Actually, Anne, I raised the genocide definition, after checking it in  
the dictionary to make absolutely certain it was correct. And it is.  
When you by intent start out to kill members of a particular ethnic  
group (in this case whites), you are by definition committing  
genocide. Whether you reach the depths of the minor league Hitler, or  
the major leaguers Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, it mattereth not. The  
weaseling of "after we are armed, we will kill only white men"  
rationale is still by definition genocide.

You would be well advised to heed Tony's advice about how you present  
that information. Your clear-cut bias is not commendable, nor is it  
education.

Lyle Brownig


On Nov 12, 2008, at 12:32 PM, Anne Pemberton wrote:

> Tony,
>
> The charge is to show why students are expected to learn about Nat  
> Turner, not just any ole person who objected to slavery. I have  
> several of those already on my website - rather much on Harriet  
> Tubman and a good amount on Frederick Douglass and J. J. Robert.  
> It's not as if Nat Turner is the first attempt to show the other  
> side of the slavery issue.
>
> My understanding is that some of the nothern colonies accepted  
> slavery in the constitution only under the threat of not having any  
> constitution at all, and having the colonies fall into disarray. By  
> enacting the 3/5 compromise the south further solidified their hand  
> over the throat of Congress for many years to come.
>
> Tony, It makes no difference if you blame the state governments for  
> compensating the slaveowners for their executed slaves. For the most  
> part the slaveowners were those who voted those government into  
> power. As shown with the 3/5 compromise, the southern slaveholders  
> also had a larger-than-they-should-have stake in the law enacted by  
> the federal government. So it is hardly surprising that the  
> "governments" backed those inhuman laws. The shame was that people  
> of conscience, often called abolitioners, were required to break the  
> law in order to follow their conscience.
>
> Tony, I do not think that Nat Turner's crime amounted to "genocide".  
> We usually apply that term to far greater numbers of dead of a given  
> category. It was his intention to reach the armory in Jeruselem to  
> arm his then-army, and after that point they would kill only men,  
> not women and children. So, it would seem that not even his plan was  
> genocidic. He started out that way in order to strike fear into the  
> hard hearts of those who thought they could own human beings. He  
> started out that way to show that human beings could strike back in  
> spite of beatings, picklings, mutilations, and other means of  
> coercion.
>
> J. South, I think it would be best for you to put OJ Simpson in the  
> same category as Thomas Jefferson. We will perhaps never know for  
> sure if he did it or not. The evidence was all circumstantial and  
> the jury did not buy it. Some of us buy into the circumstantial  
> evidence for Thomas Jefferson, some soundly and noisily oppose even  
> the consideration of it.
>
> Let's try to view Nat Turner in a civilized manner. He was an  
> otherwise good man who cracked under the strain of being sold to a  
> third master. That man did not abuse him, but he used him as a slave  
> instead of as an intelligent human being. How long could any of us  
> stand to be bought and sold and used "kindly" as if we had no  
> intellect before we would snap and do something uncharacteristic?
>
> Anne
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
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