I was watching Armistad and was struck by the British Captain that said the British Navy actively hunted down slavers.   This is kind of interesting because the Brits forced a lot of our men into their service when they were at war with the other European powers.

With our undeniable link to the British I wonder if their distaste for slavery also translated into the views if the north and the Union.

Another interesting point was the other tribe members capturing Africans to trade with the slavers for weapons and supplies.

Regardless, it was an interesting movie.

I'd say that most of the slaves were against it

Quoted: I'd say that most of the slaves were against it

I would say that is an accurate statement.

There is a distinct difference between being indentured/conscripted and being a slave.

I don't know how accurate that part about the British is because the British were trading heavily with the South until Lincoln and company imposed heavy tariffs.  That was one of the sparks for the Civil War.

The point about other tribes capturing rival tribe's members and selling them as slaves is a well known fact that seems to get lost when the subject of slavery comes up, especially reperations.  Did they think that the slave traders went wading into the jungle to capture slaves?  If that had been the case, there would not have been many, if any, slaves to trade.

Slavery was a bad thing, but it ended in this country over 150 years ago.  It is still practiced in parts of the world.  People who are always yelling about our past history should focus more on stopping the practice that still exists today.

Quoted: There is a distinct difference between being indentured/conscripted and being a slave.

Not much difference...

There's a lot of history to go over related to this.

For one thing, the British distate for slavery is one of the reasons Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclomation (sp, bein' lazy). Suddenly making the war about slavery would have made it very difficult for anti-slavery England to come in on the side of the South. Before it wasn't an issue.

On the "other tribes" note, the African slave trade had been going on for a long time. Slavery existed as an African institution (like everywhere else on the planet), but (like everywhere else on the planet) was different from the slavery that developed in the Americas. Slaves were slaves there, but you could gain rank and status. One slave rose to be a king after being a general IIRC in what today is Sudan (the king picked him to become king to avoid a civil war between two factions). Another slave was the wealthiest ivory trader in East Africa during, I think, the 1600s. For a comparison look at the show "Rome" where Ceaser's slave talks back to Ceaser, and basically carries the weight of Ceaser's voice when he goes on an errand. Slavery in the America's was different. Also, long before the Atlantic slave trade there was a slave trade with Muslim traders, mostly in horses.  The slave trade was big business before Europeans got involved. What really made it get out of control was the huge demand for slaves on sugar plantations in the Carribean, because people died there so quickly. Most slaves that came to the America's went there. Awful conditions, except in some Spanish colonies (which is where the slave revolts happened).

An argument also has been made that part of ordering the British Navy to intercept slavers (of any flag) off West Africa was because the economies in the America's of Britain's enemies (Spanish, French) were so slave dependent. Stop the labor flowing in, and you hurt your enemies. Same reason the English settled North America (Jamestown was to be a pirate's den to intercept Spanish gold ships).

Lot of very interesting history on slavery. It's a far far more diverse institution then people think, mostly because people view all of slavery by the "1859 in Georgia" model, which is very false. Heck, in the 1600's there were black slave owners in Virginia. Good book on that is "Myne Owne Ground".

Also, there were white slaves. For a while in the 1600's there was an Irish slave trade, where the English captured Irish and shipped them off to Barbados and other islands listed as slaves. There's a book on it called "To Hell or Barbados". Also inspired a Flogging Molly song (Tobacco Island).  Some English who opposed Cromwell also ended up in Barbados as slaves, including 6 titled lords.

You can make a career out of studying slavery's history in the New World. Many have. Fascinating subject.

Also, one of my prof's was the cultural and language advisor for the movie. Great guy, and an amazing historian. In his office he has a picture of himself with Morgan Freeman.

You really think the civil war was about slavery?

Societies have whatever morals they can afford, when the continent calmed down the europeans stopped impressing people, slavery ended because technology progressed to the point where it was no longer advantageous.

Lincoln would have a different reputation had he lived, he was far more racist than Lee, for example.

There weren't hundreds of thousands of confederate soldiers fighting and dying for the right to enslave people, it was a war over federal power, and everyone lost.

Slavery would have died out without the war, when the petroleum age began if not before.

Quoted: Quoted: There is a distinct difference between being indentured/conscripted and being a slave. Not much difference...

yeah, being able to work your way out and being someones property, not much at all

Quoted: Quoted: I'd say that most of the slaves were against it I would say that is an accurate statement.

I would venture a guess that being a slave in the early USA was a considerable step up from life on the continent of Africa. A little perspective might be in order. Slavery for life was a travesty. Indenturing was common for any race at the time.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I'd say that most of the slaves were against it I would say that is an accurate statement. I would venture a guess that being a slave in the early USA was a considerable step up from life on the continent of Africa. A little perspective might be in order. Slavery for life was a travesty. Indenturing was common for any race at the time.

Not really. See my post.

Quoted: I was watching Armistad and was struck by the British Captain that said the British Navy actively hunted down slavers.   This is kind of interesting because the Brits forced a lot of our men into their service when they were at war with the other European powers. With our undeniable link to the British I wonder if their distaste for slavery also translated into the views if the north and the Union. Another interesting point was the other tribe members capturing Africans to trade with the slavers for weapons and supplies. Regardless, it was an interesting movie.

Take British distaste for slavery with a grain of salt...

Britain did not free her slaves in it the Caribbean until 1833… 6 whole years before the Armistad. Slavery was de facto tolerated in much of the British Empire for decades after that.

Britain created the African-New World slave trade and was the primary slave trading country until about 1810. The US had ALREADY banned the importation of slaves in 1808… so the British became anti-slave trade at exactly the same time it was becoming unprofitable.

Quoted: I don't know how accurate that part about the British is because the British were trading heavily with the South until Lincoln and company imposed heavy tariffs.  That was one of the sparks for the Civil War.

Yep, not only did they want raw materials for their textile mills, they also wanted to see the Union and the former colonials' independent state fail through civil war. A two-fer for Great Britain!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I'd say that most of the slaves were against it I would say that is an accurate statement. I would venture a guess that being a slave in the early USA was a considerable step up from life on the continent of Africa. A little perspective might be in order. Slavery for life was a travesty. Indenturing was common for any race at the time. Not really.What? See my post.

Most slaves in the USA were not treated all that badly. The Civil war itself fostered most of the ill will that is burned into history books today. The fact of the matter is life for most everybody was hard back then. Slaves simply had a different niche to fill. I think slavery for life for no reason is indefencible, however.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: There is a distinct difference between being indentured/conscripted and being a slave. Not much difference... yeah, being able to work your way out and being someones property, not much at all

You don’t have any idea what you are talking about. BOTH were de facto property... one had a term one did not

I suggest you take a serious look at the practice of indentured servitude… there was not a dime worth of difference other than a fixed term which many indentured servants never lived to fulfill. Indentured servants were very often treated worse than slaves because they were not property and there was no incentive to see they were healthy past the end of their term.

Both were despicable practices.

Quoted: I'd say that most of the slaves were against it

Quoted: Most slaves in the USA were not treated all that badly. The Civil war itself fostered most of the ill will that is burned into history books today. The fact of the matter is life for most everybody was hard back then. Slaves simply had a different niche to fill. I think slavery for life for no reason is indefencible, however.

Not nearly as well as they would've been treated even in African style slavery, where you're actually viewed as a human being with rights and legal protections and some status, with the chance of social and economic mobility. Which was pretty much the standard model of Old World slavery until the Atlantic Slave Trade started.

Quoted: Quoted: Most slaves in the USA were not treated all that badly. The Civil war itself fostered most of the ill will that is burned into history books today. The fact of the matter is life for most everybody was hard back then. Slaves simply had a different niche to fill. I think slavery for life for no reason is indefencible, however. Not nearly as well as they would've been treated even in African style slavery, where you're actually viewed as a human being with rights and legal protections and some status, with the chance of social and economic mobility. Which was pretty much the standard model of Old World slavery until the Atlantic Slave Trade started.

That doesn't agree with what I have read but I will not defend some history text that I did not write. Good night.

Quoted: That doesn't agree with what I have read but I will not defend some history text that I did not write. Good night.

Who's?

Quoted: Quoted: Most slaves in the USA were not treated all that badly. The Civil war itself fostered most of the ill will that is burned into history books today. The fact of the matter is life for most everybody was hard back then. Slaves simply had a different niche to fill. I think slavery for life for no reason is indefencible, however. Not nearly as well as they would've been treated even in African style slavery, where you're actually viewed as a human being with rights and legal protections and some status, with the chance of social and economic mobility. Which was pretty much the standard model of Old World slavery until the Atlantic Slave Trade started.

I don't know where you get this from but Old World slavery was considered barbaric by any standard. The Arab slave trade was horrible by any standard.

Quoted: I don't know where you get this from but Old World slavery was considered barbaric by any standard. The Arab slave trade was horrible by any standard.

Most slaves exported to the Muslims countries during the time of the Atlantic slave trade were bought in order to serve in the various Islamic armies. Before that they did your average run of the mill menial labor. Nowhere near as bad. One reason for this was many of the slaves exported out of West Africa were in fact Muslim, and there's codes of conduct there (technically you aren't supposed to be a Muslims and own Muslims slaves, but you can bend that). Under Arab rules a slave was still considered a human being.

If we're grading slavery on "bad", it goes like this for your average African

Bad
West Indies (except some Spanish holdings)
South America
North America
Arab
.
.
.
West Africa
Okay


I get this stuff from my graduate classes. I can post some of the document lists. I've already named a few books. Slavery as barbaric is really a rather recent invention. For most of human history up until the 1760's slavery was an accepted practice. We abhor slavery now because, well, we decided to. I'm not saying that justifies it (it doesn't, imo), but that's how it is.

Wanna hear a turd in the punchbowl??

Should have heard me tell my Uncle mostly anyone who could own slaves would own slaves.

Shit, Id take a Tyra Banks, a Claudia Schiffer and a pair of Brittney Spears...


Man oh man did that conversation get hot. Especially when I called him a lair when he said he wouldnt.


"It was morally wrong"

Whats morals got to do with it.

The frist slaves to arrive here was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship.

Quoted: Quoted: I don't know where you get this from but Old World slavery was considered barbaric by any standard. The Arab slave trade was horrible by any standard. Most slaves exported to the Muslims countries during the time of the Atlantic slave trade were bought in order to serve in the various Islamic armies. Before that they did your average run of the mill menial labor. Nowhere near as bad. One reason for this was many of the slaves exported out of West Africa were in fact Muslim, and there's codes of conduct there (technically you aren't supposed to be a Muslims and own Muslims slaves, but you can bend that). Under Arab rules a slave was still considered a human being. If we're grading slavery on "bad", it goes like this for your average African Bad West Indies (except some Spanish holdings) South America North America Arab . . . West Africa Okay I get this stuff from my graduate classes. I can post some of the document lists. I've already named a few books. Slavery as barbaric is really a rather recent invention. For most of human history up until the 1760's slavery was an accepted practice. We abhor slavery now because, well, we decided to. I'm not saying that justifies it (it doesn't, imo), but that's how it is.

Well frankly it sounds like typical late 20th Century revisionist nonsense…

The Arab slave trade was widespread and brutal also considering everything I have ever seen indicates for every man the Arab slave traders took they took 2 women… I don’t think there were too many women in Muslim armies… not to mention the practice of taking boys to make the eunuchs.

The Arab slave trade went on far longer that the European/American slave trade… matter of fact it is still going on.

Quoted: Quoted: That doesn't agree with what I have read but I will not defend some history text that I did not write. Good night. Who's?

My textbooks from school nearly 20 years ago. I'm sorry all I retain is the general knowlege. I have no idea who the authors were. I learned history not majored in it. We did go into many specifics regarding actual treatment of slaves in North America as opposed to the simple "slavery is bad" monolith you gain from high school texts. Suffice to say, the idea you get that all slavery was the same is not what reality was before the War. The War itself effected what was recorded and popularized. Slavery for life was not right (I think this is the third time I have said this) but it sure beat starvation. Indenturing was often worse and anyone black, white or red could be born into a family with this as the only option. Life was hard. Things can always get worse.

What I read of Africa in centuries past did not lead me to believe it to be any better than it is today. Any chance of bias in your documentation? Not trying to start anything mind you, just curious how anything could be concidered completely represetative.

On second thought, disregard this, I got to get to bed. 4AM comes quickly to the internet addict. Peace.

These days?
Everybody.

I agree with Cavvet to a certain point.
I don't think all people would like to own slaves.
Myself - no thanks.
But I don't want hired help either.

Most people would own slaves though, given the chance.

I never had a choice in the matter.

I think CavVet has is correct.  Morals at the time had very little to do with slavery. If I had the chance to get a big boobed Irish lass to own, it might happen.

But seriously, I am truly enjoying this discussion.  I am sure the 88 types will show but thus far, it been very enlightening to me and to see all the different view points is great.

I dont think 88 has anything to do with it. Race was a byproduct, as stated indentured servants were often White. It wouldnt be for everyone, but there are some who would jump all over it.

Again, give me the chance to own slaves and watch and see how many I have by the end of the month. All you will see is multiple EE ads for my guns to raise capital. And no Im not an EO employer, men need not apply damnit.



And WTB ads for French Maids outfits.

Quoted: The frist African slaves to arrive here was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship.

Fixed it for ya....

Everyone forgets who the first slaves in America were...
Yes you guessed it ..It was the wagon burners...those darn Redskins!!
The only problem was that the Indians were very hard to control and would not submit. They would often run off only to come back and kill the slave master (ala scalping).
This made the African slave look like a win-win prospect.
I hate to see how one group thinks they were the only ones who were slaves here in the US.  Guess if you just keep whining about it everyone will eventually figure you have the market cornered
When was the last time you heard an Indian whining about slavery?  Technically Indians were slaves about the same amount of time (years) as the Africans were.

Quoted: I dont think 88 has anything to do with it. Race was a byproduct, as stated indentured servants were often White. It wouldnt be for everyone, but there are some who would jump all over it. Again, give me the chance to own slaves and watch and see how many I have by the end of the month. All you will see is multiple EE ads for my guns to raise capital. And no Im not an EO employer, men need not apply damnit. And WTB ads for French Maids outfits. CavVet you misunderstood what I meant.  I said that it was nice to discuss this without getting the 88 point of view.  And I agree with you on your point about owning them.  But french maids outfits are so....french. I would have to admit I would have several females around.

Quoted: Quoted: The frist African slaves to arrive here was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship. Fixed it for ya.... Everyone forgets who the first slaves in America were... Yes you guessed it ..It was the wagon burners...those darn Redskins!! The only problem was that the Indians were very hard to control and would not submit. They would often run off only to come back and kill the slave master (ala scalping). This made the African slave look like a win-win prospect. I hate to see how one group thinks they were the only ones who were slaves here in the US.  Guess if you just keep whining about it everyone will eventually figure you have the market cornered When was the last time you heard an Indian whining about slavery?  Technically Indians were slaves about the same amount of time (years) as the Africans were.

Didnt they also enslave each other?

Quoted: My textbooks from school nearly 20 years ago. I'm sorry all I retain is the general knowlege. I have no idea who the authors were. I learned history not majored in it. We did go into many specifics regarding actual treatment of slaves in North America as opposed to the simple "slavery is bad" monolith you gain from high school texts. What I read of Africa in centuries past did not lead me to believe it to be any better than it is today. Any chance of bias in your documentation? .

1)Yeah, not bad, but not up there. It's kinda like talking about WW2 and only hitting Pearl, D-Day, Berlin, and Hiroshima. Not your fault. HS and general HIST courses are like that. We only have so much time to teach.


2)I get forced to read sources from just about everywhere. This week I had to deal with two Marxists writings and one guy who really really hated them.

Max_Mike Well frankly it sounds like typical late 20th Century revisionist nonsense…

I've never understood this kind of statement. You're aware that just because it's "old" doesn't make it correct? I've got an old history book that says we beat the Germans because our technology was better, and beat the Japanese because they couldn't see. Got another that said no advanced civilizations or empires ever existed in Africa (ignoring Songhay, Mali, etc.).  History, like every other discipline, is an ongoing process.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The frist African slaves to arrive here was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 from a Dutch warship. Fixed it for ya.... Everyone forgets who the first slaves in America were... Yes you guessed it ..It was the wagon burners...those darn Redskins!! The only problem was that the Indians were very hard to control and would not submit. They would often run off only to come back and kill the slave master (ala scalping). This made the African slave look like a win-win prospect. I hate to see how one group thinks they were the only ones who were slaves here in the US.  Guess if you just keep whining about it everyone will eventually figure you have the market cornered When was the last time you heard an Indian whining about slavery?  Technically Indians were slaves about the same amount of time (years) as the Africans were. Didnt they also enslave each other?

Yes that was a very common practice.
On another note...The Indians also engaged in the sale of African slaves once they started arriving in the US.

Quoted: Didnt they also enslave each other?

American Indian captivity was kinda odd.

You either were adopted and became part of the tribe or they sacrificed you, typically in the most painful manner they could come up with. If you were adopted it wasn't really "slavery". You were considered part of the tribe, and odds are now you identified yourself with your new tribe as well. I really can't fathom that myself, but that's how it worked. There was some chattel slavery, but mostly that got started after Europeans arrived. In fact, when the Indians in Georgia were forced on the Trail of Tears, some sued in Federal court against removal. One Cherokee I believe stated that the fact that he owned a plantation and a huge number of slaves made him as American as anybody else, and as such was protected by federal law.


Down South with folks like the Aztec you either entered brutal awful slavery, or they sacrificed you. Typically, they sacrificed you. It's a commentary on the Aztecs that went the Spanish arrived, life actually improved for most people. The Spanish might accidentaly give you smallpox, or force you to work in a gold mine, but they never sacrificed 10,000 people at once.

Quoted: Wanna hear a turd in the punchbowl?? Should have heard me tell my Uncle mostly anyone who could own slaves would own slaves. Shit, Id take a Tyra Banks, a Claudia Schiffer and a pair of Brittney Spears... Man oh man did that conversation get hot. Especially when I called him a lair when he said he wouldnt. "It was morally wrong" Whats morals got to do with it.

CavVet, I would have you as my slave.  I think you would look good in a pink ballarina tu-tu while you vaccuumed...

Actually the vast majority of Northerners couldn't have given less of a damn about slavery for moral reasons.  Most Republicans opposed slavery because it competed too well with free labor in the west.


Similarly, there were several prominent southerners who opposed slavery because they recognized that cotton agriculture, supported by slavery, was keeping the manufacturing base of the south stagnant.

I love these conversations.

It seems like everyone dredges out some view of history, stories of how everyone who could owned slaves, most people were glad to have slaves, slaves were treated to steak and eggs every day, slaves fought for the South and loved their massas.....on and on.

It's as if no one alive during the time of widespread slavery was against the practice on moral grounds....which of course is ridiculous. Plenty of people saw the act as barbaric, and fought the idea of owning fellow humans as property.

Anyway, on with the topic.

Quoted: I don't know how accurate that part about the British is because the British were trading heavily with the South until Lincoln and company imposed heavy tariffs.  That was one of the sparks for the Civil War. The point about other tribes capturing rival tribe's members and selling them as slaves is a well known fact that seems to get lost when the subject of slavery comes up, especially reperations.  Did they think that the slave traders went wading into the jungle to capture slaves?  If that had been the case, there would not have been many, if any, slaves to trade. Slavery was a bad thing, but it ended in this country over 150 years ago.  It is still practiced in parts of the world.  People who are always yelling about our past history should focus more on stopping the practice that still exists today.

Google or any of a variety of easily usable reference sources will tell you when the British stopped their slave trading.  Give you a hint start with Wilberforce.  First Anti-Slavery Act was signed in the late 1700's

Beginning in the late 18th century, reaction against the barbarities of the slave trade led to it being outlawed, first in the United Kingdom and then in the rest of Europe. The power of the Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the slave trade, and while some illegal trade, mostly with Brazil, continued, the Atlantic slave trade would be eradicated early by in the 19th century.

Quoted: I was watching Armistad and was struck by the British Captain that said the British Navy actively hunted down slavers.   This is kind of interesting because the Brits forced a lot of our men into their service when they were at war with the other European powers. With our undeniable link to the British I wonder if their distaste for slavery also translated into the views if the north and the Union. Another interesting point was the other tribe members capturing Africans to trade with the slavers for weapons and supplies. Regardless, it was an interesting movie.

The only two nations who were against slavery were Great Britain and the USA. Everyone else had to go along becuase we had the big guns.

Interesting read here.

White children enslaved in a mine in 19th century England. The two on the left are virtually naked. Children of both sexes worked in this manner.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


by Michael A. Hoffman II ©Copyright 1999. All Rights Reserved

Two years ago, Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia refused to show "proper respect" to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during her state visit. In response, Terry Dicks, a Conservative member of the British Parliament said, "It's a country of ex-convicts, so we should not be surprised by the rudeness of their prime minister."

A slur such as this would be considered unthinkable if it were uttered against any other class or race of people except the descendants of White slavery. Dicks' remark is not only offensive, it is ignorant and false. Most of Australia's "convicts" were shipped into servitude for such "crimes" as stealing seven yards of lace, cutting trees on an aristocrat's estate or poaching sheep to feed a starving family.

The arrogant disregard for the holocaust visited upon the poor and working class Whites of Britain by the aristocracy continues in our time because the history of that epoch has been almost completely extirpated from our collective memory.

When White servitude is acknowledged as having existed in America, it is almost always termed as temporary "indentured servitude" or part of the convict trade, which, after the Revolution of 1776, centered on Australia instead of America. The "convicts" transported to America under the 1723 Waltham Act, perhaps numbered 100,000.

The indentured servants who served a tidy little period of 4 to 7 years polishing the master's silver and china and then taking their place in colonial high society, were a minuscule fraction of the great unsung hundreds of thousands of White slaves who were worked to death in this country from the early l7th century onward.

Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America's first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too.

Whites were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands. Free Black property owners strutted the streets of northern and southern American cities while White slaves were worked to death in the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica and the plantations of Virginia.

The Establishment has created the misnomer of "indentured servitude" to explain away and minimize the fact of White slavery. But bound Whites in early America called themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the White slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called "custom of the country," as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the White slave merchants themselves.

In George Sandys laws for Virginia, Whites were enslaved "forever." The service of Whites bound to Berkeley's Hundred was deemed "perpetual." These accounts have been policed out of the much touted "standard reference works" such as Abbott Emerson Smith's laughable whitewash, Colonists in Bondage.

I challenge any researcher to study 17th century colonial America, sifting the documents, the jargon and the statutes on both sides of the Atlantic and one will discover that White slavery was a far more extensive operation than Black enslavement. It is when we come to the 18th century that one begins to encounter more "servitude" on the basis of a contract of indenture. But even in that period there was kidnapping of Anglo-Saxons into slavery as well as convict slavery.

In 1855, Frederic Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park, was in Alabama on a pleasure trip and saw bales of cotton being thrown from a considerable height into a cargo ship's hold. The men tossing the bales somewhat recklessly into the hold were Negroes, the men in the hold were Irish.

Olmsted inquired about this to a shipworker. "Oh," said the worker, "the niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything."

Before British slavers traveled to Africa's western coast to buy Black slaves from African chieftains, they sold their own White working class kindred ("the surplus poor" as they were known) from the streets and towns of England, into slavery. Tens of thousands of these White slaves were kidnapped children. In fact the very origin of the word kidnapped is kid-nabbed, the stealing of White children for enslavement.

According to the English Dictionary of the Underworld, under the heading kidnapper is the following definition: "A stealer of human beings, esp. of children; originally for exportation to the plantations of North America."



"Press gangs in the hire of local merchants roamed the streets, seizing 'by force such boys as seemed proper subjects for the slave trade.' Children were driven in flocks through the town and confined for shipment in barns...So flagrant was the practice that people in the countryside about Aberdeen avoided bringing children into the city for fear they might be stolen; and so widespread was the collusion of merchants, shippers, suppliers and even magistrates that the man who exposed it was forced to recant and run out of town." (Van der Zee, Bound Over, p. 210).

White slaves transported to the colonies suffered a staggering loss of life in the 17th and 18th century. During the voyage to America it was customary to keep the White slaves below deck for the entire nine to twelve week journey. A White slave would be confined to a hole not more than sixteen feet long, chained with 50 other men to a board, with padlocked collars around their necks. The weeks of confinement below deck in the ship's stifling hold often resulted in outbreaks of contagious disease which would sweep through the "cargo" of White "freight" chained in the bowels of the ship.

Ships carrying White slaves to America often lost half their slaves to death. According to historian Sharon V. Salinger, "Scattered data reveal that the mortality for  servants at certain times equaled that for  slaves in the 'middle passage,' and during other periods actually exceeded the death rate for  slaves." Salinger reports a death rate of ten to twenty percent over the entire 18th century for Black slaves on board ships enroute to America compared with a death rate of 25% for White slaves enroute to America.

Foster R. Dulles writing in Labor in America: A History, states that whether convicts, children 'spirited' from the countryside or political prisoners, White slaves "experienced discomforts and sufferings on their voyage across the Atlantic that paralleled the cruel hardships undergone by negro slaves on the notorious Middle Passage."

Dulles says the Whites were "indiscriminately herded aboard the 'white guineamen,' often as many as 300 passengers on little vessels of not more than 200 tons burden--overcrowded, unsanitary...The mortality rate was sometimes as high as 50% and young children seldom survived the horrors of a voyage which might last anywhere from seven to twelve weeks."

Independent investigator A.B. Ellis in the Argosy writes concerning the transport of White slaves, "The human cargo, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on each other. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunder busses. In the dungeons below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death."

Marcus Jernegan describes the greed of the shipmasters which led to horrendous loss of life for White slaves transported to America:

"The voyage over often repeated the horrors of the famous 'middle passage' of slavery fame. An average cargo was three hundred, but the shipmaster, for greater profit, would sometimes crowd as many as six hundred into a small vessel...The mortality under such circumstances was tremendous, sometimes more than half...Mittelberger (an eyewitness) says he saw thirty-two children thrown into the ocean during one voyage."

"The mercantile firms, as importers of (White) servants, were not too careful about their treatment, as the more important purpose of the transaction was to get ships over to South Carolina which could carry local produce back to Europe. Consequently the Irish--as well as others--suffered greatly...

"It was almost as if the British merchants had redirected their vessels from the African coast to the Irish coast, with the white servants coming over in much the same fashion as the African slaves." (Warren B. Smith, White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina).

A study of the middle passage of White slaves was included in a Parliamentary Petition of 1659. It reported that White slaves were locked below deck for two weeks while the slaveship was still in port. Once under way, they were "all the way locked up under decks...amongst horses." They were chained from their legs to their necks.

Those academics who insist that slavery is an exclusively Black racial condition forget or deliberately omit the fact that the word slave originally was a reference to Whites of East European origin - "Slavs."

Moreover, in the 18th century in Britain and America, the Industrial Revolution spawned the factory system whose first laborers were miserably oppressed White children as young as six years of age. They were locked in the factories for sixteen hours a day and mangled by the primitive machinery. Hands and arms were regularly ripped to pieces. Little girls often had their hair caught in the machinery and were scalped from their foreheads to the back of their necks.

White Children wounded and crippled in the factories were turned out without compensation of any kind and left to die of their injuries. Children late to work or who fell asleep were beaten with iron bars. Lest we imagine these horrors were limited to only the early years of the Industrial Revolution, eight and ten year old White children throughout America were hard at work in miserable factories and mines as late as 1920.

Because of the rank prostitution, stupidity and cowardice of America's teachers and educational system, White youth are taught that Black slaves, Mexican peons and Chinese coolies built this country while the vast majority of the Whites lorded it over them with a lash in one hand and a mint julep in the other.

The documentary record tells a very different story, however. When White Congressman David Wilmot authored the Wilmot Proviso to keep Black slaves out of the American West he did so, he said, to preserve that vast expanse of territory for "the sons of toil, my own race and color."

This is precisely what most White people in America were, "sons of toil," performing backbreaking labor such as few of us today can envision. They had no paternalistic welfare system; no Freedman's Bureau to coo sweet platitudes to them; no army of bleeding hearts to worry over their hardships. These Whites were the expendable frontline soldiers in the expansion of the American frontier. They won the country, felled the trees, cleared and planted the land.

The wealthy, educated White elite in America are the sick heirs of what Charles Dickens in Bleak House termed "telescopic philanthropy"--the concern for the condition of distant peoples while the plight of kindred in one's own backyard are ignored.

Today much of what we see on "Turner Television" and Pat Robertson's misnamed "Family Channel," are TV films depicting Blacks in chains, Blacks being whipped, Blacks oppressed. Nowhere can we find a cinematic chronicle of the Whites who were beaten and killed in White slavery. Four-fifths of the White slaves sent to Britain's sugar colonies in the West Indies did not survive their first year.

Soldiers in the American Revolution and sailors impressed into the American navy received upwards of two hundred whiplashes for minor infractions. But no TV show lifts the shirt of these White yeoman to reveal the scars on their backs.

The Establishment would rather weep over the poor persecuted Negroes, but leave the White working class "rednecks" and "crackers" (both of these terms of derision were first applied to White slaves), to live next door to the Blacks.

Little has changed since the early 1800s when the men of property and station of the English Parliament outlawed Black slavery throughout the Empire. While this Parliament was in session to enact this law, ragged five year old White orphan boys, beaten, starved and whipped, were being forced up the chimneys of the English parliament, to clean them. Sometimes the chimney masonry collapsed on these boys. Other times they suffocated to death inside their narrow smoke channels.

Long after Blacks were free throughout the British Empire, the British House of Lords refused to abolish chimney-sweeping by White children under the age of ten. The Lords contended that to do so would interfere with "property rights." The lives of the White children were not worth a farthing and were considered no subject for humanitarian concern.

The chronicle of White slavery in America comprises the dustiest shelf in the darkest corner of suppressed American history. Should the truth about that epoch ever emerge into the public consciousness of Americans, the whole basis for the swindle of "Affirmative action," "minority set-asides" and proposed "Reparations to African-Americans" will be swept away. The fact is, the White working people of this country owe no one. They are themselves the descendants, as Congressman Wilmot so aptly said, of "the sons of toil."

There will only be racial peace when knowledge of radical historical truths are widespread and both sides negotiate from positions of strength and not from fantasies of White working class guilt and the uniqueness of Black suffering.

Let it be said, in many cases Blacks in slavery had it better than poor Whites in the antebellum South. This is why there was such strong resistance to the Confederacy in the poverty-stricken areas of the mountain south, such as Winston County in Alabama and the Beech mountains of North Carolina. Those poor Whites could not imagine why any White laborer would want to die for the slave-owning plutocracy that more often than not, gave better care and attention to their Black servants than they did to the free white labor they scorned as "trash."

To this day, the White ruling class denigrates the White poor and patronizes Blacks.

If this seems admirable from the pathological viewpoint of Marxism or cosmopolitan liberalism, the Black and Third World "beneficiaries" of White ruling class "esteem" ought to consider what sort of "friends" they actually have.

The Bible declares that the man who does not take care of his own family is "worse than an infidel." This also applies to one's racial kindred. The man who neglects his own children to care for yours has true love for neither.

White, self-hating liberals and greed-head conservatives who claim to care for the "civil rights" of Black and Third World people, discard the working class of their own people on the garbage heap of history. When they are finished with their own they shall surely turn on others.

Those who care for their own kind first are not practicing "hate" but kindness, which is the very root of the word.



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Michael A. Hoffman II is the author of "They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America and Industrial Britain".

Quoted: I was watching Armistad and was struck by the British Captain that said the British Navy actively hunted down slavers.   This is kind of interesting because the Brits forced a lot of our men into their service when they were at war with the other European powers. With our undeniable link to the British I wonder if their distaste for slavery also translated into the views if the north and the Union. Another interesting point was the other tribe members capturing Africans to trade with the slavers for weapons and supplies. Regardless, it was an interesting movie.

I did not see the movie, so I don't know in what year the events took place.  Britain engaged in slavery until it was outlawed in 1834 (I believe, either 2 or 4).  So, before that, slavery was OK by them - talking legally/national policy.  After that, I can see their NAvy stopping it.

BTW, though they never had slaves in the way the Americas did, Austria had serfs, which was almost the same thing with possibly less or, less widespread violence.  Maria Theresa, by Imperial Decree,  freed the serfs and made serfdom illegal as cruel and inhumane....in 1770.

Quoted: Indeed, and once Slavery had been abolished in the Empire in 1833, the Royal Navy and Marines set upon a sustained campaign to destroy the trading posts and slave 'empires' on Africas Atlantic, Medditeranean and Indian Ocean coasts, hardly the policy of reluctant abolishionists. As an interesting aside, free Negro men made up about 15% of the Royal Navy's manpower at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Andy

And yet the crown allowed Cecil Rhodes to abuse southern Africa at the end of the 19th century. Interesting.

Quoted: I don't know how accurate that part about the British is because the British were trading heavily with the South until Lincoln and company imposed heavy tariffs.  That was one of the sparks for the Civil War. The point about other tribes capturing rival tribe's members and selling them as slaves is a well known fact that seems to get lost when the subject of slavery comes up, especially reperations.  Did they think that the slave traders went wading into the jungle to capture slaves?  If that had been the case, there would not have been many, if any, slaves to trade. Slavery was a bad thing, but it ended in this country over 150 years ago.  It is still practiced in parts of the world.  People who are always yelling about our past history should focus more on stopping the practice that still exists today.

But that would mean that guys like Sharpton and Jackson would actually have to do something......other than just getting their names in the press.

Quoted: Quoted: I don't know where you get this from but Old World slavery was considered barbaric by any standard. The Arab slave trade was horrible by any standard. Most slaves exported to the Muslims countries during the time of the Atlantic slave trade were bought in order to serve in the various Islamic armies. Before that they did your average run of the mill menial labor. Nowhere near as bad. One reason for this was many of the slaves exported out of West Africa were in fact Muslim, and there's codes of conduct there (technically you aren't supposed to be a Muslims and own Muslims slaves, but you can bend that). Under Arab rules a slave was still considered a human being. If we're grading slavery on "bad", it goes like this for your average African Bad West Indies (except some Spanish holdings) South America North America Arab . . . West Africa Okay I get this stuff from my graduate classes. I can post some of the document lists. I've already named a few books. Slavery as barbaric is really a rather recent invention. For most of human history up until the 1760's slavery was an accepted practice. We abhor slavery now because, well, we decided to. I'm not saying that justifies it (it doesn't, imo), but that's how it is.

Okay, we get it.  Slavery was only bad in America...........it's all the evil white man's fault........etc, etc.  Same old shit from the same old liberal textbooks, blah, blah, blah.

Quoted: There is a distinct difference between being indentured/conscripted and being a slave.

One is a human being working off a debt, the other is livestock.

Quoted: Quoted: I don't know how accurate that part about the British is because the British were trading heavily with the South until Lincoln and company imposed heavy tariffs.  That was one of the sparks for the Civil War. The point about other tribes capturing rival tribe's members and selling them as slaves is a well known fact that seems to get lost when the subject of slavery comes up, especially reperations.  Did they think that the slave traders went wading into the jungle to capture slaves?  If that had been the case, there would not have been many, if any, slaves to trade. Slavery was a bad thing, but it ended in this country over 150 years ago.  It is still practiced in parts of the world.  People who are always yelling about our past history should focus more on stopping the practice that still exists today. Google or any of a variety of easily usable reference sources will tell you when the British stopped their slave trading.  Give you a hint start with Wilberforce.  First Anti-Slavery Act was signed in the late 1700's Beginning in the late 18th century, reaction against the barbarities of the slave trade led to it being outlawed, first in the United Kingdom and then in the rest of Europe. The power of the Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the slave trade, and while some illegal trade, mostly with Brazil, continued, the Atlantic slave trade would be eradicated early by in the 19th century.

Well, that doesn't jibe with the fact that they traded heavily with the South, taking adavantage of raw goods produced through the use of slaves.

Quoted: Okay, we get it.  Slavery was only bad in America...........it's all the evil white man's fault........etc, etc.  Same old shit from the same old liberal textbooks, blah, blah, blah.

Goddamn some people are fucking hard headed.

Slavery in the United States was, yes, in fact worse than slavery in West Africa. To assuage your, whatever, some of the blame is shared by West African leadership who had to know what was going on in the Americas and sold slaves anyway out of sheer greed. If it makes you feel better, slavery in the Carribean, controlled by European powers was far far worse than in the US. Average slave lifespan there was 8 years (where they also enslaved whites and blacks).

I'm somewhat shocked I'm being called a "liberal". But then again, discussing history with some people is often a lot like having a discussion about 1911s not being teh greatest pistol ever!!!111. Some people just can't let go off whatever comfortable misconception they happen to like.

I'm no liberal, but I'm not part of the "America can do no wrong, nor has it ever" crowd.  I'll take accurate history over whatever makes you feel good Larry.

Quoted: Well, that doesn't jibe with the fact that they traded heavily with the South, taking adavantage of raw goods produced through the use of slaves.

The Brits took economics over conscience until a decision had to be made on if they should actually fight for the south. It's also partly why they started interdicting the slave trade at all.