Slavery Contextualized

There are more slaves today than at any point in history

GEORGE NOGA
OCT 29, 2023

The astounding and unexpected success of the powerful fact-based movie The Sound of Freedom has focused attention on modern slavery, which today is lumped together as human trafficking. Operation Underground Railroad (“OUR”), the organization behind the movie, leads the global fight against trafficking. OUR estimates there are 50 million people being trafficked today – the most at any point in history. Moreover, this number does not include the tens of millions held in peonage, or debt slavery.

Children constitute 35% of the victims. In the US today there are over 5 million slaves found in all 50 states of which sex trafficking constitutes 70%. Other common forms of twenty-first century slavery are forced labor, forced marriage, child soldiering and forced begging. Chattel slavery, the type common in the 19th century, also exists in many countries including Mauritania, South Sudan, Ghana and Libya. In some of these places there are open slave markets – just like hundreds of years ago.

girl in white crew neck shirt — Photo by Nathan Bingle on Unsplash

Slavery as Taught in Government Schools

There is much controversy about how slavery is taught in government (public) schools, with many teaching CRT and the 1619 project. Slavery, in all its myriad forms, is evil always and everywhere and it is right and proper for schools to teach children about its history and evils. The problem is lack of context.

Progressives, who have an ironclad grip on government schools, teach only about slavery in América. They divorce it from all contexts and fail to inform students about mitigating factors. As a result, students believe slavery occurred only in America and are ignorant of the often-heroic efforts to abolish it. Following is some much needed contextualization – some of which likely will surprise or even shock you.

Slavery in Historical Context

Slavery always has been a tragic, but inseparable, part of the human condition. It is thriving today and is even more profitable to the criminal cartels than illicit drugs. However, I am focusing on the period after the discovery of America.

From the 16th to the 19th century, 10 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the West. However, during that same time period, a far greater number (15 million) was sent east to the Ottoman Empire. Today there are many millions of descendants of those slaves in the west but virtually none in the east. Why is that? The slaves sent east were castrated and then killed when their usefulness ended. Thus eastern countries, which imported 50% more slaves than the West, do not have a legacy of slavery because there are few surviving progeny – due to castration.

Relatively few slaves were forcibly captured by European slavers. Most were sold by other Africans, even by their own families, making them complicit in the slave trade. The slave trade could not have succeeded without the active support of African elites.

“Selling one’s neighbors, and even one’s own children, into slavery is more condemnable than buying them.” Voltaire

Slaves were not limited to Africans. As recently as the 19th century, Barbary pirates captured and enslaved over one million Europeans. In America, emancipated slaves, who could afford it, also became slave owners.

The West Africa Squadron

There were many heroic actions taken by the West to end slavery. I will describe one of them – a massive, but largely forgotten by history, effort by Britain that spanned over half a century. Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1807 and they used the Royal Navy to wipe out the slave trade throughout much of the world.

Britain established a naval squadron to patrol the coast of West Africa; the squadron grew to include 20% of its fleet. From 1808 to 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves – at a cost to the Royal Navy of over 1,500 men. Some historians have declared Britain’s West Africa Squadron the most expensive international moral action in modern history.

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners are now being held. The hypocrisy

in its honoring of slaveholders and genocidal Indian fighters is too rich to ignore.

By: George Noga – April 10, 2016

Although this posting has Democrats in its cross-hairs, I am obliged to repeat that our MLLG blog is non-partisan. We disdain both major political parties. Our lodestar is the same as our name, i.e. more liberty and less government. Sometimes however, hypocrisy is so glaring it cries out for attention; this is one of those times.

The Democratic Party’s annual gig is the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, so named because they regard Jefferson and Jackson as the founders of the Democratic Party. To say it is pregnant with hypocrisy is an understatement. Let’s review the historical record of Jefferson and Jackson as it pertains to slavery and Native Americans.

Both Jefferson and Jackson owned slaves. Jefferson was the only founder and president who did not free his slaves – even upon his death.
The cruelty of Jackson’s Indian removal policy (“The Trail of Tears“) is legion and remains an enduring stain on American national honor.
Jackson was ruthless in the Creek War and in later wars against the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Seminoles. His nickname was “Indian killer“.
Jackson was in command while his troops butchered Indian women and children following battles or massacres; some called it (and still call it) genocide.
Jackson was an aggressive defender of slavery; this was in sharp contrast to Washington, Madison and Monroe all of whom regarded it as a moral evil.
Jackson supported the spread of slavery to the territories and he once publicly called opponents of slavery “monsters“.

Contrast the above with recent events where obsequious Democrats caterwauled over perceived transgressions regarding confederate flags on license plates or flying on state capitol grounds – which incidentally were first put there by Democrat governors. Unctuous Democrat leaders used terms such as bigotry, racism and oppression while calling for boycotts of any events held in South Carolina or any other offending state.

Republicans have their annual event, the Lincoln-Douglass Day Dinner, named after Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Imagine if the Republicans’ annual dinner was called the Custer-Duke Day Dinner after George Custer and David Duke? The yowling and mewling of Democrats and their media sycophants would be incessant.

Democrats are considering a name change but can’t find prominent Americans of Democratic persuasion to use in place of Jefferson and Jackson. It seems they consider all potential historical figures imperfect and can’t find even one who passes through every politically correct filter extant. They may just abandon people’s names altogether and go with something anodyne like the “Fairness and Equality Day Dinner”.

Since all historical figures now are imperfect to progressives, where does it all end? Can we judge a person as a whole giving credit for accomplishments while being less judgmental about flaws that were not considered as such contemporaneously but only now in today’s uber-correct political atmosphere? If the present trend continues there will be no statues or portraits left standing or hanging anywhere in America.

For now, let’s simply savor the juicy hypocrisy of the most politically correct and intolerant group in America naming its greatest honor for unreformed slaveholders, racists, genocidal Indian fighters and the perpetrator of the infamous Trail of Tears.

Tag: Slavery