Your Opinion: History destroyed through ignorance

Tom Ault

Jefferson City

Dear Editor:

"Slave" as described in the dictionary is "a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them." The past should not be forgotten, but built on!

Had the African chieftains not sold their own people to increase their personal financial desires, the slavery we are now speaking of would not have happened. Long before the African slave trade in North America, Europeans conducted a transatlantic slave trade of our Native Americans. They were sold into England, France, Portugal and Spain.

In our own country, the slave trade was diluted through the Emancipation Declaration of 1862 and later eliminated in 1865 by the 13th Amendment. The abolitionists (See abolitionists at Wikipedia) included Africans such as Olaudah Equiano, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Ignatius Sancho, known as "The Sons of Africa," who worked side by side with British and American abolitionists. (There were approximately 3.5 million enslaved Africans prior to those articles of freedom.)

I was not taught in school that European colonists used the taking of Indians as slaves as a weapon of war. Even Native Americans used slavery as a tactic for survival. Slavery of Native Americans lasted well into the eighteenth century when it was largely replaced by African slavery. By 1830, about 319,599 free Blacks were in the United States, approximately 13.7 percent of the total Black population. A significant number of these free Blacks were the owners of slaves. The Census of 1830 lists 3,775 free Negroes who owned a total of 12,760 slaves. Anthony Johnson, for example, was a "free negro" who owned a 250-acre farm in Virginia during the 1650s, with five indentured servants under contract to him.

Unfortunately we still suffer today with human trafficking (white slavery), especially of young women. There is no worse human fault than that of slavery. If we, as a country, are to survive we must unite as a free country, not a country of hatred. Our educated races would agree these uncontrollable protests are ridiculous and the cost to repair the unnecessary damage is another add-on to our taxes.

When history is destroyed through ignorance, the future will not prevail.