Tuesday, February 25, 2014
On Slavery, The Founding Fathers, Michele Bachman, and Chris Matthews
According to the National Archives and many other sources, FOUNDING FATHER, Benjamin Franklin, put forth in 1790 a Congressional petition (one of his final official actions) that actually called for the total elimination of slavery. I never knew that and, while, yes, it's fully possible that Congresswoman Bachman also never knew it, what say you, you pompous ass, Christopher Matthews?
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4 comments:
Indeed Will good old Ben was an early abolitionist you could say.
Unfortunately the majority of the nation was not in agreement with him.(and others).
Economic and financial considerations primarily, although there were others.
I just found it way hilarious that Ms. Bachmann wasn't quite as far off the reservation as people like the smug Mr. Matthews had initially claimed.
They both are far off rational ground most of the time.
;Ya think Michelle B. is going to trot again?
Thomas Paine was perhaps the most outspoken against slavery, but he
was outspoken against religion and
persona non grata in this country.
Thomas Jefferson, under Paine's influence, mentioned the slave trade in the first draft of the
Declaration:
"..he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, 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 & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."
-even though he heaped blame on
the English king, the slave lobby
quickly removed that portion. IMO,
that lobby was the most powerful
and long-lived of any US group, using states rights and personal liberty (mine, not my slave's)
as well as religion to shield
their 'peculiar' institution.
Even former slave-holder Franklin
waited until a couple months before his death to petition congress, so divisive was the
poltical and regional divide.
Too bad, for it would have saved Lincoln a lot of trouble, as well
as the lives of 750,000 northern
and southern soldiers.
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