At a family gathering, conversations drifted to politics and the nation. A lovely high school graduate mentioned she took an online patriot quiz and failed miserably.
She guessed there were 51 states. However, she felt better when consoled that Obama thought there were 58. The teen believed the meaning of July 4 was simply that it was the Fourth of July. She wildly guessed our first president was Joe Clinton. “It had been a few years since she had History,” she explained.
KrisAnne Hall, former Florida State Prosecutor and now a national educator on the Constitution posted that “If it weren’t for July 1776 there would have been no end to slavery in America. Most historians that are actually driven by facts will tell you that without our Independence, slavery would have ended in Great Britain much later. America was the example for the western world to end slavery.”
Hall said it’s a fact that “Great Britain mandated slavery on the American colonies even as many were attempting to outlaw the wicked institution. There would be no end to slavery in America if our founders in 1776 hadn’t pledged life, fortune, and sacred honor with the driving principle that…. We hold these truths to be self-evident that ALL men are Created Equal and Endowed by their Creator with Certain Unalienable Rights.”
In 1619, the White Lion, a badly damaged Dutch slave ship arrived in Virginia’s Chesapeake Harbor with 20 slaves aboard. Colonist provided food and services to the human cargo. However, settlers had no model to deal with indigenous Africans.
They ultimately added them alongside indentured white European workers. In 1641, slavery was legalized In America. Africans became chattel, personal property that could be owned for life.
Slavery became so profitable in the colonies that in 1660 England’s King Charles II established The Royal African Companys (sic) to transport humans known as Black Gold from Africa to America.
When England finally outlawed the slave industry in 1807 and throughout the British Empire in 1838, America continued to rely on its own domestic slave trade. By 1860, a million humans were being utilized and traded in the colonies.
Christian abolitionists in Europe and America, notably the Quakers, were instrumental in changing this evil practice. They lobbied, preached, risked their lives and launched the underground railroad to set the captives free.
America’s founders believed that outlawing slave imports via the Constitution would starve the industry of resources and set all men on a path to freedom. KrisAnne Hall contends that without July 1776 there would be no “Juneteenth.”
Thomas Jefferson, in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence blamed Britain’s King George for his role in creating and perpetuating the transatlantic slave trade—which he describes, in so many words, as a crime against humanity:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself," Jefferson wrote, "violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither."
The exact explanation of this passage’s removal from the Declaration may never be known. The historical record lacks details of the debates at the Second Continental Congress. What is known is that the 33-year-old Jefferson, who composed the Declaration between June 11 and June 28, 1776, sent a rough draft to members of a pre-selected committee, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, for edits. Between July 1 and July 3, congressional delegates debated the document, during which time they removed Jefferson’s anti-slavery clause.
The removal was likely fueled by political and economic expediencies in pondering war. While the 13 colonies were already deeply divided on the issue of slavery, both the South and the North had financial interests in perpetuating it. Southern plantations, a key engine of the colonial economy, needed free labor to produce tobacco, cotton and other cash crops for export back to Europe. Northern shipping merchants, who also played a role in that economy, remained dependent on the trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas that included the traffic of kidnapped Africans.
One-third of the Declaration’s signers had slaves or were involved. Even in the North, where abolition was more widely favored, states passed “gradual emancipation” laws designed to slowly phase out the horrid business.
It seemed impossible for those people in those times to quickly and responsibly eradicate slavery and untangle its captives from American society. However, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution laid the moral and ethical tracks for that to occur.
Happy Independence Day!
(Lou Binninger can be heard on No Hostages Radio podcast, live on KMYC 1410AM 10-1 Saturdays, read at Live with Lou on Facebook and at Nohostagesradio.com)
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