Dear Dr. Nash, Thank you for this very informative presentation. I like how you dismantle the idea of "the inevitability of history." I agree that just because something happened (or didn't happen in this case) doesn't mean that it could not have happened differently. As you point out, there were identifiable reasons why the abolition of slavery didn't occur at this opportune moment in history, the most evident being the absence of leadership in the highest places of government by men whose hearts and minds seemed to be on the right side of this issue, but insensitivity, self-interest, and the fear of the loss of power prevented them from acting. As you stated, these men clearly did not lack the political capital to solve this most important issue, and in fact every reasonable and rational argument that was available was in favor of abolishing slavery at this time, including the preservation of the unity of the country and the honesty that must involved if democracy if to be promoted around the world. It was interesting that Madison stated in an unpublished essay that not solving this problem would result in "a political aristocracy by southern slave regimes that would not help but produce concentrations of political power that are in opposition to the ideas of self-government," the residue of which seems to still be alive in the hearts and minds of many southern politicians of today. One is led to believe then, that in the case of those in high places who could have done something at that time but didn't, that these men had themselves been born into privilege and lacked the necessary compassion that would have enabled them to really care about what was going on and to do something about it, but, also in fact, these men benefited greatly from the peculiar institution. It's also interesting to me that it took a man of humble beginnings (Lincoln) to finally put an end to this horrible stain on the country. The love of money or, another way to put it is 'the fear of lack' makes the heart hard and truly is the root of all kinds of evil, as the Apostle Paul wrote. I think another reason why slavery wasn't abolished sooner has to do with (in my view) the faulty and spiritually incorrect premise on which America was founded. If the answer to not having to pay taxes to the Mother country was to take up arms against her in violent revolution, then how could one expect any other concept than promoting and protecting one's own estate, as was at the root of the establishment and maintenance of the institution of slavery, to come from the hearts and minds of those who were intimately involved in the uprising against Britain and the desire to create a country where one can control one's own (white man's) destiny? With this in mind, perhaps there is something to the concept of historical inevitability after all, as these men were apparently spiritually incapable of making any other decision than the one they made which was the decision not to act on the issue of slavery. But those who did not let fear stand in the way of doing what is right are rewarded and history records them favorably. Thank you for this very interesting presentation!
Response to Pam Telemann: I highly value the sincerity of passion and clarity of thought, posited in you post. I also value your insight and clarity of after thought. I am becoming increasingly convinced of a collective blindness that white scholars have, analogously comparable to the blinds spot experience by drivers of automobiles. And that is the point. It’s not that you (collectively) refuse to understand that the founding fathers of this country - that your perceived “were sitting on the fence” as regards to morality and or possession the spiritual likeness and image of the Creator”- rather they were not even in the field where where the fence is located. To rationalize the wrongness of enslaving humans as chattel or as property -as wrong economic poLicy- speaks to a blindness within the soul An emptiness of any qualities or image of the Creator. In Paul’s treatment of the outcomes of the love of money, he is addressing Christians who once had the image and likeness of the Creator - and then lost it due to the temptations of the lure of the love of money. The founding father and other white colonists had no evidence what so ever as having or possessing the image and likeness of God - Void. And that is generally inculcated (exclusively) in people who have - not only never then enslaves - so as to think across perspectives as to what the calculus of what the experiential wisdom inculcated by forced purports to be. What this forced subhuman squalor of existence - forced by the gun - unfathomably benchmarks the level physiological/ psychological/ and mental squalor, lived generationally for centuries (under slavery in the English Colonies and In the U.S.) from cradle to grave. White America’s blind spot remains.
Eloquent and deeply researched lecture by a fine historian; however, he convinced me of his anti-thesis: the founders had no clue how to end slavery. As Nash depicts it, their main plan was to compensate man-stealers (the slaveholders) for losing the people they exploited viciously with land robbed by violence and trickery from Native Americans. Imagine paying Germans for the loss of each Jew they enslaved or killed by giving Germans land the Russians occupied (lebensraum). Why not reparations for the people who truly experienced loss, African-Americans. As the lecture thus indicates, the founders could not deal with their and most White Americans’ racism. The talk helped reconcile me to the 1619 project despite the factual errors.
Individuals may have wanted to end slavery but the system was deeply tied to a financial network that was selling paper slavery as bonds across Europe. The US had converted people who had any African female POW who'd been sold in into the US Slave Breeding industry into currency and collateral. The USD wasn't stable from state to state but the price for the enslaved was considered stable currency. Banks accepted enslaved people as collateral for loans, those loans were bundled and sold as bonds. Dismantling slavery meant dismantling an economic network that benefitted not only the US but European banking houses too.
idk where this man learned that Lafayette was against slavery but that is unbelievably wrong, he was a part of the slavery lobby in france when they where arguing about freeing the slaves during the revolution
After election to the National Assembly in 1789, Lafayette wrote the draft for the Declaration of the Rights of Man and pursued legislation to promote his liberal ideals, including the abolition of slavery.
@@scb3850 Lafayette was in the party that argued against the abolition, he defected before slavery was abolished but when he was in France he was arguing to exclude people of color in the colonies from the declaration and was deeply involved in the colonies and slavery that point about Lafayette is so so wrong.
@@scb3850 and he didn’t single handed write the declaration lmao it was mostly under the impulse of The more « left wing » people (republicans)than Lafayette who was more of a centrist in favor of a constitutional monarchy, and very limited revolution
To the enslavers it was not personal, but to those who were enslaved and their subsequent families, it was completely personal. Economics will not solve that stain on humanity by Europeans and some tribal groups visited by explorers and gold speculators, but a debt must be paid, and quickly!
