1/4 of Presidents lived in a time and society where owning slaves was accepted.
Not nearly the same degree as slavery, but I see a lot of reaction stuff to comedy and movies from the 70s and 80s and younger people are shocked at some things that were typical back then. Doesn’t mean anyone is wrong either way, times just change. Obviously slavery is wrong, but the period of time always needs to be considered when making judgements. Would have any of those Presidents made it into office, or even been not run out of town if they had been full on abolitionists? It’s a lot like our current time where we can’t seem to have candidates that push for extreme changes because they wouldn’t get support, even if it would help most of the voters.
1/4 of Presidents lived in a time and society where owning slaves was accepted.
Abolitionism is as old as (edit: chattel) slavery itself. They owned those slaves and inflicted unspeakable horrors on them despite no shortage of people telling them that’s wrong; it’s not like “black people are people too” was such a foreign thought to them.
Wikipedia disagrees with it being that old. It’s a product of the Enlightenment but even then took time to grow into a large movement.
That’s not true, and it’s especially not true for England, the primary wellspring of American culture.
The reality is a bit more complex but in one of the most hypocritical acts of history England actually had a bit of cultural myth that there were no slaves in England, and that the mere act of stepping onto English soil would free anyone that was a slave.
This was more or less legal fact, though they famously worked around with it things like indentured servants.
If you’d like to know more I’d start with
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart
Which basically established that common law (traditional understandings of how society worked) outlawed slavery in England, and had basically outlawed it for as long as England has been a thing, and there was no other law to override that.
Some point to this as the start of abolition but the legal basis of the case is that it was already illegal.
One of the basises for the decision was Cartright’s case. The details have been lost but this is a decent summary:
https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/10/10/slavery-and-cartwrights-case-before-somerset/
So, in the 11th year of Elizabeth I’s reign, a century before the Enlightenment, it was already legal tradition that there were no slaves in England and breathing the air proved you couldn’t be a slave.
Obviously, the English abandoned those ideals in the pursuit of Empire, and there’s a whole bunch of hypocrisy involved, but abolitionism didn’t spring from the Enlightenment in England in particular, it was already there, even if they were typically human hypocrites about the whole thing.
I just pulled my statement based on reading wiki’s entry on abolitionism which does mention what you point out. I don’t think what I said was wrong as much as not specific enough, but my main point was that there was no major movement that a Presidential candidate could rally with and gain votes to win. It took a war for one to push such an act through, left a scar that never healed, and cost him his life.
Oh I should’ve said chattel slavery, but still abolitionism older than you imply. In any case, however, it was very much a thing by the time of the founding of the US and a few states had banned slavery even before the American war of independence. Even if we ignore the whole “not giving them their freedom despite the will of his father in law explicitly demanding it” part, someone like Washington could not have been ignorant of abolitionist thought except willingly.
Grant’s story on that is pretty interesting actually.
https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-grant-slaveholder/
That was a really good article.
Are we not counting trump’s under aged sex slaves? And why?
Are we not counting trump’s sex slaves? And why?
History is filled with questionable actions. It also shapes the future. As humanity evolves progress is made but we should always remember the past.
The way things are going, that percentage is likely to go up.
