I think the 2008 Recession will be just as memorable as the Vietnam War or the fall of the Soviet Union. It has amplified a lot of problems that we will probably still struggle with in the future.
Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.
"Founded on the enslavement of black people" is at best a misrepresentation of reality, and at worst a counterfactual statement. The bulk of the Northern states abolished slavery by 1810. The founding principles were at odds with slavery, to the point that many southerners objected to the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal. Some parts of the US did tolerate the contradiction between its founding principles and slavery for close to a century, and this contradiction between slavery and America's founding principles culminated in a Civil War. There is little merit to the claim that the US was "founded on the enslavement of black people."
Several US states were the first governments to abolish slavery in the entire New World. Even if we're explicitly talking about national level abolitionism, the United States was average in terms of the time it took to abolish slavery in the Americas. Slavery continued until 1873, 1886, and 1888 in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil respectively. Chile, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela abolished slavery in the 1810s and 1820s but only prohibited the enslavement of newly born children while allowing the continued enslavement of existing slaves.
Hyperbole about slavery in America's founding aside, being the first President of direct African heritage is an achievement that would be worthy of being put on a banknote.
Reading "all men are created equal" like that is ahistorical. The Declaration of Independence asserted that at the same time as those northern states kept slaves (and would for decades to come), and natives being driven from their lands like cattle. Clearly "all men" was less inclusive than it's thought of today.
And just how long does it take to found a country? In 1789 there were around 4 million people in the US, and slavery was legal in most of the country whether measured by area, economic output or population.
Even if you take 1810 as the cutoff that's 34 years after independence. Would you say 34 years after the founding of some 20th century nation states (some of which collapsed a lot sooner than that) that it was too early to tell what principles they were founded on?
It's also a very narrow view to say that a southern state producing cotton where slavery was legal, and a northern state where slavery wasn't legal but where cotton production with southern material contributed significantly to the economy weren't both involved in slavery.
The principles of universal equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence were indeed interpreted by many as delegitimizing slavery. For example, the Massachusetts constitution included similar language, and this was subsequently used to ban slavery.
34 years is a heartbeat in the overall span of history. Furthermore some states, including some of the most populous ones like Massachusetts abolished slavery less than 5 years after the founding of the United States, and many did so before 1800. Many of the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended slavery to be phased out, and Jefferson banned the importation of slaves during his presidency. It's difficult to claim that the US was founded on slavery when states started to ban slavery almost immediately after its founding and key founding figures took steps to curb slavery.
To say that slavery was a "founding principle" of the United States does not have much justification beyond the fact that slavery existed at the time of the United States' founding. By that metric, effectively all countries founded during the New World revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th century were founded on slavery.
You're the only one bringing up a "founding principle", which shifts the discussion from reality on the ground towards legislative philosophy.
Everything you've said here and in the sibling comment makes the case for the irrelevance of those declared policies. If they were important you'd expect the US to have abolished slavery relatively early, or for it not to have been such an important issue as to have precipitated a civil war within its borders.
To say that a country is "founded on" something speaks to its early development. For instance the modern Icelandic state is arguably founded on its fisheries, and the US can be said to have been founded on sustenance agriculture, the economic surplus of slavery etc.
> You're the only one bringing up a "founding principle", which shifts the discussion from reality on the ground towards legislative philosophy.
The reality on the ground is that most of the US was the first country in the Americas to take steps towards abolition, most of the country by population had banned slavery within a few decades, and it was banned nation wide within a century. I had assumed people were talking about "founded" in terms of founding principles, because trying to justify the claim that the US was founded on slavery based on "reality on the ground" is even harder to defend.
> If they were important you'd expect the US to have abolished slavery relatively early, or for it not to have been such an important issue as to have precipitated a civil war within its borders.
It was. The first state to ban slavery was Vermont in 1777 literally one year after the country's founding. Massachusetts, then one of the most populous colonies (I think 2nd or 3rd highest population) banned in in 1780. The majority of the country by population had banned slavery well within one lifetime after it's founding.
The fact that the country was willing to go to wage a Civil War to bring about the end of slavery is testament to the fact that that the country was not founded on slavery, I cannot fathom how one can convince oneself that this indicates the opposite.
> To say that a country is "founded on" something speaks to its early development. For instance the modern Icelandic state is arguably founded on its fisheries, and the US can be said to have been founded on sustenance agriculture, the economic surplus of slavery etc.
By this logic, the US was founded on subsistence farming, logging, fur trapping, manufacturing, shipbuilding, whaling, and countless other industries. Furthermore, using this logic one can claim that the entirety of the Americas, Africa, much if not all of the Middle East, and many European countries are "founded on slavery". The fact that the only way to defend the claim that the US was founded on slavery is take such an expansive view of what it means to be "founded on slavery" that it becomes almost universal demonstrates that there isn't much justification for this claim.
> I cannot fathom how one can convince oneself that this indicates the opposite.
Honestly I can't fathom how saying the US was founded on slavery is a controversial point.
The context of this thread is a discussion of the design of the British pound, and whether Obama being on the dollar would be seen as being notable by future generations because he's black given the deep history of slavery in the US.
I think you're trying to defend a strawman when purely discussing the US's slavery practice in the context of the Americas. If we're only doing that we'd focus on countries like Haiti and Brazil instead, but we're not. Furthermore it's a given that it's not notable that a black person's on Haiti's money given their demographics.
To say that a country is founded on something is to describe its overall character at the time. Almost a 100 years after the country's founding almost 1/5th of the population was enslaved[1]. More than half of the US's export earnings were from the products of slavery, dwarfing any other sector.
Comparing this to whaling would be comical if the subject matter wasn't so sad, and so is cherry-picking the early abolishment of slavery in a few northern states who didn't have a notable population of slaves to begin with. It would be like Nebraska having outlawed whaling while most of the US's population & economic output was supported by whaling.
> Honestly I can't fathom how saying the US was founded on slavery is a controversial point.
Because it is incorrect. Slavery ran contrary to what the US was founded on, which is why those states that persisted in practicing slavery ultimately could not co-exist with the rest of the US.
> The context of this thread is a discussion of the design of the British pound, and whether Obama being on the dollar would be seen as being notable by future generations because he's black given the deep history of slavery in the US.
Yes, and in doing so the above commenter wrote that the US was "founded on the enslavement of black people". This is incorrect.
> I think you're trying to defend a strawman when purely discussing the US's slavery practice in the context of the Americas. If we're only doing that we'd focus on countries like Haiti and Brazil instead, but we're not. Furthermore it's a given that it's not notable that a black person's on Haiti's money given their demographics.
Some attempt to portray the US as uniquely persistent in its practice of slavery, and I pointed out that this is incorrect.
> To say that a country is founded on something is to describe its overall character at the time.
The US was overwhelmingly Christian at the time of its founding, and continued to be so for well over a century. The US was not at all founded on Christianity, it is an explicitly secular state (superficial things like the pledge of allegiance notwithstanding). This line of reasoning does not hold up to scrutiny.
Most people would say that a country is founded on something if that something is foundational to the country. Sparta was founded on slavery, for example. Slavery was foundational to Spartan society - a Sparta without slavery was an impossibility. One of the reforms of Lycurcus (arguably Sparta's most important founding figure) was to make the people Sparta conquered slaves owned by the Spartan state. That is an example of a country founded on slavery.
> Almost a 100 years after the country's founding almost 1/5th of the population was enslaved[1]. More than half of the US's export earnings were from the products of slavery, dwarfing any other sector.
It is intellectually dishonest to cherry-pick exports as though it is indicative of all economic output, as you do below. Slavery did not comprise the majority of the US GNP. Even if the analysis is exclusively limited to the South, slavery only compromised just over a quarter of economic output [1]. The industrialized North had an outsized share of GNP as compared to the south - estimates I find put the north at 3/4 to 4/5th of the US's total GNP in 1860.
> Comparing this to whaling would be comical if the subject matter wasn't so sad, and so is cherry-picking the early abolishment of slavery in a few northern states who didn't have a notable population of slaves to begin with. It would be like Nebraska having outlawed whaling while most of the US's population & economic output was supported by whaling.
The majority of the US economic output was not supported by slavery. Slavery contributed about 25% of the South's economy, which in turn contributed 20-25% of the total US GNP, so the share of GNP produced by slavery was ~6%. Most of the output of slave labor was exported, so even if you want to expand the scope of what was "supported by slavery" to include manufactured goods produced from cotton picked by slaves it is still a slim share of the overall economy. The notion that "most of the US's population and economic output was supported by [slavery]" is not even remotely true.
> Slavery ran contrary to what the US was founded on[...]
My understanding of your argument is that because certain nice and lofty things were said in certain founding documents we should look at it as a matter of historical inevitability that practices like slavery and racial discrimination were ultimately abolished.
I just don't buy that, and I think if you try to make this argument for any other country you'll see how silly it is.
I could similarly argue that say the oppression of the Soviet Union of its own citizens didn't have anything to do with its nature or foundational structure, it was just some temporary mistake. If you read the Soviet constitution it's even more unequivocal about condemning that sort of thing than the equivalent American documents.
For something like 1/3 of the history of the country millions lived out their lives as slaves, if we're being conservative for 2/3rds structural racial inequality was the law of the land.
If you'd have talked to supreme court justices, and some of the authors of those founding documents (many of whom had slaves) they'd have been appalled by this modern reading of the text. "All men" is much closer to the contemporary reading of "all [male] citizens [who hold property/are head of households]".
> The majority of the US economic output was not supported by slavery.
The page you're linking to makes the opposite case if you take it as a whole instead of selectively quoting from it. It argues that a buyout of the slaves would have been impossible due to the high price. Furthermore it's talking about numbers at the time of the civil war, almost 100 years after the period we're discussing, at that time the country had a more diversified economy.
If a sector of your economy is so integral to it that the government wants to get rid of it but can't see itself abolishing it without a war with itself it's pretty foundational to the economy.
> The notion that "most of the US's population and economic output was supported by [slavery]" is not even remotely true.[...]
Based on your reductive analysis of GNP by sector, but that's not how economies works. Low prices in one sector (e.g. due to slave labor) cascade to other sectors. The page you linked to explains this, it's like oil prices today. The benefit to the economy from reduced oil prices is higher than just the dollar value paid for the oil, it makes everything else cheaper.
But really. I don't see how we're going to get anywhere here (although I'd love to continue the discussion in this increasingly stale thread). How much slavery contributed to the economy is a supporting fact, but it's clearly not the main point. Although I'd be curious at what percentage of GNP you'd concede it. 25%? 50%?
The point is that a phrase like "built on slavery" accurately characterizes the country at the time both economically and socially as compared to other notable countries.
> My understanding of your argument is that because certain nice and lofty things were said in certain founding documents we should look at it as a matter of historical inevitability that practices like slavery and racial discrimination were ultimately abolished.
> I just don't buy that, and I think if you try to make this argument for any other country you'll see how silly it is.
Pointing to founding principles is but one of a variety of items I've been using to demonstrate the falsehood of trying to asset that slavery was foundational to the United States (early abolition movements, the fact that slavery comprised ~6% of GNP, that founding figures expressed desire to end slavery, and more). If genuinely believe, "that because certain nice and lofty things were said in certain founding documents we should look at it as a matter of historical inevitability that practices like slavery and racial discrimination were ultimately abolished" describes the points I've been making then I doubt you've been reading my comments in any detail. Did you just forget all the other points I've been making?
> I could similarly argue that say the oppression of the Soviet Union of its own citizens didn't have anything to do with its nature or foundational structure, it was just some temporary mistake. If you read the Soviet constitution it's even more unequivocal about condemning that sort of thing than the equivalent American documents.
One could make a decent argument that the worst aspect of Soviet oppression was a temporary mistake. The worst of Soviet oppression took place during Stalin's purges, and the Soviet government essentially disowned him after his death. Which was more oppressive, the Soviet Union outside of Stalin's reign, or the Tsarist regime that the Soviet Union replaced? Remember under Tsarist Russia a huge portion of the population lived as serfs, which were human property (serfs could be purchased and sold, perhaps not quite identical to slavery but at least in a similar stroke). Both were very bad, and I would be appalled if I had to live under either, but many see the Soviet Union as an overall positive delta.
> For something like 1/3 of the history of the country millions lived out their lives as slaves, if we're being conservative for 2/3rds structural racial inequality was the law of the land.
To be more specific, for 1/3rd of the history of the country, millions lived out their lives as slaves in ~40% of the county in which slavery was legal. Re-framing this to "structural racial inequality" is diverging very far from the claim that the united states was "founded on the enslavement of black people", which is the claim that I am disproving.
> If you'd have talked to supreme court justices, and some of the authors of those founding documents (many of whom had slaves) they'd have been appalled by this modern reading of the text. "All men" is much closer to the contemporary reading of "all [male] citizens [who hold property/are head of households]".
So now we're talking about the lack of female suffrage? This is diverging even further from the claim that slavery was foundational to the United States.
> The page you're linking to makes the opposite case if you take it as a whole instead of selectively quoting from it. It argues that a buyout of the slaves would have been impossible due to the high price.
Sure. That doesn't change the fact that slavery comprised 6% of GNP. But because the South only had 20-25% of the country's GNP, this represented 20-25% of the South's economy. It's not surprising that they would choose to fight. But that does not change the fact that slavery did comprise 6% of GNP - very far from the 25-50% you speculate below.
> Furthermore it's talking about numbers at the time of the civil war, almost 100 years after the period we're discussing, at that time the country had a more diversified economy.
Quite the opposite. Slavery during the time of the United States' founding was much less economically productive than it was during the antebellum period. Cotton, slavery's primary product, was not profitable until the cotton gin was invented which boosted cotton production by a factor of 25-50. Tobacco plantations were more popular than cotton before the invention of the cotton gin. Some scholars even speculate that slavery would have petered out without conflict were it not for the cotton gin. If you want to measure the economic output of slavery at the time of the US founding, it's drastically less as compared to 1860.
> If a sector of your economy is so integral to it that the government wants to get rid of it but can't see itself abolishing it without a war with itself it's pretty foundational to the economy.
Slavery became foundational to the Southern economy, but this was a development that occurred after America's founding. As as explained above, slavery was not economically very productive at the time of the United States' founding. "King Cotton" didn't come about until the invention of the cotton gin and westward expansion.
> Based on your reductive analysis of GNP by sector, but that's not how economies works. Low prices in one sector (e.g. due to slave labor) cascade to other sectors. The page you linked to explains this, it's like oil prices today. The benefit to the economy from reduced oil prices is higher than just the dollar value paid for the oil, it makes everything else cheaper.
> (and later) Although I'd be curious at what percentage of GNP you'd concede it. 25%? 50%?
Slave labor produced cotton, most of which was exported. While some of this did get sold internally to the North, the article I linked writes, "The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed an enormous increase in the production of short-staple cotton in the South, and most of that cotton was exported to Great Britain and Europe." The article does mention that "all regions benefited from the South’s concentration on cotton production" such as the north selling manufactured goods to the South. But it does not claim that this was anywhere near the majority. Again, the entire Southern economy comprised 20-25% of the country's GDP, and slavery accounted for 25% of that figure (5-6% in total). While the indirect contribution you refer to existed, it was not remotely close to the majority. Attempting to quantify this is difficult, because defining what kind of economic activity counts as being supported by slavery is ambiguous, but not scholar would put this figure near the 25 or 50% you speculate.
> But really. I don't see how we're going to get anywhere here (although I'd love to continue the discussion in this increasingly stale thread). How much slavery contributed to the economy is a supporting fact, but it's clearly not the main point.
Then what is the main point? So far we have established that:
* Slavery was not one of the principles the US was founded on.
* Abolition movements started effectively immediately after the US's founding, and the majority of the country was slave-free within half a century.
* Slavery, and economic activity related to slavery, did not comprise even remotely close to the majority of economic activity in the US.
* Most of the country's founders expected slavery to be abolished, including some that owned slaves themselves (e.g. Jefferson)
The only potential justification you have presented that slavery was foundational to the US is the fact that slavery existed at the time of the US's founding - that is insufficient to claim that this was foundational to the US, especially in contrast to the points I listed above.
> The point is that a phrase like "built on slavery" accurately characterizes the country at the time both economically and socially as compared to other notable countries.
No, it does not. America at it's founding at best tolerated slavery, and within a matter of decades society did not tolerate slavery. Economically, it comprised a relatively small portion of the economy. The comparison to other countries is even more egregious, and speaks to a profound ignorance of the role of slavery in other countries [2].
^ This is actually a very good visualization top to show just how much larger slavery was in 1860 as compared to 1790. In the latter slavery was pretty much exclusive to a couple narrow stretches of land on the coasts of Virginia and Georgia. Also note the difference in the legend between slave and free people.
* The principles expressed in founding documents contradict slavery.
* Some States banned slavery less than a decade after the country's founding, and within forty years the majority of the country by population had banned slavery.
* The contradiction between the founding principles and slavery ultimately led to a Civil War where the former emerged victorious.
* The United States' did not take an abnormal amount of time to ban slavery at a national level. And in fact, some States in the US were the first governments to ban slavery in the entire New World.
I'm pretty much at a loss as to how someone can come away with this comment thinking that nothing in my comment is refuting the claim that the US was founded on slavery.
