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Date: | Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:30:24 -0500 |
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Anne,
There is no doubt by anyone today that slavery is morally wrong and in most
countries illegal. Slavery in North America developed over time and was
legitimized by all the British Colonies and then by all the individual states of the
United States. There was little doubt, in the antebellum south, even after the
mid 1800s that God had established the master-slave relationship between
whites and black so slavery was legitimized by religion as well. It was an
approved economic and social institution.
It would, in my opinion, produce a better understanding if students were
taught that the governments, federal and state, were complicit in the
activities of slavery. “They” paid and provided the troops to quell rebellions
and uprisings. “They” paid the compensation for slaves killed or whipped as
punishments for crimes committed. “They” passed and enforced and codified
laws like the Fugitive Slave Acts. “They” being not just the good people of
Virginia but of Pennsylvania, New York and Maine as well.
To show the lack of complacency on the part of the slave perhaps better
choices exist. Tell the real story of Harriet Tubman. Describe the method of
escape for Henry “Box” Brown and how he worked for the Abolition movement
after his flight. Define the activities of Anthony Burns and how the black and
white populations of Boston fought to harbor and then purchase this mans
freedom.
I can not in anyway, shape or fashion see Mr. Turner as a patriot. He did not
as a send a grievance to his Master, whom he called a kind man, defining what
he felt as in proper treatment. He took a hatchet and beat him and his entire
family to death as they slept. Whether he personally killed one or fifty is not
the issue he was depraved and indifferent in his leading of a mob and will
always be a mass murderer.
I agree that our children need to learn the consequences of suppression and
what it does to people and to the nation. Those lessons should be taugh
without honoring Nat Turner or General Custer. Those lessons should be
honest and without a political bent, without the poetry and prose of the left or
the religious rhetoric of the right.
v/r
Tony
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