2/21/23
Newsletter #254A
The Crack of Dawn
Oddly, I think, our society seems to be in a war with our past. As opposed to what seems like the standard, worldwide view of the past – a basic thankfulness for getting us here – the younger folks these days seem resentful that our forebearers didn’t do a better job. And for goodness sake, why did they commit so many atrocities? And why weren’t they more inclusive, understanding, and nicer to each other?
There seems to be this feeling that when America declared its independence in 1776, we immediately failed to live up to our own constitution that says, “All men are created equal.” That statement was written by one of the greatest Americans who has ever lived named Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a wealthy, Virginia plantation owner who also owned many slaves. Therefore, in the modern view of the past, Thomas Jefferson was a white, elitist, hypocrite. Except that he wasn’t.
In 1776 there had never been one minute of human history without slavery, anywhere. Never. The slave trade was a huge international business, dominated by the Portuguese, British, French, and Spanish on the Atlantic side – not the Americans – and run entirely by the Arabs on the other side of the world. The first country to attempt to abolish slavery was France in 1794. Having just endured a particularly bloody revolution, where tens of thousands of people were beheaded – France’s revolution followed directly on the heels of the American Revolution, where we didn’t behead anybody – France enacted the first anti-slavery law. This bit of wishful thinking by a bloody, failed, but high-minded, republic, lasted for eight years until Napoleon seized power and rescinded the law in 1802.
In direct response to that, the first country to actually abolish slavery was Haiti in 1803. Once again, wishful thinking. It was not up to Haiti to make international law. In fact, in 1803, the only people on earth who could make any kind of international law were the British, because they had the biggest empire in the world which was primarily composed of black and brown people. If the British said slavery was OK, it was OK.
One man in England, William Wilberforce, made it his life’s work to get the British parliament to pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807 that prohibited the sale of slaves anywhere in the empire – except Ceylon, where they really needed them to grow tea, which the British had come to love – but that law didn’t prohibit slavery, just the sale of slaves. England did not enact a law to abolish slavery until 1833, the day before William Wilberforce died. There’s a decent movie about him called Amazing Grace (2007).
France had to go through another revolution to finally arrive at a government that banned slavery for the second time in France’s history in 1848.
America had to go through its own second revolution, which we call the Civil War, to achieve the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. A fellow named Steven Spielberg made a good picture about this called Lincoln (2012).
My point is that America followed right along. France had a bloodier first revolution, and America had a much bloodier second revolution. Let us not forget that the American Civil War was the bloodiest war in U.S. history – 700,000 dead, all Americans.
It took from the beginning of human civilization (and warfare) until the middle of the 1800s for the west to abolish slavery. In the east, and in Africa, it still persists. We put our fingers in our ears and make loud noises to ignore that. But here in America, we’re still working things out. And as a reasonably new society, with rapidly changing demographics, it’s challenging.
We conveniently ignore everything that doesn’t fit with our narrative. This was never a white, Christian country – Native Americans were already here, and they count, too. The good old days weren’t all that good. Make America great again? Why? Did we peak?
The late, great Dr. Isaac Asimov, in a wonderful collection of three books called, Before the Golden Age, said that there was always a Golden Age right before your time, and you just missed it. It also has been said that no matter what you think of the time you’re living in, that’s the time you’re living in. These are the good old days.
As a Jew, whose 3,000-year history is a series of enslavements, by Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, up through Germans, we are not taught to hate the past, but to instead remember it, and enjoin those around us to do the same. The past is not your enemy; it’s your friend. Learn from it. And be thankful that it’s over; the past was brutal, and the lack of sanitation was appalling. We lived through it once, that was enough.
Today we rest, tomorrow we build the bridge. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.