Rep. Michelle Bachmann A Revisionist Historian?

Revisionist? No, but, like you, she seems to be over simplifying history. The history of slavery in the U.S. was not as black and white (no pun intended....ok, slightly intended). For example, were you aware that not all slaves were black and that not all slave owners were white? In fact, one of the first entrepreneurial slave owners was a black man who "won" his slaves in a court case (and who's name I am desperately searching for as I write). They were originally indentured servants who left before their term was finished, he took them to court and the judge ruled that as a result, they were never to be free, thus establishing the system of permanent slavery for a person. This is how many slaves started out. Another such story is of a former slave who was simply named "April A". Upon receiving his freedom, he legally changed his name to William Ellison, naming himself after his former master as a show of gratitude and began his entrepreneurship. His family eventually became exceedingly wealthy, even by white standards of the day. They held one of the largest cotton gin empires in existence at the time. In 1860, the Richards family of Louisiana, who ran a sugar cane plantation, owned 152 slaves. They were one of 6 black plantation owners who kept slaves in that state Of the $1.5 million dollars in taxable property owned by free blacks in Charleston, N.C alone, more than $300 thousand of that value was in the form of slaves (I guess as property, slaves were taxable) This was in a state where at least 125 free black families owned slaves. And in North Carolina, nearly 70 free black families owned slaves. Ok, by now you are saying to yourself "All of that is irrelevant to my topic!". Well, yes......and no. It goes to my point that history isn't always as clear cut as it is taught or believed to be. Such is the case with the founding fathers and slavery as well. To go in to each of the men you listed and describe the subtle nuances of each of their stories would take far more room than we have. SO I will focus on Jefferson here, since I covered him and slavery in a discussion a long time ago and already have the information available. Now, it is commonly taught that Jefferson owned slaves. There is no disputing this. It was the "thing" of the time, a time in which not many saw it as evil. what isn't commonly taught it that Jefferson, despite owning slaves early on, was not very comfortable with the practice of slavery, calling it a "moral and political depravity" As time progressed, he became more and more openly against it and began acting to end it. So, Lets have a look at some of Jefferson's thoughts on slavery: [i]"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [blacks] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." "Do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people... On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity." "Nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery; and certainly, nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object." "I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way." "I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe." "There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. . . ." [/i] He then goes on to describe what he believes will be the divine consequences of slavery: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a context. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil." But words alone do not an abolitionist make. So what had he done to back up his beliefs with action? Quite a bit it turns out. As a young Lawyer, in the case of Howell v. Netherland, he argued that "we are all born free" and that slavery was contrary to natural law. He lost the case as the courts dismissed his argument. in 1769, as a Virginia state legislator, he helped to draft a bill to allow for manumission by deed, a procedure in which slave owners could transfer, by deed, their property interest in slaves back to the slaves themselves, setting them free. The bill passed in 1782, and Jefferson who was by then the Governor of the new state, signed it into law that year. As a member of the federal Congress in 1783-84, Jefferson drafted and submitted to that body a Report on the Government of the Western territories, which Congress enacted into law as the Ordinance of 1784. It provided that "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty" in any part of the United States outside of the original 13 colonies. (does this sound familiar?) The slavery prohibition was deleted by Congress from the final bill... by a single vote as under the Articles of Confederation, which were then in effect, laws could be enacted only if supported by the delegations of seven States. In his original drafts of the constitution...slavery would have been outlawed as well. The reason it didn't make it in to the final draft was merely an unfortunate matter of timing. It seems his latest drafts arrived at the convention too late.

The answer to this is that Bachmann was correct and those who call her "balloon head" because they disagree with her remarks are woefully uneducated as to the beginnings of our great nation. If one studies the history of the first Continental Congress and the creation of the Declaration of Independence, one will find that document originally had a clause to abolish slavery, and that a southern contingent led by South Carolina's Edward Rutledge bound together to block passage of the Declaration until it was removed. With no other recourse, the northern contingent led by John Adams of Massachusetts, realizing their dream of independence would end if they didn't acquiesce, eventually acceded and the clause was removed. As Bachmann noted in her four sentences about this issue Saturday, Adams' son John Quincy Adams did indeed work tirelessly to end slavery. Even the liberally-biased Wikipedia admits this: "Adams was elected a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts after leaving office, the only president ever to do so, serving for the last 17 years of his life with far greater success than he had achieved in the presidency. Animated by his growing revulsion against slavery, Adams became a leading opponent of the Slave Power and argued that if a civil war ever broke out the president could abolish slavery by using his war powers, a correct prediction of Abraham Lincoln's use of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Wikipedia went even further concerning Adams' fight against slavery: Late in life, especially after his election to the House, he was noted especially as most prominent national leader opposing slavery. The turning point came with the debate on the Missouri Compromise in 1820 when he broke with his friend John C. Calhoun, who became the most outspoken national leader in favor of slavery. They became bitter enemies. Adams vilified slavery as a terrible evil and preached total abolition, while Calhoun countered that the right to own slaves had to be protected from interference from the federal government to keep the nation alive. Adams said slavery contradicted the principles of republicanism, while Calhoun said that slavery was essential to American democracy, for it made all white men equal. Both men pulled away from nationalism, and started to consider dissolution of the Union as a way of resolving the slavery imbroglio. Adams predicted that if the South formed a new nation, it would be torn apart by an extremely violent slave insurrection. If the two nations went to war, Adams predicted the president of the United States would use his war powers to abolish slavery. The two men became ideological leaders of the North and the South. In the House Adams became a champion of free speech, demanding that petitions against slavery be heard despite a "gag rule" that said they could not be heard. In 1841, Adams had the case of a lifetime, representing the defendants in United States v. The Amistad Africans in the Supreme Court of the United States. He successfully argued that the Africans, who had seized control of a Spanish ship on which they were being transported illegally as slaves, should not be extradited or deported to Cuba (a Spanish colony where slavery was legal) but should be considered free. Under President Martin Van Buren, the government argued the Africans should be deported for having mutinied and killed officers on the ship. Adams won their freedom, with the chance to stay in the United States or return to Africa. Adams made the argument because the U.S. had prohibited the international slave trade, although it allowed internal slavery. He never billed for his services in the Amistad case. The speech was directed not only at the justices of this Supreme Court hearing the case, but also to the broad national audience he instructed in the evils of slavery. Adams repeatedly spoke out against the "Slave Power", that is the organized political power of the slave owners who dominated all the southern states and their representation in Congress. He vehemently attacked the annexation of Texas (1845) and the Mexican War (1846-48) as part of a "conspiracy" to extend slavery." I agree that misinformation is detrimental to the nation, especially when nationally broadcast political commentators attack and vilify particular political figures by accusing them of lying or being stupid, when in fact, those who are making those accusations are the ones who have not studied the facts.