How did the American people reconcile the principles that all men are created equal and that men's inalienable rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with the practice of slavery?

Was the Declaration of Independence written for a specific, narrow, purpose such that it was not to be applied as a statement of general principles?

The current administration would probably get around it by quibbling about the definition of "men":

'The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren't recognized as "persons" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act...

...Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that ``it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not "person(s)".' www.mcclatchydc.com

However, back in the eighteenth century, from Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence:

'...he [i.e. King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. [determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold,] he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce [determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold]...'

Apparently, '...This passage, Jefferson wrote at the time, "was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary wished to continue it. Our Northern brethern also I believe felt a little tender under those censures, for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."'

Possibly, again with parallels today, they didn't attempt to reconcile principles, but merely refused to let certain persons' profits or lifestyles take a hit, however compelling or obvious the arguments necessitating just that.

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:
How did the American people reconcile the principles that all men are created equal and that men's inalienable rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with the practice of slavery?

Was the Declaration of Independence written for a specific, narrow, purpose such that it was not to be applied as a statement of general principles?

_______________________________________________

Hi Fred:

When the Declaration was written,slavery was already being practiced in some of the original colonies,namely in the South.

Jefferson, who wrote most of the Declaration ,was one of the 3 largest slaveowners in the States,Washington was another.

Jefferson was chosen to write it because he was well educated and had a way with words.

He was hypocritical with regard to slavery as it didn't match what he truly believed.

One interesting aside reagarding who got the vote first,Blacks or Women.

Black males got the vote in 1870,the 15th Amendment, 50 years before Women in 1920,the 19th Amendment.

If you don't believe me ,trot out your copy of the Constitution and read these two Amendments.

hippolips

Fred has a copy of the US Constitution?

quote:

Jefferson, who wrote most of the Declaration ,was one of the 3 largest slaveowners in the States,Washington was another.

Really? It seems he owned somewhere under 200 slaves.

www.anusha.com

eric.ed.gov

Did that make him one of the three largest slaveowners in the US?

Jefferson was certainly among the largest slave owners in the Virginia Assembly. I am equally sure that 200 would not qualify him among the top three in the country!

As of the first US Census in 1790, there were 292,627 slaves counted in the Commonwealth of Virginia out of a total slave population of 694,207. About 25% of southern families owned slaves. The minimum number of slaves to be considered a planter was 20.

“But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

~ Thomas Jefferson, 1820

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Fred has a copy of the US Constitution?

Isn't the US Constitution an aircraft carrier?

Then I hope you have a really large bathtub, Fred.

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Fred has a copy of the US Constitution?

Isn't the US Constitution an aircraft carrier?

_______________________________________________

Hi Fred:

I'm curious are you an Englishman who lives in France ,or a Frenchman who lives in England.

I know this is a little off topic ,but I'm just curious.

hippolips

I think Fred, like Shaw's Zoltan Carpathy, is....Hungarian.

quote:

Originally posted by hippolips:

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Fred has a copy of the US Constitution?

Isn't the US Constitution an aircraft carrier?

_______________________________________________

Hi Fred:

I'm curious are you an Englishman who lives in France ,or a Frenchman who lives in England.

Easy. I'm half an Irishman who lives in both [my mother was Irish]

Born in England, British citizen. I keep homes in both countries.Over the course of a year I'm in Britain rather more than I'm in France.I have to keep moving, to avoid my creditors

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
I think Fred, like Shaw's Zoltan Carpathy, is....Hungarian.

Nearly so. I'm like Dean Spanley in "My Talks with Dean Spanley" by the Irish writer, Lord Dunsany.It's the moving tale of a churchman who regresses, to being the dog he was in a previous life, when he drinks too much of the Hungarian wine, Tokay His conversation is witty and clever when he's a dog ( all right, I'm not much like him).

Footnote: He's Lord Dunsany or the Baron Dunsany to us (and Amazon UK) but to Amazon's US site he's "Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany " . (He's not. He was either simply 'Edward Plunkett' or 'Edward Plunkett,the Lord /the Baron Dunsany' but 'Edward .... Dunsany' he wasn't.These damn Brit titles )

quote:

Originally posted by FredPuli:
How did the American people reconcile the principles that all men are created equal and that men's inalienable rights were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with the practice of slavery?

Was the Declaration of Independence written for a specific, narrow, purpose such that it was not to be applied as a statement of general principles?

It is my understanding that life, liberty and blah blah blah only applied to white male property owners. Those where the only folk that mattered, the rest of us were out of luck.

You should treat yourself to Thomas Paine and his castagation of England for engaging in slavery in the late 18th century.

Many Americans never had to do any reconciling at all in their private lives, and in public life, we reconciled by going to war and aboloshing it at the cost of immense body count.

Example:

My g-g-grandfather was mentioned in the Minnesota Volunteer infantry publications of the 1880s. He was captured and spent some time in the Andersonville Civil War prison. He was once ordered to whip a black man for a petty reason. At the inhumaneness of the request, he was threatened with and then received the whipping himself because he refused to comply.

Pretending that everyone endorsed slavery just doesn't make it true.

"You should treat yourself to Thomas Paine and his castagation of England for engaging in slavery in the late 18th century.

Many Americans never had to do any reconciling at all in their private lives, and in public life, we reconciled by going to war and aboloshing it at the cost of immense body count."

The evidence of one man is evidence of how a nation felt? Why, then, was slavery legal in this country for 90 years? Your phrase "we reconciled by going to war..." makes it seem so noble. Just who was it we went to war with? Was slavery the real reason we engaged in that war? What did Lincoln say about slavery and preserving the Union? Why did Lincoln free only the slaves in Southern states that were not under Union control?

"Pretending that everyone endorsed slavery just doesn't make it true."

Pretending that the nation did not want slavery does not make it true. That the Founding Fathers for the most part endorsed the idea that all men were not created equal is evidenced by the method of counting slaves for census purposes (1 slave = 3/5 a white man).

Perhaps a clue to how America felt about Paine's words against slavery shows up in the following, from Wikipedia:

Paine died at the age of 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City on the morning of June 8, 1809. Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location. At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen.

You are justifiably proud of your ancestor. Had more Americans been like him, slavery would have ended much sooner. But they weren't and it didn't.

The evidence that the US wanted to continue slavery is far stronger than the evidence that she didn't. You've proved nothing save that you will use a toothpick to postulate a forest, while ignoring cut cut up shrub nearby.
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Selected Countries and the ear (when possible) that they abolished slavery

Poland - 15th Century
Lithuania** - 1588
Russia** - 1679 (Agricultural Slaves converted into Serfs)
Russia** - 1723 (House Slaves converted into Serfs)
Fench Republic - 1794
Britain - 1834
Sweden (in union with Norway)* - 1847
Denmark* - 1848
Romania - 1864
United States - 1865



*Abolished in the Colonies. Slavery in the country itself abolished earlier, in some cases, much earlier.)

**Later replaced by enserfment. However, in each case, serfdom was abolished before slavery was outlawed in the US. Russia ended Serfdom in 1861.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
The evidence of one man is evidence of how a nation felt? Why, then, was slavery legal in this country for 90 years?

You seem to be assuming the exact opposite: that because it was legal, all people felt that it was okay. I'll let you sort out the reasoning there.

quote:

Your phrase "we reconciled by going to war..." makes it seem so noble. Just who was it we went to war with?

Liberals ALWAYS minimize the sacrifices of those who go to war for a cause. Whatever your motivation to do so is your own business, but it convinces me that you have no attachment to reality.

What issues would you give money for, say $500?
It would have to be at least a nominally good one, right?

What issues would you give your home up for?

What issues would compel you to risk your life?

Now the game's on:

Are there any issues that you would think are worth the risk of life, injury or dismemberment, and when you actually come into the line of fire and the terror of the actual prospect, would that issue be important enough to compel you remain at risk or would you run?

This is a state of mind that liberals can't relate to, and that's why (I believe) they demonize or minimize such sacrifices. If you are perpetually self-absorbed, this behavior would be alien to you.

You are therefore not qualified to speak on the issue of the "nobility" of the Civil War, and you will always be vulnerable to being victimized by others of like mind who have something clever to say about it. You will never know any better.

DG, slavery in Britain was not abolished in 1834 It was not legal at common law by then. We could start with Magna Carta,which declares liberty for all in 1215 but, more accurately, there is a declaration of the Council of Westminster in 1102 which states than any sale of a men 'like brute animals'is not allowed at law, there's a decree of 1171 in Ireland saying that any English slaves in Ireland were free,there was another general declaration of emancipation in 1381 ( it's not clear whether it is freeing slaves or saying there is no slavery or saying that serfs were free), there's a judgment by Lord Mansfield in 1772, in a case where a man sought to take a slave he had brought to England back with him to Jamaica,wherein his Lordship ruled that the man could not, and the slave was free because the common law did not allow slavery in England.

These are all recitals of the law as known.Of course, people were 'tied to the land' by way of villeinage up until the early 1600s but they could not be bought or sold. And, typically British, we cheerfully permitted slavery in our colonies in the West Indies (as the Mansfield judgment shows) and, evident from the Ireland declaration, some English slavery was going on in Ireland in the C12. The Act of 1834 outlawed slavery outside Britain.

Thanks for clearing that up, Fred. I guess I misunderstood what Wikipedia said about it.

Vet, please read what I said again. Look for the part where I said that all the people felt slavery was acceptable. Let me know when you find it. Until you do, please try to stick to facts when making factual statements. You'll find that more people will agree with you. When you rant, as you've done in many of your posts, you look like nothing more than a man angry because progress is passing him by, leaving him in its wake. I imagine being on the wrong side of history isn't pleasant; I'm sure that I will find out for myself someday. I hope I have the grace not to fight the inevitable.
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Vet -
Please read the AnswerPool rules, and know this about me. I tolerate personal insults well, but I will not allow the members of AnswerPool to be insulted in the same fashion, especially by someone who doesn't have the grey hair yet in the Pool. Your input and opinions are welcome. Insults to the members are not.

The community rules are not being applied equally, so don't play that game with me, I used to moderate two of these forums.

Every time one of your liberal buddies lies about my country, my president, or my brothers and sisters in uniform, they insult me, but that can be disregarded, right, since you don't understand fully the harm you do?

While you're trying to protect the "feelings" of others here at this site, terrorists all over the world are hoping for the tide of American opinion to turn, and they use identical propaganda to that stuff being spewed here, and they find in you and others the willingness to do their jobs for them.

Your participansts here have nothing to worry about, but our service members do, and I intend to defend them in kind.

You can't hide behind ignorance any more. Every time I pick up a book written by any member of the uniformed service, I read abject hatred for liberals because of the stupidity of thinking that they can hide behind freedom of speech and say whatever they want and damn the consequences.

Every day in theater, our soldiers, sailors and marines watch the liberal media trash them and the job they're doing, they call them incompetent and losers (though not in so many words), and they are helpless to defend themselves being 12 time zones east.

So cut us a break, huh? If you want to talk about putting a stop to the insulting of other players here, make it an even playing field or delete my user. I'm defending people who are in fire zones who can't defend themselves and I don't back down.