03.13
While I was doing research on the Peabody Education Fund, I came across the report that the Fund gave in 1880. It was a fascinating read. One of the things that really just shocked me was the language in it about how slavery had gotten it’s start in the Colonies. I had stuck it in my stack of things to post in the future and kind of forgotten about it. But, it came back to my mind when I was watching Ken Burns PBS documentary on Thomas Jefferson. It corroborated the story that the original wording of the Declaration of Independence contained harsh language denouncing King George the III for forcing slavery onto the Colonies against their will. I really can’t do it much better by commenting on it since I’m no slavery historian so just read it for yourself:
It would be foreign to the purposes of this Report to
enter into an extended discussion of the history of the
introduction of African slaves into our country, or of the
many questions connected with their presence among us.
But it can hardly be deemed out of place to state the
unquestionable fact that they were introduced into what is
now the territory of the United States by authority of
the British Government, more than one hundred years be-
fore the Declaration of Independence, and while we were
British Colonies. Nor was it done with the sanction of the
Colonial Legislatures. On the contrary, there is abundant
evidence to prove that some, if not all, of the Colonies
earnestly remonstrated against it.
The preamble to the first constitution of Virginia,
adopted on the 12th of June, 1776, three weeks before the
Declaration of Independence, in reciting the causes of com-
plaint against the British Government which had impelled
that commonwealth to arms, assigns as one of the most
prominent, ” that the king, by the inhuman use of his
negative, refused permission to exclude by law the intro-
duction of negro slaves.”
It further appears, from the testimony of Mr. Jefferson,
that his original draft of the Declaration of Independence
contained the following impassioned paragraph: ” He (the
king) has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people, who never offended him ; cap-
tivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemi-
sphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of Infidel
Powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great
Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men
should be bought, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or re-
strain this execrable commerce.” Writings of Jefferson,
Vol. I., p. 19. It is true that, from motives of prudence,
this harsh denunciation of the British king was stricken
out by the committee, but that circumstance does not in
any degree invalidate the truth of the charge.
The fact was recently distinctly admitted by John Bright,
the eminent British statesman, in a speech delivered by him
at Rochdale, on the 19th December, 1879. In that speech
he is reported to have said : ” And I may tell you that
slavery in the United States was not the offspring of republi-
can institutions. It was there in colonial and monarchical
times; it was during the time of George III. that, when
the Colonies and the United States would have abolished
the slave-trade, the English Government forbade that abo-
lition, and continued the trade.”
Buckle, Vol. I., page 321, says: “George III. looked
upon slavery as one of those good old customs which the
wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated.” And in a note
he adds : ” Such was the king’s zeal in favor of the slave-
trade, that in 1770 he issued an instruction under his own
hand, commanding the governor (of Virginia), upon pain
of the highest displeasure, to assent to no law by which
the importation of slaves should be in any respect pro-
hibited or obstructed.” Bancroft’s American Revolution,
Vol. III., p. 456.
Edmund Burke, in his great speech on conciliation with
America, delivered in the House of Commons, March 22,
1775, referring to a proposition to enfranchise the slaves in
the Colonies, said : ” Slaves as those unfortunate black
people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must
they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that
very nation which has sold them to their present masters,
from that natio. ne of whose causes of quarrel with
those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that
inhuman traffic?”
These facts abundantly prove that whatever responsibility
attaches to the introduction and continuance of slavery in
the Colonies rests with the Government of Great Britain.
It is due, however, to the truth of history to say, that,
when our fathers undertook to form the Constitution of the
United States, they found the institution of slavery so inter-
woven with our industrial and social systems that they were
obliged to leave it as they found it, trusting, doubtless, that
a cure for it would be found in the future. Hence, neither
the word ” slave ” nor ” slavery ” is to be found in the
Constitution.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, slavery existed
in all the Colonies. But, under the influence of wise legis-
lation, it gradually receded from the Northern to the more
Southern States, where it lingered until the close of the
Civil War, when, happily, by an amendment to the Consti-
tution of the United States, this disturbing element in our
political affairs ceased to exist anywhere within the juris-
diction of our Government.
I believe that Dr. Barnas Sears was charge with writing the report so that’s who is pictured above. This information really opens up a great research window for anyone who is interested in actually learning about slavery and not just historical rhetoric.
