision meant to make it easier for Congress to give away public lands ? Following passage of the Protect Illinois Communities Act – a law that bans the sale, distribution and manufacturing of assault weapons and high-caliber rifles that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed last week – Whiteside County’s sheriff sent out a public statement that says he will not enforce it :“I, among many others, believe that HB 5471 is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." ?


The battle is hardly won.

Despite trying to appear ( superficially) objective, Loury and McWhorter fail to disguise their core alt.Right sympathies, thus fall to persuade. I almost miss William Buckley,Jr.

[Belle]

Entirely ideological. The prosecution rests.

[Rach3]

Entirely ideological.

Yeah,absolutely nothing factual.

[Belle]

Entirely ideological.

Yeah,absolutely nothing factual.

Bingo.

[diegobueno]

It’s interesting how society allows some people to grieve and commemorate their past disasters and indignities. Jews can proclaim “Never again!” in response to the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust (as well they should). United States Americans learn slogans like “Remember the Alamo” and “Remember Pearl Harbor”. The tremendous loss of life in the latter is still within the memory of older Americans.

And yet when it comes to slavery in the United States, you can’t teach that in school because it makes some white parents uncomfortable. Anything having to do with racial injustice in American history is suddenly transformed in the eyes of conservative white politicians into “Critical Race Theory”, and derided as an evil Marxist plot meant to sow division and communism (somehow). Belle feels entitled to tell the rest of us not to “live in the past”, that we should move on and forget about the 400 years of torture and inhumanity visited upon those stolen from Africa’s shores so that white plantation owners could grow rich off their labor and avoid doing the back-breaking work themselves.

[jserraglio]

yet when it comes to slavery in the United States, you can’t teach that in school because it makes some white parents uncomfortable. Anything having to do with racial injustice in American history is suddenly transformed in the eyes of conservative white politicians into “Critical Race Theory”, and derided as an evil Marxist plot meant to sow division and communism (somehow). Belle feels entitled to tell the rest of us not to “live in the past”, that we should move on and forget about the 400 years of torture and inhumanity visited upon those stolen from Africa’s shores so that white plantation owners could grow rich off their labor and avoid doing the back-breaking work themselves.

Bingo!

[jserraglio]

yet when it comes to slavery in the United States, you can’t teach that in school because it makes some white parents uncomfortable. Anything having to do with racial injustice in American history is suddenly transformed in the eyes of conservative white politicians into “Critical Race Theory”, and derided as an evil Marxist plot meant to sow division and communism (somehow). Belle feels entitled to tell the rest of us not to “live in the past”, that we should move on and forget about the 400 years of torture and inhumanity visited upon those stolen from Africa’s shores so that white plantation owners could grow rich off their labor and avoid doing the back-breaking work themselves.

My very conservative but fully integrated, independent parochial school treats the likes of Belle's pseudo-conservative darlings with the contempt they deserve and provides moral-values education as it always has. More and more as the years go by, Black parents in Cleveland feel comfortable sending their sons to be educated at schools like ours.

[barney]

yet when it comes to slavery in the United States, you can’t teach that in school because it makes some white parents uncomfortable. Anything having to do with racial injustice in American history is suddenly transformed in the eyes of conservative white politicians into “Critical Race Theory”, and derided as an evil Marxist plot meant to sow division and communism (somehow). Belle feels entitled to tell the rest of us not to “live in the past”, that we should move on and forget about the 400 years of torture and inhumanity visited upon those stolen from Africa’s shores so that white plantation owners could grow rich off their labor and avoid doing the back-breaking work themselves.

Bingo!

This is unquestionably so, and I do not argue for a second about the evil that was the slave trade. But it's interesting that Mark singles out only white slave owners, and his previous criticisms have been exclusively reserved for whites. Liberals like that never mention that the slave trade functioned only because black Africans sold other black Africans to whites and to Muslims. Whites didn't travel deep into the bush to steal Africans; they mostly picked them up from cages on the beach where they'd been put by other black Africans who profited from their sale. I think it would be a lot more honest just to admit, as Jeremiah puts it, that the heart is desperately wicked above all things, and this applies to whites, blacks and everyone else. It seems to me, from this side of the Pacific, that Americans are so deeply engaged in the culture wars that any nuance is simply impossible - the other side is always and only evil, and one's own side is right in every particular.

[jserraglio]

Americans are so deeply engaged in the culture wars that any nuance is simply impossible - the other side is always and only evil, and one's own side is right in every particular.

Maybe so, maybe not. There is a lot of good academic work being done in the U.S. on the nuances of slavery — for example, that for a host of reasons, some admirable, others not so admirable, it was not unheard of for free Blacks in America’s South to own slaves; or that prestigious Northern universities allowed their own medical schools to engage in a pernicious cadaver trade in slaves’s bodies; or that Harvard University reported recently on slavery in the North and on its own deeply ingrained complicity in profiting from the slave trade. https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/rep ... d-findings

Some if this work is being popularized in excellent TV shows like Henry Louis Gates’s “Finding Your Roots” on PBS.

Or by Isabel Wilkerson’s well-known books for the general reader on the Great Migration and on Caste in America.

True, Mark expressed his opinions broadly and polemically. Nothing wrong with that, I think. His implicit point being that demagogues like Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis should be challenged when they would adopt public education policies to restrct the teaching of African-American history — see https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/d ... orida-law/ — and effectively sweep the past under the rug. If that results in a “culture war”, then so be it.

I am pleased to state that my little independent high school now teaches courses on both African-American history and African-American literature. And that I was the one that pushed for the adoption of the course on Black lit.

So, let the critics of so-called C.R.T. howl at the moon. Their anti-intellectualism deserves the utter and complete contempt it has received here and elsewhere.

[barney]

So, let the critics of so-called C.R.T. howl at the moon. Their anti-intellectualism deserves the utter and complete contempt it has received here and elsewhere.

Again, I'm in complete accord. It amuses me that the right whines so constantly about cancel culture (which does exist, btw; just not as broadly as alleged), but engages in it so ruthlessly itself. Savonarola and book-burning can't be far away.

[jserraglio]

Another great study of slavery that blew me away with its scholarship: Daina Ramey Berry's
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (2017).

a brilliant CSPAN Book Talk by Berry on Slave Commodification here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?421244-1/ ... ound-flesh

. . . and another talk explaining the market in slave cadavers, which the Ivy League engaged in so shamelessly to stock their medical school dissection labs: https://www.c-span.org/video/?435686-1/ ... e-cadavers

So here's the bottom line, literally and figuratively: up yours, RON DESANTIS. You won't have to go begging for more space up there, dear Gov.

[diegobueno]

This is unquestionably so, and I do not argue for a second about the evil that was the slave trade. But it's interesting that Mark singles out only white slave owners, and his previous criticisms have been exclusively reserved for whites. Liberals like that never mention that the slave trade functioned only because black Africans sold other black Africans to whites and to Muslims. Whites didn't travel deep into the bush to steal Africans; they mostly picked them up from cages on the beach where they'd been put by other black Africans who profited from their sale.

Generally Barney's postings here are reasonably thought out, but this one is so transparently false and simple-minded, I have to assume Barney’s account has been hacked, and someone else wrote these words. So, to whomever wrote these words:

This is your argument? Because the bad black folks in Africa sold their fellows into slavery, and bad white folks went and took them that makes everything even steven? Everybody's bad, so we should all forget about it and move on?

Just left them out on the beach in cages, did they? The Europeans even get off the hook for trading in humans? Jeez, that’s a new one.

Where do they come up with this stuff?*

The thing is, it didn’t end there. Even accepting your history as true (which I don’t) These slave dealers didn’t have the same generosity of spirit as the African captors. They crammed their captives onto ships, kept them chained closely to each other, with no room to move, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. The ones that died en route were tossed overboard. The ones that survived were sold at auction. So it was all profit for the slave traders if, as you say, they got their merchandise for free.

The slave trade flourished in the US because the cheap labor afforded by it allowed them to produce goods on a large scale. And on top of that, the labor force was self-replicating. The harvested slave children could generate even more income by being sold off to other slave owners so they could increase their production and gain more profits. The growth and success of the United States as prosperous and powerful nation owes everything to this cheap labor. So much so, that when it came time to found a new nation, slavery had been too deeply integrated into our society to be cast away. The founders themselves were slave owners.

And because of this, the idealism of our founders was severely compromised. The noble experiment in freedom, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” had to be qualified. All men are created equal. But not those men. Not those 3/5ths men.

Fortunately we got rid of the practice of slavery, but we have, and not just in the states where slavery was widely practiced, resisted full implementation of the proposition to which our nation was conceived. This situation exists right up to this very day, and so we have to decide, as we contemplate the intentions of the noble and well-meaning men who created this nation, whether to leave things as they formulated it (originalism), or to look beyond to the ideals we like to think they intended.

Given the barbarity which the founders and succeeding generations allowed, we have no choice but the second option. We cannot just forget and move on. We must be ever mindful of where we have failed as a nation in order to move to the exalted level of all the ringing phrases we like to proclaim on patriotic occasions.


• [i/(The give-away that this statement is bogus is the simplicity, the absoluteness of the presentation. No European ever went in to Africa to capture slaves. All of it was done by the indigenous peoples themselves. All transactions were undertaken by the same indigenous peoples, so the Europeans never had to pay money for their prizes. In this scenario, the beaches of Africa were fairly littered with caged captives, waiting for Europeans to just row ashore and pick them up, and can you blame them for taking advantage of their good fortune?)[/i]

[jserraglio]

I don't think anybody hacked Barney's account. I also don't think Barney was drawing the sweeping conclusions you attribute to him. He was trying, I believe, to strike a balance between extremes.

On the plus side, for anybody interested, my school was featured on our local TV channel for the celebration of MLK Day on Jan 16. NOTE: The link to this video may be geo-restricted. https://www.cleveland19.com/video/2023/ ... eneration/

[diegobueno]

I don't think anybody hacked Barney's account. I also don't think Barney was drawing the sweeping conclusions you attribute to him. He was trying, I believe, to strike a balance between extremes.

I'm sure you're right, but I was using his post as a starting point to address Belle's assertion that we should not discuss slavery at all.

[jserraglio]

Well, Belle and I have disagreed about a thing or two too. She did write an essay on Malcolm X though, so I reckon that renders her sympatico.

[diegobueno]

Well, Belle and I have disagreed about a thing or two too. She did write an essay on Malcolm X though, so I reckon that renders her sympatico.

I believe Belle's interest in Malcolm X is tied to the statement he made about white liberals. She brings it out to try to convince us that Malcolm X endorsed conservatism. Here is a larger extract from his famous speech.

In like manner, modern Negro magicians are hired by the American government to oppose The Honorable Elijah Muhammad today. They pose as Negro "leaders." They have been hired by this white government (white so-called liberals) to make our people her think that integration into this doomed white society will soon solve our problem.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns us daily: The only permanent solution to America's race problem is the complete separation of these twenty-two million ex-slaves from our white slave master, and the return of these ex-slaves to our own land, where we can then live in peace and security among our people. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns us daily: The American government is trying to trick her twenty-two million ex-slaves with promises that she never intends to keep. the Crooked politicians in the government are working with the Negro civil rights leaders, but not to solve the race problem. The greedy politicians who run this government give lip-service to the civil rights struggle only to further their own selfish interests. And their main interest as politicians is to stay in power.

In this deceitful American game of power politics, the Negroes (i.e., the race problem, the integration and civil rights issues) are nothing but tools, used by one group of whites called Liberals against another group of whites called Conservatives, either to get into power or to remain in power. Among whites here in America, the political teams are no longer divided into Democrats and Republicans. The whites who are now struggling for control of the American political throne are divided into "liberal" and "conservative" camps. The white liberals from both parties cross party lines to work together toward the same goal, and white conservatives from both parties do likewise.

The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political "football game" that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.

Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights. In this profitable game of deceiving and exploiting the political politician of the American Negro, those white liberals have the willing cooperation of the Negro civil rights leaders. These "leaders" sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These "leaders" are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders.

The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox.

The job of the Negro civil rights leader is to make the Negro forget that the wolf and the fox both belong to the (same) family. Both are canines; and no matter which one of them the Negro places his trust in, he never ends up in the White House, but always in the dog house.

The white liberals control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. As long as they control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro's struggle, and they can control the Negro's so-called revolt. The Negro "revolution" is controlled by these foxy white liberals, by the government itself. But the black revolution is controlled only by God.

Edited to include more relevant passages from his 1963 speech.

[jserraglio]

Thanks. I assume that, unlike the Autobiography, Malcolm wrote this speech all by himself w/o a collaborator. He also, I trust, changed his mind about the separation of the races after breaking with Elijah Mohammed.

Malcolm makes a good point about liberals though. I once saw Ralph Ellison informally debate the famous Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal and take issue with his preposition about the deficits in American “Negro” culture.

[Rach3]

An analysis of the racist / psychotic roots of the current GOP ( ie. Right ):

https://tinyurl.com/3ucjr3wv "You Don't Negotiate with These Kinds of People "

[barney]

This is unquestionably so, and I do not argue for a second about the evil that was the slave trade. But it's interesting that Mark singles out only white slave owners, and his previous criticisms have been exclusively reserved for whites. Liberals like that never mention that the slave trade functioned only because black Africans sold other black Africans to whites and to Muslims. Whites didn't travel deep into the bush to steal Africans; they mostly picked them up from cages on the beach where they'd been put by other black Africans who profited from their sale.

Generally Barney's postings here are reasonably thought out, but this one is so transparently false and simple-minded, I have to assume Barney’s account has been hacked, and someone else wrote these words. So, to whomever wrote these words:

This is your argument? Because the bad black folks in Africa sold their fellows into slavery, and bad white folks went and took them that makes everything even steven? Everybody's bad, so we should all forget about it and move on?

Just left them out on the beach in cages, did they? The Europeans even get off the hook for trading in humans? Jeez, that’s a new one.

Where do they come up with this stuff?*

The thing is, it didn’t end there. Even accepting your history as true (which I don’t) These slave dealers didn’t have the same generosity of spirit as the African captors. They crammed their captives onto ships, kept them chained closely to each other, with no room to move, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. The ones that died en route were tossed overboard. The ones that survived were sold at auction. So it was all profit for the slave traders if, as you say, they got their merchandise for free.

The slave trade flourished in the US because the cheap labor afforded by it allowed them to produce goods on a large scale. And on top of that, the labor force was self-replicating. The harvested slave children could generate even more income by being sold off to other slave owners so they could increase their production and gain more profits. The growth and success of the United States as prosperous and powerful nation owes everything to this cheap labor. So much so, that when it came time to found a new nation, slavery had been too deeply integrated into our society to be cast away. The founders themselves were slave owners.

And because of this, the idealism of our founders was severely compromised. The noble experiment in freedom, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” had to be qualified. All men are created equal. But not those men. Not those 3/5ths men.

Fortunately we got rid of the practice of slavery, but we have, and not just in the states where slavery was widely practiced, resisted full implementation of the proposition to which our nation was conceived. This situation exists right up to this very day, and so we have to decide, as we contemplate the intentions of the noble and well-meaning men who created this nation, whether to leave things as they formulated it (originalism), or to look beyond to the ideals we like to think they intended.

Given the barbarity which the founders and succeeding generations allowed, we have no choice but the second option. We cannot just forget and move on. We must be ever mindful of where we have failed as a nation in order to move to the exalted level of all the ringing phrases we like to proclaim on patriotic occasions.


• [i/(The give-away that this statement is bogus is the simplicity, the absoluteness of the presentation. No European ever went in to Africa to capture slaves. All of it was done by the indigenous peoples themselves. All transactions were undertaken by the same indigenous peoples, so the Europeans never had to pay money for their prizes. In this scenario, the beaches of Africa were fairly littered with caged captives, waiting for Europeans to just row ashore and pick them up, and can you blame them for taking advantage of their good fortune?)[/i]

Actually, I agree with everything you said up to the blob point. Europeans obviously went to Africa to acquire slaves, but they seldom ventured into the bush to capture them themselves. That is simply an historical fact, however little you like it.
I can't imagine where you get the idea I said Europeans didn't pay - you really need to read a little more carefully. I began my post by acnowledging that the slave trade is evil; further, I add, it was always and only evil, I never implied that Europeans were "fortunate" or less immoral. I merely observed your hypocrisy or bigotry, whichever it is, in ever only criticising white Europeans, as though other races were morally superior. Of the two of us, I know whom I think is the racist. People are the same everywhere, and when they have the opportunity to exploit they often do. History is replete with such examples, including Africans, Asians and everyone else - throughout history and to this day.
In fact your sloppy, lazy and belligerent account of my argument reminds me that really it's not worth engaging with you at all. Life's too short.

[diegobueno]

Actually, I agree with everything you said up to the blob point. Europeans obviously went to Africa to acquire slaves, but they seldom ventured into the bush to capture them themselves. That is simply an historical fact, however little you like it.

You agree with most of what I've said, so there's no real issue here except the part about how the slaves were acquired. That the Europeans came looking for slaves is damning enough. It is the Original Sin of U.S. history that we accepted these slaves and grew wealthy off their labor. So it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge what happened and to see to it that that is made right. We can't, as the right wing (Ron DeSantis, etc.) would like to do, cover it all up and not let children learn about it. We can't rationalize it, like some do, by saying "actually we did the slaves a favor by introducing them to Christianity and saving their souls". We can't pretend, as many do, that the Civil War was about some abstract principle like states' rights (states' rights to what, exactly?). We have to fully own our sin.

I'm intrigued by the notion of cages on the beach for the Europeans to just pick up. What is the source of this information? I also wonder how we know no Europeans went into the continent
capture slaves? I suppose, why should they bother, if someone is willing to just sell them the slaves. That makes sense. But how did the African slave dealers know that there was a market for their wares among Europeans? And eventually Europeans realized they didn't have to go into Africa to export the people to other places. They could just go in and carve up the continent into colonies and exploit the people and resources in situ.

[jserraglio]

Mr. Ron, Mr. DeSantis, was mean to me and hostile toward me. Not aggressively, but passively, because I was Black. Like in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight that war, to kill other people, over owning people—Black people. He was trying to say, ‘It’s not OK to own people, but they had property, businesses.’

[jserraglio]

from American slavery: Separating fact from myth https://theconversation.com/american-sl ... myth-79620

by Daina Ramey Berry
Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin

Economists and historians have examined detailed aspects of the enslaved experience for as long as slavery existed. My own work enters this conversation by looking at the value of individual slaves and the ways enslaved people responded to being treated as a commodity.

They were bought and sold just like we sell cars and cattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They were itemized and insured the same way we manage our assets and protect our valuables.

Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until after death. Slaveholders examined women for their fertility and projected the value of their “future increase.” As the slaves grew up, enslavers assessed their value through a rating system that quantified their work. An “A1 Prime hand” represented one term used for a “first-rate” slave who could do the most work in a given day. Their values decreased on a quarter scale from three-fourths hands to one-fourth hands, to a rate of zero, which was typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople (another term for slaves).

For example, Guy and Andrew, two prime males sold at the largest auction in U.S. history in 1859, commanded different prices. Although similar in “all marketable points in size, age, and skill,” Guy was US$1,280 while Andrew sold for $1,040 because “he had lost his right eye.” A reporter from the New York Tribune noted “that the market value of the right eye in the Southern country is $240.” Enslaved bodies were reduced to monetary values assessed from year to year and sometimes from month to month for their entire lifespan and beyond. By today’s standards, Andrew and Guy would be worth about $33,000-$40,000.

Slavery was an extremely diverse economic institution, one that extracted unpaid labor out of people in a variety of settings – from small single-crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity was also reflected in their prices. And enslaved people understood they were treated as commodities.

“I was sold away from mammy at three years old,” recalled Harriett Hill of Georgia. “I remembers it! It lack selling a calf from the cow,” she shared in a 1930s interview with the Works Progress Administration. “We are human beings,” she told her interviewer. Those in bondage understood their status. Even though Harriet Hill was too little to remember her price when she was three, she recalled being sold for $1,400 at age nine or 10: “I never could forget it.”

[jserraglio]

from NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ETHNOGRAPHY https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aah ... textsd.htm

The majority of all people enslaved in the New World came from West Central Africa. Before 1519, all Africans carried into the Atlantic disembarked at Old World ports, mainly Europe and the offshore Atlantic islands. From 1493, the year of Columbus's second voyage, some of these Africans or their progeny entered the New World. The first vessel carrying slaves that sailed directly between Africa and the Americas appears to have arrived in Puerto Rico in 1519 (Eltis et al).

The African slave trade in the hands of the Portuguese, was more than fifty years old when the 16th century began. The Portuguese were to hold a monopoly on the trade until the century ended. Sixteenth century Africans enslaved by the Portuguese came from the Kongo, one of the largest African states, and its tributaries. The “Mani Kongo,” or king of the Kongo, ruled a geographic area of 60,000 square miles that was inhabited by an estimated 2.5 million people.



The Kings of the Kongo and the European merchants were both aware that human labor was one of the greatest productive resources of the southern savanna. There was no such thing as a “class” of slaves in Kongo society. However, there were many people acting in a transitory status as servile subjects:

“…These people were of foreign origin, people who had been outlawed for criminal acts, people who had lost the protection of their kinfolk; or become irredeemably indebted to others. They differed from slaves in European ownership in that they were likely to be reabsorbed into society. Families and clans probably welcomed foreign accessions to their numbers. …Women were particularly easy to integrate, but even male strangers did not remain the ‘slaves’ of society for very long (Birmingham 1981:32).”

From the 16th through the early 20th century slaves in the Kongo had rights to fair treatment, to receive a share of their earnings, and to buy freedom. Their children did not necessarily become slaves. Great and famous men could and did rise from the ranks of Kongo slaves. This understanding of what it means to be a slave may account for the initial willingness of Kongo royalty to engage in slave trading. Later, the Kings had little choice (Brown 1987).

The earliest Central African slaves were the external captives of the Bakongo. Attempts to confine slaving to external captives failed and soon slaves from within Kongo society were being sold. Many were captured warriors from the 1569 Jaga Wars. By the mid 16th century, after the Portuguese established Angola colony in Mbundu territory, the tribute formerly passed upward to the King was paid to a Portuguese army officer rather than to the traditional chief. The army officers required that tribute be paid in the form of slaves. By the end of the 16th century, 10,000 slaves a year were being exported from Luanda, the slave catchment area of Angola (Birmingham 1981:32–37).

By the middle of the 18th century, people from the Bight of Biafra were also highly represented among those Africans enslaved in the Americas (Walsh 2001). Randy Sparks provides a detailed account, based upon primary source documents about how 18th century Africans and Europeans conducted the slave trade. His description is unusual because some of the primary sources were written by Africans (Sparks 2002).

[barney]

From the Spectator, last October

The Woman King's flawed history lesson
Sam Ashworth-Hayes

8 October 2022

4:30 PM

As a general rule, it’s worth remembering that Hollywood is in the business of mythologising, rather than retelling history. The Woman King, which was released in cinemas this week, represents the latest effort at constructing a past more in tune with 21st century progressive political narratives. In the film, King Gezo of Dahomey and his loyal Amazons – an elite band of women warriors – struggle to free his kingdom and his people from the evils of the slave trade, the dominance of the Oyo empire, and the creeping tendrils of European colonisation. It’s a stirring tale of African resistance and female empowerment. It’s also deeply flawed.

King Gezo, Dahomey, and the Amazons really existed, and did fight a war with the Oyo. At that point, the parallels with reality end. The real Dahomey was a country of almost unrivalled brutality, its economy built on slavery and its religion on human sacrifice. The wars it fought had the intention of preserving the slave trade, and its conflicts with Europeans were driven by British attempts to suppress it.

In 2018, a book called Barracoon was published, containing old interviews with Cudjoe Lewis – the last survivor of the final slave ship to land in America. Lewis was kidnapped by soldiers from Dahomey in 1860, and the raid on his home town featured the kingdom’s ‘women soldiers’. The slave ship set sail in the first place following King Gezo’s resumption of slave trading – the same Amazons and the same Gezo lauded by The Woman King as proto-abolitionists.

In Hollywood’s history, Gezo is a reluctant slaver forced into the selling of prisoners to fund his purchases of weapons. In the real world, the King was an enthusiastic participant in the trade. In 1850, the British dispatched an officer to Dahomey with a simple mission: to persuade the kingdom to abandon the slave trade. He met with stout resistance. Gezo is quoted as saying:

‘I and my army are ready at all times to fight the queen’s enemies and to do anything the English government may ask me, except to give up the slave trade. No other trade is known to my people… it is the source of their glory and their wealth: their songs celebrate their victories, and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery. Can I, by signing a treaty, change the sentiments of a whole people?’

This quote reflects the complex reality of slavery in West Africa; far from being solely an imposition by Europeans on African states, the system lasted for so long because it was mutually profitable for indigenous kingdoms to engage in it too. The eventual British colonisation of West Africa was driven in part by the difficulty of eradicating the trade once public sentiment in Britain moved against it.

This complexity is reflected in Gezo’s real-world relationships with European slave traders. In the film, a Portuguese-trading slaver known as Santo Ferreira – seeking slaves to send to Brazil – plays the role of antagonist. In reality, far from waging war on slavers, Gezo enlisted their help in seizing the throne. Gezo – then Prince Madagungung – was second in line after his brother, Adandozan. Francisco Felix de Sousa, a Brazilian based in the port of Whydah, financed Gezo’s revolution and was rewarded with the position of ‘Chacha’ (principal trading agent) in the region. De Sousa’s descendants remain prominent in modern-day Benin, counting among their number former presidents and first ladies; the title of ‘Chacha’ is still handed down along the clan’s patriarchs.

This reliance and debt to de Sousa, in combination with the sheer wealth the trade brought him, partly explains why Gezo was so reluctant to end the trade. And, in turn, why the city of Abeokuta had to go. Because the curious thing about The Woman King and its glorification of Dahomey is that there really was a kingdom which resisted African slavers. It’s just that the city in question was Abeokuta, and the slavers it resisted were Gezo and his Amazons.

Abeokuta was home to a large population of liberated slaves, and did not generally participate in the wider trade. It was not a paradise; like other West African states, the people of the city kept slaves. However, this was not comparable to the cruelty shown in Western plantations; they worked in agricultural labour, and the notes of one European observer suggest a greater resemblance to the slaves of Rome than those doomed souls forced to cross the Atlantic.

When Dahomey eventually assaulted the city, it was repelled. The war on Abeokuta was partly motivated by the willingness of Europeans to engage in arms sales to the city, which was allied to abolitionist Britain. This defeat did not result in a lasting change of heart; eventually Gezo returned to slave raiding. This time, there would be no coming back: a sniper friendly to Abeokuta killed the slaver King, sparking another round of conflict between the city and Dahomey.

The story told by The Woman King is both less complicated and less interesting than the reality. Wouldn’t the story of Dahomey in full – its complicated relationships with Britain, France, and neighbouring kingdoms, the rule of Gezo, the role of de Sousa – be fascinating to see play out? And wouldn’t it be better to set aside political mythology and examine the world as it was?

[barney]

Actually, I agree with everything you said up to the blob point. Europeans obviously went to Africa to acquire slaves, but they seldom ventured into the bush to capture them themselves. That is simply an historical fact, however little you like it.

You agree with most of what I've said, so there's no real issue here except the part about how the slaves were acquired. That the Europeans came looking for slaves is damning enough. It is the Original Sin of U.S. history that we accepted these slaves and grew wealthy off their labor. So it is incumbent upon us to acknowledge what happened and to see to it that that is made right. We can't, as the right wing (Ron DeSantis, etc.) would like to do, cover it all up and not let children learn about it. We can't rationalize it, like some do, by saying "actually we did the slaves a favor by introducing them to Christianity and saving their souls". We can't pretend, as many do, that the Civil War was about some abstract principle like states' rights (states' rights to what, exactly?). We have to fully own our sin.

I'm intrigued by the notion of cages on the beach for the Europeans to just pick up. What is the source of this information? I also wonder how we know no Europeans went into the continent
capture slaves? I suppose, why should they bother, if someone is willing to just sell them the slaves. That makes sense. But how did the African slave dealers know that there was a market for their wares among Europeans? And eventually Europeans realized they didn't have to go into Africa to export the people to other places. They could just go in and carve up the continent into colonies and exploit the people and resources in situ.

Nothing I have said is intended in any way to exonerate white Europeans involved in the slave trade or profiting from it. What I am trying to get you to admit - entirely in vain, obviously - was that Africans were also complicit, and they too should be criticised for their part. You cannot bring yourself to do so, which is why I say you are merely a culture warrior to whom facts are irrelevant - you simply deny them - and to whom defending a position is everything, devoid of any nuance. You seem to be the same with the Muslim slave trade, who also bought Africans from Africans, but involving roughly 50 per cent more slaves across the past 400 years. Why cannot you bring yourself to admit that Arabs/Muslims bought and sold slaves? Isn't it racist to look through a racial lens and blame only one race out of three? Isn't that the essence of racism, to see only race?

[jserraglio]

Chinua Achebe’s great novel, Things Fall Apart tells of the disruptions caused by the incursion of Anglican Christian missionaries and British colonists and resource extractors (e.g., palm oil) into the land of the Igbo (i.e., what is now Nigeria) in roughly the second half of the 19th century (from 1842 on).

This incursion took place many years after England had abolished the slave trade in Nigeria (1807) and later slavery itself in most of the colonies (1833).

The novel does not romanticize indigenous Africans (as did Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness) nor does it absolve the Igbo from blame for the destruction of their religion, warrior aristocracy, and tribal culture generally. Many of them were blind to the threat posed by the Europeans or, still worse, eager to become active collaborators with the British administration.

[diegobueno]

What I am trying to get you to admit - entirely in vain, obviously - was that Africans were also complicit, and they too should be criticised for their part. You cannot bring yourself to do so, which is why I say you are merely a culture warrior to whom facts are irrelevant - you simply deny them - and to whom defending a position is everything, devoid of any nuance. You seem to be the same with the Muslim slave trade, who also bought Africans from Africans, but involving roughly 50 per cent more slaves across the past 400 years. Why cannot you bring yourself to admit that Arabs/Muslims bought and sold slaves? Isn't it racist to look through a racial lens and blame only one race out of three? Isn't that the essence of racism, to see only race?

Their complicitness is irrelevant, at least as far as the issue of slavery in the United States is concerned. Remember this discussion started out with an article about former slaves' letters to their former owners, followed by a command that we stop dredging up the past and move on. What do African and Muslim slave dealers in Africa have to do with that? Nothing.

Perhaps in Australia you don't appreciate the degree to which slavery, and race, has shaped our history. Africans did not own slaves in the US. Muslims did not own slaves in the US. European whites did. The people brought in from Africa were the slaves. It was convenient because you could tell at a glance who were the masters and who were the slaves. And that's why we in the US talk about blacks and whites all the time. Back in Africa, they did not identify as blacks. They did not identify as Africans. They identified themselves by tribe, and like tribes the world over, they got into conflict with neighboring tribes. They didn't become "blacks" or "Africans" until Europeans came in and put those labels on them. So which tribe of Africans, which Muslim group am I supposed to acknowledge as complicit? And to what end?

But we know exactly who is complicit in the ownership of slaves in the US. We know who is responsible for the continued persecution of African Americans in the 150 or so years since the end of slavery. We know who is continuing to promulgate the doctrine of white supremacy, even to this very day. And by the way, the correct definition of racist is someone who believes his race is superior to others. I am not asserting this at all.

My wife had to point this out to me: as a white European American, I cannot be held as a racist for wanting to hold my own people to account. I don't think of myself as European. My mother's side is Anglo and my father's side is Hungarian. The fact that my parents were able to live and meet in the same place makes me something else. It makes me an American. I wear the label with pride and have to insist that my country lives up to high ideals it aspires to.

[barney]

I understand race in the US is a huge issue because of its history. Race is an issue everywhere - the in-group despising outsiders, as in China and Japan, two of the most racist countries where differences also stand out as you observe - but it is more defining in the US.
I certainly don't think we should just "move on". There's a lot of healing needed yet, and the rise of (white) Christian nationalism is a big concern.

But I think it's naive and unhelpful to portray one side as utterly villainous and the other as utterly virtuous. Life is not so simple, and - as I pointed out - tribes in Africa butcher other tribes in Africa. They did this before Europeans arrived, and they did it after Europeans left (Rwanda and a host of nations in central Africa). They are neither better nor worse than Europeans because under the skin we are all the same.

You may be white (I didn't know until your post above, though I assumed so), but that doesn't mean you can't be an anti-white racist. And it is not racist to hold your own culture to account; I applaud that. I don't think you can hold your race to account - there are too many of us allover the world who have nothing to do with this. I also try to do hold a lens to Australian culture in all sorts of ways as a journalist. But it is racist to make the only lens race - whites bad, everyone else good. Four legs good, two legs bad, as Orwell put it.

You are still evading the point,which is that no one comes out of this with credit (except to an extent the British who twice tried to stop the slave trade), and it is grossly hypocritical not to acknowledge the role of non-whites. If black Africans had the ability to sell whites as slaves in the 19th century for profit, would they have done so? Of course they would. Just as Barbary pirates raided Europe and took white slaves, or the Ottomans on a massive scale. As I said above, no race is immune from exploiting the weak, and I can't understand why you can't bring yourself to acknowledge that.

Or is it - and this is a particularly American problem to outsiders - only Americans matter, and the Muslim slave trade is neither here nor there for you. And I would not regard this as a moral position. If slavery is wrong, it's wrong everywhere.

[diegobueno]

You are still evading the point,which is that no one comes out of this with credit

It was the point only in your mind.

But if it makes you feel any better, Yes it's terrible that people in Africa enslaved people.

[barney]

You are still evading the point,which is that no one comes out of this with credit

It was the point only in your mind.

But if it makes you feel any better, Yes it's terrible that people in Africa enslaved people.

Thank you.Yes, it does make me feel better. Argument over.