Who traded slaves and other facts that debunk the most common myths about slavery in America

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Since ancient times, the slave trade has been an extremely profitable business for people of completely different nationalities and religions. Everyone did this: Arabs and British, Portuguese and Dutch, Muslims and Christians. By the middle of the 18th century, the Americans had joined the European slave traders. The first in New England to legalize slavery in northern Massachusetts. There are many myths and horror stories about this unsightly period in human history. Find out the whole truth about the five most common misconceptions about slavery.

At the very beginning, both whites and Indians could become slaves, and not just the natives of the African continent. But there was too much fuss with the former. Whites could easily run and were impossible to find. The Indians, who were well-versed in the terrain, also made successful escapes quite often. In addition, the Indians did not differ in special endurance and were too susceptible to various diseases. With blacks, there were no such problems: it was difficult for them to escape, since they had no chance to mingle with the crowd. There was no one to protect them. In the North of the States, slavery was not as profitable as in the South. Therefore, they gradually abandoned him, selling all the slaves to the southerners.

Myth # 1: There were enslaved Irish people in the American colonies

Historian and public librarian Lee Hogan wrote: "There is a consensus among experts on this issue, based on overwhelming evidence that the Irish were not subjected to eternal, hereditary slavery in the colonies, based on the concept of race." This persistent myth, most often exploited today by Irish nationalists and white supremacists, has its roots in the 17th and 18th centuries, when Irish workers were humiliatingly called "white slaves." This phrase was later used by the slave South as propaganda against the industrialized North, along with claims that the lives of immigrant factory workers were much harder than those of slaves.

Which of this is true? Large numbers of paid servants did emigrate from Ireland to the British colonies in North America, where they provided cheap labor. Planters and traders were eager to use them to the fullest. Although most of these people completely voluntarily crossed the Atlantic, there were also those who were exiled there for various crimes. But slave bondage and hard work, even by definition, are far from being close concepts to the fact that a person is movable property. First, it was temporary. All Irish but the most serious criminals were released upon expiration of their contract. The colonial system also offered lighter punishment for disobedient servants than for slaves. In addition, if the servants were mistreated by the owners, they could apply for early release in this regard. The most important thing was that their slavery was not hereditary. The children of forced mercenaries were born free. Children of slaves were the property of their owners.

Myth # 2: The South left the Union over state rights, not slavery

This myth that the Civil War was not essentially a slavery conflict would have come as a surprise to the original founders of the Confederation. In an official statement on the reasons for their secession in December 1860, the South Carolina delegates pointed to "growing hostility from other, non-slave states towards the institution of slavery." In their opinion, the interference of the North in these matters violated their constitutional obligations. Southerners also complained that some New England states are very tolerant of abolitionist societies and even allow black men to vote.

James W. Lowen, author of The Lies My Teacher Told Me and The Reader of the Confederates and Neo-Confederates, wrote: "In fact, the Confederates opposed the northern states in their decision not to support slavery." The idea that the war was for some other reason was perpetuated by later generations. The South sought to whitewash its ancestors and tried to present the military confrontation as a noble struggle for the right of southerners to defend their way of life. At the time, however, the South had no problem with claims to defend slavery as the reason for their break with the Union.

Myth # 3: Only a small percentage of Southerners own slaves

This myth is closely related to myth # 2. The idea is to convince everyone that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers were people of modest income, and not at all owners of large plantations. Typically, this statement is used to reinforce claims that the noble South would not go to war just to defend slavery. The 1860 census shows that in states soon to secede from the Union, on average, more than thirty-two percent of white families owned slaves. Some states had much more slave owners (forty-six percent of families in South Carolina, forty-nine percent in Mississippi), while some others had much less (twenty percent of families in Arkansas).

True, the percentage of slaveholders in the South does not fully express the fact that it was a convinced slaveholding society, where slavery was the foundation, the basis of all its principles. Many of those white families who could not afford slaves sought this as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. In addition, the basic ideology of white supremacy, which served as the rationale for slavery, made it extremely difficult and intimidating for Southerners to even imagine living side by side with yesterday's slaves. Thus, many Confederates, who never had slaves, went to war to defend not only slavery, but the very foundations of the only way of life that they knew.

Myth # 4: The Union went to war to end slavery

From the North, there is also a similar "pink" myth about the civil war. It consists in the fact that the soldiers of the Union and their brave, just leader Abraham Lincoln fought to free innocent people from the shackles of slavery. Initially, the main idea was the unity of the nation. Although Lincoln himself was known for personally opposing slavery (which is why the South seceded after his election in 1860), his main goal was to preserve the Union. In August 1862, he wrote to the well-known New York Tribune: “If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it. If I could save him by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. If I could save him by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would have done it too."

The slaves themselves helped to support this myth, fleeing en masse to the North. Early in the conflict, some of Lincoln's generals helped the president understand the fact that sending these men and women back to slavery could only help the cause of the Confederation. By the fall of 1862, Lincoln was convinced that the abolition of slavery was a necessary step. A month after his letter to the New York Tribune, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, which would take effect as early as January 1863. It was more of a practical wartime measure than a real liberation. This declared all slaves in the rebellious states free. Where the president needed to remain loyal to the Union, in the border states, no one was released.

Myth # 5: Slaves also fought for the Confederation

This argument is fundamental for those who are trying to redefine this military conflict as an abstract struggle for the rights of the state, and not a struggle to preserve slavery. He does not stand up to criticism. White Confederate officers did take slaves to the front during the Civil War. But there they only cooked, cleaned and did other work for officers and soldiers. There is no evidence that significant numbers of slave soldiers fought under the Confederate banner against the Union.

In fact, until March 1865, Confederate Army policy specifically prohibited slaves from serving as soldiers. Of course, some Confederate officers wanted to recruit slaves. General Patrick Cléburn proposed recruiting them as early as 1864, but Jefferson Davis rejected the offer and ordered that they never be discussed again. In the end, in the final weeks of the conflict, the Confederate government yielded to General Robert Lee's desperate call for more people. Slaves were allowed to join the army in exchange for freedom after the war. A fairly small number of them signed up for training, but there is no evidence that they participated in hostilities before the end of the war.

History holds many myths and secrets, to discover some of them, read our article 6 intriguing mysteries of world history that still excite the minds of scientists.