Inspired by the thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=253407 , it brought up an old question, what ‘people’ can be held up and celebrated in ending slavery as a standard practice in the world?
That my friend is a question I can’t answer. But I have always believed that our history books have mistakenly celebrated Abraham Lincoln as a “Champion” against the Slave Trade when he clearly had little interest in freeing them. There was one of our Presidents that I believe really was a Champion against slavery that Many people don’t even know about. That president’s name was Thomas Jefferson. (our third one). I believe that he had a Black woman as a mistress while serving in office and even bore a few children by her. If memory serves me correctly, I believe her name was Sally Hemmings. If this is correct (and I am quite sure that it is), this made Sally Hemmings the first and only woman of color to serve indirectly as America’s First Lady. :eek:
If you want to, you can look HERE for a more detailed story about it 
The UK deserves a lot of credit.
UNICEF: Slavery runs in 53 African nations
Slavery has always been with us and did not disappear for a day after the U.S. Civil War or even after Brazil became the last major country to abolish slavery in 1888.
The U.S. had had a long-standing abolitionist movement, mainly supported by Christian churches. Quakers especially crusaded against slavery, and had a long history of doing so in Britain as well. They worked on the local level to get the northern states to eliminate slavery. But they were aided by the economic fact that slave labor was far more valuable on southern plantations than in northern factories. If this had not been the case, it’s difficult to say whether the governments would have paid any attention to them.
The African slave trade did not stop even when the various North and South American countries abolished it. The trade merely shifted to the Middle East and other parts of Asia, with an estimated two million slaves taken there after our Civil War.
No one thing brought U.S. slavery to a public halt, and it goes on behind the scenes wherever the economics makes it favorable.
IIRC, several latin-american countries abolished slavery before the UK.
So having sex with a slave makes someone a Champion against slavery? Apparently there were a lot more aboltionists in the ante-bellum South than anyone ever realized.
Well, there was Chile. Britain abolished slavery in 1833, I think Chile did it the year before. But they only did it because they (like many South American countries) had strong ties with Britain and they saw which way the wind was blowing. It was obvious that Britain was going to abolish slavery long before 1833. Chile moved slightly before Britain because the British parliament is a slow-moving thing.
It took a while for it to pass through the parliamentary process and become law. But Chile were able to change their law quickly in readiness for the inevitable change that was to come in British law. So any Latin American countries that changed their law before Britain only did it because they knew that Britain was about to outlaw slavery worldwide. They didn’t do it out of any internal movements against the slave trade.
Britain were the most important trading partner of the time (like the US now) so if Britain said to your country: “We will no longer trade with you unless you abolish slavery” - you abolished slavery or you starved.
Once Britain abolished slavery they then went on to enforce this ban with some relish (born of stern Victorian morality). They set up the Anti-Slavery Squadron which was a fleet of ships that patrolled the shores of Africa looking for slave ships. Whenever they found a slave ship they boarded it, confiscated the slaves and took them back to Africa.
The Anti-Slavery Squadron was expanded as the years went by and, at one point, it was the biggest fleet in the world. In one particular year, it intercepted something like half a million slaves and returned them back to Africa.
It was impossible for the captains of these ships to return everyone to their individual village so they set up a town where all the returned slaves could live if they wished.
They called this town Freetown and it’s still there. It’s the capital of present day Sierre Leone.
oops sorry, Sierra Leone, typo.
I’ve been searching for a site to quote my theory, but I do believe that when Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of Independence, the first statement he made in it was that “all men are created free and equal”. I believe that when he wrote this, many of his political rivals stated that Sally Hemmings had a substantial amount of influence over both this and many more of the decisions that he made while in office. (I think that someone even made a movie about this once). I’m still serching for more info to site this.
Someone please step in and correct me if I am wrong…
I believe that before Thomas Jefferson served as President, he was once the ambassador of France, It was somehere around this time that his wife passed away. Thomas Jefferson vowed by her deathbed that he would never marry another, and grievenly watched her slowly pass away. Later on he was chosen by congress to serve as Americans Ambassador to France with the instructions to make every attempt to purchase the Lousiana Territories within North America from the King. While France was on the brink of a civil revolution, Thomas Jefferson had Sally Hemmings accompany him as his "personal companion"and saw to it that she not only be paid for the work she did while in France, but to also be given an advanced education from some of the best scholars that France could offer.
After returning to the United Stares with a victory under his belt, it wasn’t revealed to the general congress or the press about his intimate relations with Sally Hemmings until after his second term in office as President. Many of his rivals demanded that he sell her immediately and he outright refused. I believe that it was even noted in his memorars that he and Sally once were involved in a privately “heated” discussion over how the LLousiana terrirories were to be used. When it became known to her that they would be used as Slave States, she asked him "How can he sit back and allow something like this to occur knowing that their son whose carrying both his blood and hers may someday become a slave himself (if not his offspring) on the very plantations that he is allowing congress to create.
Thomas Jefferson later gave a speech to congress asking that slavery be halted immediately and congress refused believeing that African Americans lacked the intelligence to learn the necessary skills to functions like “civilized human beings”. The Nations Census Breau only counted slaves as 1/3rd of a person and were not willing to change their views in the least. With this Thomas Jefferson sent for Sally to be presented to congress to demonstrate that with the proper training that slaves, once freed, could be taught to function in society just like anyone else. Sally Hemming stood before Congress and gave a very intense speech that was not only written by her own hand, but also demonstrated that she was not only well versed in the english language with a vocabulary that exceeded even most members of Congress, but was very well versed in French as well.
With this demonstration still in effect, Several members of congress went into an absolute rage and many of Thomas Jeffersons rivals demanded his immediate resignation. Natrually he refused. His adversaries from that point on tried every trick in the book to have him impeached, and every attempt failed. Even after his term in office was complete, his rivals still continued to rid themselves of him for good fearing that since he was allowing Sally Hemming access to his presidential Library, she was in a position to teach all of his servants how to read and write for themselves. This by far was his rivals worst nightmare, a plantation full of blacks with the ability to forge signatures and write freedom papers for any and every runaway slave that they encountered . I believe the way they got him was that they managed to unite everyone who bought, sold, or traded for products that were produced on his plantation to halt all business with him thus driving him into bankruptcy. (I think the IRS had a heavy hand in this too)
Thomas Jefferson Died from alchoholism on July 4th 1826 (50 years to the day the Declaration of Independance was signed). Although he never actually freed Sally or left authorization for it in his will , I do believe that he kept her very close to his
heart frearing that if he did free her that she would leave him and he would never see her again.
Its been a very long time since I’ve done any research on this and my memory of every detail is somewhat spotted, but if anyone out there who is familiar with this trilogy sees anything misleading in any of the above statements, please feel free to step in and make any corrections you feel necessary.
Whoever told you slavery was at an end?
Slavery is alive and well in Sudan, but nobody seems to mind much. Probably because it’s more than a little difficult to blame either the US or Israel – and of course then it’s a lot less interesting.
Debt slaves in India ain’t going nowhere.
Also sex slaves from the former Soviet republics seem to be a booming business.
Starguard, that is nonsense. Sally Hemmings never was remotely Jefferson’s “First Lady”. Jefferson carefully kept his relationship with her a secret. (I’ll presume that there really was a relationship. It’s quite probable, but it’s not absolutely certain. The only knowledge of it is a lot of rumor and a DNA test which indicates that Hemming’s descendents were also descendents of either Jefferson or one of his nephews.) He didn’t live with her most of the time. Although there was a persistent rumor about the relationship, he never even came close to admitting it. Had he done so, it would have been an almost unprecedented scandal. While there was an unstated assumption that a fair proportion of slaveholders were sleeping with their female slaves, no slaveholder publicly acknowledged this.
Could you give us a citation that Sally Hemmings gave a speech to Congress? I’ve never read such a thing, and it sounds totally uncharacteristic of the times. No supporter of slavery (and that was most of Congress during Jefferson’s administration) would have stood to be lectured to by a slave. The rest of what you say about Jefferson’s presidency is also nonsense. There was no attempt to impeach him, although he wasn’t universally popular. Your claims about the end of Jefferson’s life are also mostly nonsense and not even well-faked nonsense. Your claim that “the IRS had a heavy hand in this too” is the most obvious case. The IRS didn’t even exist till the twentieth century.
If you want to read a good book about Jefferson’s relationship to slavery, read “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills. Although Jefferson may have disliked slavery on some personal level, he never opposed it. He knew that he was elected only by the support of slaveholders. Had he opposed slavery, he would never have gotten into office. He never connected the statement that “all men are created equal” with slavery. It’s more likely that he didn’t truly mean “all men” in the sense we think of today. He meant somthing more like “all white property-holding males.”
I’ve printed out this entire posting and today I am going to go to the library and do a lot of digging around to find as much info as I can on this. I can surely remember reading about Sallys speech, but I can’t remember at this time from what source. Today I will go and dig up as many references as possible about the relationship that they (supposedly) had…Will be back later on today.
From doing a brief search on the web, it seems that there are several variations pertaining to the affairs od President Jefferson and the relations he had with Sally Hemmings. Here is just one of many postings that somewhat prove that this is a topic of great controversy. Please read it through. From this alone I am starting to get the feeling that there may be several versions of what actually happened back then, and no matter how much our present historians and DNA specialist dig around, it is possible that the actual truth may never be known. 
There was even a movie made about this that I recorded off Television once that I still have on a VHS tape a few years back. I will take a look at it today and post here who made it and if possible where to find a copy. I can’t remember where I read about her speech to congress, but as soon as I find it I will return here and post that too as a reference for all to see.
*I’m starting to get the feeling that this topic will lead me the exact same direction Homers Greek Trilogy “The Odessey” did. That story has so many different versions that it seems almost impossible to keep up with them all. *
If you have both the time and Patience, [url=“http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=sally+hemmings+speech+to+congress&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=”] HERE is an entire webpage of conflicting story’s pertaning to President Jeffersons life with Sally
**Kanicbird **- I apoligise for taking attention away from your origional question. My comments and contributions were not aimed at any attempt to Hi-jack your post
Lets try this again… Click here for reference to above posting :smack:
Very, very slow, then, since I found very different dates :
Chile : 1811 (that would be more than 20 years before the UK, hence unrelated)
Argentina : 1817
Peru : 1821
Several countrries in central america : 1824
Mexico : 1829
Uruguay and Bolivia :1830
Go to the library where they have actual books. Ask the librarian for the National Geographic September 2003, I stole it from a doctor’s office last week. Read the first article Slavery 2003. It is about slavery in the world today including the United States. It says that there are more people living in slavery in America today than all of the 1800’s. It includes a story of a Guatamalen immigrant that was forced to pick cucumbers 12-14 hours a day at gun point in South Carolina, my home. There is a site listed for a State Department paper on human trafficing in America today. Read it all, slavery is aive and well here, today. I was appalled.
Precision : Actually, Chile, Peru and Argentina abolished slavery progressively (I’m not sure what it means in practical term…apparently the children of slaves were born free. At least it’s the way it worked in Peru)
Chile began in 1811, definitely abolished it in 1826 (So, unrelated to the UK)
Argentina began in 1817, definitely abolished ionly in 1853
Peru began in 1821, definitely abolished in 1854
Also :
First country to abolish slavery temporarily : France in 1894 (reestablished in 1802)
First country to abolish slave trade : Denmark in 1802
You know, this has got me thinking…after the europeans abolished slavery, what ever happened to the “now free” populations that should have existed afterwards?
Also claroibscur- I think you meant France abolished slavery in 1794, (not 1894) then reestablished it in 1802. 