Did America ACTUALLY have 400 years of slavery?

[caketastydelish]

First, I'm not a slave apologist, or a libertarian or ron paul fan or whatever.

That said, a phrase that keeps popping up here in America (especially around black history month) is "America had 400 years of slavery". But how true is this?

America was founded in 1776 and slavery was abolished in 1865. That's less than 100 years - not even close to 400.

"but we mean the colonies in the geographical region that would later become America".

Well, that's not the same as America, but I'll be generous and give it to you. The first African slaves to reach any of the British colonies didn't arrive until the year 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. That adds up to 246 years - still well short of 400.

In conclusion, "America had 400 years of slavery" is not actually true, but even if I'm generous with what they mean by "America" it still isn't close to true.


I think slavery for even 1 second is wrong, let alone 250 years and I'm no CSA fan or whatever. But why do we spread lies?

edit: I did the math and even if you go all the way back to 1492, when they started making contact with the new world period, (long before African slaves were introduced and none of that geographical area at the time would become the United States regardless) adds up to 373. Still short of 400.

 

[Ajidica]

I recommend you read up on the Redeemers and Reconstruction. While that statement isn't necessarily true, it isn't necessarily inaccurate.

 

[caketastydelish]

How is it not inaccurate? Even if I'm far more generous with the statement than any reasonable person would be in the first place, it still isn't 400 years.

 

[Ajidica]

If you think everything was hunky-dory for the black population after 1865, and that the white elites (largely in the south but not exclusively) didn't try and use every legal, political, social, and economic tool in the book to keep the black population in a state of de facto slavery, you may need to ask for a refund on your education.

 

[caketastydelish]

I never it was "hunky dory". I said America didn't have close to 400 years of slavery. Because that's what they're actually saying.

edit: Keep in mind this is coming from the same country who at the same time had white people (even children) in factories working 80 hours or a week or more with practically no regulations whatsoever and often literally getting their fingers chopped off.

 

[schlaufuchs]

I never it was "hunky dory". I said America didn't have close to 400 years of slavery. Because that's what they're actually saying.

We still have slavery. And the population affected is, very predominantly, still black people.

 

[caketastydelish]

How do we still have slavery?

 

[schlaufuchs]

How do we still have slavery?

XIII Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

 

[caketastydelish]

Is that really what they mean when they make the "400 years of slavery" statement? I don't think so.

 

[Cutlass]

The first slave ship loaded with African slaves landed in Virginia in the first quarter of the 1600s. It's not the first quarter of the 2000s. Do the math. Slavery changed in the 1860s. And again in the 1960s. But it has never ended.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Is that really what they mean when they make the "400 years of slavery" statement? I don't think so.

I don't really know who "they" is, nor do I speak for "them".

But it must ought be noted: the authors of the XIII amendment thought prison labor qualified enough as a form of slavery as to classify it as an "except" to the constitutional ban on slavery.

 

[caketastydelish]

The first slave ship loaded with African slaves landed in Virginia in the first quarter of the 1600s. It's not the first quarter of the 2000s. Do the math. Slavery changed in the 1860s. And again in the 1960s. But it has never ended.

If this is what you all think then we are done.

 

[red_elk]

America likely had many thousands years of slavery. USA had only about a hundred.

 

[Alvarez_Player]

Well, since this is the "world history" forum, why should anyone consider America = USA in the first place? I'm still in the continent called America living here in the southern hemisphere. And here, in the American continent, black slavery was largely practiced from the 1500's to the near end of the 1800's.

 

[caketastydelish]

That's a more reasonable answer, thank you.

 

[caketastydelish]

America likely had many thousands years of slavery. USA had only about a hundred.

Fair point. We are harsh on the Spanish for their atrocities (and rightfully so) but the Aztecs get a free pass, because "it's their culture" and they're not white.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Who gives the Aztecs a free pass? It's just that the western hemisphere is still living in the aftermath of the industrial scale slavery of the triangle trade. It seems pretty fair that European slavery is discussed and lamented a bit more than the ritual slavery and sacrifice practiced by a long-extinct Aztec kingdom.

 

[Lexicus]

Who gives the Aztecs a free pass?

People who read a little too much postcolonial theory and spend too much time on Facebook. I once encountered a guy who who insisted that the Americas were some kind of giant anarcho-communist paradise with no gender oppression, no imperialism, no slavery, no land ownership etc. until the Europeans showed up.

Arguing with him (or even simply pointing out the facts of the matter) would have gotten me banned from the group for being a pro-genocide racist.

I don't mean to overstate the significance of such scattered, ah, eccentric individuals however.

Well, that's not the same as America, but I'll be generous and give it to you.

What the hell are you talking about? "Generous"? it literally is the same as America, like the exact same in every way. One of the important similarities is of course the persistence of slavery before and after political independence from the UK and the ratification of the Constitution.

But it must ought be noted: the authors of the XIII amendment thought prison labor qualified enough as a form of slavery as to classify it as an "except" to the constitutional ban on slavery.

Otoh there are significant differences between the prison labor era and the antebellum era. I am no fan of prison labor, obviously, but it is not really comparable to a society that reproduces itself primarily by surplus extraction under a system of chattel slavery. Take prison labor away from the US today and it would't change much. Take chattel slavery away from the antebellum South and...it looks like Radical Reconstruction. Very different scenarios.

Incidentally, here is an excerpt from a piece by a guy who agrees that the claim (or rather, a closely related claim) taken at face value is silly:

At a 1991 conference at the Harvard Law School, where he was a tenured full professor, I heard the late, esteemed legal theorist, Derrick Bell, declare on a panel that blacks had made no progress since 1865. I was startled not least because Bell’s own life, as well as the fact that Harvard’s black law students’ organization put on the conference, so emphatically belied his claim. I have since come to understand that those who make such claims experience no sense of contradiction because the contention that nothing has changed is intended actually as an assertion that racism persists as the most consequential force impeding black Americans’ aspirations, that no matter how successful or financially secure individual black people become, they remain similarly subject to victimization by racism.

That assertion is not to be taken literally as an empirical claim, even though many advancing it seem earnestly convinced that it is; it is rhetorical. No sane or at all knowledgeable person can believe that black Americans live under the same restricted and perilous conditions now as in 1865. The claim therefore carries a silent preface: “(this incident/phenomenon/pattern makes it seem as though) nothing has changed.” It is more a jeremiad than an analysis and is usually advanced in response to some outrage. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Henwood 2013), for the claim to have the desired rhetorical force, those making it must assume that things have changed because the charge is fundamentally a denunciation of objectionable conditions or incidents as atavistic and a call for others to regard them as such. Attempting to mobilize outrage about some action or expression through associating it with discredited and vilified views or practices is a common gambit in hortatory political rhetoric, more or less effective for a rally or leaflet. But this antiracist politics is ineffective and even destructive when it takes the place of scholarly interpretation or strategic political analysis.

 

[red_elk]

Arguing with him (or even simply pointing out the facts of the matter) would have gotten me banned from the group for being a pro-genocide racist.

The guy is even crazier than you.

Moderator Action: Please don't flame other members. --LM
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Traitorfish]

Otoh there are significant differences between the prison labor era and the antebellum era. I am no fan of prison labor, obviously, but it is not really comparable to a society that reproduces itself primarily by surplus extraction under a system of chattel slavery. Take prison labor away from the US today and it would't change much. Take chattel slavery away from the antebellum South and...it looks like Radical Reconstruction. Very different scenarios.

I mean, does it? What ultimately replaced slavery was a system of peonage that ensured the basic continuity of pre- and post-bellum Southern planter economy. It's not as if the South stopped producing tobacco, cotton or rice, after all. The ultimately significance of abolition wasn't liberating Southern blacks from the plantation, but providing the legal basis for their grandchildren to do so, and it's possible to imagine that if the United States had achieved a non-military resolution to the "slave question", it could have transitioned directly to peonage.

The expansion of convict labour after the Civil War mostly served to fill those roles previously occupied by slaves that could not easily be filled by agricultural peons, such as public works and industry. There's enough continuity in how slave labour and convict labour were use that Congress' legal identification of convict labour with slavery seems less like a technicality and more like prescience. I don't know how far that continues down to the present, but it's worth consideration.