American Revolution Sparked Anti-Slavery Movement

Tom Krannawitter, President of Speakeasy Ideas says the American Revolution was the greatest anti-slavery movement in all of history.

[CarbageMan]

That was outstanding, Jon. Tom sounds like a student of Rampart College.

[truthandfreedom]

I have to disagree with one thing and that is that our founders and Jefferson had no plan to end slavery quickly. We need to look at a few clauses of the Constitution to understand what the plan was. Article, Section 1, Clause 1; Article I, Section 2, Clause 3; Article I, Section 9, Clause 1; Article IV, Section 1, Clause 1; Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3; Article IV, Section, 3, Clauses 1 and 2 and Article VI, Section 1, Clause 2. The plan to end slavery is laid out here. Art. I, Sect. 1, Cl. 1 states that all legislative power granted by the Constitution is vested in a Congress of the united States while Art. VI, Sect., 2, Cl. 3 states that the Constitution and laws made under the Constitution are the supreme Law of the Land. So we are to understand that the Constitution and Laws of the united States made by Congress according to the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution are supreme. It is here that we must turn to Art. 1, Sect. 9, Clause 1 which states that Congress shall not have the power to prohibit importation of persons (reference to slaves) until 1808 but prior to that time they may tax such importation of such Persons. Congress did exactly that, they did impose a tax on the importation of slaves prior to 1808 and they abolished the Slave Trade in 1808 with the Slave Trade Act which Jefferson had the pleasure to sign as President at that time. Here, you have the Constitution granted Congress the power to abolish the slave trade within 20 years of the signing of the Constitution of the united States and they did exactly that. There was a very quick (about one generation) plan to abolish the Slave Trade in the united States.

But this plan was possible for other reasons which brings us to Art. I, Sect. 2, Cl. 3 which says that representation in Congress and taxes would be based on the population of the States. It goes further then this because they had one particular thing in mind when they were drafting this clause. They could have simply stated that representatives and taxes would be apportioned among the states based on population but they don't. They then say in this clause that the population for purposes of representation and taxes would be determined by a mathematical formula where "free Persons" would be counted as a "whole Number, " Indians who are not taxes excluded and "all other persons" being counted as a fractional number. Why do this? Because it was part of their "plan" to end slavery quickly. This made Art. I, Sect. 9, Cl. 1 much easier as well as other parts of their plan which I will get to shortly. Slave owning states would not receive full representation for slaves and the reason for this was so they would have less representation in the House. This helped to trigger the Civil War in 1861 but prior to that time the Slave Trade Acts which abolished the Slave Trade in the united States and made the slave trade a crime only happened because of Congress having the ability to pass such legislation (see Art. I, Sect. 1, Cl. 1).

This brings us to Art. IV, Sect. 1, Cl. 1 and Art. IV, Sect 2, Cl. 3 and how these were also designed to bring about the end of slavery. Art. IV, Sect. 2, Clause 3 may sound pretty bad given what it says until you realize it's context in this plan to end slavery quickly. This Article states:

"No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."

This must have been designed to uphold or defend slavery, right? No it wasn't because it is in Art. IV and that brings us to Art. IV, Sect. 1, Cl. 1 which says: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

This meant that full faith and credit shall be given to the judicial proceedings of a State and in the context of Art. IV, Sect. 2, Cl. 3 it meant a person who was held to Service in one State under the laws of that State was to be returned to whom such Service is due except Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Proceedings shall be proved and the Effect of those judicial proceedings. Remember though that Art VI said that the supreme Law of the Land is the Constitution of the united States and the laws made in accordance with the Constitution. This did mean that when Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1808 (for example) that a person who claimed to own a slave who was imported after 1808 wouldn't have any claim because Congress made it illegal for them to purchase such Person and their claim would not be proven and would be of no effect. This might seem like it didn't help slaves who were born into slavery but it also did do that as well and the reason we are seeing a problem is another clause of the Constitution which I have left out until now.

This is Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 which grants Congress the power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory of the united States (Cl. 2). When this is combined with the power of Congress to decide if a State would be admitted to the union (Cl. 1) it effectively gave Congress the power to prohibit slavery in the territories of the united States and to ensure no new slave state would be admitted to the union or at least that more non-slave States were admitted than slave states. The plan at this point is a bit more clear:

1) prevent within 20 years more slaves being brought into the united States
2) make slavery illegal in the territories of the united States
3) don't admit slave states to the union or at least admit more non-slave states than slave states to keep the Congressional advantage in favor of abolition

That was the primary objection of the south in the events that triggered the Civil War in 1861. They would never have the kind of political power that would allow them to preserve slavery. As they were becoming politically weaker due to the admission of new States and Congress preventing the Slave Trade they saw on the horizon what a Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 13th amendment was able to be done right after the Civil War was over. In the Civil Rights Act of 1866 Congress declared:

"That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding."

A simple majority of Congress was able to do this but just to be extra certain they ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments which abolished slavery (13th) and granted citizenship to blacks including former slaves (14th) amendment. The 14th amendment was basically the 1866 Civil Rights Act turned into a Constitutional Amendment and it said:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

People think the Civil War was necessary to end slavery but it wasn't. Slavery was taking it's last breath in 1861. The supreme Court in 1857 tried to save it with Dred Scott and it was that ruling by the then leftist supreme Court that forced us into a Civil War to undo the long-term damage that Dred Scott did. It declared that black people could never be citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. That brings us back to the Article IV part of the plan that we've talked about so far. The Dred Scott decision basically turned the tide against slavery in favor of slavery and the plan that our founders created was effectively ruled unconstitutional. That's why they did what they did in Dred Scott and why they started the Civil War when there was pushback and they realized that they stood no chance of winning and that slavery was dead. Slavery was finished prior to the American Civil War and we had to fight the Civil War to deal the final blow due to the left starting the Civil War to protect the leftist institution of slavery.

[truthandfreedom]

Great video. Thank you so much for talking about some of these things. These people don't give the founders enough credit for what they did or why they did it. They were opposed to slavery and believed it was wrong but because some things are so deeply rooted in a society the people of the time often have to make compromises to achieve great things. The end of slavery was on their minds when they declared independence and wrote the Constitution of the united States of America. We know this was on their minds for many different reasons but the most obvious proof is the original draft of the Declaration of Independence stating:

"He 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, 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 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, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

But their response to this would be that it was removed and our founders threw slaves under the bus. The problem with this line of reasoning is that they didn't throw slaves under the bus. They recognized that some things needed to happen first. Those claiming our founders were flawed or hypocrites for owning slaves are simply wrong about this claim that this was a flaw. You have Jefferson owning slaves at the same time as declaring it to be an "execrable commerce" and and "assemblage of horrors" and "crimes" against the "Liberties of one people." So why did he own slaves? Was it because he was flawed? The flawed person would be the person who didn't own slaves, who didn't engage in the very thing they despised and never become the success that he needed to be to be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. A Jefferson who didn't own slaves would have been a Tom who didn't write the Declaration. This may sound horrific until it becomes clear that Jefferson was not unnecessarily cruel to the men and women he held as slaves. He hated it with every fiber of his being.

He was willing to remove the condemnation of slavery from the Declaration yet he also wrote to others, "You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.” So why didn't he sacrifice owning slaves himself or sacrifice others signing on to the Declaration of Independence? Because to end slavery required him to own slaves and to abolish slavery and the slave trade required that he give an inch to gain a mile. When he said he was willing to make "every sacrifice" he didn't mean not owning slaves or making it his hill to die on because those would not be true sacrifices to end slavery. That would have just made him feel good about himself like so many leftists of today do when they virtue signal. Farmer Tom living in relative poverty and anonymity could have said "I'm a good person and I don't own slaves" but that wouldn't have been a sacrifice instead the true sacrifice of a truly great man was to own those slaves even though that would be a shame he would bear his entire life because that sacrifice of that shame was worth him doing the things that were necessary to bring it to an end. He rose in wealth and prestige and he became a leader on the world stage and he changed human history and to do that he had to own slaves because of where he was born and lived. He did it and made that sacrifice and to this day a great man is continually insulted, demeaned and degraded for owning slaves. He is called a hypocrite and flawed because he made that sacrifice to end slavery and to forever change the world.

But why did he then keep slaves throughout his life after the Declaration of Independence was signed or the Constitution ratified? Why did he continue to own slaves throughout his life? How was that a sacrifice of a great man who deplored slavery with every fiber of his being? The answer to this is the same. Jefferson served in Congress, as Vice President and as President because of his position in life. He would not have walked the halls of power if he wasn't the slave owner that he was. This sounds horrific to modern ears but what if Jefferson wasn't alive in 1807 when he was the President who signed the Slave Trade Act abolishing the importation of new slaves into America? What if right after the Constitution was ratified he walked away and went back to his life and freed his slaves? We may never know who would have been President in 1807 or if they would have vetoed the Slave Trade Act instead of signing it.

One of the greatest achievements of our founders in writing the Constitution and ratifying it is that they never put the word "slavery" into the Constitution itself. They didn't debase that document by doing so instead throughout the Constitution when it speaks of anything related to slavery they consistently declare that slaves are People or Persons. The same People that our Declaration states are created equal with certain inalienable rights. As they were writing the Constitution they did a few things that the left today uses to attack them but those things are the means by which we have ended slavery. If the Slave Trade Act hadn't been passed and southern states continued to import slaves between 1808 and the 1860's we can not be certain the Civil War would have gone the way it did. The south could have become the kind of powerhouse that much of the world may have aligned themselves with but that didn't happen. The south was weaker than the north and much of it had to do with the compromises our founders made to get the Constitution ratified.

If they had failed in the American Revolution and if the bold claims they made were seen as failures then we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. They could have made slavery the hill they died on but then slavery would have been rooted in the world forever. The bold claims our founders made would have been rejected such as "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.- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

What people may not understand is that what the founders accomplished wasn't just necessary for making the world a better place but they had to win it so the world wouldn't become worse. If they had failed, we wouldn't just have continued to be a part of the the United Kingdom but the gains the United Kingdom had made towards the ideals that the founders embodied would have been reversed. The king of England could have then turned the failure of the colonies on the British themselves and against the British Parliament and said something to the effect of the people aren't fit to govern themselves because we tear each others throats out over everything and can't even get on the same page long enough to accomplish anything meaningful.

In other words, the American Revolution wouldn't have happened in 1776 and the American Civil War in 1861. The Civil War and American Revolution would have both happened in 1776 and the British would have won the Revolution because of the in-fighting of the concurrent Civil War over slavery making it impossible for us to defeat the British. How would that have helped end slavery? The left never answers this because they didn't want us to win the American Revolution or the Civil War. The left are the people we defeated in the wars of 1776 and 1861.