...My name-changing friend did not know that slavery occurred on every continent except Antarctica. Europeans enslaved other Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans. Arabs enslaved other Arabs. Native Americans even enslaved other Native Americans.

   ..."People of every race and color were enslaved, and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed." Sowell also wrote: "The region of West Africa ... was one of the great slave-trading regions of the continent, before, during, and after the white man arrived. It was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere. ... Arabs were the leading slave raiders in East Africa, ranging over an area larger than all of Europe."

   ...10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage. In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone!"

   ...African tribes who captured other tribes sold them into slavery. For this reason, in 2006, Ghana offered an official apology. ..."While slavery was common to all civilizations," writes Sowell, "... only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history, Western civilization. ... Not even the leading moralists in other civilizations rejected slavery at all."

Did you know? Benjamin Franklin was president of America's first anti-slavery society. Franklin's last public act was to petition Congress on February 3, 1790, to abolish slavery, urging them to "devise means for removing the inconsistency from the character of the American People" and to "promote mercy and justice toward this distressed race."  

" What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" -By Frederick Douglass | July 5, 1852 - ...I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. ...Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too, great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men.

  ...They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

   ...The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. ...In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? ...The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey man's law before the law of God.

   ...Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.

   ...Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. ...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain.  

The Constitution Was Never Pro-Slavery - By Allen C. Guelzo - It was deliberately written to avoid establishing a legal precedent for ownership of human beings. ...To read the Constitution as pro-slavery, in the manner of Finkelman, Waldstreicher, and even Sanders, requires a suspension of disbelief that only playwrights and morticians could admire. Yes, the Constitution reduced slaves to the hated three-fifths; but that was to keep slaveholders from claiming them for five-fifths in determining representation, which would have increased the power of the slaveholding states. Yes, the Constitution permitted the slave trade to continue; but it also permitted Congress to shut it off, which it did in 1808.

   ...Its authors, even when they turned a blind eye to slavery, did so believing that "slavery would disappear" and that "the imprint of that expectation is visible in the document they finally approved." ...But by the 1850s, [Federick] Douglass ...insisting instead that the Constitution, when "construed in the light of well-established rules of legal interpretation," must be "wielded in behalf of emancipation" as "a glorious liberty document." What convinced Douglass was the same thing that the Framers had hoped would win the day: silence. "If the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument," then why could "neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave . . . be anywhere found in it"? That is the question the anti-constitutional sensationalists have yet to answer.  

Attacking Our Nation's Founders - By Walter E. Williams - Most often, the hate-America teachings are centered on the fact that slavery is a part of our history. What is left untaught is: Slavery was a routine part of human history. Blacks were the last people to be enslaved. Plus, our Founding Fathers struggled mightily over the issue of slavery. Let us look at some of that struggle.

   George Washington said, "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, Patrick Henry and others were highly critical of slavery, describing it as a "disease of ignorance," "an inconsistency not to be excused" and a "lamentable evil." George Mason said, "The augmentation of slaves weakens the states; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind."

   James Madison, in a speech at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, declared, "We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man." Benjamin Rush said: "Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity. ... It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father."

   In their effort to create a union, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had to negotiate many contentious, deal-breaking issues. Slavery was chief among them. Southern states made clear that they would not vote to ratify a constitution that abolished slavery or ended the slave trade. Northern delegates wanted to end slave trading and did not want slaves counted at all for congressional apportionment. Southern delegates wanted slaves counted as whole people. That would have given the South greater political power in the House of Representatives. (Continued here.)

The Key Facts About Slavery That the Left Conveniently Ignores - by Walter E. Williams ...Large numbers of Christians were enslaved during the Ottoman wars in Europe. White slaves were common in Europe from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages. It was only after A.D. 1600 that Europeans joined with Arabs and Africans and started the Atlantic slave trade.    ...Southern delegates to the convention wanted slaves to be counted as one person. Northern delegates to the convention, and those opposed to slavery, wanted only free persons of each state to be counted for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The compromise reached was that each slave would be counted as only three-fifths of a person. ...With this union, Congress at least had the power to abolish slave trade by 1808. According to Delegate James Wilson, many believed the anti-slave trade clause laid "the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country."   ...Many of the Founders abhorred slavery. Their statements can be read on my website, https://walterewilliams.com/quotations/slavery/ .    ...Unfortunately, these facts about slavery are not in the lessons taught in our schools and colleges. Instead, there is gross misrepresentation and suggestion that slavery was a uniquely American practice.  

It Was the Brits Who Instituted Slavery in the US, Not Americans, So Should THEY be Responsible for Reparations? - By Teresa Neumann - ...The fact is, Americans didn't institute slavery in this country. England didn't clear up until colonials defeated the British in the Revolutionary War. By that time, there were over 2 MILLION slaves in the American colonies. Ruled by an overseas king at that time, colonials had no say in the law of the land.
   Marika Sherwood, writing for History in Focus, said: "Britain followed in the footsteps of the Portuguese in voyaging to the west coast of Africa and enslaving Africans. The British participation in what has come to be called the 'nefarious trade' was begun by Sir John Hawkins with the support and investment of Elizabeth I in 1573. By fair means and foul, Britain outwitted its European rivals and became the premier trader in the enslaved from the seventeenth century onwards, and retained this position till 1807. Britain supplied enslaved African women, men and children to all European colonies in the Americas."
   Therefore, politicians who support the notion of additional reparations (beyond the sacrifices of the Civil War) must take their blame game across the Atlantic to England, a nation accused of trying to "bury" their responsibility for it.
   ...But it doesn't end there. The British, according to historical documents, were simply following in the footsteps of their arch-enemies at the time. The Portuguese and the Spanish, who ran slave expeditions to Africa for their own countries, were responsible for sending upwards of 15 MILLION slaves to the Caribbean between 1492 and 1820. Sure, England abolished slavery in 1834; the US in 1864. But Spain's colony of Cuba didn't follow suit until 1886 and Portugal's New World colonies, not until 1888.
   So, they were the bad guys, right? Well, the Islamic slave trade began long before the Atlantic slave trade. According to a New York Times article by Adam Hochschild, the Arab world is estimated to have enslaved 11.5 million poor souls during a dozen centuries. Why is so little attention paid to Islamic slavery today? Says Hochschild: "One reason, suggests Segal, a South African-born editor and the author of ''The Black Diaspora,'' is that in the Muslim world slavery never became the publicly fought moral and political issue that it did in the United States and Europe. 

The truth about slavery - By Larry Elder, July 12, 2018 - A man I have known since grade school changed his name, years ago, to an Arabic one. He told me he rejected Christianity as "the white man's religion that justified slavery." He argued Africans taken out of that continent were owed reparations. "From whom?" I asked.
   Arab slavers took more Africans out of Africa and transported them to the Middle East and to South America than European slavers took out of Africa and brought to North America. Arab slavers began taking slaves out of Africa beginning in the ninth century -- centuries before the European slave trade -- and continued well after.
   In "Prisons & Slavery," John Dewar Gleissner writes: "The Arabs' treatment of black Africans can aptly be termed an African Holocaust. Arabs killed more Africans in transit, especially when crossing the Sahara Desert, than Europeans and Americans, and over more centuries, both before and after the years of the Atlantic slave trade. Arab Muslims began extracting millions of black African slaves centuries before Christian nations did. Arab slave traders removed slaves from Africa for about 13 centuries, compared to three centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. African slaves transported by Arabs across the Sahara Desert died more often than slaves making the Middle Passage to the New World by ship. Slaves invariably died within five years if they worked in the Ottoman Empire's Sahara salt mines."
   My name-changing friend did not know that slavery occurred on every continent except Antarctica. Europeans enslaved other Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans. Arabs enslaved other Arabs. Native Americans even enslaved other Native Americans.
   He accused me of "relying on white historians" who, he insisted, had a "vested interest to lie."
   What about Thomas Sowell, the brilliant economist/historian/philosopher, who happens to be black? Sowell writes: "Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century.
   "People of every race and color were enslaved -- and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed."
   Sowell also wrote: "The region of West Africa ... was one of the great slave-trading regions of the continent -- before, during, and after the white man arrived. It was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere. ... Arabs were the leading slave raiders in East Africa, ranging over an area larger than all of Europe."
   I asked my friend if his anger over slavery extended to countries like Brazil. "Brazil?" he said.
   Harvard's Department of African and African American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. -- who also happens to be black -- wrote: "Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That's right: a tiny percentage. In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone!"
   African tribes who captured other tribes sold them into slavery. For this reason, in 2006, Ghana offered an official apology. Emmanuel Hagan, director of research and statistics at Ghana's Ministry of Tourism and Diaspora Relations, explains: "The reason why we wanted to do some formal thing is that we want -- even if it's just for the surface of it, for the cosmetic of it -- to be seen to be saying 'sorry' to those who feel very strongly and who we believe have distorted history, because they get the impression that it was people here who just took them and sold them. It's something we have to look straight in the face and try to address, because it exists. So we will want to say something went wrong. People made mistakes, but we are sorry for whatever happened."
   Over 600,000 Americans, in a country with less than 10 percent of today's population, died in the Civil War that ended slavery. "While slavery was common to all civilizations," writes Sowell, "...only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history -- Western civilization. ... Not even the leading moralists in other civilizations rejected slavery at all."
   And, no, after all this, my friend did not reconsider his name change. 

American Minute with Bill Federer - Slavery - a long shameful history

...Ancient cultures made slaves of those captured in battle, as seen in Babylon, Persia, Greece, China, India, and Africa.

...Israelites were made to be slaves by powerful Pharaohs of Egypt for four hundred years.

...Julius Caesar conquered in Gaul and brought so many captured "slavic" peoples into to Rome that the term "slav" gained the connotation of permanent servant - "slave." Over half of Rome's population were slaves.

...The timeline of slavery added a new chapter in 711 AD, when Muslim Moors conquered Spain, then invaded Portugal and France, followed by the coasts of Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean. Over a million Europeans were carried off into Islamic slavery. In 1189, Muslims raided Libson, Portugal, and enslaved 3,000 women and children. In 1191, Muslims attacked Silves, Portugal, and enslaved 3,000.

...Muslim raiders enslaved an estimated 180 million Africans over its 1,400 year expansion.

...Muslim slave markets existed in:
...North Africa:
...West Africa:
...Swahili Coast:
...Horn of Africa:
...Arabian Peninsula:
...Indian Ocean:

...Tragically, Muslim slave markets continue, with news reports giving shocking details of ISIS enslaving captured women, many of whom are Christian or Yazidi.

...Liberal academia defended this practice, as reported on February 7, 2017, where Georgetown University Professor Jonathan Brown, holder of the Al-Waleed bin Talal Chair in Islamic Civilization, delivered a lecture explaining how slavery and non-consensual sex (rape) are acceptable under Islamic sharia law.

...Over the next two centuries, the number of slaves tragically grew from "20 and odd" to an estimated 4 million by 1860.

...A lesser known chapters of slaves brought to America occurred in the 1600s when King James I, followed by Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, sold over 500,000 Irish Catholics into slavery onto plantations in the West Indies, Antigua, Montserrat, Jamaica, Barbados, as well as Virginia and New England. Additionally, many poor Europeans sold themselves as "indentured servants" -- a temporary slavery -- for seven years, in exchange for transportation to America. From 1714-1756, thousands of oppressed Irish sold themselves as indentured slaves in return for passage, usually to Pennsylvania, hoping to take advantage of William Penn's promise of toleration.

...Indian tribes would sell captives from other tribes into slavery. ...Some Native Americans owned African slaves. In 1842, there was an African slave revolt in Cherokee Territory. After colonial conflicts with American Indians, some were sold into slavery in the West Indies.

...Christian missionaries and movements, especially Quakers, Moravians, and Methodists, were a continual voice of conscience against slavery.

...Jefferson pushed through legislation ending the importation of slaves into the United States, telling Congress, December 2, 1806: "... to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe."

...When Democrats wanted to expand slavery into this new Louisiana Territory, it resulted in "Bleeding Kansas."

Prior to the Civil War, America was divided into 5 categories:

1. Radical Northern Republicans: whose attitude was slavery is wrong--end it now.

2. Moderate Republicans: whose attitude was that slavery is wrong but the country should transition out of it gradually over time.

3 Practical Neutral Voters: who cared little about the value of human life. They were more concerned about their pocketbook, jobs, wages, economy and tax-tariff issues.

4. Moderate Southern Democrats: whose attitude was slavery is wrong, but it was settled law and the nation should just live with it. People should have the choice whether or not to own a slave--just treat your slaves nice.

5. Extreme Southern Democrats: whose attitude was slavery is good and should be expanded into new Territories and States.

Slavery was ended in the United States after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment.

George Washington's evolving views on the difficult subject of slavery - by Tara Ross - Washington himself wrestled with the subject for years, although he never took a public stance against slavery. Should he have done so? Some scholars speculate that he never did take a public position because he was worried about breaking up the Union before it ever got off the ground. Either way, Washington's views were changing, and his actions reflected this evolving perspective. He quit selling slaves without their permission. He would not break up families, even when he had too many slaves and ran into cost inefficiencies at Mount Vernon.

   He softened his position on allowing black men to serve in the Continental Army during the Revolution. He met with the first black American poet, even giving her the respectful title, "Miss Phillis." (See September 1 history post.)

   Towards the end of his life, he would speak of slavery as the "only unavoidable subject of regret" in his life. Maybe it is unsurprising that he freed his slaves in his will? None of us are perfect, and I suspect future generations will find plenty wrong with the things that we have done. But I hope they will also find things that we did right.

   One thing that the Founders did right: Fifty-five of them met in a room in Philadelphia. They were learned men, students of history. They had studied various political systems. They were free from partisan interests. (Their biggest bias was in favor of their own states.) They lived at a unique point in history, and they came together with the goal of creating a uniquely successful government. And they did just that. In this author's opinion, we do our country a disservice when we ignore the good things that these men did because we wish that they had overcome one (really) big flaw more quickly.

Were The Founding Fathers Racist? - By Jeff Dunetz - Many in the progressive world, believe that America's Founding Fathers were racist. Usually to prove their point they cite Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons."

   Those "other persons" was a reference to the black slaves. To the liberals, that 3/5th figure is an indication that our Founding Fathers were a bunch of racists who thought that the African slaves were only 60% as good as a Caucasian.

   That is a simplistic and false answer. The Founders from the northern colonies strongly opposed slavery. They insisted on counting the slaves as less than "full persons" to prevent the slave states from getting too many congressman and electoral votes to dominate the government and prevent slavery from ever being abolished.

   The slave states wanted their slaves to be counted as a full person so they could dominate the House of Representatives and the Presidency. This would allow Southern whites to have the benefit of counting the slaves, while controlling the political power of the slaves who were not allowed to vote. The Northern States did not want them counted at all, to prevent the South from becoming too powerful. The "three fifths of all other persons" is meant to refer to the slave population as a whole, not to the humanity of each individual.

   ...In Federalist #42 he [James Madison] writes: It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren! Attempts have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it on one side as a criminal toleration of an illicit practice, and on another as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America. I mention these misconstructions, not with a view to give them an answer, for they deserve none, but as specimens of the manner and spirit in which some have thought fit to conduct their opposition to the proposed government.

   Benjamin Franklin freed his slaves and was a key founder of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Alexander Hamilton opposed slavery, and along with John Jay and other anti-slavery advocates, he helped found the first African free school in New York City. Jay helped found the New York Manumission (literally voluntary freeing of slaves) Society and, when he was governor of New York in 1798, signed into law the state statute ending slavery as of 1821.

   ...Slavery will always be a horrible chapter in American History, but the "three-fifths compromise" was not. It was not a measurement of human worth; it was an attempt to reduce the number of pro-slavery proponents in Congress. By including only three-fifths of the total numbers of slaves into the congressional calculations, Southern states were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress and electoral votes for selecting the president.