Dismantling Howard Zinn Part 3 Slavery Quick recap: Because of all the revisionism that is passing for history, I began a series to correct the 4 indictments of America, as put forth by historian Howard Zinn. Those 4 are the Imperialist behavior(covered on 12/13), the transfer of Mexico, slavery, and the treatment of Native Americans/ First, no one can deny that slavery happened. It was a stain on our nations history and a moral struggle going all the way back to our Founders. But again, as with the transfer of Mexico, it is being used by some as a political tool. I have many problems with this.....most of which is how slavery is referred to in the past tense. Slavery exists to this day in many parts of the world. The ABOLITION of slavery is something that is unique to the West. And what is even MORE unique about the American experience is that white men spilled blood to end it. This is not to EXCUSE slavery but to represent its UNIVERSALITY. You likely have not been told the whole tale. Indentured servants is one aspect of that narrative. In school, you were probably taught that indentured servitude was a labor system where by young people paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a certain number of years. But in fact, poor children from England and France were kidnapped and sold into indentured labor in the Caribbean for a minimum of five years, but most times their contracts were bought and sold repeatedly and some laborers never attained their freedom. POOR WHITE CHILDREN. And another thing you were probably not taught. SLAVES WERE OUTNUMBERED BY THESE INDENTURED SERVANTS. Now, let us cast our eye on the most BRUTAL slaveholder the antebellum South had seen. His name was William Ellison. He is another part of the narrative that is not told. Why? Because he was black. From 1830 to his death in 1861, he was the largest slave holder in South Carolina. His brutality extended even to practices shunned by white slave holders such as slave breeding. Shortly before his death, he offered the Confederate Army the labor of his 70 slaves. Again, this is not to provide cover but to illustrate how UNIVERSAL slavery was. I reject the notion by Zinn that this is the White Mans Sin. IT IS A SIN OF THE WORLD. As for the penance of that sin, it was the white man who led the black man into freedom. It was a white man who taught Frederick Douglass how to read(and oh what an essential underpinning of freedom that is.) It was the white man who spilled his blood at Antietam, Bull Run, Shiloh, Gettysburg, etc. It was the white man who reconstructed the South. It was the white man who would again spill blood into the future in the fields of Mississippi. And it would be white men like Eisenhower and Nixon who would stand up to other white men like George Wallace and Orville Faubus to ensure that black men did not lose their hard-fought gains. There are SOME in the black community who are speaking truth to their own people: You are being lied to. And if one wants to know the motives behind those lies, one simply needs to examine the amount of MONEY in the coffers of the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan. Next week, The Treatment Of Native Americans. And in two weeks, we will discuss what IS wrong with America as we move forward into the 21st century. -RJP-
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 15:36:52 +0000
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