You overlooked those who are fighting today to preserve voting rights, which is a very real and important battle right now. My reference to OP voicing the comment had nothing to do with my opinion, which is not relevant, but rather that the OP comment could not have been voiced in 1776 by anyone, and that it can be now should be celebrated.
Obviously I am aware of the 3/5 compromise, and the exclusion of women ( which you neglected to mention) from the constitution. That doesn’t mean it was a bad document in 1776, just that it needed to be improved. For it’s time, it was quite revolutionary in suggesting the equality (of white men) when even that idea was not generally accepted.
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I am fully aware of what I wrote and what you wrote. The OP made an impassioned statement that July 4 needs to be celebrated if there are continued attempts to make this “a more perfect union”.
My reference was to “civil rights”, which is an all-encompassing term. I didn’t “neglect to mention” women’s rights, but you finally acknowledged after multiple posts. Please don’t attack me because of that. This is not about winning a you vs. me debate. This is about the state of the US and its effect on all of us, most importantly the future of this country (i.e. the young folks).
We agree that the ongoing assault on voting rights is shocking.
My point is simple: let us celebrate making this a more perfect union. We celebrated it yesterday but acknowledged there is a far way to go.
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“All men” in the original constitution didn’t just mean all white men (to the exclusion of white women and everyone non-white). It meant white land-owning men. There is a lot to unpack there in terms of who was considered fully human and worthy of “equality.”
The colonies fought a war with the British for their independence, on the premise that freedom (self-rule) and economic justice (the rejection of taxation without representation) were core values. What gave these colonies the economic viability to succeed as an independent nation? The forced labor of enslaved people, who lived their whole lives without experiencing a drop of freedom or economic justice.
Yes, there are historical norms that cannot be judged by contemporary standards. But it does not take a contemporary lens to see the cognitive dissonance that was baked into our country’s founding. There were plenty of people who saw it at the time. But money and power prevailed over principle, which they continue to do, albeit in different ways, today. If we do not acknowledge the moral compromises that have propelled our nation’s rise, we can’t begin to develop the clarity of national conscience that modern challenges will require, not to mention redress the lasting harm from those compromises that continues to propagate through our society.
While there are many qualities I appreciate about the CC community, the discourse on racial themes generally tends to disappoint. I must say that this thread has gone better than I expected as I read the original post. That alone is something to celebrate!
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White men’s votes were hardly equal at the time.
- The 3/5 compromise meant that voters in states with large non-voting enslaved populations got bonus representation relative to possible, potential, or actual voters in the House of Representatives.
- Even among White men, states had various limitations on who could vote. These included qualifications such as land owning, tax paying, and/or religion. The greater the number that were disallowed from voting, the greater the vote power each remaining voter has.
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I appreciate the thoughtful ideas the OP expresses and I realize that the mythology of the USA suppresses the reality of slavery.
I also think that slavery is not the foundation of American prosperity and success. To the extent that this country has succeeded, it is because slavery as an economic system and as a moral hierarchy has been rejected.
Slavery still exists in the world today; it existed before the United States was ever a concept. Slavery, the oppression of women, and the persecution of religious minorities are eternal human problems. The current laws of the United States consciously acknowledge and attempt to mitigate these forms of oppression.
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Chattel slavery at the level conducted in the US for hundreds of years is a specific horror not contained by the idea that slavery in one form or another still to this day. The generational aspect, and erasure of basic humanity for millions, was something horrific in its specific evil machinery. So that’s one thing. And secondly, it’s specious to think that the power of the country wasn’t fueled by hundreds of years of free and forced labor. How does the fact that we outlawed it long past our economic rivals means doing so speared our economic power? The fact is that the South fought the CW to keep slavery, and the North fought it to keep the South. Freeing the slaves was a side issue.
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In the 19th century, our main economic rival was the UK, and they supported the Confederacy because they wanted cotton for their mills. They had the luxury of posturing on slavery because the US was doing their dirty work. The worst conditions in the “New World” were the Caribbean sugar cane plantations under UK control. Rice plantations were also terrible.
I understand and acknowledge the monstrosity of slavery. However, there is an intellectual and political parochialism that identifies slavery with the USA, and the USA alone. I reject that. I oppose the historiography that associates slavery with the defining characteristics of the USA. 18th century globalism was a reality, just as it is now.
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This is a conversation about slavery in the context of July 4, a uniquely American holiday. Sorry, but I don’t think you can reject that slavery, as it was practiced in this country for hundreds of years, is absolutely a defining characteristic of this nation.
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To suggest that slavery was the fuel of economic prowess is a flat out overstatement. The industrial revolution was fueled by low wage jobs occupied by mostly the poor of all races. Slavery fueled the agriculture economy of the South, while important, the industrial revolution was far more significant.
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I don’t reject that slavery was an aspect of the historical identity of some parts of this nation. What I do reject is that slavery defines this nation.
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Yes, slavery was doomed by the industrial revolution. Slavery is not very economically efficient, in addition to the moral repugnance. I do not agree that the prosperity of the USA is based on slavery.
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Slavery did, however, define the major political conflicts within the US through 1865 (consider the various famous “Compromises” such as 3/5, Missouri, 1850). After 1865, its after-effects (including economic) and the continued inequality of civil liberties and political rights for Black people continue to define major political conflicts in the US.
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There were well over 100 years of slavery in the colonies before the industrial revolution even began. Can it really be argued that the colonies could have fought the Revolutionary War and survived as an independent nation without the mind-boggling value of free labor that slavery provided? For that matter, textiles were the dominant industry of the industrial revolution. Where did the raw materials come from, at a low enough cost to make that industry profitable? Even after abolition, sharecropping kept an exploited agricultural labor force in place (both black and white) for almost another century.
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Slavery had had an impact that resonates today, and I’m supportive of efforts to bring attention to the history of American racism. However, there is more to the world and to this country than the relations of southern whites and ADOS (American descendants of slaves).
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The northern colonies were not dependent on the slave economy and they were always richer in any case.
Based on your multiple posts, you seem to be saying that slavery was meaningless in terms of the growth of the US in terms of prosperity. However, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but is that what you’re saying?
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I do not believe that slavery is the basis of US prosperity, if that’s what you’re asking.
The Civil War destroyed the slave-based economy in the South.
There was slavery in New York City all the way until 1827.
All very true. And yet, shall we discount the political achievements of Ancient Greece and Rome because the rights and freedoms that its relatively few citizens enjoyed were not extended to women and slaves? Is the Magna Carta less significant because its guarantee of rights only applied to noblemen?
We are an imperfect nation, hopefully always moving towards a more perfect union. In 1776, that union would not have been formed, had dealing with our nation’s original sin of slavery not been kicked down the road. And the White citizens of the USA paid dearly for it, in blood, during the Civil War, and have paid for its consequences ever since, though not nearly in any way that could atone for the monumental suffering of slaves, and of their descendants in the Jim Crow years.
The fact that the founders of our nation were unable to agree to abolish slavery does not negate their amazing achievement in establishing our nation, with freedom for some (not Blacks, or women, or those under 21). But yes, absolutely, there is always accompanying the magnificence of the words… “That all men are created equal”, the echo of, what about your slaves? What about women? They were not perfect - but this nation would have remained colonies of England had some insisted on the abolition of slavery. And no one even thought of extending rights to women, at that time. And yet, women celebrate Independence Day. So do immigrants and their descendants, though their forbears weren’t here in 1776. For this reason, I think that our citizens who are descendants of slaves should also celebrate, for the innovative and then outrageous notion that all men are created equal has been to a much greater extent extended to include the descendants of slaves, and to women, and to people age 18 to 21.
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Some appear to have an odd view of history. France abolished slave trading by law effective 1826, and prohibited slavery in 1848. England, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, all did so in roughly the same time frame, with some occuring after the US, such as Brazil and Cuba. As a prior poster noted, this was a global horror ( and one which dates back several thousand years) not a uniquely American one. We can celebrate that the final country in the world to legally abolish slavery was Mauritania. In 1981.
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