Author: lbwriter

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History

American Slavery Ended with the Civil War

flag behind scales of justice statue

This is another example of twisting truth.

By 1772, all of the thirteen colonies embraced slavery legally. Massachusetts was first. Virginia was fourth, and the first southern state to legalize it.

The legality of slavery was exploded by the 1772 British law case of Somerset vs Steuart. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/history-stories-kenwood/somerset-case/

Based on a case during the Elizabethan era, it was argued that slavery could not exist under the Magna Carta provision of habeas corpus. The ruling was that there was no basis for slavery under British common law and, therefore, slavery could not be enforced. However, slavery was not abolished at this time because it was directly addressed by this case.

The effect in the American colonies was explosive, since they operated under British law. Because slavery was unenforceable, laws related to it had to be revised or it would cripple the plantation system and even smaller businesses.

The revision changed slavery as practiced in the American colonies from the labor category of “slavery” to “involuntary servitude.” Thus, prior slaves were equivalent to apprentices, except that their term of service was lifelong and hereditary.

Prior slaves had been often treated as servants already in many households complete with the legal rights. Like apprentices, however, the rights were limited to the permission of the master.

The language difference was important. People who wanted to demean blacks still talked in terms of owners and slaves, even niggers. Slavery continued to be used in casual conversation and even in courts for convenience and clarity.

But in genteel southern households, as well as northern ones, the previous slave was called a servant. The plantation owners did not own slaves, they owned the land. He was the master of servants—like the master of an apprentice.

I was taught none of this in school. Were you?

Categories
History

Slaves Were Whipped Mercilessly

whip

Were slaves whipped? Sometimes. So were sailors, students, and children.

During the days of the British colonies in America, whipping was not considered a “cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, that phrase did not exist.

Whipping was a moderate measure compared to the medieval penalties dealt out for capital offenses, such as being drawn and quartered or having limbs pulled apart by four horses.

The British Whipping Act of 1530 https://www.britannica.com/topic/flogging was still in force during colonial times. It authorized whipping for theft, blaspheming, poaching, and other minor offenses. Both men and women were whipped, including the insane.

So, you see, during the Antebellum and Civil War Periods, most people upheld the practice of whipping if used judiciously. Judicious use included being limited to a minor offense, by using an appropriate instrument (not the cat-o’-nine-tails), and by limiting number of lashes.

However, abolitionists made spectacular displays of escaped slaves with whipping scars as a way of convincing northerners that slave owners in the south whipped all slaves mercilessly. They omitted the fact that runaway slaves were overwhelmingly slaves of cruel masters.

In fact, many plantation owners did not whip slaves—or anyone else—at all.

As to merciless whipping, the DVD series North and South did a wonderful job of pointing out that men who were cruel to slaves were just bad men. They were cruel to everyone in their power.

 

Categories
History

British Colonial Slavery

British Flag

During the Civil War, Confederates cried defensively, “Plantation slavery isn’t our fault. We inherited it from the British!”

So, what did Britain contribute to slavery in the United States?

One thing was its system of labor. All land discovered, explored, and claimed in the name of the British monarch belonged to the reigning king or queen. Favored gentlemen were granted royal charters to develop great swaths of land. This was usually in agriculture or mining precious metals or gemstones.

Within the forts and towns that grew on charter land, there were four levels of labor distribution apart from the military.

Table - Descr -Example - Person In Charge - Rights

The first colony, Jamestown, began in 1607. The first black slaves arrived in 1619 and would be used especially in the developing tobacco plantations.

All of the colonies had slaves although the occupations of slaves differed. In southern and middle Atlantic colonies, enormous numbers of slaves were needed for the vast plantations. In New England, plantations were rarely economical because of the poor soil and rougher terrain.

However all colonies used slaves for small farms, household help, personal servants, and skilled labor. In New England, these included indigenous slaves.

The New England states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island were in the business of acquiring and selling African slaves through shipbuilding and slave ship charters.

So, yes, the labor system that included slavery was inherited from the British.

 

 

Categories
History

American Slavery: Who Started It?

sailing ship

Spain and Portugal fought over the Americas. A treaty in 1494 determined which land belonged to which country, totally ignoring indigenous claims, of course. Portugal was mostly limited to Brazil.

Spain developed the plantation system of agriculture. During this time, the slave route was established. Spanish slave traders made deals with the Yoruba of Nigeria, the Fon of Dahomey, and the Fanti and Shanti of Ghana who already captured slaves through tribal warfare. They were cruel masters whose greed for Spanish trade made slavery into a business.

More slaves died while with the black slavers than died during the dreaded Middle Passage, according to Seabrook. That does not forgive the hideous conditions and abuse on slave ships!

The first African slave insurrection was at Veracruz, Mexico. Between 1570 and 1609, Gaspar Yanga, thought to be a Gabonese prince, led followers from plantation slavery to “star mountain” (the tallest mountain in Mexico) to form an African settlement. In 1600, they were joined by de Matosa’s group of African maroons. Today, a town of 20,000 mestizos still occupies the spot of the settlement. https://www.blackhistoryheroes.com/2011/05/gaspar-yanga-1570-african-slave-revolt.html

This is 78 years after Columbus, and it was not the last resistance.

One more thing: Spanish plantations were planted in Florida in the 1600s and 1700s until Florida became part of the United States of America.

So, I’m wondering why the push for black reparations for slavery is limited to the United States. Why aren’t these African countries included? Why aren’t European countries included in reparations? Is it lack of knowledge? Is it racism that omits reparations from African countries? Or is it greed instead of justice: targeting the USA because she is rich? What do you think?

Categories
History

American Slavery: the European Invasion

The first and second waves of Eurasian immigrants resulted in the First Nations. The first invasion came into Alaska and worked its way down the west coast, deserts and mountains. The second wave came over the Atlantic Ocean and has been found as far west as Minnesota. Both of these originated in Turkey and the Baltic nations, but DNA differs enough to track them. It is possible that these immigrants brought the practice of slavery with them.

As far as we know, the next arrivals were the Vikings. Leif Ericson is said to have followed the directives of Icelanders who had sailed west far enough to spot land, but then returned. If this was during the last ice age, as some hypothesize, the Vikings could also have been directed by sailing south of the ice and by consulting their “sunstones.” https://phys.org/news/2011-11-viking-sunstone-myth.html

We know that Vikings dealt in slavery because slave markets have been found, including a large, active one in Ireland. But if they meant to enslave the Americans, they probably quickly determined that negotiation was the best policy. The Vikings were vastly outnumbered. Their widespread villages did not survive.

We think Christopher Columbus arrived next. Ferdinand and Isabella, his sponsors, were very clear: the inhabitants were to be Christianized and remain free. Columbus was under the authority of the crown, as would be all native inhabitants. Later the monarchs amended the instructions so colonists could require labor and tribute, supposedly to correct reported laziness.

But greed got the better of Columbus. When the king and queen heard of his enslaving and mistreating the Native Americans, they sent a ship to relieve Columbus of his governorship and bring him back in chains.

It was this protection of native inhabitants that forced European colonists to turn to Africa for slaves. They were not the first choice. So much for the anti-black racist argument of slavery.

Categories
History

Ancient and Pre-Columbian American Slavery

manacles

What is slavery? A slave was someone who was owned by another person entirely. Not only was that person considered to be property, but he or she also had no rights at all. Nada. Zip. The slave didn’t even have the right to life. Slavery has been around for a long time and continues to exist today in some nations.

When asked “When did slavery begin?” many people will say it has always been part of human history.

I disagree. Whether you believe in evolution or intelligent design, the human race is traced back to an original family. It is highly unlikely that slavery existed in tight family groups because slavery always enslaves someone who is an “other.”

Even when a group came into an area looking for supplies of obsidian, there does not seem to have been a war, but the groups worked together, although not always equally. It seems that the directing group had more advanced knowledge and arrived later.

There is one early cave drawing that shows two groups of armed men approaching each other. This has been interpreted as a battle scene. However, since we now have proof that man and megafauna lived at the same time (overprinted footprints, spear and arrow heads imbedded in megafauna bones), the picture could just as well be interpreted as a friendly meeting by two groups who always went armed for protection against animals.

When people began to construct city states and enormous structures such as monolithic stone circles (such as Stonehenge, which was not the first), we see suggestions of labor division with overseers and hierarchy, but we don’t know the labor structure.

The earliest mention of slavery that I have found was in the time of Sargon the Great. Some Bible scholars equate him with Nimrod mentioned in Genesis chapter 10. If so, he is described as “a great hunter before the Lord.” Considering the megafauna wandering around, that is saying something!

Jewish lore says Nimrod was a “ruthless leader,” a “merciless ruler,” and the “chief idolater.” Could it be that he believed his own press clippings and morphed into Sargon, who may have been the first to “hunt” men (in terms of warfare, not murder). Someone had to be the first to attack his neighbors.

Sargon conquered an enormous swath of land before he was stopped at the mountain passes of Turkey. We hail him as a great warrior. But if he was first, he attacked people who until then were ignorant of murder on a large scale. He wasn’t great. This was easy pickings. And it was immoral.

Once slavery was conceived, it spread across all of the earth, most likely through trading routes. Only one person successfully stopped it. A Chinese emperor abolished it. But after his death, that was reversed. After all, by now, slavery was considered normal. Indeed, since the definition of normal is “what most people are thinking or doing,” it was normal.

Meanwhile in the western hemisphere many, but far from all, nations and empires adopted slavery. This included nations in the area that today is the United States of America.

Categories
History

Exposing Biased Civil War Sources

words matter

How do we know that a source is trustworthy?

First, by research the author: his or her education, other books written by this author, awards received, historical knowledge specialty, and what organizations the author joins or supports. Obviously, if the author is a member of the Ku Klux Klan or an activist lawyer for black civil rights, you would read carefully, looking for bias. Nevertheless, the book may still be enlightening!

Examine the bibliography. How extensive is it? How much variety does it contain? Are the sources reliable (as far as can be determined)? Is there a mix of sources from the 1860s and 1870s or are they all secondary sources?

Look at the vocabulary of the book. Careless disregard for the meaning of a word or phrase may actually hide bias.

In Civil War history, a few inaccurate words must be used for clarity. “Civil War” is the most common. Even Southerners use it when speaking to the rest of us because we are not familiar with “Lincoln’s War” or the “War of Northern Aggression.”

But a Civil War is conflict within a nation. That outright denies the claim that the Confederate States of America comprised a separate nation.

Union is often used incorrectly. A union is a voluntary association or organization of people striving to reach mutual goals. Note the word voluntary. Teachers associations for mutual goals where membership is forced is not a union, regardless of their legal names. In Right to Work states, teachers organizations are, in fact, unions.

When the Confederate states left the USA, they formed a separate union. The USA union altered substance to contain only the remaining voluntary states. It was incorrect to say that war was waged “to restore the Union” because war is force, and therefore not voluntary. Nor could war “save the Union.” That Union was already altered. Even when Confederate states were “readmitted to the Union,” it wasn’t true because southerners didn’t want to associate with the north. Legislation passed because almost no prior Confederate whites had voting rights, and the national Congress was completely Republican.

One more example is to use “federals” for USA troops. Federal refers to a national government, as opposed to state governments. While it is true that the USA had both national and state troops, and the national troops could also be called federal troops, the CSA also had federal troops and state militia.

Read carefully. See if words are used correctly and carefully. If not, you must determine if the author is biased, is deceiving the reader with propaganda, or just sloppy. (In which case, what else will the author sloppy with?)

Words matter.

In conclusion, read a wide variety of opinions and approaches to history, but be careful to identify bias and propaganda for what it is.

Categories
History

Civil War Lies

As a high school student, I found history interesting, but history teachers boring. Lincoln was my favorite president after George Washington. I believed everything I had been taught in class or had seen on television.

Ten years ago, I found this book:

Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War Is WrongI was not afraid that it would upset my beliefs, and I enjoyed learning other points of view, so I investigated it. The Table of Contents was shocking, if true. The bibliography was extensive: 20 pages of tiny print! There were many southern sources. I had rarely seen southern sources in other history books.

The author had been awarded the Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal.

Looking at ratings, I saw they were abysmal, so I looked at comments. They were all rabidly negative. Foaming at the mouth negative. Knowing that nothing is all bad or all good, I recognized a smear campaign. Today, we would call it Cancel Culture.

The smear campaign really stoked my curiosity. I bought the book.

When I read it, I was shocked.

I have fact checked most of the claims in this book and found them to be true. Actually, in some cases, the full truth was even more unpalatable.

They lied to us. But who did it?

As a teacher, I knew that unless you are teaching an area of expertise, you have to trust the book. You don’t have time to do your own fact checking. You expect that the writers have done their job.

As a professional writer, I know that textbooks are usually ghost written, because the “authors” don’t write at a professional level. The ghost writer’s specialty is writing, not the book’s subject. So the writer didn’t lie to us.

The listed authors should be experts related to the book’s subject. Did they lie to us? Lying is such a strong word! It includes untruth, but also the intention to deceive. I don’t think that of the authors. But then they must be ignorant, lazy, or lacking in curiosity. Because the truth is out there. I found it, and I am a self-taught historian, not a professional.

Then who lied to us? Who would gain by a massive propaganda campaign?

You’re not going to like the answer: the Lincoln administration and the nineteenth century Republican Party.

Categories
World History

The Magic of Faience

ceramic bowls

San Diego Culture

Mehrgahr Blooms

Faience Invented

Making Magic

The Magic of Faience

The Magic of Faience

In 5500 B.C., TGD and biblical history dates are approximating, but they haven’t connected yet.

San Diego Culture

Southern California was settled by people of the Encinitas culture. Grinding stones and shells suggest marine and farming activities. It would endure until 1000 B.C. in the San Diego area.

Mehrgahr Blooms

Mehrgahr (Pakistan) has entered its greatest age, which will last 2000 years! Pottery was in use. Faience has appeared, perhaps originally from the Near East in trade. Manufacturing has blossomed. Creativity is invested in new crafting techniques: both arts and manufacturing. Long-distance trade developed further.

Specific technologies included updraft and large pit kilns, and copper crucibles.

In the arts, faience beads were made, which may have represented money as well as useful beauty. We do not know that. But the later use of wampum in North America puts the idea in my mind.

The first “button” seals, manufactured from terracotta and bone, used geometric patterns.

Terracotta figures became more detailed. They were painted and wore a variety of ornaments and hairstyles.

Burials were different throughout the period. Two flexed burials covered with ochre occurred during the early period. The amount of burial goods diminished, eventually consisting only of ornaments, with more left in burials of females. (Strange in what is assumed to be a paternalistic culture!)

Faience Invented

Egypt was still between cultures, but the art of faience was practiced. Quite possibly, it arrived through trade. The Egyptians fell in love with it and greatly developed its manufacture. Egyptian faience is a ceramic art with a silica body and brightly colored glaze.

Do not confuse Egyptian faience with the Italian faience of the Middle Ages. That is a totally different product.

Making Magic

Egyptian faience was made of easily available ingredients:

Quartz: white quartz pebbles were easily found in the desert

Alkaline salts: plant ash or salts of evaporated salt-water

Lime: limestone

Metallic colorant, most popularly copper

The dry ingredients were mixed with water to create a paste that was then formed into the object. Immediately, the faience differed from the clay. It slumped while modeled. It was not flexible. It cracked instead of bending and could not hold its own weight.

That made faience difficult to work with except for small items such as beads, or flat items such as tiles or plates.

Larger items were made in molds or shaped around cores that burned away when fired. And what a fire! Faience required the kiln to be at 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  

The Magic of Faience

Any piece of finished faience has a core that is fragile and porous: quartz grains that seem powdered encased in a soda-line-silicate glass. This glass is transparent.

But looking through the glaze gives a magical effect. Light reflects off of the quartz in all directions. The result is seen as translucency with brightness in a variety of shimmering depths.

Faience became associated with magic. Religiously, the shimmer reminded Egyptians of sunshine rays and therefore the god Ra. The favored bright blue color made with copper was linked to fertility and rebirth.

It’s no surprise that faience, made of common materials, took its place beside precious stones and metals.

Everyone tried to have at least one shubati, ornament, or house god made of faience. Later, pharaohs used it liberally in pyramid ornamentation and grave goods.

Egyptian faience would maintain its importance for 4000 years.

Source Credit and Suggested Reading:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/egfc/hd_egfc.htm#:~:text=Faience%20may%20have%20been%20developed,gleaming%20qualities%20of%20the%20sun.

Photo credit: Mathias Reding on Unsplash

Categories
World History

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

fire burning, seals

Cultural Overview

New Products in North America

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

We’ve jumped time to 6100 B.C. (TGD).

Cultural Overview

Nothing new is happening in China, Greece, or Pakistan. In Egypt, the Faiyum culture is gone with nothing to replace it. Merngarh in Pakistan is expanding from its farming community, but there are no significant changes.

However, because of the rising seas at the close of the last ice period, Britain is now an island! Although trade will continue through navigation, the British will become a closed community, beginning their own traditions.

New Products in North America

In North America, all sites demonstrate a proliferation of tools, trade goods, and burial items. Columbia River sites in Oregon concentrated tool making on salmon fishing. In Utah the emphasis was on wool, leather, fur, and basketry.

The Great Basin sites, where people lived in caves or rock shelters, added the atlatl (a curved stick for hunting), smoking pipes, medicine bags and the deer-hoof rattles possibly used in the ceremonies, seashell ornaments, and bird-bone whistles.

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

But the best news is that Mesopotamia has awakened at last!

The Halaf culture, lasting one thousand years, was now first seen at Sakce Gözu, which is in Turkey near Syria. The most important site was located in what today is in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq.

Halaf culture existed primarily in the valley of the Khabur River, although its beautiful pottery was found throughout Mesopotamia.

Bowls and plates are frequent finds. Nude female figures made of terracotta show traces of pigment as if clothes were painted on them. The earliest stamp seals known in the Near East began in the Halaf culture.

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

It’s 5700 B.C. (TGD) in Sesclo of the Thessaly area of Greece. A new form of architecture has been developed. It’s called a “megaron house,” although later traditional megarons were not houses to live and sleep in, but were great halls for meetings, celebrations, and/or religious worship.

We don’t know the purpose of this oldest megaron. Maybe it was just the house of the most important or richest man.

It sits on the apex of the hill. (Where have we seen a structure on the highest place before?) Today, only the foundation remains, but we can learn much more from archaeological finds.

The megaron is surrounded by circular stone walls that separate it from the simple houses. It is rectangular and sits on an east-west axis. The foundation is stone. Finds indicate that the walls were brick and the roof was timber.

To enter, you walked through the porch, then the entrance to the main chamber. This chamber is almost square. It has a clay floor and a square clay hearth. On the northwest corner two oblong stone structures act as an area to prepare, serve, or assemble whatever is required. Three conical holes in the middle of the floor would have held the timbers that supported the roof.

Beyond the square room is the back room, possibly for storage. Later, a trapezoid area on the east would become a back porch.

Well! This is quite fancy for Greece! And the megaron is the prototype for the splendid temples of classic Greece.

Photo credit: Marinela Malcheva on Unsplash