10 Myths About Slavery | The Cynical Historian | History Teacher Reacts
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about things in history. Many times these can be the result of politicization, or just honest mistakes that develop over time. In today's video we look at 10 Myths about Slavery by The Cynical Historian. Let's dispel these myths now!
Original Video: • 10 Common Slavery Myths
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What slavery myths were YOU taught?
Slavery started in North America
Surprisingly i didnt really get any myths. My AP world history teacher was great about the whole truth
That slaves where all African Americans. No, their was some slaves that were white. Because of enteriterd servitude.
@@Rhyderdie100
Similar evil different magnitude
I'm Iranian, There is no history books in school!
Qin Shi Huang being against slavery is the prime example of a stopped clock being right twice per day. I'll always remember him as that jackass who murdered anyone in sight.
Equating him with abolitionists like Cassius Clay, and Thaddeus Stevens is beyond despicable.
Burned books as well
@@undying3132why are people so weird about burning books. I live in a country where it has never been a thing and was surprised to find out that's it's akin to calling some one a bigot
@user-zi1kr4kd1v maybe if u burn a Harry Potter book now, no one will bat an eye.
But this is ancient China we're talking about. The books he ordered to be burned were historical records from before a unified china.
@@user-zi1kr4kd1vburning a book means that you’re willing to destroy things you don’t like
As a random dude from Hubei, I find the equivalence between Qingshihuang and people who advocated for the end of slavery in America to be beyond reprehensible. He might have ended slavery as a general practice, but the people forced to work on his vanity projects were not better off than slaves.
sounds like king leopold
To me, it almost sounded like the guy who made the video was annoyed by the fact that the Europeans quit slavery. It's like being disappointed when a criminal reforms his ways instead of keeping on committing more crimes.
@mikitz i mean the europeans who quit slavery kept doing the same kind of stuff as the qing emperor. corvee labor (especially in their colonies), compulsory military service, and so on. king leopold fought holy wars against slavery while his enforcers literally butchered 'free' peasants for not meeting rubber quotas. so if the chinese don't count as having really abolished slavery, neither do yppo
His point was that the idea of abolition did not originate from Western society.
@@JeanValjean875 I don’t care if it originated from the west or not, giving Qingshihuang the credit is unacceptable!
The emancipation proclamation also, by making the eradication of slavery a war goal, effectively prevented England and France from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy
THAT was the whole point of it. Folks like to make a rosey picture of Lincoln and his benevolent ending of Slavery, but it was purely strategic. 1. Framing the war as being against slavery would put the moral pressure on Europe to stay out of the conflict. 2. Saying any enslaved person to make it north would be freed encouraged the disintigration of the Souths labor pool and skilled workers. 3. Bolstering ones own side with an influx of new bodies for the war is always good.
People also forget the slave states of the North. I don't recall how many there were but there were a few Northern States which still had Slavery as legal all through the war because the Proclamation exempted them. Most had undone slavery by the end of the war but a couple held on until the COnstitution was amended. Thats right, Northern states KEPT SLAVERY until they were forced to stop.
@@JTheTeach They weren't really "Northern states". They were ideologically aligned with the Southern slave states, they just didn't side with the confederacy.
Also, Lincoln was 100% against slavery, he just thought preserving the union was more important than abolishing slavery.
@@yoloswaggins7121Lincoln was definitely not against slavery. He literally said it himself, in fact he said he didn't have any issues with slavery at all. He already had a plan to deport all the free slaves to south America and back to Africa. Then he was conveniently assassinated.
No, there is no way that France or England would have been involved regardless of the emancipation proclamation and if they were going to be involved Lincoln saying something wouldn't have had anything to do with anything
@@davidpeters6743 that wasn't a given at the time. The South had a large trading history with both of them, and at this point in time, Britain was not close to the US like they are now. Personally, I agree that they wouldn't have regardless, but if they had it could well have forced the Union to negotiate, and Lincoln couldn't take that chance.
Some countries in ancient times a slave could buy there freedom
Yes, that's correct!
United States included for a time.
@@morganmcallister2001true. Before the cotton gin slavery was on the way out. I believe it was profitable for the slave master to let his slave sue extra work to get money to buy back his freedom.
@@Nostripe361yeah but even after the cotton gin a few slave owners would allow slaves to buy their freedom but it was really really rare.
Yep. A lot of places. Mind the rules sucked. For example, since it's one I know well, Jewish law allowed someone to be kept as indentured if they were also Jews, as chattel if a foreigner, and children born to those currently indentured were property of the contract owner, thus chattel, with no right to buy themselves out of a debt they didn't have. Similar laws existed in neighboring nations, but ironically, most of them required that indentured contracts be YEARS shorter. Of course, these rules found their way into the Bible, with revisionists trying to claim that all slaves under Biblical law were indentured, with rights, denying that their children became chattel, and insisting that somehow the contracts were more "fair and or shorter".
In other words, that it was the complete opposite, and thus US slavery was some sort of, "whoops, we did it wrong", not actually following the law to the letter. Sure....
I was a teacher in Texas for 18 years and the curriculum actively taught the “states rights” as the main cause of the civil war. It was tested on state tests.
Well, it was true, as in the states rights to keep slavery.
I am 50 years old and was educated in Silicon Valley. I remember being taught in school that the Civil War was about states’ rights. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I went through and read the letters from states declaring why they were seceding from the Union. Over and over again, the Southern States referenced slavery and the refusal of non-slave states to return escaped slaves. That research led me to do more research, and I learned about “The Lost Cause.” So, even in California (where liberalism is believed to thrive), The Lost Cause was being taught in schools in the 1980s.
I am almost a decade younger. I remember when I first heard that 'states rights' argument actually articulated as such and my immediate response to it was "ok, what rights?"
These days whenever I get someone using that argument, all I do is ask them that question. Some people squirm, some outright deny, some will try and find nits to pick (which is why I ask such a simple question) and still others drop the obfuscating BS and start talking plain... very few seem to actually even care about the answer.
For what its worth, I'm a lifelong resident of Connecticut, but my fathers side of the family has been in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia since at least around the 1730s and thus I have spent a fair amount of time down there on vacations over the years.
I don't think we have a way to really know what was real and what was not. Propaganda was not invented in the last few decades. Reading old documents is fine, except if they are not falsified or fabricated. And we don't have good ways to determine that. And when we have some way to tell, usually the expert hired to do it will spin their political agenda version.
Just like the video we are watching. In reality Trump never said "China" with no context, just repeating it. So now I know the video has particular political bias. Fun fact, you can do the same for any other politician who has a job that requires addressing other countries. I've seen similar video about Biden, but in it saying "China" out of context meant he loves China and works for them.
Dude, Regean was your governor. Of course Lost Cause and other myths were taught to you
You need to look at where those books you were taught from were written. Texas puts out a lot of them so kids get taught their craziness.
Your literally saying those invaded were the dictators of the wars purpose. It's the only instance in history we're the losers get to write the reason for the war when typically the victor's so , and the union didn't fight it over slavery slavery became the reason after Lincoln needed to prevent European alliance with the south and he needed abolitionist support to win reelection. In effect making it about states rights because Lincoln's purpose was obviously federalization meaning limiting states rights.
This video is very important because there are still many Americans ignorant about the history of slavery in the way it occured here
The "lost cause" grooming conspiracy has twisted the actual history of the USA.
"The slavery trade is something i have always very much been interested in..."
-Mr Terry
Don't do this to me!
You're bad 🤣🤣🤣
Breaking: History Reaction CZcamsr Desires to be a Slave Trader in 2023!
😂
@@92jwiener Breaking news: Local history teacher fired from his job, for teaching his students about "Greatly profitable business ventures."
If I may offer a foreigner's perspective: being French, I had most of my secondary education at a French school in the US. In history class, we pretty much followed the French national curriculum (education in France is centralized even for schools abroad), along with an American civilization class starting from 8th grade and then a mixed Franco-American curriculum in 10th grade.
From what I can remember, in the French curriculum, slavery was covered as an aspect of early Modern history in 8th and 9th grade, along with the colonization of the Americas by European powers, and then its (second) abolition by France in 1848 was mentioned as a milestone we had to know. We learned about the horrendous conditions of the Atlantic slave trade, but it was covered as more of a pan-European thing than its French specifics (I learned more about that later on by myself), and I can't remember much detail being given. There was definitely no notion of slavery being invented in this context, especially because we had covered the ancient world and slavery there in 6th grade.
In American civ, the slave trade and slavery in the colonies were covered in separate chapters, and of course we covered the Civil War, racism and segregation, but I have to say I don't remember much. All in all, I definitely wasn't taught any of these myths, except maybe the Union fighting to end slavery thing, and it might just have been me making that conclusion. I can't say any of these myths were present in that curriculum or stayed with me if they were.
Haiti
@@pro-choicemom I love one-word comments on complex historical topics. I like to wave at them as they pass by. 👋
@@samrevlej9331
I would think it would be self explanatory how France treated & continues to treat Haiti b
@@pro-choicemom It was clearly not, and it still isn’t. Tell me more, please.
@@koschmx It's rare that a non-French person recognizes my pfp as Jean Jaurès. I'd tip my hat to you, but doesn't have one on in the picture.
"The history of slavery has been politicized."
Gee I wonder why someone might think slavery is political?
Basic human rights should not be political
@@alexamerling79and yet the republocan party literally had to be crested to end slavery. Which these guys act like it was his goal at all, except what Lincoln wanted was it to come to a "natural conclusion" bc he believed in peace. He didn't want so many men to die. But he did believe it was a moral evil. This video doesn't at all talk about nuances. Which to act like there were none is a lie in of itself. Like he contradicted himself in saying that indentured servants weren't slaves but then later talked about a guy ignoring the end of contracts. And he lies about who the first official (on paper at least) slave owner was. The man went to court to have ownership. It's well documented. This entire video purposefully keeps things hidden for a political agenda. By not talking about instances where it wasn't the case about this or that it I effectively lying. For example, my family were irish, the Barry's of Barrymore castle. Two of my direct decendants, cousins,.one 17 (male) the other 12 (female) were arrested for telling the english basically to fuck themselves when they came to take over the castle in the late 1700s. I think 1789. It's well documented. Upon arrest they were sent as political prisoners, sold in auction (my great great grandma for 4 dollars) my great great first cousin (like what 4 or the 5th removed) for 7 dollars. Their "indentured servitude" was permanent and they were pushed into a forced marriage to another slave who was native. Then my great grandmother to a black slave after. 3 generations of slaves. Later, bc the irish part was so strong they married another irish "indentured servant" and they were freed when slavery ended. This was all well documented. Also, they were owned by a black family. .who had over 300 slaves. They're one of the most prolific slave owners in Louisiana at the time. So yeah, I take umbrage of someone claiming that this wasn't slavery. That's a lie. They had no choice, they signed no indentured contacts. Yet their legacy is dismissed as if it didn't happen. Furthermore, he said black slaves were treated far worse but if this was the case why is it that so many (nearly all) of the irish died in servitude?? It's crazy high, lime 90 something percent. I suggest u look into things instead of believing this horseshit bc it supports ur sides narrative. I'd rather the truth my make my side look bad and hear the full truth that be lied to to continue to support my team. Just saying
As to the benevolent slave owner. Not only was their “kindness” an act of control to try and prevent revolts but also if they are looking at them as an investment, it would be incredibly stupid to go and buy a brand new corvette and then go and slash one of your own tires. If you wanna get the most out of them you wanna take care of it. Just typing that out made me feel gross.
Yeah, but you would kick a mule.
It may feel gross, but as far as basic economics goes, labor is a commodity and a business owner has to find ways to maximize productivity in the process of making a profit. That said, for some, kindness may be an act, but that doesn't mean there weren't those who were genuinely kind and humane. If we were born 200 years ago, we'd be raised in a culture where we were taught it was normal and acceptable. We'd rely on the social mores. We can be certain that something that we live with today - whatever that may be - will leave generations 200 years from now wondering why we lived as we do today, and will question our own "backward" way of thinking.
@@godaistudios very well put
Kindness is a relative term. We know from some letters of slave owners and from slave narratives that some owners were puzzled when slaves ran away, especially when the masters had been "kind" to them.
You owned a mule. A slave owner owned a slave. An indentured servant had laws on the books to protect them but it was more to prevent abuse & excesses that was not uncommon. Indentured servants weren't rented mules you had to turn over to their actual owners at the end of the day, there were instead released at the end of their contracts by the person holding that contract. Until that day came, the farmer or plantation owner wants to get as much work out of the servant as possible....not seen as a long term investment like a slave would be. Maybe if the indentured servant had a complaint they could go to the local labor relations board or file something in the court (who I'm certain had no ties to the the folks wealthy enough to buy indentured servant contracts)...
5 year terms were doable (7 years the common term), but 20 year contracts in the 17th and 18th centuries? In the south working plantations with malaria and the host of other diseases and lots of ways to die in your 30s or 40s? What the heck was a indentured servant coming off a 20 year contract supposed to do assuming by some miracle they lived that long? Start a new life after spending most of their expected lifespan working for nothing (or very little)? They could runaway and blend in a lot easier but if caught the punishments for breaking contract could be severe (lashing and branding as well as shackles with more time added).
Indentured Servitude largely was ended by banning debtors prisons in 1833 in the US, but wasn't finally made illegal until the passage of the 13th amendment.
As an Irish man, the 'Irish Slave Trade' myth is one that really annoys me. The history of the Irish people is tragic and brutal, but seeing it used by white nationalist as an ideological weapon to undermine the injustice of the Trans-Atlantic Chattel slave trade enrages me. It also annoys me as a lover of history, as the evidence for the difference and scope between indentured servitude and chattel slavery are so available if one does even the minor amount of research
Enraged!!!!! What a puss. You go girl.
don't call them white nationalist because it doesn't make sense, in their stupid brains it does but logically it doesn't
yeah its an addition too the tragedy not a " a gotcha "
As an Irishman what do you think of the forced indentured servitude during the 1600s? Oliver Cromwell forced thousands into indentured servitude and I believe that it was many Irish refer too
@@irishsaint89 I think it’s a horrible chapter in our history. But it differs immensely from the chattel slavery the spanned the centuries following it. Equating the two is historically inaccurate
I grew up in the early '70s as a elementary student and I had education in New York and also in Tennessee. I don't remember ever really learning about slavery until I watched Roots and that is the god honest truth and that is so horrible. But that's when me and many other black people probably across the country actually learned what happened unless you were being taught at home by your parents. Otherwise no, I was never taught about slavery until Roots came out. 😢
Roots was bullshit. Even Alex Hailey said it wasn't factual he was trying to get "His People" motivated and involved.
I noticed it was never mentioned that most slaves were purchased from moslems and those blacks that stayed in Islamic areas had a life expectancy of about 5 years. It was common practice to castrate the men of which only about1 in 30 survived the butchery.
And Alex Haley, the author of Roots, pretty much admitted he made the whole thing up.
Love your videos but this was particularly great. Thank you! I'd love to see more reaction/discussion videos from The Cynical Historian channel.
Thanks. I'd love to do more
The largest number of Irish Indentured were during the potato famine. People would intentionally commit crimes to get 'Transported' as it was called. In one famous case a pair of sisters stole bread right in front of a police officer, were taken to court, the Judge felt so sorry for their emaciated appearance he dismissed the charges, they turned and punched a police officer in front of the Judge. It became such a common occurrence they many were simply shipped 'without Indenture', just a sentence to not return on pain of Hanging.
Point of contention: in #2 he points out that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was a part of global slavery, not the entirety, but at the end he makes the same mistake of using "slavery" ambiguously.
"Whites", specifically the British, did end the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, no one has ended Slavery as a whole.
Also, yes, it *is* virtuous for one whonis benefitting from a situation to reverse that situation. In fact, it is more virtuous than if a complete outsider ended the situation because it involves sacrifice.
We all, I assume, believe the fiduciary sacrifice is a pittance compared to the moral gain, but it exists, none the less.
Look at it this way: if I came across one child bullying another, I could break them up and remedy the immediate situation. It would be right for me to do so.
But, if the bully recognized their error and corrected the situation themselves, then there is a moral growth that occurs. A
Caught that too. Glad you brought it up!
I do agree that the British were a big part in ending it. However, I think the argument that white people ended slavery in its entirety is an arrogant statement to make. Like the video brought up the Haitians were the first successful slave revolt. The Persians had also outlawed the practice I believe shortly there after as well.
Well yes, knowing The British Empire did asbolished the slave trade is an important thing, but attaching some form of virtuous morality to this act, would be personifying The Empire as a whole, but it's just an entity. Yes the people who fought to push the vote to asbolish slavery/the Atlantic slave trade may have done a virtous act, but the abolishment of slavery did not go really so smooth in the entire British Empire, and probably not with all of the British. Those sacrifices weren't all made with good will, without compensation, also there were all those who actually rebelled against the Acts and laws. Most of the colonnies did not see the end of slavery until 1833 with the slavery abolition act. So saying the British as a whole accomplished a virtous act is a bit wrong imo,. It was a complex fight for a complex problem that needed complex solutions, "The Slave trade Act" 1807, sounds simple, but it wasn't. But there may have been a moral growth like you said, or it's better to say it started a moral growth, the first Act of 1807 did start to move things around and help encourage actions to stop slavery, in other countries too
You don't think economics of the Industrial Revolution and politics of labor were the big levers of ending Slavery "Officially" in the Empire? It would be nice to think the population went through a moral revelation but that seems unlikely. In the industrial centers it was actually cheaper to hire labor than to use enslaved people. The laborer only needed to get paid their wage for their work; no need to worry about feeding them, clothing them, housing them, or even working them too hard. If an enslaved worker died, for the business owner that costs money to replace them, if a laborer dies there are thousands ready to replace them of their own will. On the flip side of that you have this growing populace of industrial laborers who saw slave workers as undercutting them, and forcing their wages down. I think those two factors together explain the switch from slave labor to wage labor pretty well: wage labor was cheaper and the politics of employing your own free people played better with the masses.
@@TheMasonK the Haitians ended their own enslavement, but not the TAST.
I grew up in both europe and the caribbean and learned about slavery from two very different, mostly opposing perspectives (apologetic and afro-centric). To get the full story though I just had to do my own digging. You are never going to get an accurate representation in any school (unless they had no involvement at all). The way I look at it is simple: it happened, and we can't change it. It obviously was morally and ethically a bad thing, and we should irradiate all forms of slavery and get rid of or revise any policies put in place that were used to keep any one race down. That being said, many (if not most) of us wouldn't be here today if it didn't happen.
I guess you couldn't get more fair than that.
@@ADADEL1how is it fair when he left out the eurocentric component. How Europeans try to blame slavery on africans. And claims slavery was everywhere but only emphasis it in africa and seeing yourself the Europeans as the saviors that helped africa. Nothing fair about it if he not pointing out what white people are doing. All he pointed out is white liberals and black people is all he said but he not gonna point out racist white people who believe there morally superior because Africans sold africans and think they built civilization everywhere by enslaving people which benefited those people. It's anything but fair is upsetting. In america my ancestors were enslave by white people who told them they were property because the color of there skin. They taught in school that they were cursed see of ham. Grand parents murdered by white supremacists so this how shit happens thing is not and everyone benefited thing is for the birds and the immigrants seeking government money and are anti black. That actual history andwe know how that history has affected us. And it not about a victim complex. Black and white cultures in america are not friends we are not comrades. There is no Familia connection. As a people those who excel know er need to separate to avoid anti black racism. If things continue whites and the immigrant tether class who they tell we are bad people to are going to are going to continue to dismiss our history because the bs they the original poster post. The reality is white people are racist zenophobic and have a inferiority complex. They can't be trusted and there no establish oh we all good now. Signing some laws in the 60s ain't gonna change shit especially when most those benefits for to immigrant and black americans are scape goated. So fuck this dudes racist as opinion. He the type to move to america and tell blacks to get over slavery. Why should blacks get over what happen to them like we just made to be abused and used like objects. While yall spreading anti black propaganda and using these racist talking points
I 100% agree with your assessment. History is messy and good things can come out of catastrophe.
As a Dutch-descended Canadian, do I sometimes think about how people who looked like me came to Canada and displaced indigenous people. Is my existence on this continent the result of a colonialist land grab? Yeah, probably on some level, though most of my family came to Canada long after the Europeans had established control over North America.
Can I personally do anything meaningful about it? Probably not. Do I like what Canada is today? I like a lot more than I dislike, especially when I compare modern Canada to most of the world and most of human history. I think we have meaningful reconciliation to do with indigenous Canadians and we should try to figure out how people can live together as agreeably as possible. That's all we can really do.
@@BloggerMusicMan I am Canadian too (first gen)! And yeah, exactly. I know my family's history and fully recognize that they left Scotland to take advantage of the economic benefits of the slave trade in the Caribbean. I also recognize and accept that I will never be able to track my African ancestry (in any significant way) as a result. Was it right...certainly not, but you can't look at it through today's lens. Feel sorrow for the tragedy of the past, recognize the privileges you have today, and work to improve things for the future.
@@Leesann1987 that's a healthy approach. History ultimately is history because it happened in the past. So unless we build a time machine and travel back to right all wrong we can't do anything about it; and considering how many of today's people we would sentence to non-existence in that attempt, retroactively preventing the atrocities of our history would be itself an atrocity! So all we can do is learn from it, so we won't repeat those atrocities ever again.
Not to mention, our modern values and morals are a direct result of our history as well. Today's trend to judge people from 500 years ago by the moral standards of 2023 is incredibly dishonest and self-righteous. "Oh, had I lived in 1492 I wouldn't have enslaved anyone!" Well, chances are, had they lived back then and had the ressources, they would have, and so would you and I - because we all would have been raised in a society where slavery wasn't considered immoral!
I laugh so hard at the lost cause people they mentioned terrifs and States rights is the soul reason of the American Civil War here what Mississippi says and I quote "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth"
Came here to quote that. How arrogant of me to think it wasn't already done. Another fact to bolster it, Robert Hunter of Virginia had sponsored the tariff bill of 1857 current at secession. Tariff rates were lower than ever.
One just needs to read the confederate constitution to see what their thoughts were on slavery.
Slavery was indeed the root cause of the Civil War, and I have an issue with, and suspicious of, those claiming slavery had nothing to do with it.
Sole, not soul
The Civil War was fought over one of the two issues over which all wars are fought; money and religion. In this case money. Slavery supporters believed the financial value of slaves far outweighed their humanity; seen as inferior at the time. They were simply property with a dollar value tied to each one of them. The value of the slaves working on a plantation was higher than the value of the plantation land itself. How were slave owners to be sufficiently compensated for their taking by the federal government?
The Northern elites absolutely did dislike the Southern planters sending their goods to foreign countries. They sought to politically limit these exports and the price they had to pay for Southern agricultural goods. The North had openly opposed the expansion of slavery in New states. This was an unconstitutional position, as the residents of each new state should have chose the position of their state. Even if that choice needed to be settled by bloodshed.
So now you have the elites in the North and South in opposition with one another. Next you need issues to mobilize the masses to fight one another. Slavery was the obvious answer for the North and resisting Northern influence was the best issue to use in the South. The elites needed the poor to fight, because why would they be their own pawns.
The saddest thing about the Civil War is that it accomplished nothing that would not have happened organically. 600k thousand people died to speed up the end of American Slavery by perhaps 3 decades. Why own slaves when machinery could make you more money?
Serfs were also protected by what was essentially Renter's Rights. If a lord was too abusive or excessive, the king/higher lord had authority to smack them hard to lay off the smallfolk.
Graduating High School in 2009 going to a 70% white school with the other 30% being black and mexican mostly, i dont feel we were pushed any of these myths in school EXCEPT that the The Union fought to end slavery. That is pushed as the main reason i remember early on learning for their motivations. once u take US history (i was in AP) we learned more of the real reasons for the war
the reasons is state rights, period
@emmanuelucrosacosta1845 yes the states right to decide black people aren't humans with inalienable rights endowed by their creator in order to maintain their economy which entirely depended on them. It's disgusting to water it down just say it as it is instead of trying to downplay it
@@emmanuelucrosacosta1845 I'm confused. You're saying this is the real reason or what is taught?
@@emmanuelucrosacosta1845 ---No. The issue was slavery, period. That "lost cause" bullsh!t is exactly that.
@@michaelj.beglinjr.2804 states right to preserve slavery
This was my first encounter with your channel, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm glad to see my initial concern did not play out. Good content. I subscribed.
Regarding Indentured servitude some people entered into it when at some point rich people figured out they could send some of their servants to serve to pay for the rich persons debts. Not sure how often that happened but there was some of it. Also there were instances of some people bundled up onto boats instead of jail, as some jails were getting full so another option versus using Australia as a penal colony some of those criminals did end up being placed into indentured servitude. So not everyone who entered it wanted to be there is what i am trying to clear up.
Interesting video, but The Cynical Historian either misses a few facts or is downplaying them. One is "yes", the Union did not fight the Civil War to end slavery, but that ended up being the result. Also, preventing the spread and ending slavery was one of the two goals of Republican party when it was founded and under Lincoln it was accomplished - whether that was the original goal for the war is not relevant. It's like saying the reason the United States fought WWII was because of Hitler, we fought the war because of Japan bombing our battleship fleet in Hawaii. The other point is that the English ended slavery in their country themselves. They fought no war to end it and the slaves did not rise up and end it. It was a decision the country made for itself.
I agree. It seems like the video was trying to say all white people were the same, so claiming that Republicans and Democrats had different positions is false, and saying that the US had a different position than the UK is false. It never mentions white abolitionists, of which there were so many that the Republican Party was partly a result of them If the South seceded because they feared what Lincoln would do, but Lincoln often said he wouldn’t change slavery - why did the south fear him? Because of the party he represented.
Also abolitionism in the UK was so powerful it ended slavery. So white people did, however you look at it, end slavery in white countries. Saying they didn’t because it still exists in other countries is just an excuse to not admit it. Of course, ending something bad your ancestors started doesn’t excuse your ancestors, but are we debunking myths or creating new ones?
The Slavery Abolition Act is definitely the reason slavery is illegal in many countries of the world today. That some countries abolished slavery before (China is a bit of a bad example, as they had to abolish slavery a plethora of times) doesn't invalidate that. That this doesn't right wrongs is obviously a fair argument. However, the Act didn't fall of some tree. There were people who had to fight for it. Marginalizing their efforts, despite the fact that it certainly changed the world for better, doesn't feel quite right either.
Another factor. Many countries that abolished slavery didn't have to do it because they suffered from a loss of power, but the power was still on the predominantly white people. So if white people didn't abolish slavery in white countries, slavery wouldn't be abolished; abolished by whom? There were no others but the "white" in power.
Haiti is an outlier there, and maybe some other countries that were created in slave revolts. But in the vast majority of countries, including the USA, slavery COULD only be abolished by white people
That blacks weren't objects and freedmen (of both genders) campaigned for an end to slavery is not contested. But those were but voices in a democracy; only after "the white" became involved could slavery be abolished, because they were the majority and the only ones who had the power to abolish slavery.
Wakanda didn't invade the USA to abolish slavery in the 1860s and other countries subsequently.
Ad to your point about the British. Not only were they one of the earliest countries to ban the practice, but they were also the only one to strike at it on the global stage between trade embargoes, banning the practice in all their territories (yea imperialism), and devoting a portion of the largest navy on the planet to patrolling slave trade routes.
A decision the country made for itself for various reasons. One of which was th expense that occurred with the countless revolts in Jamaica and the other British territories.
6:45 you’d be surprised. Of the 2 million that left during and after the famine, around a 3rd stayed in the UK. It could’ve been because they couldn’t afford the journey to the US, but either way there’s a lot of Irish ancestry in the North West, especially Liverpool.
I know right! Mr History by the way.
I think its funny how people think indentous severitory was NOT slavery and the irish weren't slaves. What would you call genarations of families in indentous severitory and had to work the masters fields for life for nothing but a little food and their home? Signed a contract? Don't make me laugh.lthey came and took your land and you had to work that land just to survive.
That's simply because they are anti-white racist trash pushing an agenda for profit.
Interesting fact here in Taiwan we don't have the topic of slavery in our school at all, maybe teacher will mention it when teaching about world history and talking about American civil war, but that is about it
And American history itself isn't really been view as something important, we mostly learn about American in the context of world history, not domestic American history
In our history class we put more focus on Taiwanese history and Chinese history, and slavery do exists, but not a big part of society so it is not really metion
To us the hot and political charge topic is more like dictatorship, Indigenous people and stuff like that
Wait, so if they had an Australian version of voting where if your candidate doesn't make the cut, your vote goes to person no 2, the democrats would have won? As probably they would have voted for another similar group?
I would argue the souths fight wasn't so much about the abhorrent practice of slavery, but about economics and politics. The south had a booming economy and therefore a foothold in politics due to their practice of slavery. You take the slaves out of the South, then the economy goes with it. So slavery was correlation, but not necessarily causation.
When you say that Irish had to flee after the Great Famine and they weren't going to go to Britain that wasn't the case. A very large number of Irish people, including some of my own ancestors migrated to Britain after the famine. Areas such as Lancashire and particularly Liverpool received large numbers of Irish immigrants. However, all the main centres of industry had such Irish immigrant populations including parts of the English Midlands, South Wales etc.
Most of them could not afford to go much further.
Umm… some indentured servants were definitely forced into it. I have an ancestor from Liverpool, England that was sold as an indentured servant at 10 years old by his own father. The theory goes that they had too many children and were near homeless and thought “Sell our youngest, he’ll have a better chance than here”. This ancestor did 12 years.
I think the issue here is what "forced into it" actually means. Being "forced into" something by economic circumstances is not the same as physically being captured and forced to work under threat of physical violence.
@@JeanValjean875 so it is okay for a father to sell their youngest child into servitude and not the others to offset his financial situation? The kid was 10. The mental trauma from that would be on par as anyone captured. Families being ripped apart. Doesn’t matter when someone thinks you can be tossed out and make a few pounds off of.
@@usdutchkitty What indentured servants had to deal with was different than slaves in a number of ways under the law. The most important being you and your kids aren't property.
@usdutchkitty2859 Indentured servants were not bought and sold in the same way slaves were. If they were indentured servants than the buyers would have been purchasing the child's contract, not the child themselves.
Does that make it "ok?" No, but even today, many people are forced to part with their children because they have more kids than they can afford. It doesn't make them slaves.
@@JeanValjean875 it did happen. If it wasn’t for the fact of finding of my ancestor was done this way, from Liverpool, as a child.
Also, this same thing happened to Wanda Syke’s ancestor too.
Not bad overall and i agree, given my limited knowledge, with most of them.
But the last myth? He probably intended to nick pick those people who weaponize that fact to "combat" the other trolls that also weaponize history in other extreme ways. But the way he put it? It was very weird. Very weird indeed. He got almost completely out of the "historian attitude" to approach a moral/political one.
If the question was "Who was the first to 'invent' the idea or even who did free up slave first"?
He said it was China first or something similar? Who knows, But i very much doubt that he has any "historical facts" to conclude that.
And no it is not sufficient that it is the oldest story about freeing slaves that you now of. It just shows your knowledge and never what happened.
As said before slavery is as old as humanity and probably even older that homo sapiens. As long as there are social interactions centred around power, slavery has a great base to be birthed.
But i understood that the "myth" was not about who did it first. It was about who did make this world wide reality that slavery is morally wrong and totally illegal.
Was it some china emperor or whoever "came first"?
The answer is simple. it was the ones who made an incomparable effort over centuries all over the world.
The same effort that if it wasn't here now, then it is very probable that most people now would think of slavery to be as normal as so many "painful and disgraceful" things that exist right now and that we think as part of our reality.
Denying all of those people their due just because they were "white" and because " there's also a kind of disgusting side to claiming that whites freed the slaves".
To me that thing is as disgusting as the ones who toolify racism for political reasons.
I doubt slavery predates homo sapiens because slavery cannot really exist in a purely hunter gatherers society because there is no excess wealth, no farms for the slaves to work etc.
Slavery probably starter very soon after civilization started around 10,000 years ago.
And I doubt anyone "invented" it. It was most likely "invented" in multiple places independently
It was collectively different individual countries on their own choice. Not a single people that acted like heroes.
@@nahuel3433 It was indeed many individuals and many collective that they managed to form to gain momentum and strength.
And i am sure that there were as many "non white" people involved directly or not in that war as any "white ones".
Saying that it was the white people that did it is certainly exaggerated and most probably said by someone with dubious ideas about the whole thing.
But my comment was not about that part of the argument. It was about how it as presented. He was only orbiting on some unpleasant and mostly dumb expression and word choice, all the while ignoring the argument that it brought.
This kind of thing happen constantly were many valid arguments and even facts are thrown overboard because of some ignorant extremist that corrupt them until they become toxic meme.
The video creator did exactly that. He threw the whole idea because it was uncomfortable to him and because it was "soiled" by those "i don't know how to label them".
He did many similar things with some of the other presented myths, but it was possibly done in a lighter manner.
To me the worst part is that the presentation was plain and simply hiding the whole fight under the rug. Just re-watch that part and you will see that it was very disrespectful to the memory of those who sacrificed for it.
This whole thing need more details.
I really don't care for the colour of who did it
But i will speak in a much more rude manner and with a tendency to go with those "white racist" ideas.
Slavery was not abolished by Europe, Asia, by Africa, by America, by Oceania, by whatever else i forgot. It was done by a certain, let us call, "movement". And what can we say about that movement?
It was a clear war done by the western culture with the UK at the front. And i am not a great advocate of UK in any form, but dues are to who deserve them. And i certainly can argue about how western culture was as well one of the biggest obstacle against the end of slavery.
Nothing is ne dimensional in reality. And as long as we recognize our little mortal existence with its intrinsic limitations, we will have to use labels and limited transmission of said limited knowledge.
I do believe that abolishing slavery is a normal evolution of our morals and culture. At that time and with those circumstances (technology, economy, philosophy, religion, , etc) it was the British with the power to act on it.
Maybe if it another western country (any one), they would have done something similar. Or maybe not. And that applies in the same manner to any country in the world, be it in Africa, Asia, or whatever.
What-ifs are great, but that is part of fiction and fantasy. History is more about trying to get what really happened and not what we whish that should have.
No matter the politics or trends. Let us never forget all of those who fought for what we all see as great in humanity.
I noticed it in some of his other videos, he has very clear bias he's unable to let go when it comes to a certain group of people. There's something very peculiar in how he pronounces that word, almost as if he's spitting it out.
He's also very fond of 'priming' his viewers by choosing 'pleasant' imagery to accompany when talking about things he's in favour of and 'unpleasant' imagery when talking about things he dislikes.
Bringing up the Qin dynasty in particular seem strange as well as from what I've understood it a huge amount of slaves was used by the state in constructing the great wall at the time.
And even when various chinese dynasties did try and curtail slavery it usually wasn't some kind of complete end to it, but more like setting limits to it, such as forbidding the enslavement of chinese but allowing enslavement of foreigners or allowing people to sell themselves because their family is too poor to feed them, but not forced enslavement.
With the average life expectancy in Colonial America being 35, a contract of 20 years was essentially slavery.
Speaking of Muslims, Crimean Tatars seeked their slaves in Poland-Lithuania. This was called "yasir" and consisted of raiding the Ukrainian steppe (and sometimes even up to Galicia and Vollhynia), catching prisoners and selling then on the Ottoman slave market.
my country, formerly Kingdom of Bohemia, founded by the Premyslid dynasty, was rather big on slave trade. our Wenceslas square, formerly Horse market, actually served as a slave market at first. few people know the history of slavery in my country, or admit to it. i think in my highschool history class we kinda brushed over this very start of it briefly, if at all? we did learn about indentured servitude and Marie Theresa and Josef II. reforms, but still, not enough generally, i'd say. sad but true..
Mr. Terry, the quote you're looking for is:
"It's like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true." - Woodrow Wilson on the movie "The Birth of a Nation".
I think when he said qin dynasty “ended” slavery what he really mean is that qin dynasty changed chinese political and economic structure to the point where china no longer reliant on slavery in later dynasty
England did not just end slavery within their country. The British navy was sent on patrol of the west coast of Africa and actively fought slavers.
I don't remember having been taught any of this.
I remember that I learned that Sweden had slaves "trälar" in the Viking age and that that system ended because it wasn't profitable any more. And I learned about a slave like system "statare" (basically, they worked for food, didn't get paid, so pretty hard to get away, but nobody owned them), it ended in the 40ies IIRC.
Now, everybody knows about the forced labor in China, but let's not forget Human Trafficking. Slavery still exists, it's just operated in different ways
In the (Netherlands) Dutch schools I attended in the 80s and 90s, I remember very little about slavery, if it was mentioned it was quickly without much detail. Dutch history was more about the heroes. How we stood up against the Spanish oppressors in the 80 year war of independents, things you could be proud of.
I dont think too many European countries spend too much time going through it, but for USA it was important because of the civil war.
The "indenture servitude" of the Irish took place with very shady dealings and upon close inspection was often forced.
Sometimes this took the form of starvation, sometimes political forces, and sometimes it was literal orphans in practice most resembling "American black slavery"
I'm Irish and I'm not trying to downplay our suffering but most of the time it wasn't forced. I believe it was only forced very early on in the early 1500s and after that it became illegal to force people into it.
What does this have to do with a video on the enslavement of Black Americans?
indentured servitude has never been voluntary in any meaningful sense and i wish "mythbusters" would stop trying to whitewash it (and prison labor). they're ironically playing into the hands of the people who want to ratchet up the authoritarianism of labor relations.
@@yoloswaggins7121 As usual, history can't be summed up to a 30 minute video and it's far to easy to gloss over things when covering... "myths" and such. Children were often entered into indentured servitude because that was sometimes the only way to keep families from starving - and people would be given the "option" by those owed over them. The power dynamic is still at play here.
Even where people weren't "forced into it" sometimes were "forced to remain" by unscrupulous debt holders. There is a reason why usury is illegal. A person's promissory note might be "voided" by a corrupt magistrate, or have gone "missing" and people would not be released or given the promised property in exchange. Some never got out of the contract and were stuck for life.
@@godaistudios Oh yeah of course. In reality it was never a fair deal. The word "voluntaty" kind of hides the reality of the situation. People only agreed to it because they did really have any other options.
The Union fought to preserve the United States.(just as the Union said at the time). And the Confederate States fought to preserve slavery (just as the Confederate States each said at the time). There has never really been any confusion about this by anyone who studies American History.
I love how you gloss over his point that Europeans didn't go into Africa and capture slaves themselves. I was yelling at my screen and getting ready to type about how Portugal definitely did that until you mentioned it, my only gripe is that you only spent about a second on that point and didn't really highlight he is wrong, otherwise great video.
You mean white people walking around in the bush looking for people who would make good slaves? Who believed that.
The old Nordic used to do that a lot. When they would invade lands many people who were captured would start as servants and overtime be adopted into the Norse culture. It's one reason why Norse (and other old Germanics) were so successful at conquesting and spreading throughout much of really old Europe.
They were so good at raiding sailed into Paris and fucked shit up because they could.
I don’t have a perfect memory and I’m 26 years old now. But I’m almost positive I remember being taught that the civil war was fought over slavery and that the union was anti slavery and the confederacy was pro slavery. And also that Abraham Lincoln was anti-slavery. I had no idea there was so much nuance there
I find the argument about whether or not the Civil War was fought over slavery disingenuous and tiresome. But for slavery, the South wouldn't have be worried about a Lincoln presidency (and Lincoln most likely wouldn't have been elected). But for slavery, Lincoln's election wouldn't have prompted the South to leave the Union. And, therefore, but for Slavery, Lincoln wouldn't have found it necessary to fight a war to preserve the Union. So, were there many factors and actors involved in what led up to the war? Yes! But there was only one issue overwhich the North and South could not reach a compromise and that issue was slavery.
I come from Denmark - we were taught a little about the Viking use of slaves but a lot more about the Vikings travels and raids.
We were taught a lot about freeing the slaves in the Danish West Indies in 1848, but the the slavery itself was brushed over and the freeing the slaves was framed as being the choice danish Governor-General when he in reality was pressured to it by a slave rebelion on Sankt Croix.
For me it’s the fact that most historical classes I had made blacks out to be way more passive about being slaves than they really were
Most slaves throughout history were "passive" in that they didn't generally fight for their freedom.
But that is totally understandable. People today really underestimate just how dire their situation was. A bunch of disconnected, uneducated, oftentimes malnourished and illiterate slaves did not really stand a chance against an organised state, and what most people fail to realise is that the punishment for such disobedience was not simply death but usually unspeakably painful torture inflicted on the slaves and their loved ones.
The first brotha off the boat tried to get all uppety...but it didn't work out so well for him
@@yoloswaggins7121really? I think the passivity of the enslaved in America is grossly overstated. There were countless rebellions, infants killed enslaved poisoned and murdered.
@@kudjoeadkins-battle2502 It depends on what you mean by passivity. Slave rebellions were pretty rare and often slaves did not attempt to gain their freedom through disobedience. So in that sense they were a bit "passive" for the reasons I mentioned above.
But many slaves engaged in small acts of deliberate disobedience and feigned incompetence and acts of sabotage as a way to inconvenience their oppressors. They were not sheep just passively obeying their masters. They did what they could where they could.
This is why you will see old Southern textbooks that accuse slaves of being "lazy" when in fact they were deliberately working slowly to minimise their master's profits.
@@yoloswaggins7121 I get what you’re saying but running away from large plantations were pretty common. Running away was pretty common in general especially after 1810. Those small acts of sabotage were wise range. I was just talking about how many feigned incompetence. They had shandy in their own eyes. They were human beings.
'Kindness to what purpose?"
Indeed, kindness to keep people enslaved.
It vaguely reminds of how I feel when a car dealer or any corporation claims they CARE about me, or ANYTHING other than profit at ALL costs. It's also how I feel about company picnics, and office culture, with all that fake cameraderie.
In regards to myth #1, if you take a tour of our prisons today, you'd find slaves of all colors. It's in the 13th Amendment, "except as punishment for a crime."
We live in very interesting times, to say the least, when even facts are treated as opinions... I'm Portuguese and I can't believe some of the comments. Yes, we contributed to the expansion of the slave trade, we learn it at school here. It's not something to be proud of and it has to be put in that time's context, but it is a fact. The same to the rest of the world. We should be learning from past mistakes and improving our relationship as a species with that knowledge not using it as an excuse to increase separation. What is wrong with people today? I feel the world is going mad!
Well slavery whitewashing/denying in places like Florida are very much commonplace, so is most of the Southern portion of the US. These people simply don't like to portray themselves as the "bad guys" despite obviously being the bad guys and heavily worshipping a certain regime in Germany during World War II.
The idea that the first slaveowner was not only black but obtained the first African slave in 1655 is ridiculous. Virginia had a law on the books by 1639 that prevented African slaves from owning weapons which means African slaves were already present in sufficient numbers to require legislation. One of my father's ancestors arrived as child in Jamestown around 1632 as part of the headright system. His father, quite possibly an indentured servant, died in 1635, leaving him and his siblings as orphans in the new world. However, by the time he died at the end of 1697 his will shows he owned several African slaves and not only freed one in his will but left money for her transportation out of the country, a requirement for freeing slaves at the time. Again, this strongly suggests that by the time he died slavery was pretty well established in the colony, with laws and general customs in place for things like the disposition of slaves upon the death of owners.
I also have a relative who came from England (Wales) to Virginia around that time named Emmons. Your story sounds familiar
I'm from germany; the trans atlantic slave trade is taught here as europeans landing in africa, raiding the villages of stone age level savages, and shipping them over to america. No mention of the african kingdoms of that era that were on a similar technological level as the european powers. No mention of the east african slave trade or the barbary states. No mention of west african slave markets or of the west africa squadron of the royal navy. Basically a 180° reversal of that Ubermensch-ideology: Back then we thought we're so special we should run the world, now we think we're so special without us no evil could have ever happened... the idea that african people were primitive savages who never got past the stone age remains. And the people perpetuating the racist myth of the african savage who never developed past stone age level technology and culture fashion themselves as "anti-racists".
Yeah I think what you’re describing is “noble savage” mythology, which still seems to be the way most people look at the native peoples of Africa and North America (that’s where I’ve mostly seen it). It requires one to consider them as basically not even human-but not in a bad way-I mean like transcendent utopian beings who are a hivemind of peace and love, without any disagreement, strife, etc. At least until the Europeans/white man came.
Such is popular Crusade history-the poor peaceful Muslim monolith just wanted to worship in their middle eastern homeland, which was definitely just all one singular theocratic kingdom with no divisions whatsoever (lol) but the bloodthirsty European bigots just had to go out of their way to sail/march all the way over there to kill and terrorize them all for not being Christian. Of course ignoring the centuries of Muslim conquest against non-Muslims from the founding of Islam to before the 1st Crusade, including directly into the middle of Christian Europe (eventually defeated in France I believe in the early medieval times). Why is it only considered problematic when Europeans pulled the uno reverse card, and went into the middle of the levant/holy land (which obviously was the foundational birthplace of Christianity long before Islam existed, so is literally more justified than Muslim armies invading Western Europe)…?
@@andrewp8284 Yes, exactly. I totally forgot the 'noble savage', which is weird because it's the literal translation in german!
If you listen to today's activists, it's absolutely insane what they claim. "The muslims were totally fine with gay and trans people until the europeans arrived", and since the europeans left they never thought that, maybe, in their pre-colonial past, things were better and reverse it? Really? "Binary sex is a construct by white western powers forced upon the indigenous people" - as Bill Maher beautyfully put it, not even Star Trek would have run THAT story! But the radical left believes this bullshit. It's quite literally the left's version of flat earth, or chemtrails. Just that their conspiracy theories are taught in schools and universities, and endorsed by politicians and media.
In Spain, one our history teachers taught us that the ACW was not actually about slavery but about markets and tariffs... But not from a Lost Cause POV, but from an anti-american perspective: that the idea of Americans fighting to end slavery was pro-American propaganda, to make themselves look better.
Kindness by itself will never work for a long time, because it will be abused or seen as weakness. You have to be both intimidating and kind enought to keep people in line.
I think this is what we need to keep in mind when we read of people like Robert E. Lee having slaves whipped on one occasion or another. There was a time when ship captains, school teachers, and even parents regarded physical punishment to those under their charges as necessary to obedience and discipline. Having accepted the perverse notion that they had the right to enslave other human beings, the rest naturally followed.
I remember learning about the distinction between indentured servants and slaves in school. One important distinction I remember being taught that I don't think got brought up here is that the children of indentured servants were not indentured servants, while the children of chattel slaves were slaves, so there's a generational aspect there. That's especially important to note when discussing something like reparations and generational wealth inequality, since in one case there was an impact on one generation, after which the family could begin to accumulate wealth (even if their conditions still made that difficult), whereas in the other case you're talking about multiple generations with no, even slim, opportunity to accumulate wealth.
If I do have one issue with Cynical Historians video though, it's that I do think comparisons between modern prisoners and slavery can be quite valuable and aren't really that strange. I mean the 13th amendment only abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for crime", and while the conditions in prisons do probably fall more on the "involuntary servitude" end of that line, the disproportionate numbers of people of color in prisons, forced to work as an essential part of the economy for next to nothing, is a historical rhyme worth pointing out.
Honestly, I think convicts, upon taking away and breaching the rights of others, give up some of their rights. If a convict, like normal people, wants to eat, they have a duty to earn their keep. Given than very few prisons make a profit, convicts accumulate more debt to society over time, not less.
Exactly, Sally Hemmings, the enslaved woman who had children with her 'owner', Thomas Jefferson, was only a quarter black; she had a majority European ancestral. How? Because Sally Hemming WAS born into hereditary slavery. Her mother was a mixed race, enslaved woman, and her 'father' was her mother's owner; Sally Hemming's grandmother was an African enslaved woman who was impregnated by her white owner. Sally Hemming's children were legally white by the law of the time, but they were still, briefly, slaves, as children born to enslaved mothers were considered enslaved people under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem. African chattel slavery was hereditary; Irish indentured servitude was not.
@@bradclifton5248Except that the prison system is also built on the same racist system, with Jim Crow laws that criminalized being unemployed or “idle” specifically targeting people who had the hardest time finding employment. Even today some populations are more likely to be criminalized for behaviors seen as mere “youthful indiscretion” in other populations. And some populations are notoriously victimized by shoddy legal representation and assumption of guilt. Innocent people are convicted of crimes every day.
Servitude means slavery. When we say slavery we mean chattel. So yes, using prisons for labor for corporate America is a form of forced labor. Many of those who were indentured during our colonial period were also involuntary indentured as they were pressed into it because they committed or were charge with a petty crime.
People need to watch Neoslavery to see how prison forced labor because the new slavery post civil war.
I do not think the Irish are owed reparations BUT we need to stop blowing off our colonial period as just people who could not afford a plane ticket and took an overseas job to pay that off.
The idea that slave owners used compassion to help prevent revolts was crazy. But I’ve also heard on record that slave owners did way more de-humanizing things than just beatings. So looking for the timeframe of switching from, forcefully bred and fed to gators into, “most slave owners where nice” would be my next mission.
Life has many nuances, I’m sure there were slave owners who treated them relatively good at least for the context of the time, didn’t make it right at all in the slightest nonetheless, and yea straight up fucked up shit was common, treated less than cattle. There were also black slave owners who fought for slavery which is crazy but.
As a 40 year old Danish dude, i Dont Think that any of the 10 myths were thought in my Danish school. There is maybe something with number 8 and the black soldiers fighting against the union. But as I remember we was thought that they are forced to fight.
But I have heard all of the myths told by people I have met in my life. So they are all living in the world 😢
I grew up in Seattle which is very liberal. Most of my history teachers didn’t try to sugar coat subjects like slavery or what was done to Native Americans. Since I’ve moved to a Midwest state I’ve learned that different parts of the country don’t teach the same history. Also people here don’t seem to read as much as those who live on the west coast. Things I used to consider common knowledge aren’t for most of the people I’ve met especially whites.
Yeah that sucks about that
"different parts of the country don’t teach the same history"
Yes! Seems like that is wholly by design, and a good part of the present day 'culture wars' wants to see that practice continued.
I'm late to comment, but I just want to say thanks for this video.
Slavery can be a touchy subject for some, but thank you for sharing your knowledge in an adult manor without holding back.
Your a fool you are being lied to mr terry just racist just wants brainwash other whites to his lies
The myths that stood out to me were
1. The first slave owner in America was black
2. The Union fought to end slavery
3. Africans were captured by Europeans
Prior to college I had not been "educated" on slavery-I was born in Jamaican but raised in America from age 7.
My parents never spoke about slavery beyond the fact that we were descendants of Africans who were brought to Jamaica as slaves.
Therefore, my basic knowledge of slavery is what I heard in passing and getting some information during Black History month.
As stated, my first education on chattel slavery was in college and the aforementioned list of myths I learned in college.
Because I have a curious mind and have always questioned who "my people" were, I've always read what I could about slavery to get an answer.
This was a very informative video.
I'm glad videos like these are out here to dispell the myths.
One love 💞 🇯🇲
The Irish potato famine didn't kill people. Landlords (mostly Englishmen, but some native Irish) hoarding all the good land and using it for raising cattle to export instead of allowing the natives enough to support themselves growing crops other than potatoes killed people.
If ending slavery wasn’t a chief motivation of the Civil War, why are the reconstruction Ammendments about the previously enslaved people?
For the North, the motivations behind the war shifted after the Emancipation Proclamation from preserving the Union to ending slavery. The Reconstruction amendments were just a natural next step after that.
@@werewolffamguy8597 for the North, but the South clearly viewed the preservation of slavery as their cause, as expressed in their own founding documents.
@@luodeligesi7238 I agree. Hence why i didn't mention the South 🙃
@@marduk2672 not sure what that has to do with anything, but yes, it was those in the south.
@@werewolffamguy8597 I would say war crime trials would be a natural step but that didn’t happen.
Dude, you know your stuff, you're a pleasure to watch 🙏
My 8th grade Georgia history class was full of the "Lost Cause Theory "! That was in the early 80s.
I was honestly pleasantly surprised to see that a solid handful of these listed myths were actively being debunked within the classroom by my history teachers throughout even Elementary school in the early aughts. Especially considering I went to underfunded public schools in South Carolina. My teachers all very much emphasized the differences between indentured servitude and slavery and did discuss how the enslaved fighters for the confederacy did not fight of their own free will and in many cases were actively lied to about the true reasonings behind the war. Others of these myths were also at least touched on, but the truths for those two were very much emphasized.
A possibke clarificationnon point #4:
The view, going into the 1860s, was that slavery was going to die off on its own. The free states outnumbered the slave states, and that trend was likely to increase.
Eventually, with or without ALincoln and the civil war, public opinion would be such that the law woukd change.
From the Northern view, there was no need to fight a war to end slavery. The only need to fight a war was to preserve slavery, as the ootiins for keeping it were becoming ever more limited.
As previously mentioned, the free states were progressively out numbering (and out producing) the slave states and the future would make armed conflict increasingly one-sided. Like Germany in WWI, the best time to fight was already past, and the only chance of victory was to stop delaying the inevitable.
Luckily, the slave states misjudged and failed miserably anyway.
What I find funny is how it's not all that uncommon for Americans to act as if the American history of slavery is all that matters even when talking about other continents. For example, war slaves are of little to no importance when discussing the USA, however when discussing Europe it's quite important.
Why would we give a shit? If you're studying world history, sure. But if your talking American slavery, why would European slavery be relevant?
Even the Barbary slave trade. I have heard some of the yanks actually claim "white" people were never slaves.
they might not even know about it, or care about it, sadly.
Because it is important to explaining the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
When the topic is USA history, USA slavery is going to dominate any discussions regarding slavery.
What I find funny is how desperate some USAmericans are to divert attention away from USA slavery and whine about other countries' slaver terrorism.
I'm glad you reacted to this video. Myths like these really get on my nerves
I have a question about the first myth, didn't also the Native Americans practice slavery?
Since by this point I am starting to think that every culture practiced slavery at some time.
If there was a myth 11 it would be “no. 11, 1619 was the founding of America when the first slaves arrived in Jamestown”, which is ludicrous.
Please elaborate on why that is ludicrous, besides any cheeky reference to 1776.
@@nrsrymj Jamestown was a single colony that was abandoned decades before the American Revolution and had no political influence on the creation of the state known as the USA. Calling it the "founding of America" (USA) is an oversimplification and misleading. I also find it amusing you want to dismiss a "cheeky reference to 1776." Yes, I'm sure you'd like to dismiss the irrefutable fact that no American state existed in 1619, which makes the claim that "America was founded in 1619" *Literally false.*
@@David-sl6xf @David-sl6xf you don't think a response of "because The United States was founded in1776" would have been cheeky?
the 1619 project is obviously not claiming an American state existed when the first African slave stepped onto the soil, but rather that this moment is emblematic of the future economy which either relied directly on slave labor and the products of its efforts, or like Northern banking interests, partook in the financial and investment aspects of owning black people. Granted, the system of hereditary chattel slavery -- based on a "heaven ordained dominion of the white man over the colored race" as the creator of the confederacy's second flag put it two and a half centuries later -- had some time to develop. But it was there and then that the seeds were planted.
@@nrsrymj So it claims the founding of the united states in longer words. That's literally all you've said here.
@@Reaper08 trying to make sense of your comment but can't. Maybe if you rephrase it. Are you denying or affirming that the economies of the colonies and then the United States were dependent on slave labor both directly and indirectly?
tbh the first one is a very weak point. yes, indentured servitude is a form of slavery. and yes, the US prison system where prisoners are often forced to work is in fact slavery, too. even the constitution agrees and explicitly allows it (which is a mistake, in my opinion)
Completely agree, indentured servitude was and is often entered into by deceit, misrepresentation and even kidnapping. Finally if the only "real" slavery is chattel slavery why have that specification of slavery.
@@matthijszeeman5351 it's weird because in other parts of the videos, he talked about how slavery in some cultures is very different and so on. so he does seem to get to concept that not all slavery is the absolutely singular worst form of it
@@matthijszeeman5351 Few weeks ago seen a history video on irish slaves/indentured servitude, it was surprising to see that one of the kings of england at that time signed a law stating irish slaves gotten from war were no longer slaves, but indentured servants. They were free to get on boats and go to other countries, or be tried for treason and executed if they stayed, or if they left and were found out to have come back they would be executed for treason. I believe the people at the time found the word slave/slavery in bad taste so to save face the king changed it to indentured servitude, they were free to still be worked to death by their new owner/employer though.
It also sucks that the constitution allows it for majority of minor crimes. The most we can do as individuals is learn from the past and better ourselves and not make the same mistakes.
the reflection of the ceiling fan on the NBA Jam screen gives it a great vintage flicker.
Great review of common myths of slavery. First time finding your channel, good review of a complicated historical topic. Hope you're feeling better. (couldn't help but notice the coughing)
People like to paint indentured servants as all volunteers. They weren't. Some were forced into it by prison sentence, others were kidnapped as kids into it, and even for the ones that were willing to be indentured servants many of them didn't know the language that the contract was in and the translator that was given to them purposefully lied about the contract
Still not the same thing
"Willing" is a bit misleading even in best of cases because they were still forced by the situation they found themselves in.
Still, this particular myth is just pushbike against narratives that seek to compare indentured servants to American slaves with the goal of dismissing generational damage caused to black Americans.
You know, the who "The Irish were slaves too and you don't see them complaining" argument, which as actually drawn the ire of the Irish academic community.
@@briannearound Also that doesn't include the fact that the whole "Indentured servants kids can't be sold into slavery thing" was a conditional stipulation. It America that was only the case if say a White male indentured servant had kids with a white woman. If the master made the White male breed with the female Black slave and a kid came from it that kid could be sold into slavery
@@DManCAWMaster keep trying to make it seem like white people were the victims
@@briannearound I believe what Thomas Sowell says about slsavery more then what terry reacts would have to say about because terry reacts cherry picks what he thinks will fit his narrative
Firstly it was British rule in Ireland not English 2nd you say they were not going to flee to England (by which I assume u mean Britain) well your wrong over 200k Irish fled to Britain 900/1 million went to the USA
Why is this important to mention on a video about the enslavement of Black Americans?
Yes he was so wrong on that one, thousands of lrish ended up in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow etc.
@@johncarroll772 100% correct
Yes, In fact, some people do think we invented slavery
That’s a shame. I’ve never hard that said in any academic setting, or from anyone with a real academic background. I only hear that from people who said other people say that.
A boomer’s perspective. From dim memories of my US History public school education in the early 70’s.
1. Taught that indentured servitude was opted for by folks unable to pay off their debts. The choice was between indentured servitude or debtors prison.
2. European colonial powers outlawed slavery before the US; but some allowed it to continue in some of their colonial possessions long after the American civil war.
3. Never recall being taught that African Americans owned slaves. The common teaching was that whites owned slaves in the USA.
4. Recall being taught that the South seceded once Lincoln elected because they believed he would outlaw slavery. Once they seceded, the union fought to preserve the union (a house divided against itself cannot stand). The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in rebellious states. Not slave states like Maryland that remained in the union.
5. Taught the South seceded because the institution of slavery was threatened and that they had the right to secede as a sovereign state. So, the means was (state’s right) for the end (maintaining slavery). The civil war established the federal government as the supreme sovereign over a state’s sovereignty.
6. Lincoln won by a plurality of the vote.
7. Never taught factory worker’s akin to slaves. Though conditions could be very bad. Including women and children working long hours in arduous conditions.
8. Taught that teaching slaves to read and write was illegal and discouraged. Those that taught slaves did so with risk.
9. Taught that some slaves did fight for the south but many more fought for the north.
10. Only taught that Europeans shipped slaves from Africa primarily to Caribbean and US east coast. That the mortality rate was very high especially coming over on the ships and some of the islands with tropical diseases.
Not affirming any of these. Just reiterating what I recall being taught during my schooling way back in the day.
I think I disagree with the comparison of indentured servants with modern prison labor. Those prisoners are often forced to do labor, and paid literally like 5-10 cents per hour to shovel snow and sometimes fight forest fires. The comparison implies that it’s voluntary to be a prison worker, and it doesn’t really seem to be-especially given the power dynamic at play.
Side note, especially given that most prisoners in America are non-violent offenders, this makes it even worse.
If the defining difference between indentured servitude and slavery is a voluntary contract and still having basic human rights, then prison laborers are closer to slaves than indentured servants on both counts.
I wouldn’t say often, most states have laws protecting the rights of prisoners in that regard. (Though having written that I guess it depend more upon the location of most prisons) But something to consider is that they don’t have to pay for anything except luxuries from the commissary. Also, the prisoners who are forced to work typically have it as a part of their sentencing. It blurs the line, but it’s not the same as forcing random innocent people to generational lifetimes of forced labor.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 "still having basic human rights"...You might want to look into the actual history of Indentured servitude or hell, prison labor. In neither case does it necessarily turn out that way in practice. Put some humans over others and abuses seem to be inevitable. The history of prisons in the US is long and shameful and most of the reforms haven't been true reforms and/or have had very limited success in making things better for prisoners. To this day Prison Rape (as an example) is often deliberately overlooked by guards or even, in some cases, solicited by them as a weapon against certain prisoners. And that's despite much political theater and several 'task forces' supposedly against it.
@@remo27 ... you may want to re-read what I said. I think you may have misunderstood my meaning.
@@robbomegavlkafenryka6158some states have started adding charges after the fact to prisoners for their time in prison.
Most if not all were taught in my schools in some fashion from grade school thru 12th grade. I can't stand the Irish slavery point people try to make, because it was NOT the same thing slaves in the US went thru. Like it somehow needs to be a competition on how horribly our ancestors were treated. And the whole thing on white people ending slavery irritates me too. I was thankful to have a world cultures teacher in high school who did this kind of research for us and tried to debunk as many of these myths during our time with him!
Yet the British empire did abolishe slavery .
White people are fed up of being accused of creating slavery and being the evil bad guys. While ignoring the fact that slavery was around the world instead tribes,nations,country. Hell African tribes would capture other tribes and sell them into slavery.
Even in America many white people fought against slavery.
So your irration at white people ended slavery just shows that you seem to hate yourself for being born white
I've talked to more pro-union people than I can count and I've never heard a single person say america invented slavery. I've heard pro-confederates say that "many people say America invented slavery" but I've never heard that from a person saying it.
In the state I live in we weren't taught much about slavery; just the general forming of the nation, trail of tears, and the civil war. Had one class back in 7th grade where towards the end of the year the teacher showed Gone With The Wind.
Britain waged a long and expensive War on the Slave trade, in the Atlantic and later Indian Oceans. It was against the huge vested interests of who wanted to protect and prolong that trade - including the West African kingdom who had grown immensely wealthy on that trade. It spent a vast amount of money, and fair amount of blood fighting slavers off West Africa, and later East Africa - including blockading Brazil to enforce it there. Worth watching the British Crusade against Slavery, and Thomas Sowell on the subject.
Thomas Sowell is a complete hack, but their were several African kingdoms that didn’t want the trade to end. The idea that the Brits ended the Trade for philanthropy is ridiculous.
@@kudjoeadkins-battle2502 I have NEVER heard somebody call Thomas Sowell a "hack" - unbelievable. The British spent 40% of their gdp buying Empire slaves freedom (a debt not paid off until 2015), many lives and years on the West Africa Squadron, in long concerted war against the slave trade. Your explanation is..... ? Look forward to how you explain it.
@@HankD13 that way washed was to control the Trade on the coast of Africa. It was also to keep tabs on the Portuguese. That money paid out until 2015 went to the enslavers as compensation. There is far more nuance in this situation other than the British were philanthropist
@@HankD13 you haven't heard anyone call Sowell a hack? I would suggest you get out more. Read some of the critiques about him. It seems to me at at least, that much of what he says is agreeable to many in the mainstream. I read "Black Rednecks" when I was in college. I thought the concept that the blacks after emancipation just took the culture of the Rednecks while the rednecks moved on was laughable. I couldn't believe it. I mean rather than blacks taking on that culture.
Perhaps the black folk of the time was ailed by the same problems that were faced by the poor whites. The non-land-owning whites of that era had family structures with few fathers and many orphaned kids, and little upward mobility due to the rich controlling the economics of the various regions due to the enslavement of black folk. So I would argue that black people just didn't take the helm, rather the same things that led to the supposed dysfunction among "Rednecks" affected the newly freed blacks as well. I would argue more considering that they had been enslaved. Not just enslaved, but the antebellum period was a time of unprecedented movement of black people throughout the country. Families that were broken up for about 60 years. The Domestic Slave Trade is a very interesting subject.
@@kudjoeadkins-battle2502 There was no benefit to Britain in ending the trade. Rich and powerful men opposed it strongly. In a democratic country the legally owned slaves had to be "bought" to gain their freedom - the only way to do it - and 40% of gdp was a MASSIVE debt. Portugal was dead power, along with Spain - no "keeping tabs" on them - the French were the enemy, and at the end of Napoleonic war Britain was free to impose its ban on the slave trade. The cost the to Navy, in battle casualties and more importantly, disease were worse than any other naval station by a factor of 5! Vested interests always had a say in a democratic system - but it was a "crusade" against the evils of slavery that had huge public support. How and why aside - Britain did it - when nobody else had done so - and imposed it on others. For all the thanks the "modern" world now gives or remembers - maybe you think it would have been better not to have bothered?
The thing about Wilson saying Birth of a Nation "wrote history with lightning" actually almost certainly isn't true. That quote was first found in a newspaper around 20 years after his presidency with no one who was present at the screening ever corroborating it. On the other hand, in a letter during his presidency Wilson did privately refer to it as a "very unfortunate film" and said that he hoped it would not be shown anymore. So based on what we know he seems not to have approved of the film after having watched it.
I toured Wilson's Family Home and Museum in Virginia. Even there you will learn that Woody was pretty much a Racist!
@@jamesalexander5623 what specifically?
Wilson also allowed Jim Crow laws to be put into place in Washington D.C. and allowed the secretary of the treasury and the postmaster general to segregate their departments.
@@DarthVaderTheSithLord Yeah, I don't know how much of a choice he had. Should he have created an open rift in his cabinet that early in his presidency?
@@ethanpintar5454Too bad he immediately segregated his cabinet departments, and appointed pro Jim Crow southerners to pretty much every position. Had no choice. :(
@21:00 A farmer can be kind to his horses, even love a horse... Why would he be kind to to the horse? Because it doesn't cost anything and it serves no purpose to be cruel.
I treat my car nice, I spent more money on my ride that it is actually worth. Now why would a slave owner NOT be kind to his slaves? Why is there a suggestion the slave owner has altereer motives? It is a fact many people like to take good care of their property, because it just feels like the right thing to do.
One should never judge a person's actions from the past by today's standards. Those people were raised in the reality and laws of the past. You cannot expect people to abide to the rules of the future. How will future generations judge today's inequality in the world? The expelling of greenhouse gasses? hole in the ozon layer? And those are just topics we are a;ready aware of for the last 50 years. Who knows what future knowledge will make us guilty of crimes we are not even aware of?
Kindness is a highly relative term. I submit that it’s impossible to be truly kind to a human you personally own as property and hold in slavery. There can be no kindness without basic human rights and freedoms. Where slavery is concerned, there are only degrees of being mean.
Kindness is not really a relaive term. Slaves have often been compared to owning an animal. Most people treat their ( horses or dogs for example) with kindness and sometimes love; disciplining them only when necessary. You can imagine slaves with the same families their whole life. I'm sure bonds were often formed.
@@tomproulx8112Yeah Stockholm syndrome or something similar, while it’s very natural to create bonds with people you are around everyday and happens without even realizing, it’s also disingenuous to imply these bonds would ever exist outside of a slave and slave owner power dynamic, and that the slaves would be treated as a member of the “family”. It’s an obvious statement to say that if they had a choice every single slave would choose to leave their masters and never look back, except maybe the most deeply traumatized that mentally couldn’t exist outside of this system.
The video was good but he has a bias and it shows. What he talks about is weighted against what he doesn’t. The attempt to diminish what the British did to end the slave trade was pretty egregious in my opinion.
He's just another coward or mentally ill "liberal" pushing the "hate Whitey" agenda.
I would praise them if they hadn't been involved then stopped others from doing it 😅
@@curtisthomas2670 Everyone was involved, all across the world, only the British were willing and able to end it, just because you hate Britain does not change that historical fact. Do you hate every country in the world? By your own logic, you must, as they were all involved in the slave trade.
@@wolfen210959 it's always "hate" with you people, you just can't seem to help yourselves
Indentured servitude amongst the Irish was mostly voluntary? Hundreds of thousands of Irish were forcibly sent to the new world as labor.
Mr. Terry perpetuates the myth of indentured servitude as a benign institution. The English government systemically used forced "transportation" of British and Irish poor people to supply its American and Australian colonies with cheap labor during the late 17th and 18th centuries. British courts routinely convicted English, Irish and Scots of minor "felony" offenses (e.g., swearing in public), forcing convicts to choose between public hanging and deportation. An important resource on this is George Dalzell's "The Benefit of Clergy in America" (1955). Indentured servants were sometimes badly abused and even worked to death in America. However, I don't think it's particularly useful to compare their tribulations with the terrible transgressions committed against other groups such as indigenous peoples, African Americans and Asian Americans.
Helpful video. You sound like a very wonderful teacher to your students. Good luck.
The Cynical Historian's video is full of sophistry, and I do not like that one bit. I'd list all of the reasons I say that but, since I'll not be coming back to this site or Cynical's, they don't really matter.
Give examples of his sophistry
It is extremely cynical to claim that anyone thinks that Europeans/Americans believe that they are some how 'wonderful' because they abolished slavery. I believe that most are simply grateful that it was finally decided and relieved. Making light of their effort though is asinine because it was good that it happened. And those European countries, like the UK, did put in many years of trying to stop it elsewhere with ships and lives. And discounting the deaths during the Civil War, because the congress was arguing to abolish slavery which caused the southern states to want to leave, is insulting. You are being impudent and flippant about a serious subject. And these countries did make laws to abolish it. That is fact. Do they want to be put on pedestals for the effort? No. Just acknowledge it as a fact in history. It is a shame that we don't try to do something about the current day slavery happening which most teachers do not even acknowledge or inform.
Patting on their back for doing bare minimum then claiming they are "wonderful" isn't something to brag about.
This guy just said “explicently”. I’m not sure I can trust his expertise.
I was under the impression that a lot of the Irish were made indentured servants against their will at the command of the english monarch, and there seems to be very few contacts preserved of the Irish that the king deported from Ireland.
I agree that Europeans can't cancel out their sins, however modern society tries to condemn those Europeans as if they were the only culture to be guilty of slavery. They also ignore or excuse the involvement of other cultures involving slavery. That is why so many are trying to push partial truths as deferments.
Slavery of some form existed in pretty much all cultures. However, the enslavement of African people by Europeans started a global system that exists to this day, i.e. colonialsim and colonial mode of production (parasitic capitalism fueled by the ideology of white supremacy). The mode of production is where Western nations have been parasites (capitalism) to the host (Africa) exploiting that continent of its natural and human resources while impovershing the continent.
It because if you live in the west you will learn more about western history. Celebrating the accomplishments and downplaying it atrocities.
@@user-gu8fg7ft5bhonestly, speaking as someone from the UK we are rarely taught about our accomplishments anymore, often instead we are being taught how 'evil' our colonial and industrial history is.
@@RS99FILMS interesting. What do uk teach about their role in the transatlantic slave trade?
@@user-gu8fg7ft5b personally, our class was only taught about how horrible the slave trade was and how the UK, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, France and the USA treated and used slaves, we never learned anything more than that. After eventually doing my own research I found out how the UK blockaded Africa and Brazil in an attempt to make the world end the slave trade, make it illegal across the world and incur a debt that was only payed off in 2014 to free as many slaves as humanly possible.
Personally my ideal way of teaching slavery, in the UK, would be to show how horrible and barbaric it was and yet how it was accepted for countless millenia across the world. Once learning that, show the numbers of slaves the UK and other countries transported during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade before then showing the laws, activists and West Africa Squadron who made the feat of achieving an end to the legal slave trade possible. Lastly, show that slavery still occurs today and encourage the youth of today that they could be this generations William Wilberforce who could help finally bring this horrible trade to an end.
Prison and chattel slavery arent one to one, but I believe a strong case could be made that prisoners in the US are treated as slaves in practice.
I don’t remember anything specifically being taught but I was in 8th grade when Roots was aired and my history teacher video taped it and we watched it in history class, at least through reconstruction
Can it be that some European people encouraged slavery and many others fought to end it. To paint everyone with the same brush hardly seems fair.
The Irish one was a myth I believed in, so good to get that one corrected.
The last myth I think he got wrong…never even heard it! Haiti is a false equivalence to ‘stopping slavery’, as is a country banning slavery in its own borders.
The role of the British in stopping slavery in the Empire and then more generally the cost in men and money to stop the transatlantic slave trade is one of history’s greatest crusades and should never be minimised. Even people in Britain paid more for goods that came from non-slave labour as part of this moral movement.
It was more capitalism than morality
The English did abolish slavery in 1820 but that doesn’t absolve them for enslaving tens of millions of Africans for 200 years for their American and Caribbean colonies.
@@curtisthomas2670 Proof? Or is it just because your country did not have the welath and power to stop slavery itself? Or did the British bring an end to the vast wealth that your country was amassing through slavery, and now it is poor?
@@wolfen210959 you seem confused
All of this video is great. I've never met or seen someone online who unironically believes that America invented slavery
It is a false claim made by people like Candace Owens and Thomas So we'll that many people in the US believe that slavery was first started in the US or by whites on blacks
Yes, Lincoln maintained that he intended no legal action against slavery. He also always maintained that he hated the institution. When he was elected the south was in an uproar because they knew he would be harmful to slavery.
Many people miss the closing line of that Lincoln letter: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that… I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.”