The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

The Debt of Slavery and Discriminations

The United States is a country founded on the principle that all men are created equal. We have not always been true to this principle, and the institution of slavery in the United States is the worst example of being untrue to this principle. However, we the people of the United States have shown a remarkable propensity for trying to correct the error of our ways and strive to meet this principle.

Slavery and Involuntary Servitude has existed throughout human history in all parts of the world. Slavery and Involuntary Servitude were in existence from the very discovery of America by Western Civilizations. This article cannot possibly go into the history of slavery in America, but I wish to comment on some specifics that are germane to the discussion of the Debt of Slavery and Discrimination.

Founding Fathers

Many of our Founding Fathers owned slaves, and many of them who owned slaves realized the immorality of owning a slave. I would comment on three of the most esteemed Founding Fathers who owned slaves.

Washington's Slaves

It was illegal in every slave state to simply let one’s slaves go free. Each state had laws regulating “manumission,” the legal process by which a slave owner could free his slaves. It was an expensive thing to do, requiring slave owners to pay fees and provide certain amounts of money, materials, and education for the slaves. Thus, many slave owners were unwilling to bankrupt their families because of a principle. Even for Washington, financial difficulties were an obstacle to the manumission of his slaves. As Washington's slaves had intermarried with his wife's dower slaves, he included a provision in his will to free his slaves upon her death, to postpone any breakup of their families, when her dower slaves would be returned or managed by her heirs. He freed only William Lee, his longtime personal valet, outright in his will. His last will and testament called for the ex-slaves to be provided for by Washington's heirs, with the old ones to be clothed and fed, and the younger ones to be educated and trained at an occupation so they could support themselves. Martha Washington freed her husband's slaves within 12 months of his death and allowed them to stay at Mount Vernon if they had family members. Nevertheless, in his Last Will and Testament, Washington ordered that his slaves be freed upon his wife’s death and that his heirs’ cloth and feed those slaves who were incapable of supporting themselves due to age or infirmity. Washington personally drew up his will in July 1799 and he died on December 14, 1799. His slaves were freed in December 1800, even before his wife died, and his estate cared for the aged and infirm for over three decades.

Jefferson's Slaves

The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, had an ambivalent relationship with the institution of slavery. During his lifetime, Jefferson attempted twice to legislate the emancipation of slaves, one time in 1769 at the Virginia General Assembly, and another in 1784 at the Continental Congress. Jefferson also railed against King George III of Great Britain and the slave trade in his draft copy of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. Yet Jefferson, himself, acquired and sold hundreds of slaves throughout his lifetime, owning as many as 267 in 1822. A profligate spender, Jefferson was deeply in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he was free of debt, which he never achieved. All but one of Jefferson's slaves were sold after his death to pay his debts.

Franklin's Slave(s)

When Benjamin Franklin became a prosperous businessman he purchased a slave(s). The duties of his slave were much like we would now call a manservant. These duties were not odious or difficult, and Franklin always treated his slave with kindness and respect. This purchase was expected of prosperous people as black were considered inferior and it was considered a kindness to them. Franklin never questioned this reasoning until later in his life. When Franklin left for England to represent Colonial interest he took his slave with him (it was legal to own a slave in England, just not legal to buy or sell a slave in England). When Franklin left England his slave informed him that he wished to stay in England as a free man. Franklin had every right under English law to have a constable seize the slave and put him aboard his returning ship. He did not do so and gave his slave his freedom recognizing that while he fought for Colonial freedoms it was hypocritical to deny freedom to his slave (unverified reports also said he gave the free slave some money to assist him with his new-found freedom). From that point on he never owned another slave.

After the Revolutionary War was concluded Franklin settled into a comfortable life of semi-retirement in which he was involved in many charity and public-spirited efforts. When a minister for the School for Free Black Sons requested a contribution from Franklin to support the education of free black male children Franklin decided to investigate the school (he often tried to determine to the goodness of all the charities he contributed too). Upon visiting the school he observed how cheerful, eager, and adept the black children were in obtaining new knowledge. He remarked upon leaving the school that his very core shook in the realization that there was no difference between a black child and a white child in their abilities, and that slavery was terribly wrong. At that point, Franklin became an Abolitionist and joined the Abolitionist Society, and started working for the end of slavery.

Franklin's last hoorah on slavery, just 25 days before his death in 1790, was to challenge slavery. In a letter to The Federal Gazette written under the name Historicus, Franklin related the (fictional) tale of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, an Algerian potentate who fought for the enslavement of Christians by Muslims in the late 1680s. The tyrant's inhumane pro-slavery arguments just so happened to echo those made by anti-abolitionist Congressman James Jackson of Georgia. Touché! Franklin didn't live to see slavery abolished, but we'd be kidding ourselves if we said he had nothing to do with it.

The Reasoning

Most of the Founding Fathers believed that slavery was wrong but did not take any action to end it during the Constitutional Convention. The main reasoning for this was twofold; the need for unity and the belief that slavery was dying. The first reason was that they knew if they addressed the issue that it would tear the Constitutional Convention apart. At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the former Colonies were in dire straits. The economy was in shambles, with no hope of repair unless they normalized commerce between the former Colonies. The nation was in debt from the cost of the Revolutionary War, and there was little hope of paying the creditors’ (both foreign and domestic) without a united government to manage the debt. There were also violent clashes between the peoples of one state against the peoples of another state due to commercial concerns, and the possibility of riots in the street because to the dire economic straights was a distinct possibility. The Founding Fathers knew the former Colonies needed to unite to solve these problems, and they could not allow the divisiveness of the slavery issue to interfere with this union. So, they put off the slavery issue to the following generation to resolve (U.S. Constitution - "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."). They did this in the belief that the next generation would resolve the issue. The second reason was that they believed that slavery on its own would collapse. Many of the intelligent plantation owners at the Constitutional Convention wealth was tied up in slavery, and they knew it was draining their wealth as the cost of maintaining slaves was greater than the incomes the slaves produced. They were hoping that slavery would die a quiet death because of this.

The only issue that they resolved was how the count slaves in a census that would be utilized in the distribution of Congressional representation. The infamous 3/5 rule was adopted not because they believed that a black person was only equal to 3/5 of a white person. Indeed, the abolitionists did not want to count slaves at all in order to reduce the Anti-Abolitionist representation in Congress in the hopes of ending slavery. Whereas the Anti-Abolitionist wanted to count slaves as a whole person in order to gain more representation in Congress to preserve slavery. The infamous 3/5 rule was adopted as a compromise in order to establish a union, which was everybody's main concern.

So, the question remains why did slavery not die a quiet death, and why did the next generation not resolve the problem of slavery. I believe the answer was that the effort of slaves was very labor-intensive for the product produced, and the effort to transport the product to the market was very costly and time-consuming. When these two factors changed slavery became very profitable, and the issue of slavery became more intense and entrenched. When slaves produced a product it needs to be transported to a market, often in wagons along terrible roads. This transportation often took days or weeks to accomplish. With the improvement of the roads, the making of rivers navigable, the creation of canals, the improved speed of ships and the development of more harbors, and finally the development of railroads, the cost and time of transportation was significantly reduced. At the same time, this was happening the invention of the Cotton Gin occurred. Until the cotton gin was invented it was very difficult and time-consuming to separate the cottonseed from the cotton fiber in order to create the cotton product. After the invention of the Cotton Gin, it was very easy to do this separation, and vast quantities of the cotton product could be produced, and it became very profitable. The only labor-intensive effort was the dirty and back-breaking effort of picking cotton in the field. For this effort, they utilized their slaves, and now Cotton was King, and large fortunes were to be made. With the combination of better transportation and the Cotton, Gin slavery became very important and profitable, and the economy of the South became dependent on slavery. Therefore, the issue of slavery was not resolved in the next generation as the Founding Fathers had hoped it would be.

The Civil War

It has been said that the Civil War was the last battlefield of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War was fought to enshrine the ideals of The Declaration of Independence into our society:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

The Civil War was the bloodiest (in terms of death, injury, and disease) and costly (in terms of property destruction) ever fought the United States of America. It was a terrible price to pay for the evil of slavery. But as Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address:

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Another way of expressing this sentiment is to proclaim that the debt of allowing slavery to exist and continue within the United States has been paid for, buy both the north and the south, through the blood and costs of the Civil War.

Post-Civil War Era

The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870, the five years immediately following the civil war. The amendments were important in implementing the reconstruction of the American South after the war. Their proponents saw them as transforming the United States from a country that was (in Abraham Lincoln's words) "half slave and half free" to one in which the constitutionally guaranteed "blessings of liberty" would be extended to the entire populace, including the former slaves and their descendants.

The thirteenth amendment (proposed and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery. The fourteenth amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) created the privileges and immunities clause, applicable to all citizens; and made the due process and equal protection clauses applicable to all persons. The fifteenth amendment, (proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870) prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This amendment did not include a specific prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex; it took another amendment—the nineteenth, ratified in 1920—to prohibit such discrimination explicitly. Men and women of all races, regardless of prior slavery, could vote in some states of the early United States, such as New Jersey, provided that they could meet other requirements, such as property ownership.

These amendments were intended to guarantee the freedom to former slaves and to establish and prevent discrimination in civil rights to former slaves and all citizens of the United States. The promise of these amendments was eroded by state laws and federal court decisions over the course of the 19th century. Women were prohibited by some state constitutions and laws from voting, leading to Susan B. Anthony attempting to vote in New York in the 1872 presidential election as an act of civil disobedience. In 1876 and later, some states passed Jim Crow laws that limited the rights of African-Americans. Important Supreme Court decisions that undermined these amendments were the Slaughter-house cases in 1873, which prevented rights guaranteed under the fourteenth amendment's privileges or immunities clause from being extended to rights under state law; and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 which originated the phrase "separate but equal" and gave federal approval to Jim Crow laws. The full benefits of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were not realized until the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of education in 1954 and laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

- Excerpted from the Wikipedia Article on the Reconstruction Amendments.

The one-hundred-year era after the Civil War was a very mixed bag in the United States in regard to racism and discrimination. Although Constitutional Amendments and Laws were passed to assure equality of all citizens of the United States, many laws were passed that restricted these rights, laws that became known as “Jim Crow Laws”.  Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period. The laws were enforced until 1965. The Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896 was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". As such, this decision was a stain on the principle of “Equal Rights for All”. As such blacks and other ethnic groups were treated as second-class citizens as a result of these laws and decisions. Force and intimidation were often utilized to keep blacks and others "In Their Place" (i.e. - as second-class citizens). The rise and influence of the KKK were especially pernicious and despicable and was a large blot upon the United States.

Full Civil Rights Era

Starting in the 1950s, and accelerated into a full-bore effort in the 1960s, the people of the United States recognized the wrongheadedness of bigotry and discrimination. A non-violent Civil War began to arise (The Civil Rights Movement) to correct the faults of bigotry and discrimination. Although there were acts of violence during this period, but for the most part the goals of the Civil Rights Movement were achieved in a non-violent manner. Most Americans' attitudes changed from acceptance to the rejection of bigotry and discrimination. We now live in an era were most Americans reject bigotry and discrimination, where laws are enforced to not allow bigotry or discrimination, and when persons or groups express bigotry or discrimination they are condemned. Although traces of bigotry and discrimination still exist within the United States, when they are uncovered, they are prosecuted and put to an end. That is one of the great things about American society; we learn from our mistakes, we try to correct them, and we try to never make the same mistakes again. For that, the people of the United States should be congratulated.

Conclusion

As expressed in the Preamble to the United States Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It should be noted that the preamble states "a more perfect union". The United States is not perfect, but as I have stated in one of my locutions "Perfection is reserved for God; humans should strive to do their best.". And we the people of the United States often, and imperfectly, and sometimes over a long period of time, strive to do our best.

So, what is the debt we owe for slavery and discrimination? My Article on “Reparations” delves into this subject in more detail. The conclusions of this Article are that the debt of slavery was paid in full by the Civil War deaths, dismemberments, disease, destructions, and the costs of fighting the Civil War. A debt that was paid in full as ”God wills” according to Abraham Lincoln. The debt of Discrimination is paid by not allowing it to occur in today's society, which the people of the United States have been trying to accomplish since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, some bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination still occur in today's society, but when it occurs the people responsible for it are prosecuted or disparaged. If the prosecution is successful, then the sinner must pay reparations to those who were impacted. This is as it should be as the cost of the sin is borne by the sinner. Therefore, as a biblical parable states, “Now go and sin no more” and you shall be forgiven your sins is payment for the debt of Discrimination.