By Woodrow Wilcox
Yes, there was slavery a long time ago. But it ended.
If you are a Christian, then one of your core beliefs is that the blood of a Christ/Messiah that was shed on the Cross of Calvary atoned for all the sins of all people throughout thousands of years of Earth’s history.
If you believe that, why not believe that the blood of over 600,000 people (mostly white) atoned for the sins of a little more than 200 years of slavery in our country? That’s the number of people who died in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865. That total includes civilians (many of them white women and children) who died from disease and starvation during that war. The fighting men totaled over 214,000. That is an enormous number of fathers, uncles, sons, brothers, husbands, fiancés, and friends who died in the struggle to end slavery. That’s an incredible amount of death and heartache to those who knew and loved those men.
The total number of fighting men who died in the American Civil War was almost 215,000. The total number of military and civilian deaths combined was over 655,000. The total number of wounded fighting men was over 475,000. Our country had fewer people in 1860. That amount of bloodshed and loss of life was devastating to our country. Isn’t that enough atoning shed blood to put the painful history of slavery behind us?
This is a fact of American history that reparation advocates conveniently forget. Refusing to recognize this loss of life, pain, and hardship from the American Civil War is like a slap in the face to every descendant and relative of the men who died in that war. Every family in our country suffered hardships and heartaches because of that war. How can anyone expect to get ahead in life while constantly slapping other people in the face? The families of the fallen fighting men suffered death, pain, and hardship to an incredible degree. Stop insulting their descendants.
One of my great-great-great-great-great grandfathers was murdered by two men in Kentucky. Does that give me a valid reason to hunt down the descendants of the murderers to attack them, kill them, or demand money from them for the murder of that ancestor? No, it does not.
Why demand reparations from state or federal governments for years of slavery but not demand reparations from African countries for their part in making slavery possible? After all, it was the ancestors of people in Africa who hunted, captured, and sold into slavery the ancestors of many blacks who live in the U.S. now. The slave ship owners, captains, and crew never hunted blacks who were made slaves. They simply waited at the shore while the politically, socially, and militarily stronger blacks of Africa delivered anyone they did not like to the slave ships.
The claims that somehow the slavery of some of your ancestors prevents you from accomplishing your dreams today has no credibility. The U.S.A. has poured billions of dollars into education, housing, medical help, and social services to give the descendants of former slaves a boost to help them improve themselves and achieve great things with their lives.
No one gets life handed to them on a silver platter. There are hardships and unfair situations in the lives of everyone. Do you think that slavery in the U.S. was bad? It was never as bad as the holocaust where Jews and Christians who defied the socialist government of Nazi Germany were slaughtered. Many immigrants to the U.S.A. came here with almost nothing but the clothes on their backs. The opportunities in our country were so wonderful compared to other countries that the immigrants did very well. Not all the immigrants were or are white. Many Asians come to our country and do very well. One friend of mine who is a Moslem from a Middle East country told me that America is not perfect but it is so much better than other countries.
Claiming that the slave system that ended over 150 years ago is holding back blacks now is just not credible. But anyone who believes that lie is making themselves a slave from their defeatist mentality. It is that defeatist belief which acts like a slave master to keep people from thinking, questioning, improving, striving, and accomplishing.
All people and all families have had hardships. Don’t let that keep you from chipping away at your shortcomings to become the best and most accomplished person that you can be.
My mother researched family history all the time. I know that one of my great-great-great-great grandfathers was the illegitimate child of a master and a bond servant on a plantation in Virginia. Both bond servants and indentured servants (slaves) were treated badly. Not every master was bad toward servants, but many of them were.
I challenge you to really check the history of how slavery started in the English-speaking new world. Here is a brief description of what happened.
Some English pirates captured a Spanish ship. The Spanish ship had lots of valuable things on it. But it had some black slaves, too. The pirates had no use for the slaves but they did not want to just kill them. So, they took them to Virginia and sold them as bond servants. A bond servant had a debt which could be paid either with money or with a certain number of years of service. It was a status that was used for centuries in Great Britain to ensure that the poor could work for food and shelter.
A black man who was captured from a Spanish ship and brought to Virginia worked his way free of bond servitude and started his own plantation. He bought another black man who was sold as a bond servant to work on his plantation. After a few years, a white plantation owner told the new black man that he had worked enough for the black plantation owner and was free to work elsewhere. The white plantation owner asked the newer black man to come work for him.
The black plantation owner sued to keep the black bond servant working for him. He presented evidence to the court that the black bond servant had indebted himself to the black plantation owner so much that the debt would never be repaid during the rest of the black bond servant’s life. The court agreed and proclaimed the black bond servant indebted to service for life. The first slave was owned by a black master. That is how slavery was born in the English-speaking colonies. I learned that history by finding research articles about it in the Clark County Law Library in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The original slavery was based on a system of debt – not race or color. The laws and rules to keep servants under the thumbs of people who had money, power, and government connections grew from that.
If you want to expand your knowledge about how European government elitists kept power by manipulating the common people of Europe, read the book THE PRINCE or ADVICE TO THE PRINCE by Niccolo Machiavelli. It should open your eyes on how people in government and those connected with government work to create conflict and confusion among the people in order to manipulate people to accomplish more money and more power for the elitists.
End your slavery by reading The Prince and books that will challenge, educate, and inspire you to learn how to cut the strings of those who want you to remain their puppet to do what they conditioned you to do and to think what they – the elitists – conditioned you to think. Fight for your personal emancipation.
© Woodrow Wilcox 2020
Permission to republish in entirety is hereby granted so long as the source and authorship of Woodrow Wilcox is acknowledged.
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