Slavery

          For thousands of years racism was responsible for most of the justification for slavery.  Mostly through lack of education, there exists, even today, the racism of old. In reality there is only one race, and that is the human race.  Almost all peoples have been enslaved, at one time or another, throughout history.

          Ask the average school child about slavery and they think only white people had slaves. A tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson was the first man in the U.S. who owned a slave: the slave owner was a black man and the slave was black. The courts gave judicial sanction for blacks to own a slave of their own race. In 1830 there were 3,775 free black people who owned 12,740 black slaves. Many black slaves were allowed to have jobs, own businesses and own real estate. In 1860 the largest slave holder in North Carolina was a black plantation owner named William Ellison. American Indians owned thousands of black slaves. Many Indian tribes made slaves out of the Indians of other tribes they conquered, as well as white people they captured.

          Most slaves brought to America, from Africa, were bought from black slavers, almost all of which were Islamist's, who continue the practice of slavery today. Slavery was common throughput the world for thousands of years. Whites were the first people to stop slavery in modern times. 

          In the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, Africans enslaved one and a half million white Europeans. The British were involved in slavery of whites as well. "They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.

Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.

We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? We know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade.

But, are we talking about African slavery? King James II and Charles I also led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.

As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.

But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.

Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?

Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer?

Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.

None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot."[1]

          "The Irish were further exploited when the British began to “breed” Irish women - or girls, sometimes as young as 12 - with African males.
These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of breeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company."[2]

          It might be pointed out that all, I repeat all, peoples were involved in slavery at one point or another. Moslems, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Africans and many others were involved in this abomination. The biggest problem is that it exists today.

          The modern name for slavery is human trafficking. “Human trafficking is a crime. We have found a direct nexus between prostitution and human trafficking, and we combat this crime by conducting undercover prostitution investigations. Whether it is on the street or online, prostitution, and the crimes it attempts to disguise, is illegal and we will continue to investigate and arrest those involved.” – Sheriff Grady Judd, Polk County Florida

          "Yemen to end public trading of slaves as recently as 1962 and Mauritania in 1980, though many Muslim countries still are clandestinely involved. Slavery, forced marriages, sexual slaves and child sex trafficking continues in countries with large Muslim populations, such as: Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Albania, Bosnia, Turkey and Indonesia.

Organizations tracking modern slavery are: Anti-Slavery International,

Human Rights Watch, American Anti-Slavery Group, National Underground

Railroad Freedom Center, Free the Slaves, Christian Freedom International, International Labor Rights and Education Fund, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and Anti-Slavery Society. (freetheslaves.net, anti-slaverysociety.addr.com, freedomcenter.org,antislavery.org, iabolish.org)"[3]

What does the Bible say about slavery?

          The Old Testament seems to accept slavery as common practice, as it was throughout the rest of the world at the time. In Genesis 39, Joseph was sold as a slave in Egypt. In the New Testament, slavery takes on a different connotation for Christians. Christians are said to be slaves of Christ and should be in obedience to Him. Christian slaves are instructed to serve their owner as unto Christ, especially if they have a Christian owner.[4] We must keep in mind that the Romans, who controlled the Holy Land, had slavery, and allowed it in their realm of influence. It was not that God condoned slavery, but that slavery is simply an example of mans inhumanity to man, and the fallen state of mankind.

          During the American civil war, hundreds of thousands (mostly white) died for the freedom of the slaves. The issue of slavery was an afterthought of President Lincoln, that he used to keep the north interested in continuing the War Between The States. After the war, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. It was adopted with 100% Republican support and 23% Democrat support. The 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to freed slaves was adopted with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support. The 15th Amendment, which gave the right to vote to all, was adopted with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support. As we can see, the matter of slavery was not completely settled in some folks minds.

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[1] White Cargo, The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves In America, by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, New York University Press

[2] John Martin’s article ‘The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves’.

[3] page 251, What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur’an-A History of Islam & the United States, By William J. Federer

[4]  "slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5), or "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect" (Titus 2:9).