Learned something reading The Counterrevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne, though Zinn kind of touched on it in A People's History. We tend to ascribe lofty and benevolent ideals to the Constitution and Bill of Rights while forgetting they were written by rich white male slave owners and businessmen at a time when the concern was that the ratio of Africans to non-Africans created the constant risk of them rising up and basically slaughtering them all, like they did in the Caribbean. So, one of the ways they fought against that was constantly trying to bring in more white people... Problem was those white people were in the middle of their own religious wars back in Europe. So in order to cement a White Race, they needed to neutralize the religious conflict among them... by ensuring that the US was never seen as playing favorites. We tend to look back at the Revolutionary war and all that as a unified front, but they really need to sell it to people and things make a lot of sense when you look at the Bill of Rights as kind of a negotiation with the rest of the white males of the US. First amendment ensuring that the government will never silence the rich and they'll always be able to practice their religion, the second so that they can always form their militias to hunt down slaves and kill native americans, etc...
Obviously Freedom of Religion is important, but it's funny how we look at it now and completely misinterpret the origin.
Also! Had no idea that Georgia started as a whites only, anti-slavery colony to exist as a firewall between the southern colonies and Runaway Slave raiders operating out of Spanish St. Augustine. Fascinating book!
No joke. Raiders were a major problem because it was a proxy war between Madrid and London. So Madrid would support runaway slaves, give them guns and whatnot and send them up to the carolinas to free more slaves and kill British. So this dude named Oglethorpe figured if he could create a whites only colony that would solve the problem because if you saw an African you knew right away something was up. But, again, the greedy fuckers demanded their slaves. So eventually they got their way.
Yep! I haven't read Settlers yet, but John Brown was kind of a outlier among abolitionists at the time who saw Africans as his equal as opposed to many of the other abolitionists who just wanted them gone.
Yeah that’s another thing Sakai brings up. Lincoln’s vp literally commented that Africans would be outcompeted by whites so it wasn’t anything to worry about
It wasn't just his position, he actually did send some folks. I know someone who doesn't have definitive proof, so grain of salt, but it's been folklore passed down through their family that it happened to one of their ancestors.
Absolutely. Also, it's crazy, because if you look at the graph, they just couldn't stop bringing in slaves despite knowing they were setting themselves up for disaster. Just greedy assholes.
Hell yeah we need more Horne posting here. Every single one of his books deserves immense attention from anyone seriously trying to understand the underlying connections for the past millennia.
The Dawning of the Apocalypse is soooooooo fucking good, every damn page is worthy of its own 10 page expansion of notes.
That one is on my list too, but I don't think I can follow up with it too soon. CR1776 was such a slog to get through those first four chapters. Fascinating stuff, but my man is in desperate need of an editor. I've been checking out his talks on youtube every once in a while instead.
I found this Youtube channel that just constantly uploads Gerald Horne appearing in random podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8MAryWjYYX3IUkmZfTnmug/videos
IMO, he's a slog much like Marx can be a slog. They just have too much they want to say, and it all loops back in on itself paragraph after paragraph of heavy punch 😂
Oh yeah, totally. Also, he's trailblazing so like you need that background info, but it's so much. And I'm not typically a history guy so my head was ready to explode at times. I realized about halfway through the book he kinda writes as if he's up on stage with a powerpoint running behind him, but he knows we can't see the pictures so he just puts it all out there.
Its one of those books where you can pop it open to a random paragraph and it'll send you on a night long tangent of research, forgetting why you were researching.
while forgetting they were written by rich white male slave owners and businessmen at a time when the concern was that the ratio of Africans to non-Africans created the constant risk of them rising up and basically slaughtering them all, like they did in the Caribbean.
I've seen some liberals try to give Thomas Jefferson credit for passing the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, but if you use your brain for two seconds you can tell this isn't because he was a slaveowning abolitionist, but because the Haitians had just brought the liquidation of their masters to completion three years prior and the US slaveowners were scared shitless.
I mean, unless you have a specific one in mind you want to force everyone to subscribe to, by abolishing it you're just going to run into the problem of everyone looking towards commercial indoctrination that fulfill the same "spiritual" needs. Definitely not thinking of Disney adults as I write this. ;)
Does he give any good sources regarding that being the concern of the founders, eg letters from them or is there some quote from the federalist papers or something where they cite the idea that they need to bring in more whites from Europe so that’s why they need religious freedom etc? I’d love to have quotes like that ready to pull out and show people.
I'm doing some quick searching with calibre and he asserts in the intro that the idea began after Bacon's Rebellion which was 1676-ish.
Moreover, the colonial project unfolded alongside a kind of Cold War between Catholics and Protestants13 (studded with the periodic equivalent of a kind of “Sino-Soviet” split that from time to time disunited Madrid and Paris). The chaos of colonialism combined with this defining religious rift ironically created leverage for Africans as they could tip the balance against one European power by aligning with another—or with the indigenous. Then there was the developing notion of “whiteness,” smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the “old” continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes: this, inter alia, served to unite settlers in North America with what otherwise might have been their French and Spanish antagonists, laying the basis for a kind of democratic advance, as represented in the freedom of religion in the emergent U.S. Constitution. Surely, the uniting of Europeans from varying ethnicities under the umbrella of “whiteness” broadened immeasurably the anti-London project, with a handsome payoff delivered to many of the anti-colonial participants in the form of land that once was controlled by the indigenous, often stocked with enslaved Africans—not to mention a modicum of civil rights denied to those who were not defined as “white.” Ironically, the founders of the republic have been hailed and lionized by left, right, and center for—in effect—creating the first apartheid state.
The famed “Bacon’s Rebellion” has been described as a civil war as much as an insurrection spearheaded by servants—there were about two thousand slaves and six thousand servants in the colony’s forty-thousand-strong population, as tabulated: the indigenous population also has to be accounted for when assessing the balance of class and racial forces. The growth in the population of enslaved Africans—their numbers reputedly tripled between 1680 and 1690—happened to occur as the more encompassing category of “whiteness” ascended 89 and, perhaps, as a result of this abortive revolt. This rebellion—according to a recent study—illustrates the illiberality of the settlers, making it difficult to swallow wholly the progressiveness of their revolt against London a scant century later: for, it is reported, driving this rebellion was a settler desire to enforce a quicker extermination of the indigenous, which was thought to be resisted by London’s delegates. After this revolt, religion and “race”—which pointedly excluded Africans—helped to bond the colonial elite and European servants 90
Sharples, “Flames of Insurrection,” 62, 140. See also Strange News from Virginia; Being a Full and True Account of the Life and Death of Nathaniel Bacon, London: Harris, 1677, Huntington Library; “Mss. on Negroes, Slaves, etc. Together with Some Papers on Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion,” Folder 183, Daniel Parish Slavery Transcripts; Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, 133: “After the rebellion’s conclusion, Anglo-Virginian planters emphasized whiteness and Christianity as the two bonds that held English people together against Indians who threatened from without and enslaved people who threatened from within.”
James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.`
If I go searching for "white" there's quite a bit to go through. And I don't have that kind of time right now, but I do plan on trying to give this a reread with the intention of finding meme-able content.🤞
Learned something reading The Counterrevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne, though Zinn kind of touched on it in A People's History. We tend to ascribe lofty and benevolent ideals to the Constitution and Bill of Rights while forgetting they were written by rich white male slave owners and businessmen at a time when the concern was that the ratio of Africans to non-Africans created the constant risk of them rising up and basically slaughtering them all, like they did in the Caribbean. So, one of the ways they fought against that was constantly trying to bring in more white people... Problem was those white people were in the middle of their own religious wars back in Europe. So in order to cement a White Race, they needed to neutralize the religious conflict among them... by ensuring that the US was never seen as playing favorites. We tend to look back at the Revolutionary war and all that as a unified front, but they really need to sell it to people and things make a lot of sense when you look at the Bill of Rights as kind of a negotiation with the rest of the white males of the US. First amendment ensuring that the government will never silence the rich and they'll always be able to practice their religion, the second so that they can always form their militias to hunt down slaves and kill native americans, etc...
Obviously Freedom of Religion is important, but it's funny how we look at it now and completely misinterpret the origin.
Also! Had no idea that Georgia started as a whites only, anti-slavery colony to exist as a firewall between the southern colonies and Runaway Slave raiders operating out of Spanish St. Augustine. Fascinating book!
:what-the-hell:
No joke. Raiders were a major problem because it was a proxy war between Madrid and London. So Madrid would support runaway slaves, give them guns and whatnot and send them up to the carolinas to free more slaves and kill British. So this dude named Oglethorpe figured if he could create a whites only colony that would solve the problem because if you saw an African you knew right away something was up. But, again, the greedy fuckers demanded their slaves. So eventually they got their way.
Sakai argues in Settlers that most abolitionists were simply scared of a Haiti-style slave revolt after Louverture's revolution :louverture-shining:
It wasn't uncommon for abolitionists to expect that they could just send the freed slaves "back to Africa", too.
Yep! I haven't read Settlers yet, but John Brown was kind of a outlier among abolitionists at the time who saw Africans as his equal as opposed to many of the other abolitionists who just wanted them gone.
Tried reading Lincoln's speeches to see why he's considered so good and apparently this was just his position. They uh left that part out in school
They also left out the part where he was more concerned about keeping the union together than freeing slaves.
One of his proposed central American colonies was named Linconia
Yeah that’s another thing Sakai brings up. Lincoln’s vp literally commented that Africans would be outcompeted by whites so it wasn’t anything to worry about
It wasn't just his position, he actually did send some folks. I know someone who doesn't have definitive proof, so grain of salt, but it's been folklore passed down through their family that it happened to one of their ancestors.
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Settlers is a great read. It also gets bonus points for how much it upsets white guys
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It's fucked up because I've known this for years and I still get extremely mad every time it's brought up.
:amerikkka:
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I knew that Oregon banned black people from entering the state but I never realized the Free Soil connection :agony-shivering:
Sure puts the benevolent wise forward-thinking F O U N D I N G F A T H E R S into perspective.
Absolutely. Also, it's crazy, because if you look at the graph, they just couldn't stop bringing in slaves despite knowing they were setting themselves up for disaster. Just greedy assholes.
Inherent contradictions existed back then, too. :marx-hi:
Imagine getting hundreds or thousands percent returns on your investments. this was the motivating factor
I believe I covered that under the greedy assholes label.
Hell yeah we need more Horne posting here. Every single one of his books deserves immense attention from anyone seriously trying to understand the underlying connections for the past millennia.
The Dawning of the Apocalypse is soooooooo fucking good, every damn page is worthy of its own 10 page expansion of notes.
That one is on my list too, but I don't think I can follow up with it too soon. CR1776 was such a slog to get through those first four chapters. Fascinating stuff, but my man is in desperate need of an editor. I've been checking out his talks on youtube every once in a while instead.
I found this Youtube channel that just constantly uploads Gerald Horne appearing in random podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8MAryWjYYX3IUkmZfTnmug/videos
Yes! I'm actually subscribed to them already and recommend others do too!
IMO, he's a slog much like Marx can be a slog. They just have too much they want to say, and it all loops back in on itself paragraph after paragraph of heavy punch 😂
Oh yeah, totally. Also, he's trailblazing so like you need that background info, but it's so much. And I'm not typically a history guy so my head was ready to explode at times. I realized about halfway through the book he kinda writes as if he's up on stage with a powerpoint running behind him, but he knows we can't see the pictures so he just puts it all out there.
Oh no my reading list is already a mile long :ohnoes:
Its one of those books where you can pop it open to a random paragraph and it'll send you on a night long tangent of research, forgetting why you were researching.
Sorry in advance for your time lol
I've seen some liberals try to give Thomas Jefferson credit for passing the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807, but if you use your brain for two seconds you can tell this isn't because he was a slaveowning abolitionist, but because the Haitians had just brought the liquidation of their masters to completion three years prior and the US slaveowners were scared shitless.
Exactly. There's a lot of warning signs but the mythology around the US is strong.
i think freedom of religion is the most over rated right we have
it has caused more harm than good
I mean, unless you have a specific one in mind you want to force everyone to subscribe to, by abolishing it you're just going to run into the problem of everyone looking towards commercial indoctrination that fulfill the same "spiritual" needs. Definitely not thinking of Disney adults as I write this. ;)
That one is none
Edit: nvm you addressed that. Good point
Does he give any good sources regarding that being the concern of the founders, eg letters from them or is there some quote from the federalist papers or something where they cite the idea that they need to bring in more whites from Europe so that’s why they need religious freedom etc? I’d love to have quotes like that ready to pull out and show people.
I'm doing some quick searching with calibre and he asserts in the intro that the idea began after Bacon's Rebellion which was 1676-ish.
If I go searching for "white" there's quite a bit to go through. And I don't have that kind of time right now, but I do plan on trying to give this a reread with the intention of finding meme-able content.🤞
Thank you!
Welcome!