To Slave or not to Slave

Recently we have been watching the genealogical program on PBS called "Finding your Roots" hosted by Henry Louis Gates.  This is similar to the program "Who do you think you are?" on NBC.

It is a very interesting program and they have had a slew of interesting celebrities on the program.  Many times they like to go with Black people as the background for these people is always muddied due to slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War.

Though the last episode was very different as they used Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick.   The host always like to show how we are so interconnected and the muddied pasts of most people.  He loves to also dispel myths and legends about our origins.   And one way they do this is DNA testing.  This can help in identifying major zones of ethnic origin.  It can help to identify a percentage of "White" , "African", and/or "Asian" (what they term Native American at times).

So with Bacon and Sedgwick they did not need to do the whole DNA testing since they more or less could be termed "White".  Though I think they did it anyways to verify the "Jewish" portion of one's background.  What became more interesting is the little known secret of how many of the founding fathers all had slaves.
Gates brings this up with both Bacon and Sedgwick.  It appears that in the case of Bacon he has an ancestor of Quaker origins that had a slave.  Sedgwick's case is similar in that a long standing colonial family figure had a slave of sorts but interestingly helped in emancipating one later.  Somewhat confusing but, none the less interesting. In fact slavery in the early days of the United States was not just in the southern colonies like Georgia, South Carolina, Virgina, etc.  It was practiced in places like Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as well.

George Washington had slaves, and so did Thomas Jefferson.  So you have to ask - When did things begin to change in the north such that it became repugnant to own slaves where it was still acceptable in the southern region of the United States?  There had to be some kind of societal change where people began to shift away from holding slaves and actually working to abolish it in its entirety.  Maybe it was the fact that the "North" was becoming more industrialized while the "South" was becoming more agricultural based in its economy.  Slaves seemed great for the back breaking labor of the fields.   And the north gained the many semi-skilled European immigrants.

But, this all bring up the hypocrisy present when the founding fathers made the declaration "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  Equal as long as you were not a slave.  That is the perplexing thing that comes from all this.  As you dig deeper, you find they wanted that Utopian society where in reality all men where free, to pursue their dreams as long as it did not invade or interfere with your neighbor.  But, in reality life was not very fair back then.  Sometimes only land holders could vote, forget about women, and there were certain groups of people classified as inferior and unable to do such things as hold land, or move about freely.

You can say this was a sad chapter in the history of the United States.  But, it could well be in the minds of the founding fathers that getting some rights and the ability to self govern for some if not eventually all was better then not having any of that in the first place.  This as we know eventually lead to the great Civil War.  One of the only wars fought by the United States on our own soil.  And what a deadly cost we did pay with thousands of lives lost, and tons of family forever changed.

Slavery has been around from since the beginning of recorded history.  It was practiced all around the Middle Eastern / Asia Minor region for thousands of years.  Groups like the Vikings engaged in it all over Europe for years to one degree or another.  And it was common practice in Africa centuries and some might say it still exists there in one form or another.  And in the Americas, especially large agricultural regions like Brazil, or the South it was practiced for years. But, what ever the reason it has finally become unacceptable to practice Slavery.   Though through indentured servitude and debt bondage it carries on in some places in the world.



Brazil is an interesting case as they never really had a big civil war over the ending of slavery like it there was in the United States.  It actually was abolished piece meal over time until finally in 1888 Princess Isabel decreed it done and over with.  Before that they made baby steps to solving the problem.  Some in fact were token gestures that did like to end the problem. Like giving all slaves over 60 their freedom.  If the average life span of a slave was just 20 something years this covered therefore a small percentage of the slave population.  They also declared the "sons" of slaves freed.  This appears to not have covered the Females, and sadly some of them were used as slave producers by their owners in Brazil as well as many parts of the Southern States.
Many were also given freedom as they enlisted to fight in the Paraguayan War.  All token efforts to end the institution of slavery without going to war over it.  And to some extent it did work though Brazil was one of the last countries to abolish slavery altogether.
It kind of phased out as more and more semi-skilled labor from Europe (mostly Italy) came to work on the large plantations.



It's a sordid past we live.  A dark spot on humanity.  But, in the end the light at the end of the tunnel has come.  Equality is ever present, but, we still have to fight to make sure there is justice where justice is due.  And not just on the front of Slavery.  We also have to make sure we continue to allow for religious freedom and equality.   It all goes back to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as long as does not get in the way of other people.

So don't be shy in finding out if there is there are a few skeletons in your family's closet.  You might be surprised at what you find hiding in there.  And it might not be all that bad.







Buaidh - NO - Bas