Roger Anghis
All this hell that is being raised by the racist group black lives matter, I will not give them any respect capitalizing their name because they give us no respect, is being done on false pretenses using false and or inaccurate facts. They are portraying that America was the only nation that practiced slavery. Even the idiot that ran for vice president with Hillary in 2016 said that we invented it. There is so much fake information out there it is sickening. Ronald Reagan described Democrats very well when he stated that ‘Democrats know so much that isn’t true’.
Did America participate in slavery? Yes, we did. But one has to remember that the thirteen colonies were established by the British. Britain practiced slavery and because of that slavery was actually mandated by the crown for the Colonies. Did our Founders have slaves? Yes, some did. Thomas Jefferson had slaves, but he did not brutalize them as some slave owners did. When he finished his last term as President and returned to Monticello, as the story is told, his slaves met him on the road, unhitched his horses, and drew the carriage themselves.
George Washington was a slave owner, however, he never bought nor sold a slave. The slaves he had were given to him by his uncle. He never sold a slave because he did not feel that it was right to break up a family. He almost went broke twice because he refused to sell some of them. It was almost impossible to free a slave in Virginia in his day because it was not allowed by law. At his death, in his will, he freed his slaves, but Virginia law kept them in servitude.
One of the things that blm ignore entirely is that in early America there were black slave owners! Interesting that they never talk about that. Anthony Johnson was one such slave owner. Himself a freed slave, or more likely indentured for a number of years, became a landowner and a slave owner in the early 1600s.
The Irish were also used for forced labor, though it may not have been the chattel slavery of the Africans in that day that form of slavery was practiced in Ireland from at least the 5th Century. Slavery had been practiced in Ireland for centuries before a Welsh slave in the 5th century got away, spent some years in France, and then returned to achieve a mass conversion among the Irish to become Saint Patrick. Brocca, another slave of the Irish, was the father of Saint Brigit. Dublin was a major slave market, especially after the Vikings came and renovated the town into an efficient port. It must be added, however, that slavery was a looser system in those days, and servitude, whether to Irishman, Roman, Norseman or Norman, did not necessarily mean servitude for life.
The trafficking of the Irish for cheap labor began in earnest when England began colonizing the New World, and at the same time increased their domination of Ireland. Rebels and criminals—and often their families—often found themselves being deported, especially to island plantations in the Caribbean and later to “Van Deman’s Land” (penal colonies in Australia). Most often, however, they were indentured servants, under four to seven year contracts to work the sugar cane, tobacco or cotton fields until their time ran out and they would be released from indenture. In practice, the masters sometimes extended the time of indenture; others, for whom the indentured servant was not the lifelong investment that a black or native American slave was, had no compunction about working the indentured servant to death in his last year.
For the Irish, the worst period of indentured servitude began with their rebellion against English rule in 1641, through the Cromwellian Commonwealth and on through the early 18th century, when there were mass deportations as a means of essentially moving the “Irish Problem” elsewhere.[2]
I have yet to hear from the Irish about these years of slavery and demands for reparations and the rest of the BS that comes from blm. Even leading up to the Civil War there were black slave owners that we never hear blm condemn. A former slave, Willian Ellison is one of these. William Ellison was African American, born into slavery in April of 1790 with the name April Ellison to a slave mother and white slavemaster father, Mr. William Ellison. As a young man he was apprenticed to a cotton gin maker rather than working in the fields and allowed to keep a portion of the wages he earned for his master and father, money that he later used to purchase his freedom. At the same time, he changed his name to William Ellison, after his father, to fit in with higher society. After purchasing his family, he moved to Sumter County, South Carolina and hired out other free African Americans to work in his cotton gin shop. While working, he discovered a common problem among freed slaves in the South. The expense of wages left him with a profit that would never compete with what slaveowners were earning. Wanting to move up in society, he purchased his first slaves in 1820.
By 1850, Ellison had 37 slaves while his sons owned another 16. He was one of about 180 black slave masters in South Carolina at the time, most of whom were former slaves themselves. Like Ellison, they realized that the only way to get out of the lower middle class that so many freed blacks were stuck in, was slave labor. With nearly 9,000 free blacks in South Carolina, that 180 made up a tiny percentage who were willing to do anything to compete with the upper class white slaveowners at the time. Just because they owned slaves though did not mean they were treated equally among slaveowners. As Ellison subtly hints in his letter, white slave owners would avoid interacting with African Americans as much as possible. Ellison provided many whites in the area with what were the best cotton gins available which meant that if they wanted to produce the most cotton, they would have to do business with them.[3]
The groups blm and antifa are tearing down statues of anyone they feel has been against blacks. I would like one of these uneducated fools to explain to me just how U.S. Grant is offensive to blacks. He was given a slave by his father, but he freed him instead of profiting from him. He also defeated the South which brought freedom to the slaves in the South. How about Abraham Lincoln? How is he offensive? He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves. Robert E. Lee’s statue was torn down even though he was against slavery.
It is obvious that most of the rioting has nothing to do even with George Floyd’s unfortunate death. It is a political game by the left to attempt to regain power. What will it be like if they do? Socialism will be mild compared to the control they are demanding. Democrats have done nothing to curb the violence in their cities. Where it has been tried in republican cities it has been stopped cold, as it should be. We must have law and order but the Democrats refuse to enforce it. The City Council in Minneapolis voted unanimously to defund the police, the only protection that some people have in the city but are providing security for themselves at a cost of $4,500 a day! 3 A clear sign that they believe they are the elite and deserve better than the regular Joes. This won’t fly in November.
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E-Mail Roger Anghis: roger@buildingthetruth.org
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