I fully agree with Abraham Lincoln that slavery is a 100%, morally - reprehensible institution. No man has a justifiable right
of any kind to hold another individual in human bondage so that he is deprived of his natural,
Divinely-ordained, Natural right to freedom.
FULL STOP - END OF STORY.
By the end of the American Civil War, 625,000 men had died in one of the West's most horrific and bloody conflicts. And everyone knows that in 1865, after Lincoln's Union Army had defeated the Confederacy, the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery in the US was ratified.
But the 13th Amendment is just one chapter in the story of the prohibition of slavery in America. Recently I discovered some relevant history relating to slavery in the US that most of you Yanks will not know about, but which I think is very interesting and important.
So, if you want to educate yourself, here it is....
What I learned is that on March 2, 1807, Congress voted to ban the importation of slaves (African and Carribean, in particular) to America. On this day it enacted a law to....
"...prohibit the importation ofslaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States...from any foreign kingdom, place or country."
The ban took effect on Jan 1, 1808. By the time the lawmakers had acted, EVERY STATE except South Carolina had ALREADY abolished the (transatlantic) slave trade.
This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson - (and, yes, I know that Jefferson himself was a slaveholder) - who called for the enactment in his 1806, State of the Union address, and who had favoured acting on the issue since the 1770s. Hs position on the question of banning the transatlantic importation of African and Caribbean slaves to America reflected a growing trend toward abolishing the international slave trade, with Virginia, followed by ALL the other states had banned, or restricted, since the prior decade (again, with the exception of South Carolina, which re-opened its trade).
In 1619 the first African slave ships had arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. The American Revolution against the British Crown which began in (1775)/1776, was, as you know,, based on a
bone fide appeal to human liberty and the naturally brought the issue of slavery into sharp focus. Many of the Founding Fathers castigated slavery and singled out the slave trade from Africa for condemnation. Some of the Founders, however, including Jefferson, whom I've already mentioned, along with George Washington and George Mason were slave owners. It is difficult to explain this, though there are a 1000 theories that have been put forward in the modern era that attempt to. IMHO, you would need to travel back to America in the later part of the 18th century in a time machine and meet up with Founders like Jefferson and George Washington to ask them, in person, why they owned slaves. Whatever their reasons were, I'm sure you would be surprised (!)
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the slave trade emerged as a bitter issue. After much caustic debate, a compromise was finally reached with the Southern states that guaranteed the continuance of the slave trade for 20 years after the adoption of the US Constitution. That deal set the earliest possible expiration date at 1808 - one which Congress met.
I think that for whatever reason/s this history of the slave trade in America is largely forgotten/ overlooked by most Americans, but it is important as it shows the US was taking firm and decisive steps toward stamping out slavery in America long before the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865 after the Civil War.
Dachshund - the WONDER HOUND
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