Opus 2026-119: Equality Is Not Always Equitable

The Declaration of Independence declares that “all men are created equal.”  It is one of the great founding concepts of America.  It is also one of the most misunderstood.  People wonder how they could write such things when slavery was in existence.  They confuse equality before the law with egalitarian ideas.  They confuse equal opportunity with equal outcomes.

Some use this as an attack on the Christian culture that was ingrained in the Founding Fathers.  As usual it involves a lack of understanding and the inability to think beyond the basic three colors to purple and green.  I keep hearing people try to claim that the Bible is against slavery.  Not true.  Slavery was assumed as a part of life.  Why?  Because it was.  It existed, and was accepted in every culture of history before the modern era.  No one wanted to be a slave but they accepted that it existed.

The reason it was not impossible for the writers of the Declaration was that slavery existed within the legal structure.  It was covered.  Part of this was rooted in the Biblical acknowledgement of its place in society.  Some of the confusion was in the words of the ancients.  Take this Bible verse,

Proverbs 19:10 (KJV) Delight is not seemly for a fool; much less for a servant to have rule over princes.

The word for “servant” in both Hebrew and Greek can be translated either “servant” or “slave”.  The reason it covers both is that socially they were not that different.  What verse like this point out is that people are different.  They come in many flavors.  They make different choices.  Sometimes bad choices bring personal disaster.  Some people tend to make frequent bad choices.  Those people should not be in positions of leadership and will probably experience little success in life.

What brings this to the philosophy of the Founders is that in the eyes of God we all are created in His image.  There is a value in all human life.  You may have employees.  In a previous age you might have slaves.  They still are to be treated as more than just animals.  It is what makes the Christian West different from the rest of the world.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-094: Vocabulary Lesson

It’s called slavery.

Listening to different soundbites on YouTube I keep hearing mention of “human trafficking”.  No, it is not human trafficking.  It is the time honored slave trade.  I don’t know why we are so reluctant to come with that.  Getting rich selling the bodies of young women and children was what slavery was all about.  Until the sugar and cotton plantations began to demand a stronger work force, most men taken prisoner in Africa were killed.  It was the weaker women and children who could be moved, trafficked, more easily.  It was slavery then.  It is slavery now.

It could be that the media and their Marxist allies don’t want to clarify the fact that slavery is not an issue exclusive to American history.  Slavery is, was, a worldwide norm.  It has not gone away.  It is active in every Muslim country and we see it going on here under the guise of “human trafficking” which is expressed in sweat shops, prostitution, child pornography and child sex, underpaid workers and ways normal minds don’t think about.

Christian Europe did away with slavery.  The Vatican tried to stop it in the New World plantations but there was too much money to be made.  The main force that keeps condemning it is the underlying Biblical idea that human beings are created in the image of God and have worth.  

At least now that we have a new administration in Washington there are an increasing number of voices that are speaking out against it.  Their voices would be heard better if they would set aside the feel-good euphemisms and call a slave a slave.

homo unius libri

Opus 2021-166: Beware the Slave Mentality

Why is free enterprise so great?  Free enterprise encourages private individuals to take risks because they can see the potential rewards.  In so doing they generate enough wealth that the corrupt officials can get rich and there is still enough for the rest of us who did the work.  It only works with a free people.

Many people are slaves or have a slave mentality.  I know that in certain situations I turn on what I call my “fieldhand mode”.  That means that I follow directions to the letter.  I try not to think.  I offer no suggestions.  I show no initiative.  You don’t need to be a literal slave to operate that way.  I think it is modus operandi for a significant number of government employees.  They are clerks at the DMV or in some office that is handling your mail.  They can be judges and members of the city counsel.  They are like the bearing on the wheel of a work truck that freezes up and keeps the whole machine from moving forward.

People on the dole are like this.  Maybe not all of them.  I have known people who did everything they could to get off government assistance and a strange thing happens:  They get off government assistance.  We are currently seeing that it is hard for employers to get people to come back to work.  The basic reason is that their unemployment benefits have not run out so why should they work?  This is the insidious power of welfare.  It sucks the initiative out of people.  It makes it almost impossible to stand up and be responsible.  Snowflakes living in the basement have this syndrom.  It is amazing what happens when they are thrown out and either work or go hungry.  As usual, Proverbs has a comment on this phenomenon.  

(Pro 16:26 NAS77) A worker's appetite works for him, For his hunger urges him on.

The basic attitude is human.  It says, “What’s in it for me?”  As a teacher I received the same salary and pay increases whether I worked hard or kicked back.  One reason that private schools do better than public schools is they are held accountable for the results.  The general economy is that way.  If you get a check for not working, why work?  If you get the same check as the guy on the next machine who does half the work you do, why work so hard?  

This is why slave cultures and socialism do not produce enough wealth to raise the masses out of the sloth of poverty.  This is why we need to put people into authority who understand human nature and basic economics.  This is why people with initiative tend to vote Republican after they get their first paycheck and see all that is taken out by the government.  This is why redistribution of wealth and reparations will make no difference in the long run.

Liberty and responsibility work.

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-211: Monday Pulpit: Lessons from Joseph, part 2 of 2, Slavery Sidetrack

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.  He was sold to Ishmaelite traders, distant relatives on their way to Egypt.  This is a good time for another aside.  The tangent is slavery which is a hot topic for us in the United States.  Reparations anyone?

Americans don’t know history.  Part of that is deliberate.  People who know history tend to vote different than people who are ignorant.  Take slavery.  The average American feels like slavery is an American problem, a blot on the soul of a nation.  It is the American Sin.  Such an attitude feeds into the manipulation of the elites but has nothing to do with reality.

Slavery has been a normal part of society throughout the history of mankind.  It was common in every culture on every continent except Antarctica.  It was considered normal.  The only people who were against slavery were the slaves and even most of them accepted it as normal.  Slavery still exists today in its standard form.  Even more people are enslaved in trappings that we don’t think of as slavery, such as prostitution and sweat shops.  Far from being an American problem the stand against slavery was an area that America took an early interest.  The eradication of slavery should bring pride not the guilt demanded by the left. 

Joseph’s experience is a good illustration of how slavery works.  His brothers were mad at him so they got together, imprisoned him and then sold him.  A good number of the slaves that ended up in the Western hemisphere got there start that way.  As a slave Joseph prospered.  He was given responsibility and power.  Of course he was still a slave but if you follow his story through you find that eventually he was second in power only to Pharaoh. 

Does that make slavery a good thing?  No, not in our modern way of thinking.  It just makes it something that was considered normal until modern times. 

Making slavery some kind of test of worthiness of guilt is nonsense.  Keep in mind that the slaves that came to America started their journey being enslaved by other black Africans.  They might have gone through several black slave traders before they ended up on a European ship.  Keep in mind that the slaves were going east into the Arab world for millennia before they went across the Atlantic.  Look up Kush and Axum.  One of their main trade goods was slaves.

In fact it was the Christian gospel that began a serious examination of slavery.  It is hard to hold someone as a slave when they are created in the image of God and are a brother in Christ.

We need to continue the discussion without phony guilt trips and political manipulation. 

homo unius libri

Opus 2019-107: Kicking the Can, part 1 of 2

From time to time I come across different writers criticizing politicians as refusing to deal with an issue and instead “kicking the can down the road.”  It refers to our so-called leaders refusing to take the bull by the horns and instead letting the problem go by assuming that future generations will deal with it.

We can look at such things as budget proposals that are going to balance the budget, at least until you look at the fine print.  Usually the balancing will happen four to eight years down the road when there has been another election.  What that means is never.

This is not a new problem.  I am reading Vindicating the Founders by Thomas G. West.  I am still in the early chapters and his first concern is over the issue of slavery.  I notice that he keeps referring to leaders of the day being against slavery but not willing to do anything about it.  Thomas Jefferson comes up frequently.  He is the one who penned the “all men are created equal” phrase that is so important.  At the same time he owned slaves and never made any attempt to free them even after his death.  His excuse seemed to be that he could not afford to set them free.

The thing that hit me was that the Founders kicked the can down the road.  They may have been forced to do so because there were three Southern states who would not have joined the new nation if slavery had been banned.  That was a political reality.  Northern states moved to do away with slavery but for the most part few who owned slaves and admitted it was wrong were willing to take the financial loss to do what was right.  In their defense they did outlaw the slave trade as soon as they could in 1808.

This curse still haunts us today.

To be continued...

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-273: Wasn’t Robert E. Lee a Democrat?

I have been working on this for a couple of days and now I read that Rush has done a piece on the same subject.  Here is what I had ready for tomorrow.

The leftists and racebaiters of this country are trying to remove every bit of evidence that America fought a civil war over the issue of states rights.  They want to tear down statues of Robert E. Lee and any other soldier who fought for the Confederacy.  Well, I guess the winners get to write the history but the winners found a place for the losers.  It is the modern losers that are going after these monuments under the excuse that they are people who supported slavery.

Okay, I get it.  Now let’s go to the next level.  You don’t like the KKK?  Then lets expunge any record of the late Senator Robert Byrd.  We must remove his name from every building in West Virginia that he had erected.  We need to remove from the history books any mention of a self identifying Democrat before Lyndon Johnson.  The Democrats were the party of slavery.  Remember that.  The KKK were all Democrats when they actually had muscle.  They even came to Democrat national conventions and demonstrated to force the choice of their candidate for president.  Woodrow Wilson had some very clear racist ideas.  Guess what party he belonged to.  Jim Crow?  Democrats.  Black Codes?  Democrats.  School segregation?  Democrats.  Locked up the Japanese?  Democrats.  Do you see a pattern?

We could go on.  If we are going to be consistent we need to remove the legacy of anyone who belonged to the party of slavery.  We might want to go back to Africa and get rid of some of the descendants of the people who sold the slaves to European traders also, but we can leave that for another day.

homo unius libri

Opus 2017-164: Historic Replay

One frustration I have in teaching is trying to get students to think past their latest Instagram and look at the patterns that history shows us and the possible dangers those patterns involve.  We have been examining the progress of the slavery debate.  There was a series of laws called Fugitive Slave Acts.  They had various applications but the point was that slaves were still property according to the Constitution and still belonged to their owners, even if they had escaped.

In 1850 you had a series of events that illustrated the growing tension.  In the context of the Fugitive Slave Act the state supreme court of Wisconsin declared the act unconstitutional.  The state legislature claimed the right of secession over the issue.  Vermont passed a law making it illegal to return runaway slaves.  Massachusetts passed a law giving a five year prison term to anyone obeying the federal law. 

Notice that 1850 was a long time before Obama or Trump.  This is ten years before the South tried to break away.  Politics has always been partisan.  It will always be partisan.

What does that have to do with today?  Does legalizing marijuana mean anything to you?  Have you heard of sanctuary cities and now sanctuary states?  How about reciprocity in concealed carry permits? 

Do any of these issues carry the conviction to bring us back to the point of general violence?  It would seem that the Progressives are pushing in that direction.  And they are getting away with it.  We don’t need to do much to bring back sanity.  All we really need to do is enforce the law.  Last I heard it was illegal to riot, burn and destroy.  We don’t need anything more than a few arrests, trials and jail time.  It is already illegal to slander and defame.  We don’t need to censor the press, just hold them accountable for betraying the country and telling lies about people they don’t like.

We can push for civil behavior now or reap the whirlwind later.

homo unius libri

Opus 2016-280: New Terms: Anachronistic

I continually read and hear people making a case that American slavery was worse than slavery in other cultures.  They point out that slaves had certain rights in ancient cultures and were often better off than free servants.  The ones making the case are usually Progressives who hate America and want to turn us into a workers paradise that approach slavery this way.  The slavery they describe has a lot in common with the nanny state they want to push us into.  We should all be servants of a government that wants to keep us safe and harmless.

The problem is that this is saying that slavery was acceptable in every other culture but ours because the masters were humane.  I am sorry.  That doesn’t wash with me.  A slave was still a slave.  Slaves may have had some rights but none of the ones that make you a free man.  They tell us that slaves in Rome were often highly educated and wealthy.  That may be true but they could still be executed by their master if he was unhappy or having a bad day.  Serfs had some rights but they were not free.  Keep in mind that slavery was not an American phenomenon.  It didn’t start here and it ended here before it ended in much of the world. 

Try to understand the world of the past.  In all cultures the great mass of people were in that class that made them nothing but servants.  Even the nobility often lived knowing that the monarch could demand their head or property any time they were in a bad mood.  The “free servants” of Rome were treated so badly that being a slave could be an advantage.  Neither was free in the modern sense.  It is a false comparison given by people trying to make America look bad instead of being honest.

Was slavery a bad situation?  Of course.  Was it an American evil?  Don’t be foolish.  Does it still exist?  Definitely.  Try not to take the standards of today and impose them on the past.  It is called anachronistic. 

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-283: Don’t Ask Me, I Just Work Here

Our society is running in Fieldhand Mode.

I came across this term by putting together the times I work with control freaks and a video I watched that involved slaves hoeing cotton.  There are a lot of parallels.

It doesn’t take long for a slave condemned to a life of mindless labor to realize that he will not be rewarded for hard work and perseverance.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  The slave who worked hard, fast and well was just given more work by the overseer.  Once the achiever had demonstrated what was possible, the other slaves were then driven to keep up with the new pace.  This created a backlash from the other slaves.  You see a similar occurrence with new workers in a union shop.  It takes a bit of “counseling” to get their production down to the level of the veterans.

After a long period of this type of stupefying tedium, the mind settles into a vacuum.  The hands and body go through the motion but the brain exists in another world of day-dream and fantasy.  Originality and creativity go out the window with hope.  The cultural damage is that hard work is associated with slavery and the lower classes and those who can afford it try to find a way to avoid sweat, unless it is in sports or recreation.

Overseers run our society.  We have an oppressive, over-regulated government that seeks to suck as much life blood out of every subject as possible.  Taxes are raised to the point where people refuse to invest.  Regulation strangles attempts to be innovate and creative.  The boss man sits under his office tree with his regulation whip in his hand and dares you to try to rise above mediocre.  I have heard it said that even the most law abiding, conscientious citizen breaks enough laws every day to be put in jail.  Even the IRS doesn’t know what the tax code says.  All it takes is getting an appointed government administrator mad at you and you are toast.

Thus we keep our heads down and do as little work as possible.  We find ways to do things under that table.  We don’t share our methods.  A day without tripping a rule is a day to celebrate.

I am most familiar with education.  The Overseers in their tofu towers (ivory comes from endangered species) has the whip that can get us fired or worse.  They put out bulletins and standards.  When I was directed to mine on the internet I had to go through three or four levels of links and when I got there found mine started about 450 pages into the document.  And it was small print.  Most of it is gibberish or jargon.  We are too busy to read it, let alone put it into practice.  We worry about being confronted but the Aristocrats of Administration are afraid to push too hard.  There might be rebellion in the ranks.

Or a child commenting on the naked king.

Will the Elites regulate the internet?  Will they get us out of our cars?  Will they destroy marriage?  They are well on their way.  Most of us are field hands.

When the rebellion comes I pray that it will have limited violence.

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-157: The President Seems to Support the Slave Trade

We have all been hearing about how the Obama administration has been planning and executing the importation of thousands of children in defiance of all immigration laws.  This man is doing everything he can to destroy the rule of law and bring back the Divine Right of Presidents.

I had a concern that I heard mentioned in passing but is being ignored.  What about the potential for abuse in the area of human trafficking.  That is the jargon for the international slave trade in women and children.  Most of them are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery.  It is a real problem.  Here is a website that deals with the issue.

From the website you find this information,

“The UN crime-fighting office announced that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.”

Now instead of fighting the problem the United States has become a business partner of the slave traders.  It is ironic that we can thank the first black elected president of the United States for this honor.

It has been documented that they do not have enough people to handle all of these young children that are being flow into airports all across the country.  Want a sex slave?  Get a clipboard, look official and escort a few young children out the door.

I have no proof except knowing history, human nature, opportunity and the profit motive.  How many of these children will disappear? 

Only God knows.

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-103: Plow and Crown: Greetings, Peasants

I have come to the conclusion that I would have been a peasant in ancient time.  If not a peasant I might have been a slave.

Early kings and nobles achieved their position on the strength of their arm, the speed of their reflexes and the sharpness of their swords.  If you won the fight you became the boss.  If you could hold your own you became a noble.  If you won a lot of fights you became a king.  It was common for royalty and the noble classes to be illiterate.  It was better to be good with a sword than a pen.  You had servants and slaves for that kind of thing.

Recently I went to a Project Appleseed event to learn about the skills of being a rifleman.  I found that I had a real hard time focusing on both the front sight and the target.  My eyes were never that good and now they are getting old.  If I focused on the sight, the target was a blur.  If I focused on the target, I could not see the sight.  This makes it difficult to hit what you shoot at.  Even worse, I have never been known for my coordination or athletic ability.  I think I was about ten years old before I learned to ride a bike.  When ice skating I managed to step on my own hand.  I have all the skills of a peasant.

Or a slave.  In Roman times many of the teachers were slaves.  They conquered the Greeks and made slaves of their philosophers and intellectuals.  It was not unknown for teachers to be crucified for not teaching the children well. 

How would Western society have developed different if glasses had been developed earlier?  Would literacy have been more common and the equality brought by wide spread education come sooner?  Would classes have been less set in concrete?

Simple things can make big differences.  If the Russian Princes had possessed machine guns then Genghis Khan would have been a sucker instead of a scourge.  If the Confederate States had purchased large numbers of Henry and Spencer repeating rifles before starting a war, Lincoln would have never lasted for re-election.

Be grateful that you live in a blip in history called the United States of America.  We have had liberty and prosperity for the masses at a level never seen in history.  In any other culture most would be walking behind a flatulent ox, plowing someone else’s field instead of worrying about how cow gas is ruining the environment. 

I hope that we are not coming to the end of that blip but it seems to me that the tide has turned.

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-16: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 6 of 6

Slavery was a part of our history.  That is a fact.  In isolation, used as a club, it becomes a source of guilt and a rational for all kinds of sick thinking.  We do not blame Italians for the millions who died from the Black Death in the Middle Ages.  It might have been Italian merchants who introduced the plague.  So what?  You can’t expect Italy to pay reparations for something that their ancestors may have done.  It is a little silly to try to hold people alive today responsible for what was common behavior up until the 19th century. 

Black American and their manipulating, liberal, white masters need to get over slavery and move on.  Instead of looking at all of the opportunities this country has we continue to look for blame and victims.  This attitude has been infused into the very soul of American blacks.  It is keeping them from standing up, stepping forward and becoming a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem.  Their refusal to grow up and leave the plantation is pulling this country apart.

Slavery was common.  I would venture a guess that all of us have both slaves and owners somewhere in our family tree.  It is time to get out of the tree and start walking like children of God instead of clients of the welfare state.

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-15: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 5 of 6

Someone once said something to the effect, “If God does not punish America for its moral decadence then He will need to apologize to Sodom and Ghemmora.”

George Mason felt like this would apply to America in his day over the issue of slavery.

“They [the slave owners] bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not [sic] be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities….”

The scale was tipped on slavery by the American Civil War.  It could easily be considered the hand of God punishing the nation.  The Christians in the North certainly thought that way.  Consider the first verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword.
His truth is marching on.

The Civil War was a brutal affair.  Americans suffered more casualties in that war than they have in all other wars combined.  They did that with a population much smaller than we have today.  Families lost an entire generation of sons.  The anger is still alive today.

I think it is time to take the next step and move on. 

To be continued....

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-13: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 4 of 6

Slavery has a destructive effect on the owners of slaves.  Mason continues,

“They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.”

There is something about having absolute control over another human being that brings out the worst in some people.  Slaves were treated in ways that free labor would never tolerate.

One reason that slavery died out in Christian Europe and was the teaching of the Bible.  Nowhere is slavery condemned in Christianity or any other major world religion but the conditions put on it were such that you could not maintain the relationship.  We see this in the letter of Paul to Philemon.  Paul had come across an escaped slave name Onesimus who had become a Christian.  He and Paul worked together in Rome but then Paul realized that he needed to return to his master, who was also a Christian.  When Paul sends him back he includes the letter we have.  In it he says to Philemon,

(Phm 1:15-18 NAS77)  For perhaps he was for this reason parted from you for a while, that you should have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.  If then you regard me a partner, accept him as you would me.  But if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account;

He was sent back as a slave but was to be treated as a brother.  This kind of attitude makes it pretty hard to maintain slaves.

Slavery allows the sinful nature of all human beings free reign.  It gives us the idea we are superior and have the right to inflict pain on others.  It gives us the idea that others exist for our pleasure and exploitation. 

This is an attitude that Americans have rejected just as we led the way in rejecting slavery.

To be continued...

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-12: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 3 of 6

One legacy of slavery is the attitude toward hard work.  Mason observed,

“Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.”

This is true in a number of ways.  In the antebellum South most skilled labor was done by slaves.  Blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, you name it, slaves were trained to do the work.  The stereotype of the ignorant field hand was not universal.  If they had a “good” master they were allowed to keep a small part of the proceeds.  This is how many slaves bought their freedom.  That was good for them but it made it impossible for free skilled labor to move to the area and compete.  Thus the economy of the South was locked into the large plantation life style. 

Even more damaging was the attitude that slavery encouraged in the workers.  It became the mark of a slave to sweat for your living.  Perspiration meant you were of an inferior class.  This has been observed in other cultures.  It is not unique to America.  We see similar attitudes in the gentry of England.  This social class was not allowed to do any kind of work that was considered demeaning.  Thus the gentry could be a lawyer but not a shop keeper.  They could be a soldier but not a manufacturer.  They could be a total loser but still shown respect.

I have run into this in modern black Americans.  At our school one of the disciplines instituted for bad behavior was picking up trash.  Some boys refused and got in even more trouble.  I was shocked when an otherwise rational teacher told me that she would support her sons if they refused to pick up trash.  I ask the reasoning.  She said, “Because it is slave labor.”  In her mind free people did not do menial work.

Slavery destroys productivity and the work ethic.

To be continued...

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-10: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 2 of 6

The battle against slavery had its early beginnings in England and was a war being waged during our Revolution.  We find that the battle in England had long coat-tails.  Notice the first part of the quote given in my last post.

“This infernal trafic [sic] originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Govt. constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it.

A name you may not be familiar with is William Wilberforce.  He was a member of the British Parliament and spent 30 years fighting to stamp slavery out of the British Empire.  That battle was just beginning in 1787 when Mason was writing these words.  So England had deliberately stopped Virginia, a colony that accepted slavery, from taking steps to stop the trade.  Even up to the eve of the American Civil War there were movements to do away with slavery.

Remember that at this time slavery was legal and accepted around the world.  Being against it made you the odd duck.  The United States had a lot of odd ducks.

To be continued...

homo unius libri

Opus 2014-9: Founders: The Legacy of Slavery, part 1 of 6

Slavery has always been with us.

Slavery is making a comeback.

Slavery has never been just an American issue.

The Founding Fathers struggled with the concept of slavery.  Even people who owned slaves realized that the institution was a problem and deeply immoral.  We often are taught that it was totally ignored, but that is not true.  The Constitutional Convention almost came apart because of the passion against it.  By the time the Constitution was ratified the northern part of the country had already either made it illegal or began the process of eliminating it.

One of the insightful Founders was George Mason.  He represented the paradox.  He hated slavery with a passion, yet he owned slaves.  It is easy to judge and hard to get into the minds of people living in a world where slavery was accepted and normal.

I find one quote of Mason rather prophetic.  This is from a Website at Gunston Hall.

“This infernal trafic [sic] originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Govt. constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone but the whole Union…. Slavery discourages arts & manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not [sic] be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities….[It is] essential in every point of view that the Genl. Govt. should have power to prevent the increase of slavery.”

To be continued...

homo unius libri