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This is a great speech. Douglass' biographies are on my to-read list. The Declaration of Independence was an important and powerful document. An oft-overlooked

This is a great speech. Douglass' biographies are on my to-read list. The Declaration of Independence was an important and powerful document. An oft-overlooked part is that it set the stage for the end of slavery, a world-wide phenomenon that encompasses known human history, around the world. At the time of writing, it was more important to keep the country together than to end slavery, but just ~40 years after independence America ended the slave trade, and it was the new nation of the United States of America that freed all slaves less than 100 years after it's founding. The founders of America truly had a great vision, and created the foundation of a radically new kind of country that beget the end of slavery in the developed world.

nerdponx 8y ago
Didn't the British empire ban slaves and slavery on English soil at the start of the 19th century?
- oblio 8y ago
  It did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 It even pressed other countries to abolish it (not only for pure reasons, also for commercial ones, but they'd still make Machiavelli proud).
  - arethuza 8y ago
    The Royal Navy, which had historical links to slavery, even ended up positioning ships in the Atlantic specifically to stop slave ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
  - perkee 8y ago
    When the Union blockaded the Confederacy, cotton workers in Lancashire, England (who were out of work without raw material) rallied against the Royal Navy breaking the blockade though it would have been in their economic interest at the time. Solidarity forever. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-21057494 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-21057494
- chippy 8y ago
  The British banned slavery on the British Empire at the start of the 19th century. But the slave trade was banned on English soil way before that, in 1102. However, there were imported slaves in England, which got their freedom in the mid 18th century (via some court cases because slave trade etc was banned on english soil in the common law), effectively ending slavery as a whole in England. Then 50 or so years later, as the anti slave trade movement grew, this extended to the colonies and the whole empire.
- linuxkerneldev 8y ago
  > Didn't the British empire ban slaves and slavery on English soil at the start of the 19th century? Depends on your meaning and what dates. The British did NOT ban slavery "at the start of the 19th century" (meaning 1800s). They banned only the buying of slaves using English vessels and even then it was nominally enforced. In 1833, the English compensated approximately 3000 slavers for "loss of business assets" (yes, that's right, they compensated the slavers, not the slaves) including the ancestors of David Cameron, the Bazalgettes and other wealthy families. Almost instantly after the passing of the 1833 act, the British used indentured labour to replace slavery. Indentured labour was found to be equivalently cruel. The historical record shows death rates as high or higher than the slavery period for indentured labourers brought from South Asia to the West Indies and South East Asia. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/theforgottenslavesfromindi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/thefor...
  - dagaci 8y ago
    1835 "To finance the compensation (for slave owners), the British government had to take on a £15 million loan (40% of its budget) with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. The money was not paid back until 2015." This is a very interesting timeline about the abololition of slavery in different places and peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... i think it is also good to see things in the larger context
  - nerdponx 8y ago
    Looks like I got two completely different answers. Any thoughts on the sibling reply? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462423
  - zeveb 8y ago
    > yes, that's right, they compensated the slavers, not the slaves That seems fair: the slave-owners had undertaken obligations that by the standards, mores & laws of the time were normal, ethical & legal; changing mores & laws nullified those obligations, and hence they were compensated. You'll find that it's a lot easier to change someone's mind if you say, 'I want you to do something which is right, and I'll pay you to do it!' than if you say, 'I want you to do something which is right, and I'll punish you for doing it!' What's more important in your mind: freeing slaves or punishing slaveholders?
zorked 8y ago
For those not into the whole American exceptionalism thing, you could go with Haiti, whose revolution started in 1791 and where independence and the end of the slavery were fought for at the same time.
- Reactionary_ 8y ago
  Unfortunately the paths of Haiti and the US could not be more divergent. Independence has served the US much better than it has Haiti.
- mcguire 8y ago
  A dead reply from Reactionary_: "Unfortunately the paths of Haiti and the US could not be more divergent. Independence has served the US much better than it has Haiti."
arethuza 8y ago
Some people have pointed out some similarities between the Declaration of Independence and the much earlier Declaration of Arbroath: "As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." ;-) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jul/05/declaration-independence-arbroath-wordsmiths https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jul/05/declaration-indep...
MarkMc 8y ago
Yes the founders of America had great vision and developed a radically new kind of country. But I'm not convinced that they had great vision or positive impact with regard to slavery. Weren't they hypocrites to permit slavery while proclaiming proudly that all men are created equal? The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. The thirteenth amendment to the United States constitution abolished slavery in 1865. So a first approximation is that American independence extended slavery on US soil by 32 years.
- euroclydon 8y ago
  Sure, if you look at numbers in a timeline, but 1) the British couldn't hold on to the colonies in N. America and 2) based on #1, even if they had held on to the colonies, they would have had a heck of a time enforcing abolition in the Southern states area.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    That's an interesting point. If the American Revolution hadn't occurred in 1776 (or had failed), the Southern states at least would likely have rebelled if the English had attempted to abolish slavery in the 1830s-40s. Then you have to wonder whether the northern states would have sided with the South or with the English.
- spaginal 8y ago
  The British used indentured servitude well into the 20th century. Sure, it’s not the same kind of slavery movies enjoy depicting, but the practice was just as inhumane and brutal in many respects. Indians were particularly affected by it. America ended all forms of slavery, including indentured servitude, under the 13th amendment after the civil war. We shed a lot of blood as a country to get that result, the sacrifice of those men and women shouldn’t be so quickly cast aside. Our Founders knew the fight against slavery was coming, they discussed it extensively in historical records you can look up, but they had bigger fish to fry first when they founded the country. The fact the United States moved so quickly after the ratification of the Constitution to ban slave importation in 1808 shows they had a strong desire to get the issue solved. The country quickly chipped away at it with all things considered.
scarejunba 8y ago
> The founders of America truly had a great vision, and created the foundation of a radically new kind of country that beget the end of slavery in the developed world. This is just bad history. What on Earth possessed you to write this? One could refute it but it's so made up it's practically fan fiction of the history of the world.
olavk 8y ago
> that beget the end of slavery in the developed world. Where did you learn this? This is absolutely wrong. Most developed nations had abolished slavery before the US did. A few, like the Ottoman Empire and Brazil was later, but to frame the US as a front-runner is absurd.
jacobwilliamroy 8y ago
My reading of the U.S. Civil War is that tensions began when the federal government wanted to accelerate to the development of high tech industries in the northern states by increasing tariffs on manufactured imports. This hit the southern states hard because their agricultural economies require a consumption of manufactured goods to produce raw material; equipment bought from Britain would be used to make cotton which is shipped back to Britain to be manufactured and exported again. This dynamic explains why the British elite were in favor of the south (possibly hoping they would regress the entirety of the U.S. to an agricultural economy), while the British public were more often sympathetic towards the north. This action, among other things the federal government did, resembled the old English tyranny that everyone's parents and their parents' parents had fought and died to be rid of. Slave-plantations are unsustainable. A workforce must be free before it can be trained to farm in such a way that does not rapidly deplete the land; this is one fact which contributed to the idea of white supremacy, as free workers were white, and free workers were taught more skills. With the rapid expansion of U.S. territory this would not become a problem in any single man's lifetime. I believe that those slave owning people who backed secession may have seen slavery driving the U.S. expansion, rather than the other way around, but that's just an opinion. Anyway, coming back to emancipation, the Lincoln administration had a much clearer view of the relationship between capitalism and slavery since they were outside of the southern thought bubble. Plus anyone could see the potential in having former-slave armies: radicalized fighters with unlimited morale. "Freeing the slaves" is always a good idea when one is at war with slave owners. Lincoln is one of the greatest presidents my country has ever had but in my view, the Civil War had almost nothing to do with asserting the equality of all people. When viewing it on paper it seems to me to have been about solidifying the authority of the federal government, as well as industrializing the U.S. economy to replace and eventually compete with foreign manufacturing. Also, the U.S. is not a new kind of country. There were already several confederations of independent nations, living in the area when the Europeans arrived and began colonizing. I will concede that having a central government which can create and apply policy to all members of the confederation was "new" it was not "radically new" as it was only a remix of other, well-established models of government.

nerdponx 8y ago

Didn't the British empire ban slaves and slavery on English soil at the start of the 19th century?

oblio 8y ago
It did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 It even pressed other countries to abolish it (not only for pure reasons, also for commercial ones, but they'd still make Machiavelli proud).
- arethuza 8y ago
  The Royal Navy, which had historical links to slavery, even ended up positioning ships in the Atlantic specifically to stop slave ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
- perkee 8y ago
  When the Union blockaded the Confederacy, cotton workers in Lancashire, England (who were out of work without raw material) rallied against the Royal Navy breaking the blockade though it would have been in their economic interest at the time. Solidarity forever. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-21057494 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-21057494
chippy 8y ago
The British banned slavery on the British Empire at the start of the 19th century. But the slave trade was banned on English soil way before that, in 1102. However, there were imported slaves in England, which got their freedom in the mid 18th century (via some court cases because slave trade etc was banned on english soil in the common law), effectively ending slavery as a whole in England. Then 50 or so years later, as the anti slave trade movement grew, this extended to the colonies and the whole empire.
linuxkerneldev 8y ago
> Didn't the British empire ban slaves and slavery on English soil at the start of the 19th century? Depends on your meaning and what dates. The British did NOT ban slavery "at the start of the 19th century" (meaning 1800s). They banned only the buying of slaves using English vessels and even then it was nominally enforced. In 1833, the English compensated approximately 3000 slavers for "loss of business assets" (yes, that's right, they compensated the slavers, not the slaves) including the ancestors of David Cameron, the Bazalgettes and other wealthy families. Almost instantly after the passing of the 1833 act, the British used indentured labour to replace slavery. Indentured labour was found to be equivalently cruel. The historical record shows death rates as high or higher than the slavery period for indentured labourers brought from South Asia to the West Indies and South East Asia. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/theforgottenslavesfromindi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/dec/12/thefor...
- dagaci 8y ago
  1835 "To finance the compensation (for slave owners), the British government had to take on a £15 million loan (40% of its budget) with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. The money was not paid back until 2015." This is a very interesting timeline about the abololition of slavery in different places and peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... i think it is also good to see things in the larger context
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Looks like I got two completely different answers. Any thoughts on the sibling reply? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462423
- zeveb 8y ago
  > yes, that's right, they compensated the slavers, not the slaves That seems fair: the slave-owners had undertaken obligations that by the standards, mores & laws of the time were normal, ethical & legal; changing mores & laws nullified those obligations, and hence they were compensated. You'll find that it's a lot easier to change someone's mind if you say, 'I want you to do something which is right, and I'll pay you to do it!' than if you say, 'I want you to do something which is right, and I'll punish you for doing it!' What's more important in your mind: freeing slaves or punishing slaveholders?

zorked 8y ago

For those not into the whole American exceptionalism thing, you could go with Haiti, whose revolution started in 1791 and where independence and the end of the slavery were fought for at the same time.

Reactionary_ 8y ago
Unfortunately the paths of Haiti and the US could not be more divergent. Independence has served the US much better than it has Haiti.
mcguire 8y ago
A dead reply from Reactionary_: "Unfortunately the paths of Haiti and the US could not be more divergent. Independence has served the US much better than it has Haiti."

arethuza 8y ago

Some people have pointed out some similarities between the Declaration of Independence and the much earlier Declaration of Arbroath: "As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." ;-) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jul/05/declaration-independence-arbroath-wordsmiths https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jul/05/declaration-indep...

MarkMc 8y ago

Yes the founders of America had great vision and developed a radically new kind of country. But I'm not convinced that they had great vision or positive impact with regard to slavery. Weren't they hypocrites to permit slavery while proclaiming proudly that all men are created equal? The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire. The thirteenth amendment to the United States constitution abolished slavery in 1865. So a first approximation is that American independence extended slavery on US soil by 32 years.

euroclydon 8y ago
Sure, if you look at numbers in a timeline, but 1) the British couldn't hold on to the colonies in N. America and 2) based on #1, even if they had held on to the colonies, they would have had a heck of a time enforcing abolition in the Southern states area.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  That's an interesting point. If the American Revolution hadn't occurred in 1776 (or had failed), the Southern states at least would likely have rebelled if the English had attempted to abolish slavery in the 1830s-40s. Then you have to wonder whether the northern states would have sided with the South or with the English.
spaginal 8y ago
The British used indentured servitude well into the 20th century. Sure, it’s not the same kind of slavery movies enjoy depicting, but the practice was just as inhumane and brutal in many respects. Indians were particularly affected by it. America ended all forms of slavery, including indentured servitude, under the 13th amendment after the civil war. We shed a lot of blood as a country to get that result, the sacrifice of those men and women shouldn’t be so quickly cast aside. Our Founders knew the fight against slavery was coming, they discussed it extensively in historical records you can look up, but they had bigger fish to fry first when they founded the country. The fact the United States moved so quickly after the ratification of the Constitution to ban slave importation in 1808 shows they had a strong desire to get the issue solved. The country quickly chipped away at it with all things considered.

scarejunba 8y ago

> The founders of America truly had a great vision, and created the foundation of a radically new kind of country that beget the end of slavery in the developed world. This is just bad history. What on Earth possessed you to write this? One could refute it but it's so made up it's practically fan fiction of the history of the world.

olavk 8y ago

> that beget the end of slavery in the developed world. Where did you learn this? This is absolutely wrong. Most developed nations had abolished slavery before the US did. A few, like the Ottoman Empire and Brazil was later, but to frame the US as a front-runner is absurd.

jacobwilliamroy 8y ago

My reading of the U.S. Civil War is that tensions began when the federal government wanted to accelerate to the development of high tech industries in the northern states by increasing tariffs on manufactured imports. This hit the southern states hard because their agricultural economies require a consumption of manufactured goods to produce raw material; equipment bought from Britain would be used to make cotton which is shipped back to Britain to be manufactured and exported again. This dynamic explains why the British elite were in favor of the south (possibly hoping they would regress the entirety of the U.S. to an agricultural economy), while the British public were more often sympathetic towards the north. This action, among other things the federal government did, resembled the old English tyranny that everyone's parents and their parents' parents had fought and died to be rid of. Slave-plantations are unsustainable. A workforce must be free before it can be trained to farm in such a way that does not rapidly deplete the land; this is one fact which contributed to the idea of white supremacy, as free workers were white, and free workers were taught more skills. With the rapid expansion of U.S. territory this would not become a problem in any single man's lifetime. I believe that those slave owning people who backed secession may have seen slavery driving the U.S. expansion, rather than the other way around, but that's just an opinion. Anyway, coming back to emancipation, the Lincoln administration had a much clearer view of the relationship between capitalism and slavery since they were outside of the southern thought bubble. Plus anyone could see the potential in having former-slave armies: radicalized fighters with unlimited morale. "Freeing the slaves" is always a good idea when one is at war with slave owners. Lincoln is one of the greatest presidents my country has ever had but in my view, the Civil War had almost nothing to do with asserting the equality of all people. When viewing it on paper it seems to me to have been about solidifying the authority of the federal government, as well as industrializing the U.S. economy to replace and eventually compete with foreign manufacturing. Also, the U.S. is not a new kind of country. There were already several confederations of independent nations, living in the area when the Europeans arrived and began colonizing. I will concede that having a central government which can create and apply policy to all members of the confederation was "new" it was not "radically new" as it was only a remix of other, well-established models of government.