Two Ships, One Lie — 1619 & US History

The Story of 1619, the Birth of Slavery in America, as told in 1861 (US Civil War)

Keith Wright
The Freedom Ring : A Progressive Theology
12 min readJul 17, 2020

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The Africans of the slave bark “Wildfire” — The slave deck of the bark “Wildfire,” brought into Key West on April 30, 1860 — Harper’s Weekly, 1860

Introduction by Michael Soussan, (Author, Journalist, and former UN Humanitarian Worker) who unearths and presents to us a speech given months before the Civil War broke out, given by the Abolitionist Pastor from Brooklyn, Henry Ward Beecher. This took place at Plymouth Church on Jan. 4th, 1861. The Speech is Titled — “Our Blameworthiness”

The year 1619 has recently become the subject of a series of articles called “The 1619 Project” published by The New York Times because it narrates the origins of America’s enduring race problem.

It can be said that the early American Puritans traded in slavery from day one. On the same day that the Puritans arrived in the North, another ship with African bonded slaves reached the American coast in the South. The Puritans — whose religion preached a purist adherence to biblical values, were not “pure” when it came to slavery. From day one, argues Henry Ward Beecher, this hypocrisy plagued America’s identity as a nation. He notes in the passage below how uncomfortable it made him feel to be a northern abolitionist while he was wearing shirts made with cotton picked by slaves. Herein he explains how slavery was very much a Northern problem, too, even as the North began expressing abolitionist sentiments.

The Leading Facts of American History - The First Negro Slaves Brought to Virginia

Only recently have voices re-emerged to call institutionalized racism a “white-on-white” problem to a large extent — in that it is a debate to be had between whites; a debate about how they can look at themselves in the mirror and call themselves a nation founded by puritans. This here goes to the root of how the Declaration of Independence, which declared every human equal, could have been written, in part, by slave owners. It would seem the hypocrisy ran deep in the American colonies, and that it took a man of puritan Christian faith to point this out.

The drawing below featuring a “slave-catcher” (whose lucrative jobs have served to fund some of America’s first police stations) shows us how this hypocrisy rapidly (and starkly, to this day) enwrapped America’s “law and order” institutions with racism — in both cases, profitably.

“A Queer Recontre,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 7, 1863.

As you will see in Henry Ward Beecher’s message, he states that slavery has existed in almost every society on earth, but that, what was supposed to set Christianity apart in this regard was their definition — derived from the Hebrew definition of Slaves — never adhered to the Roman definition of slaves as being sub-humans. Having themselves been slaves in Egypt, Hebrews gave their servants, Jewish and non-Jewish slaves, the Sabbath off, and never considered them sub-human in any sense. While this distinction may seem irrelevant to us today, it served at the time to debunk the claims that Christianity and slavery could be compatible because the word “slaves” appears in biblical texts. In Beecher’s opinion, Christianity and Slavery were incompatible because the bible never referred to servants as subhumans — a distinction that was all to conveniently lost, even on the first self-described Puritans who founded this country.

In retrospect, Beecher’s sermon argues for America to re-examine its own identity — and perhaps live up to the mythical values on which it was created rather than on the hypocritical reality, which, as far back as 1619, governed its growth. Spoken barely 3 months before the Civil War broke out in America, which ended up decimating the nation to the tune of a half million deaths. Henry Ward Beecher’s words resonate today as they did in 1861, when racism and policing once again spark an air of growing social conflict.

“Our Blameworthiness” — Speech by the Abolitionist Preacher, Henry Ward Beecher — 1861, Brooklyn, NY

Speech Given in Brooklyn A Couple Months Before the Civil War Broke Out

Henry Ward Beecher at Lecturing on Freedom, Love, and Liberty in Brooklyn, NY, late 1850's

In one and the same year, 1619, English ships landed the Puritans in New England and negro slaves in Virginia, two seeds of the two systems that were destined to find here a growth and strength unparalleled in history.

It would have seemed almost a theatrical arrangement, had these two opposing elements, Puritan liberty and Roman servitude, (for, whatever men may say, American slavery is not Hebrew slavery; it is Roman slavery). We borrowed every single one of the elemental principles of our system of slavery from the Roman law, and not from the old Hebrew. The fundamental feature of the Hebrew system was that the slave was a man, and not a chattel, while the fundamental feature of the Roman System was that he was a chattel, and not a man. The essential principle of the old Mosaic servitude made it the duty of the master to treat his servants as men and to instruct them in his own religion, and in the matters of his own household. While the essential principle of Roman Servitude allowed the master to treat his servants to all intents and purposes as chattels or goods, it would have seemed almost a theatrical arrangement had these opposing forces, Puritan liberty and Roman servitude, divided the land between them, and, inspiring different governments, grown up different nations. In contrast, that the world might see this experiment fairly compared and worked out to the bitter end.

A drawing depicting the slave trade from Harper’s Weekly in 1860.

But it was not to be so. The same government has nourished both elements. Our Constitution nourished twins. It carried Africa on its left bosom, and Anglo-Saxon on its right bosom. Imagine these two, drawing milk from the same bosom, have waxed strong, and stand today federated into the one republic. One side of the body politic has grown fair and healthy and strong; the other side has grown up as a wen grows, and a wart, vast, but the vaster the weaker.

We have yielded new territory to this terrible disease. They have demanded, and we have permitted, concessions, legislative compromises, constructions. Peace and friendship have been the ostensible pleas. The ambition of political parties and the short-sighted interests of commerce have been the real and active motives of this wicked consent. We who dwell in the North are not without responsibility for this sin. Its wonderful growth and the arrogance of its claims have been in part through our delinquency.

As our business today is not to find fault with the South, I am not discussing this matter with reference to them at all, but only with reference to our own individual profit. Because the South loved money, they augmented this evil; and because the North loved money, and that quiet which befits industry and commerce, she has refused to insist upon her moral convictions, in days past, and yielded to every demand carrying slavery forward in this nation. You and I are guilty of the spread of slavery unless we have exerted, normally and legitimately, every influence in our power against it.

You call it the dirty work of the Democratic Party to catch fugitive slaves for the Southern people. We are willing to perform that dirty work.” John A. Logan, in the Illinois State Legislature, Dec. 9th, 1859. Puck Magazine

If we have said, “To agitate the question imperils manufacturing, imperils shipping, imperils real estate, imperils quiet and peace,” and if, then, we have sacrificed purity and honesty, if we have bought the right to make money here by letting slavery spread and grow there, we have been doing just the same thing that they have. It has been one gigantic bargain, only working out in different ways, North and South. It is for us just as much as for them that the slave works; and we acquiesce.

North Contributing to Slavery

We clothe ourselves with the cotton which the slave tills. Is he scorched? Is he lashed? Does he water the crop with his sweat and tears? It is you and I that wear the shirt and consume the luxury. Our looms and our factories are largely built on the slave’s bones. We live on his labor. I confess I see no way to escape a part of the responsibility for slavery. I feel guilty in part for this system.

First use of the Cotton Gin, Harper’s weekly, 18 Dec. 1869 — Artist : William L. Sheppard

If the relinquishment of the articles which come from slave labor would tend even remotely to abridge or end the evil, I would without hesitation forego every one; but I do not see that it would help the matter. I am an unwilling partner in the slave system. I take to myself a part of the sin; I confess it before God; and pray for some way to be opened by which I may be freed from that which I hate bitterly. But this state of facts makes it eminently proper for us to confess our sin, and the wrong done to the slave.

All the wrongs, the crimes of some, the abuse of others, the neglect, the misuse, the ignorance, the separations, the scourgings, — these cannot be rolled into a cloud to overhang the South alone. Every one of us has something to confess. Those who have been most scrupulous, if God should judge their life, their motives, and their conduct, would find that they, too, had some account in this great bill of slavery. The whole nation is guilty. There is not a lumberman on the verge of Maine, not a settler on the far distant northern prairies, not an emigrant on the Pacific shore, that is not politically and commercially in alliance with this great evil.

THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH — Harper’s Weekly— 1861 — SOUTH. “Don’t you dar to talk to me, Sir!’ NORTH. “Oh! yeou be derned !” //\\ NORTH. “ Lookee here, SOUTH, I’m gittin’ rayther cold.” SOUTH. “Well, NORTH, can’t say I’m cold, but am bloody hungry. Now — you want my Cotton.” NORTH. “No, dern yeou, you want my Corn ! Yeou — acknowledge the Corn — “ SOUTH. “ No ; you Cotton to me.” THEY COMPROMISE !
THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH — Harper’s Weekly — 1861 — THE COMPROMISE (Section First and Last.) “The NORTH, in consideration of the fact that the SOUTH ACKNOWLEDGES THE CORN, do hereby agree to COTTON TO THE SOUTH.” //\\ Glorious, magnificent, and triumphant effect of the Compromise. The Constitution and the to be supported. Our Ramparts to be built of COTTON AND CORN. Hurrah-h-h-h !

If you put poison into your system in any way, there is not a nerve that is not affected by it; there is not a muscle that does not feel it; there is not a bone, nor a tissue, nor one single part nor parcel of your whole body, that can escape it. And our body politic is pervaded with this deadly injustice, and every one of us is more or less, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly, implicated in it. We have a great deal to confess before we cast reproaches upon the South. And while I hold Southern citizens to the full and dreadful measure of their guilt before God, and would, if I were settled there, tell them their sin as plainly as I tell you your sin, it is for us today, and here, to consider our own part in this matter; and to that I shall speak during the residue of my remarks.

The History of Slavery in America

Originally, we were guilty of active participation in slavery. It seems very strange to take up the old Boston books and read the history of slavery in Boston. We of the North early abandoned the practice of holding slaves. But it is said that ours is a cheap philanthropy; that, having rid our slaves by selling them, we turn round and preach to the South about the sin of holding theirs. There is nothing more false than such a charge. There is nothing more illustrious in the history of the State of New York, and of the Northern States generally, than the method by which they freed themselves from slavery.

Henry Ward Beecher and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe

The schools, the academies, the colleges, the intelligence, the brain of this nation, at that time, were in the North, and in the North I include all the territory north of Mason and Dixon’s line. Churches, religious institutions, those moral elements that always went with the posterity of the Puritans, were then also in the North. When our Constitution was adopted, — when the wheels of our mighty Confederacy were adjusted, and the pendulum began to swing, at that time the public sentiment was in favor of liberty.

All the institutions were prepared for liberty, and all the public men were on the side of liberty. And to the North, because she was the brain, — to the North, because she was the moral center and heart of this Confederacy, was given this estate; for in this twenty-five or thirty years the North predominated in the councils of the nation, and fixed its institutions, as the South has fixed its policy since.

America Answers to God

What, then, having this trust put into her hands, is the account of her stewardship which the North has to render? If now, after three quarters of a century have passed away, God should summon the North to his judgment-bar and say, “I gave you a continent in which, though there was slavery, it was perishing; I gave you a nation in which the sentiment was for liberty and against oppression; I gave you a nation in which the tendencies were all for freedom and against slavery; I gave you the supreme intelligence; I gave you the moral power in a thousand pulpits, a thousand books, a thousand Bibles, and said, ‘Take this nation, administer it, and render up your trust’: “ — if now, after three quarters of a century have passed away, God should thus summon the North to his judgment-bar, what would be the account which she would have to render — the North, that was strongest in the head and in the heart, and that took as fair a heritage as men ever attempted to administer today liberty is dishonored and discrowned, and slavery is rampant, in this nation. And do you think to creep out of the responsibility and say, “We are not to blame?”

“Morning Mustering of the ‘Contraband’ at Fortress Monroe, on Their Way to Their Day’s Work, under the Pay and Direction of the U.S. — from a Sketch by Our Artist at Fortress Monroe” — Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper — 1861

What have you been doing with your intelligence, your books, your schools, your Bibles, your missionaries, your ministers ? Where, where is the artillery that God Almighty gave you, park upon park, for use in this contest, provided and prepared for that special emergency? Much as I love the North, and I love every drop of Puritan blood that the world ever saw, because it seems to me that Puritan blood means blood touched with Christ’s blood, I take to myself part of the shame, and mourn over the delinquency of the North, that, having committed to it the eminent task of preserving the liberties of this nation, it has suffered them to be eclipsed.

Today there are more Slave States than there were States confederated when this nation came together. And instead of having three or four hundred thousand slaves, we have more than four millions; instead of a traffic suppressed, you and I are witnesses today of a traffic to be reopened, — of rebellion, treasonable war, bloodshed, separate independence, for the sake of reopening the African slave-trade. So came this country into the hands of the North in the beginning, and so it is going out of her hands in the end.

Our Doctrine of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence

‘Of Course He Wants To Vote The Democratic Ticket,’ — Democratic “Reformer” “You’re as free as air, ain’t you? Say you are , or I’ll blow your black head off!” — published in Harper’s Weekly in October 1876 —

There never was such a stewardship; and if this Confederacy shall be broken up, if the Gulf States shall demand a division of the country, and the intermediate States shall go off, and two empires shall be established, no steward that has lived since God’s sun shone on the earth will have such an account to render of an estate taken under such favorable auspices, as the North will have to render of this great national estate which was committed to her trust. It is an astounding sin. It is an unparalleled guilt. The vengeance and zeal of our hearts toward the South might be somewhat tempered by the reflection that we have been so faithless and so wicked. That is not the worst. That is the material side. We have stood with all the elements of power, boasting of our influence, and really swaying, in many respects, the affairs of this continent; and yet we have not only seen this tremendous increase of slavery, but we have permitted the doctrines of liberty themselves to be stricken with leprosy.

And today, today, TODAY, if you were to put it to the vote of this whole people, I do not know that you could get a majority for any doctrine of liberty but this: that each man has a right to be himself free.

The great doctrine of liberty is concisely expressed by the Declaration of Independence; and it is this: that all men are free, born with equal political rights, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And there is no true right that is not founded on this doctrine: That liberty which is good for me is indispensable for everybody. A right love of liberty inspires a man to say, “I will have it and everybody shall have it.”

Henry Ward Beecher in his 30's

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Keith Wright
The Freedom Ring : A Progressive Theology

My interests are in data, machine learning, analytics, business, history, religion & politics.