Perspective

Perspective is having the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance.  In a recent blog, “For the Record,” I presented an accurate look at the origins of slavery, but something didn’t set right with me, I felt the matter needed more context to gain a better historical perspective.

During my research I discovered that the first recorded instances of slavery occurred around 6800 B.C. (nearly 9,000 years ago) in Mesopotamia.  This abominable practice continued throughout ancient Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs to the time of Alexander the Great, to the Roman Empire, to the time of the Mongols of Genghis Khan and up until today where in 2022 there are an estimated 40 million people enslaved in various parts of the non-white world.  With such incontrovertible facts in hand, it should be patently obvious to even the most obtuse liberal that slavery was not invented by white Europeans, much less by Americans.

To put an even finer point on the matter, slavery existed for more than 8,000 years before Europeans even thought about bringing slaves to America.  But there’s an interesting aspect of the matter that’s seldom if ever recognized by the left, to wit: from 1619 when the first slaves landed in Jamestown until the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, slavery was a “European issue,” not an American one because the first Colonists were a part of various European empires and domains.

Slavery only became an “American issue” after ratification; so, in doing the math we see that slavery existed in the United States, as a nation, for just 75 years, i.e., from ratification in 1788 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.  Slavery has existed on the planet for approximately 9,000 years.  It existed in the United States for 75 of those years.  Kind of puts the matter into perspective, doesn’t it?

Quote of the day:  “The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention.”—Anonymous