Concerning reparations for slavery, I think historians need to more commonly acknowledge that the jury is still out deciding whether or not the first “Negars” documented in Virginia in August of 1619 were slaves or common servants. Certainly, records of the 1620s indicate that several of the English colony’s “Negros” were free, had come to the colony on ships carrying other colonists, and at least one was baptized in England prior to his departure for Virginia.
Horowitz says that “If the government of the United States did not exist until 1776 or 1787, how can it be sued for what happened before?” This is a good point. And we ought to also remember that “this country” at that time territorially consisted of little more than thirteen states clinging more or less to a portion of the East Coast. Florida was not part of the United States, nor for that matter were the vast territories claimed or occupied by France and Spain, that is Louisiana and California.
Horowitz then goes on to remind us of the heritage of abolition, what he calls an 80 year struggle to bring an end to the institution of slavery. I would add simply that even in Virginia—the very cradle of the institution of slavery in British North America—Quakers, themselves oppressed for the most part, though white and free, toiled for decades, at their own expense, enduring threats and actually suffering bodily harm, to bring dozens and dozens of freedom suits to county, district, and superior courts. Through these suits, no less than 400 slaves—and perhaps as many as a thousand—gained their freedom.
Horowitz continues, reminding readers of the enormous cost in lives of the U.S. Civil War, a lengthy series of bloody battles, a conflict over the very meaning of “America.” That the contest was in large measure over slavery is undeniable. Even if the war was not waged specifically to end slavery, it was fought to limit its expansion. In the end, it did both.
Overall, I thought David Horowitz’s article was on the mark. His statement about “America” no creating black slavery is taken, though I think what he meant to say was "the United States" did not create black slavery. And Horowitz is correct when he argues that the United States ended black slavery.
I would like to add, still, for all those out there who think slave reparations are a good idea and a viable pursuit, that in my own research, I have found white, English slaves in early Virginia. In one case, an English boy is mortgaged off along with a Native American Indian and an African. On that note, Allan Gallay in his recent book on Indian slavery in South Carolina argues that from 1670 to 1720, more Indian slaves were exported from the South than African slaves were imported. By the same token, my work shows that not only were upwards of 1,000 Indians retained as slaves in Virginia over the course of its pre-Civil War history, but that the colony’s first actual “slaves” were American Indians, not Africans. There were also “East Indian” servants and slaves across the Chesapeake, as well as a few Turks.
Should all Indians in North America also receive “slave” reparations? What about the descendants of the English and East Indian slaves? Can we even determine who is clearly a descendant of a slave? If I am “white,” but I have a “black” great, great, great, great, grandmother, am I, too, entitled to reparations?
by C.S. Everett on August 21, 2002 at 5:46 PM