My great grandmother , Georgine Saunders, was from the farm country around Harrisburg, Pa.
Herbert Aptheker has written _Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years_ (Greenwood Press 1992), which begins to address the role of White people in anti-racist struggles.
In that Aptheker did the first extensive study of anti-racism on this continent in the seventeenth through midnineteenth centures." Aptheker "challenge(s)" the view that racism was universally accepted by European-Americans before the Civil War. " (NST 1991) . Aptheker is working on a second volume.
Aptheker also wrote _Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement_ (Twayne 1989), a historical study of the activities of thousands of black and white abolitionists. John Brown (no relation) was just one of the most famous.
Charles
>>> Tom Lehman <TLEHMAN at lor.net> 05/23/99 10:48AM >>>
"Decent men and women were as
opposed to slavery in 1787 as they are in 1999."
Carrol, the quote from you above sums up my feelings on the issue of slavery and the constitution.
One point that I have made in the past during similar discussions of this nature is that the largest single group of the actual revolutionaries, the Pennsylavania "Dutch" who comprised as much as 50% of Washington's army at any one time, only enjoyed second hand representation by the Quakers of Philadelphia and the anti-federalist Bill of Rights advocates of Virginia.
The other side of this coin is could they have gotten better representation---I doubt it---then again who knows? No one to my knowledge has ever translated the "Dutch" dialect newspapers and sermons of the era.
Your email pal,
Tom L.
Your email pal,
Carrol Cox wrote:
> Tom Lehman wrote:
>
> > "Article I Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the
> > States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
> > Congress prior to the Year on thousand eight hundred and eight,"
> >
> > The above was called by George Washington, "the Quaker Amendment". It represented one
> > of only two attempts in the constitution to limit slavery on a national level.
>
> It is useful once in a while to cut off attempts at "historical" justification of
> U.S. slavery. Samuel Johnson, the rock-ribbed Tory, once made a toast
> "To the Next Negro Insurrection in Haiti." He was also a "hawk" during
> the American War for Independence on the basis that a nation that
> kept slaves had no right to be free. Decent men and women were as
> opposed to slavery in 1787 as they are in 1999. (It would be interesting
> to turn that into a syllogism.)
>
> Carrol