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Mates in Chelsea

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Rory Mullarkey

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“They took it for more than it was, or anyhow for more than it said; the container was greater than the thing contained, and Lincoln became at once what he would remain for them, “the man who freed the slaves.” He would go down to posterity, not primarily as the Preserver of the Republic-which he was-but as the Great Emancipator, which he was not.”

PoliticsSlaveryAmerican Civil WarPolitics Of The United StatesSlavery In The United StatesSlavery In AmericaAbraham Lincoln
Book:The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
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“The mythology serves purposes darker than sentiment, nothing more so than the currently popular, and arrantly nonsensical, assertion that Lee freed his inherited slaves in 1862 before the war was over, while Grant kept his until the Thirteenth Amendment freed them in 1865. The subtext is transparent. If Southerner Lee freed his slaves while Northerner Grant kept his, then secession and the war that followed can hardly have had anything to do with slavery and must instead have been over the tariff or state rights, or some other handy pretext invented to cloak slavery’s pivotal role.”

SlaveryAmerican Civil WarConfederateSlavery In The United StatesRobert E LeeConfederate States Of AmericaAmerican Civil War Biography
Book:Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged
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“You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, we have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.”

HistorySlaverySlavery In The United StatesAfrican Slavery
Book:Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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“One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slave holder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slave holder is patriotism á la carte.”

RacismSlaveryPatriotismRacism In AmericaReparationsSlavery In The United States
Book:We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
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“Here in the United States, very little effort has been made to voice formal apologies, make reparations, or pass political mandates about education. Yet this country was founded in part by genocidal policies directed at Native Americans and the enslavement of Black people. Both of these things are morally repugnant. Still I love my country. In fact, it is because I love my country that I want to make sure the mistakes of our past do not get repeated. We cannot afford to cover over the dark chapters of our history, as we have for decades upon decades. It is time for that to stop.”

HistorySlaveryAmerican HistoryColumbusNative AmericansSlavery In The United StatesSlavery In AmericaAmerican IndiansNative American GenocideUnited States History
Book:Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition
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“Slavery was more or less brought to an end in America, although not as quickly or apologetically as it should have been, and even after slavery ended, the descendants of slaves have been treated very terribly by many people in places with much hatred and violence, which, like slavery, may someday come to an end, although not as quickly or apologetically as any decent person would like.”

SlaveryAmerican HistorySlavery In The United States
Book:Poison for Breakfast
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