despite the low and obscene exclusion of antebellum African
Americans
Slaves were chattel property prior to the 13th Amendment and so were not "Americans" of any kind.? They were slaves of African descent.? See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857) which is still the Supreme Court legal precedent on the point vis-a-vis African slaves.
JDS
-----Original Message-----
From: S. Corneliussen <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 7:47 am
Subject: W&M research on slavery era
This morning at DailyPress.com, the Web site of the Newport News Daily
Press, you can read a front-page, above-the-fold headline article reporting
that William and Mary is creating "a long-term [slavery-era] research
project to chronicle the life and history of blacks at the university and
greater Williamsburg."?
?
This very brief article highlights the involvement of my friend the
historian Robert F. Engs, who is retiring from Penn. Bob is the author of
_Freedom's First Generation_, which tells of Fort Monroe's self-emancipating
Contrabands and events during and after the Civil War in Hampton, when
Reconstruction and what followed might have become something marvelous
instead of gradually, across the South, being undermined by un-American race
hate and race terrorism. Bob has lifelong Virginia connections, having
family here, and having lived here himself.?
?
I hope that William and Mary doesn't share the newspaper's master-story
bias, the view that this research project is mainly an exercise in feckless
slavery apology. That framing will of course accelerate the inevitable
objecting by those who are already going to cry political correctness,
presentism, revisionism. I hold that hope because constructive revisionism,
in my view, is precisely what's needed concerning American slavery, a hugely
important dimension of the history of liberty itself, with implications
extending well beyond Virginia and the country. William and Mary's research
effort has a local focus, of course, though that won't stop it from
contributing to a wider view of the history of liberty.?
?
Maybe this new research effort can even contribute to helping us all agree,
finally, that despite the low and obscene exclusion of antebellum African
Americans from merely legal citizenship status, on a higher level,
_everyone_ who toiled and suffered and created and procreated and built the
wealth of Virginia and the South and the nation over generations was truly
and profoundly an American.?
?
Thanks very much.?
?
Steven T. Corneliussen?
Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)?
Advocating a self-sustaining, revenue-generating, innovatively structured
national park at Old Point Comfort ?
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