> People will study whatever parts of
> history interest them. Putting the name
> of an unknown African on a rock at
> Poquoson would not be correct, inasmuch
> as the slaves came in initially at Jamestown.
I'm guessing that the equivalent of a typo got us from the Potomac River to
the city of Poquoson. As a Poquoson resident and a defender of Fort
Monroe -- the national treasure that the Civil War Preservation Trust says
is under threat (please see the top of the page at CFMNP.org) -- I'd better
note something about that ship carrying those first Africans in 1619. Before
going on to Jamestown, it stopped first at Old Point Comfort, the strategic
point of land overlooking Hampton Roads and the lower bay. A quarter of a
millennium later, during Fort Monroe's earliest decades at Old Point
Comfort, and just after Fort Sumter, the first African-American
self-emancipations of the multi-named 1861-1865 conflict took place there.
Prof. Bob Engs at Penn says that those self-emancipations started a cascade
across the South that ended up helping to determine the war's outcome. In my
view this is all the more important because, as my friend Scott Butler wrote
in a brief op-ed
(http://www.cfmnp.org/we_should_tell_the_full-circle_story.htm) last year,
"we should tell the full-circle story of slavery at Old Point Comfort" --
from that 1619 ship through the slave-labor construction of the moated stone
fortress, to the beginnings of slavery's end, to Reconstruction and its
lamentable undermining by an evil that, as its perpetrators would know full
well if they were here, existed beyond any defense by presentism arguments.
Steve Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anne Pemberton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 1:36 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Richmond and VA slave Traders, plus Africa
> Neil,
>
> People will study whatever parts of history interest them. Putting the
> name
> of an unknown African on a rock at Poquoson would not be correct, inasmuch
> as the slaves came in initially at Jamestown.
>
> But, if you want to make the point that Africans enslaved Africans before
> the British came to the idea, go ahead and write a book or two and make
> your
> case. In the meantime, those interested in naming the AMERICANS who were
> complicit in this long chain of immorality, should not be challenged. The
> CHRISTIANS and those who cheered for and/or signed the Declaration of
> Independence were promising a NEW way of living, an attempt at true
> freedom
> for man, and then a decade later turned their backs on those brought here
> as
> slaves.
>
> How can men claim morality when they profess their love of their own
> freedom
> and deny that self-same freedom to their neighbors and workers?
>
> Anne
>
> Anne Pemberton
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.erols.com/apembert
> http://www.educationalsynthesis.org
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "macbd1" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Richmond and VA slave Traders, plus Africa
>
>
>> In Henry's attempt to shift focus away from Africans' responsibility for
>> maiming, killing, capturing and enslaving their own people for sale to
>> the
>> world, his analogy and logic fall short -- and he doesn't offer help with
>> names that was my pursuit. Weapons of all sorts that were useful for
>> hunting, fishing and cleaning game were also substitutes for maiming and
>> killing people since time's beginning, by those who would find any means
>> for that result, initially their bare hands, blunt objects, sharp rocks
>> or
>> sticks, then malleable metals, (all of these still used) etc. etc. I
>> simply wish to see one African slave-trader's name emblazoned on the
>> shore
>> of the Potomac for all people to remember the representative great evil.
>> It is 'not' my intent to belittle subsequent evils within countries where
>> slaves were taken, the vastly greater numbers being to other than British
>> colonial America and its subsequent United States where slavery finally
>> was ended with great loss of military lives.
>>
>> ......and slavery still continues 'today' in some parts of the world,
>> where are our concerns expressed toward this additional matter?
>>
>> Neil McDonald
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]>
>>
>> ....Instead of focusing our judicial fury on murderers, the
>> "secondary few" who pull the trigger, we should hunt down the gun
>> manufacturers, those who are "primarily responsible for the endless
>> supply"
>> of guns in our country and "share accountabilities" for gun violence. I
>> think that's where we end up with this line of reasoning.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek
>>
>> ______________________________________
>> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions
>> at
>> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
> ______________________________________
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions
> at
> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 8.0.100 / Virus Database: 270.4.1/1517 - Release Date: 6/24/2008
8:41 PM
______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
|
