Timothy Birdnow

Today is the birthday of William Wilberforce, (August 24, 1759-July 29, 1833) the British statesman who successfully led the fight against slavery in Great Britain. Wilberforce, a committed Christian, started with a very minority position, but through diligence and prayer slowly turned a nation - and the n world - away from the evil institution.

Wilberforce was THE lead abolitionist in Britain, but the movement was larger than he - and the rise of slavery in America far more complex.

Slavery is the world's oldest profession, likely predating prostitution. It certainly was the cornerstone of the Roman Empire. In fact. Rome invented a steam engine at one point which the emperor at the time suppressed because he feared it put too many slaves out of work. And during the Middle Ages the Norsemen held slaves, particularly Irish (whose island made for easy pickings) but taking others as well. Medieval Europe generally outgrew the practice, primarily because they had serfs to do the work slaves just wouldn't do. Slavery never died out in the Islamic world, and in fact was one of the bones of contention between the Christian West and the Islamic East.


It was the Muslims in Africa who first enslaved black people.

Slavery never caught on in Europe, but it was important from the beginning in the New World, particularly in the Caribbean, where Indians were first tried by the Spaniards to work in the sugar plantations. The natives died too easily, so the Spaniards began importing Africans shortly after their arrival in the New World. Spain had been ruled by Muslims for centuries, and had little concern about the practice; their masters had taught it to them. So the Spanish began importing slaves. The other colonial powers did likewise.

But at first it wasn't all Africans being enslaved. For instance, the British enslaved quite a few Irishmen after the Battle of Kinsale in 1601. After that, Irish rebels had a saying "to Hell or Barbados" as they would be taken into slavery on the sugar plantations by the British. In fact, in places like Montserrat, there are a large number of Irish surnames; the Irish men married African women and a mixed race culture was created.

Slavery came to Virginia in 1619 when a Dutch merchant ship brought Africans they had stolen from a Portuguese vessel to work as indentured servants. See, it was expensive to immigrate to the Americas that early, and often settlers, who needed workmen, would pay the fare for poor people provided they worked as indentured servants for a period of time - usually seven years. There were penalties in the contract for running away, usually an extension of the term of service. Some people were more prized then others. Generally the Irish had longer contracts (as the English and Scot colonists weren't overly fond of them). But there never were enough workers, and the ship masters lost money to empty holds, so they began picking up Africans and shipping them to America. As these people weren't exactly eager beavers (they were kidnapped) the contracting businessmen began extending their contracts, until eventually they had 99 year contracts, or were slaves.

That's not to say slavery wasn't there all along. In 1621 an black Angolan indentured servant named Anthony Johnson arrived in Virginia. Now Johnson was an ambitious colonist and he soon was set free, sometime around 1635, to become a tobacco planter. He owned the contracts on a number of indentured servants, including one John Casor. In 1653 Casor approached the Colony leader Captain Goldsmith claiming his time of servitude was up and he should be released but Johnson wouldn't let him go. This resulted in a trial in 1655 where the jury found that Johnson still owned Casor; Johnson argued Casor was his property in perpetuity aka his slave. He won, and slavery was henceforth a legal institution in Virginia.

The first slaveholder in America was a black man.

And this would be true throughout America's "peculiar institution". For example, the largest slaveholder in Louisiana at the time of the Civil
War was a black man named Meridith Calhoun. He held over 700 slaves on his sugar plantation.

Then there was Antoine Dubuclet, who owned over a hundred black slaves. And there were many others. Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry owned 168 slaves in South Carolina. See more here.

Slavery never sat well in America. While the Constitution did not correct the problem, it was clearly not welcoming of the practice. And in 1808 the slave trade was abolished; it was no longer legal to import slaves into America. But slave ownership was still permitted. See, Eli Witney invented the cotton gin in 1794, making cotton a practical fabric. Until then it was primarily a luxury material, because cotton is full of seeds which had to be hand picked out of the material. So only the wealthy could afford cotton. But Witney's invention allowed a machine to pick the seeds out - but failed to provide for a mechanized way to pick the cotton off the stalks. This was a laborious job, and so the new cotton plantations had to employ black slaves to do it. Slavery flourished in America precisely because we had cotton and the cotton gin.

In Britain, the slave trade was abolished in 1807, just one year prior to America's abolition. But Wilberforce's efforts bore fruit much earlier in Britain, with slaverly being abolished in 1833, a little over thirty years prior to America. (Bear in mind the Emancipation Proclaimation of 1863 did NOT abolish slavery; it freed slaves in the rebellious territories only. It was the 13th Amendment in 1864 that ended slavery.) It should be remembered that slavery was abolished in much of the country well before then.

Another interesting point about slavery; Arizona is a much smaller state than the original territory. It was cut down by Congress as punishment for supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. Much of the Arizona territory went to California and Nevada.

At any rate, America had always been unenthusiastic about slavery, despite what the New York Times tries to claim with their 1619 Project and their slandering of the founding of the U.S.

Strange, too, is the way the Times ignores modern slavery in the Arab world today.

At any rate, slavery was an institution as ubiquitous as humanity. The main reason we don't have it now is because mechanization made it economically unviable - and because Christians made it their business to stop it. Wilberforce was one such Christian. We should all remember that on this, his birthday.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1114 words, total size 7 kb.