campconstitution

Camp Constitution Hosts Patriots Day Overnight

Camp Constitution hosted a Patriot’s Day overnight for several homeschool families at the Lane Learning Center in Lexington, MA-a few blocks from the Lexington Battle Green Sunday April 16 -Monday April 17.

The event began Sunday evening with a viewing the movie “Johnny Tremain, and then a walk to the Hancock- Clark House to watch the reenactment of the “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” where we met up with Camp Constitution instructor and historical reenactor Rich Howell

Then back to the Lane House for a few hours’ sleep.  At 4:30 AM, we took a walk to the Lexington Green to get a good spot for viewing the reenactment and the wreath laying ceremony at the gravesite of Lexington Militia leader Captain John Parker, and then back to the Lane House to warm up and enjoy a hearty breakfast cooked by Camp Constitution Director Hal Shurtleff

 

 

Camp Constitution offers tours of Lexington, Concord, Boston and Plymouth to homeschool and church groups.

The Weekly Sam: Going to School Back in the Great Depression by Sam Blumenfeld

One of the great advantages to being 83 years old is that I have lived through a great deal
of history and have a perspective on life that you, my younger readers, do not have. I
remember the days when I would look around and find myself perhaps the youngest
person in the crowd. I took great delight in that. Today I look around and I am usually
the oldest. But I know that God has kept me around for a purpose, and I suspect that He
wants me to keep doing what I have been doing for the last forty years: writing about
education and promoting homeschooling.

How different is education today from what it was when I first attended a public school
back in New York City in the early 1930s! That was during the Great Depression, but I
don’t remember anyone I knew being depressed. My father was in the produce business
and thus we always had plenty of food to eat. My mother actually made her own noodles
for chicken soup. I was able to walk to school and come home for lunch. I remember
admiring the smiling policeman who stopped traffic so that we could cross the avenue on
our way to school.

On Saturdays my friends and I went to the movies. Price of admission? Ten cents. In
those days a penny could get you a Tootsie Roll, a package of gum, a bun. Five cents
could get you a hotdog.

At school we all sat in desks bolted to the floor. The desks were arranged in rows so that
you only saw the back of the head of the pupil in front of you. If you coughed, you
didn’t cough in anyone’s face. Today, with kids seated around tables, they are coughing
into each others faces and spreading disease.
Back then, the teacher had her desk at the front of the class and she taught us all the same
thing. There was no such thing as an “individual learning plan.” We learned to read
with phonics because it was the Depression and the schools could not afford the new
Dick and Jane look-say books.

We were taught penmanship, cursive writing, which
helped us learn to read because it taught us directionality and manual discipline. By
connecting the letters in a word, we learned the word’s spelling and how different
combinations of letters made different sounds.

Back then in elementary school we were taught arithmetic, not math. Arithmetic is a
counting system. In addition you count forward. In subtraction you count backwards. In
Multiplication you count forward in multiples, and in division you count backwards in
multiples. The teachers knew then that only by memorizing the arithmetic facts could
you become efficient at using this ingenious place-value counting system. And so we
memorized the arithmetic tables. Mathematics, which dealt with relationships, came
later.

Of course, some of us learned the 3Rs better than others. Some of our teachers were not
terribly good at teaching. Others were great, and we loved them. I remember being
humiliated in front of a class because, for some reason, I could not remember some
simple arithmetic function, and that angered the teacher.

From that experience, I have always advised tutors and homeschooling parents to never
get angry when a child is having difficulty learning something. Be patient, and explain
what it is that you want the student to learn. The brain is a very remarkable instrument
and can do both amazing and silly things–often at the same time!
So we all learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. And because we could read, we then
learned history and geography.

We learned all about the history of New York and its
five boroughs. It was a happy time for us kids. No one had dyslexia, or ADD, or
ADHD. No one was on Ritalin. There was no sex ed or death ed, no multiculturalism,
no values clarification, no secular humanism. The schools did not try to undermine our
religious beliefs or morals. They were teaching us to become good patriotic Americans.
Since most of us came from immigrant families, becoming good Americans was very
important. The only decoration in our classroom was a portrait of George Washington.
Moreover, Biblical religion was respected, and the Principal recited the 23rd Psalm at
each assembly.

In Third Grade, we had Music Appreciation. The teacher brought out her hand driven
Victrola from the closet and played classical music for us. I still remember some of the
pieces she played: The Swan by Saint-Saens. March Slav by Tchaikovsky. And I know
that that’s where I acquired my taste for classical music.
So I had a very decent primary and elementary education. And the public school was an
institution which instilled great patriotic values and love of country. They did not dumb
us down; they lifted us up. But those days are long gone, and today I tell parents: do not
put your child in a public school. If you want to preserve their mental sanity, teach them
at home.

Today’s public schools have become criminal enterprises where children’s brains are
deliberately crippled by whole-language and look-say, where drugs are pushed on
millions of children who must ingest Ritalin, where a child’s religious beliefs are
undermined by the practices of behavioral psychology, where pornography is foisted on
the students in the name of sex education, where money is extorted from taxpayers to pay
for the dumbing down of the future generation. Children in such a system will suffer
lifelong deficits, and that is why home schooling is so important, and why homeschoolers
should bless their parents for keeping out of such a harmful system.

(This was written in 2009.  For more gems like this, please visit Sam’s archives:

https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

The Weekly Sam: How to Dumb Down a Nation By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

It’s easy. Destroy its literacy, and you’ve dumbed it down. And once dumbed down, it
becomes the potential victim of any power that wants to dominate it.

If you look at the most illiterate nations on the planet, you find that they are ruled by
despots, their people live in abject poverty and have no hope for a better future. That
doesn’t mean that literate nations, like Germany, can’t produce monsters. But when they
do, we know that satanic influences are behind it.

America, from its beginning, was the most literate nation on earth, and the result was
positive in every respect. Why was it so literate? Because the people and their leaders
were governed by the precepts of the Bible, and biblical literacy was paramount in the
education of the country’s children.

But once we got a government schooling system, which was taken over by atheist
progressive educators, the God of the Bible was removed from the schools. It then
became possible to introduce a new socialist curriculum with teaching methods
calculated to reduce American literacy. The Bible was now relegated to an hour of study
in church on Sundays. And because it was no longer part of the curriculum, children no
longer considered it important to life.

A blatant, anti-biblical morality was introduced in the schools through such programs as
values clarification, sensitivity training, transcendental meditation, sex education, death
education, drug education, multiculturalism, psychotherapy, evolution, secular
humanism, and other such programs. Moral degeneration has been the inevitable result.
The result is that America has been greatly dumbed down.

Editor:  The above was written over 25 years ago long before teachers would openly promote sodomy and so-called gender reassignment surgery.  The solution is simple:   Remove your children from the clutches of these atheists who hate you and your children.  Please feel free to contact us if you are looking for recommended homeschooling resources:  campconstitution1@gmail.com

 

Christophobia Rearing Its Ugly Head in Gloucester, MA

Christians from Communist China to Ukraine to Iraq and dozens of nations in-between have been viciously persecuting for their faith.  Sady, it is also happening in the United States -a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

 Like Boston, the city officials in Gloucester denied a permit to fly the Christian flag to life-long Gloucester resident Alex Destino.  Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter and the city did not respond.  The following is a letter to the editor of the Gloucester Daily Times by Alex Destino who was denied a permit to fly the Christian flag in Gloucester.
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Letter to the Editor GD Times:
 PETITION TO RAISE CHRISTIAN FLAG DURING HOLY WEEK: “DENIED” BY MAYOR OF GLOUCESTER
 It’s impossible to tell the story of Gloucester’s 400 years without including the enormous impact of the Christian Church and community here. In every corner of Gloucester, from Annisquam to Magnolia, East Gloucester to West Gloucester, as well as Downtown, we have Christian Churches of all denominations that have been serving our community for hundreds of years. In Downtown, all you must do is look up to see the beautiful church buildings built by our Christian ancestors.
 Our city was built by the fishing community, many of whom gave their lives to the sea. During those tragic days, Gloucester people filled the churches and homes of our lost fishermen. In 1978 alone, we lost 14 men at sea. I will never forget the packed churches and prayer services in the homes of those fishermen. The women, in particular the Fishermen’s wives, rallied around those families with prayer and support. The following year, in 1979, Saint Peter’s Fiesta took on a new meaning for me personally, and for many in our community.
 Over four days, tens of thousands of people flocked to St. Peter Square in Gloucester to pray and support the families of those lost at sea in 1978. The outdoor Mass on St. Peter’s Square that year was incredible. The emotion, the prayer, and the outpouring of love for those families moved me. I was only 13 years old at the time, but I realized how blessed we were to live in this community, surrounded by amazing, loving, people of faith.
 Of course, there are countless other examples of the Christian community here in Gloucester selflessly pouring themselves into the needs of our community. Those who have been on the receiving end of those prayers and love can never forget. My family and I are among those who have been recipients of those prayers and support since I was a child. One cannot separate the influence of the Christian community here in Gloucester from who we are as a city.
 To honor the impact and contributions of the Christian community in Gloucester over the last 400 years, I petitioned the Mayor of Gloucester last October to raise a Christian Flag at City Hall during Holy Week, 2023. My request was denied by the mayor. A month ago, I made a second request to the mayor. This time, I requested to fly the flag for one day only, Good Friday, April 7, 2023. I have not received a response from the mayor or anyone else from our city government.
This denial and lack of response from Mayor Verga necessitate a legal response. This situation is much more significant than a flag. The city of Gloucester is openly discriminating against viewpoints it disfavors. So, I have engaged Liberty Counsel, to assist me in preserving our cherished liberties and First Amendment rights here in Gloucester.
 The city has opened the flagpoles at city hall to numerous groups and viewpoints over the years—but has rejected the Christian flag. This is not only wrong but unconstitutional. My attorneys at Liberty Counsel sent a Demand Letter to Mayor Verga and City Counsel leadership, demanding that we be allowed to raise the Christian Flag on Good Friday, with a deadline to respond by March 25th to prevent any further action by Liberty Counsel. Mayor Verga and City Council leadership ignored the Demand Letter.
 The Mayor and City Council are aware of last year’s unanimous (9-0) Supreme Court decision, that ruled the city of Boston violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by censoring a private flag in a public forum merely because the application referred to it as a “Christian flag.” The High Court stated the censorship was viewpoint discrimination, and there is no Establishment Clause defense. As Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mathew Staver said recently: “This 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court involving the Christian flag continues to have an impact across the nation. The clear message from the Supreme Court is that government must not discriminate based on viewpoint. The government cannot favor one viewpoint and censor another and cannot censor religious viewpoints under the guise of government speech. Any governments that are ignoring this ruling are setting themselves up for potential lawsuits.”
 The city of Boston has since been forced to pay $2.1 Million to Liberty Council for legal fees and other associated costs during the five-year legal battle. Let’s hope and pray that the Mayor of Gloucester doesn’t make that same mistake.
Sincerely,
Alex Destino
Gloucester

Coolidge warned of Deep-State “Bureaucracy … having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody” – American Minute with Bill Federer

President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech at the College of William and Mary, May 15, 1926:
“There is another … recent development … the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities …
Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency.

Coolidge continued:
“When they are successful, minority rule is established …
The result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive …”
Coolidge continued, exposing the autocratic deep-state bureaucracy:
“No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.
Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people.
Being irresponsible they become autocratic …
… Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy.
It … sets up the pretense of having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody …”
Coolidge added:
“We must also recognize that the national administration is not and cannot be adjusted to the needs of local government …
The states should not be induced by coercion or by favor to surrender the management of their own affairs.
The Federal Government ought to resist the tendency to be loaded up with duties which the states should perform.
It does not follow that because something ought to be done the National Government ought to do it.”
An example of what Coolidge described could be the Department of Education.
Since its establishment in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, student’s proficiency in math and critical reading have declined, with public education shifting from an academic achievement model to that of behavior modification.
The warnings of Coolidge are reflected in today’s calls to as “drain the swamp.”
He stated:
“I want to see the policy adopted … that instead of an extension on the part of the Federal Government there can be a contraction.”
At the unveiling of Equestrian Statue of Bishop Francis Asbury, President Coolidge stated October 15, 1924, Washington, DC:
“There are only two main theories of government in the world.
One rests on righteousness, the other rests on force. One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword.
One is exemplified in a republic, the other is represented by a despotism.”
Collins English Dictionary defines “despotism”:
“the rule of a despot; arbitrary, absolute, or tyrannical government.”
SparkNotes on Locke’s Second Treatise states:
“Despotical power is absolute, arbitrary power of one person to take the life and property of another against their will.”
John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (Ch. 14-15) stated in a republic there should be:
“No absolute or arbitrary power.”
States such as Kentucky and Wyoming specifically state in their Constitutions:
“Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic.”
General Douglas MacArthur addressed Massachusetts State Legislature in Boston, on July 25, 1951:
“I find in existence a new and heretofore unknown and dangerous concept
that the members of our Armed Forces owe primary allegiance … to those who temporarily exercise the authority … rather than to the … Constitution which they are sworn to defend. No proposition could be more dangerous …
For its application would at once convert them from their traditional and constitutional role as the instrument for the defense of the Republic into something partaking of the nature of a praetorian guard, owing its allegiance to the political master of the hour …
Members of the armed services have been subjected to the most arbitrary and ruthless treatment for daring to speak the truth.”
President Coolidge continued his address, October 15, 1924:
“The history of government on this earth has been almost entirely a history of the rule of force held in the hands of a few.
Under our Constitution, America committed itself to … the power in the hands of the people.”
Coolidge’s reference to the history of “rule of force held in the hands of a few” was demonstrated in Europe.
After Napoleon’s lightning fast conquering of Europe, Prussian King Frederick William III wanted to strengthen his German state.
This led him to embrace the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Hegel was a professor at the University of Berlin.
He taught:
“The state is god walking on earth …
We must worship the state …
The state … recognizes no authority but its own … acknowledges no abstract rules of good and bad …
All the worth which the human being possesses … he possesses only through the state.”
Hegel explained:
“The state is … the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the state …
The nation state … is therefore the absolute power on earth. A single person, it hardly needs saying, is something subordinate.”
Under Hegel’s system, the “general will” is determine by the ruler. In Philosophy of History (Jacob Loewenberg, ed., Hegel: Selections, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1929, p. 398), he wrote:
“… It is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails;
individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union …
… The origin of a state involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other.
Obedience — lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler.”
Students at the University of Berlin, who admired Hegel formed the Young Hegelians.
A member of the Young Hegelians was Karl Marx.
Kelly O’Connell wrote in “Pagan Government Theory Insures Tyranny Returns to the West” (Canada Free Press, June 18, 2012):
“… but Marx did get his idea of ‘government as god’ from Hegel.”
Marxist socialism influenced Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedung, and other socialist dictators.
Harry S Truman stated, March 6, 1946:
“Dictatorship … is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing … the state is the only thing that counts, and that men, women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.”
Hegel’s process of using division and disruption to bring change was called “Hegelian Dialectics.”
It can be described as a triangle:
  • one corner is the THESIS;
  • the opposite corner it the ANTITHESIS; and
  • the top corner is the SYNTHESIS.
Hegel’s dialectic struggle influenced Darwin in his development of the theory of evolution and its survival of the fittest.
Hegel’s dialectic struggle influenced Adolph Hitler, who wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
Marx translated Hegelian Dialectics into a political application, where people are content with the status quo (thesis), there must be created a crisis that is real bad (antithesis), so that people will surrender their freedoms for a solution that is only half as bad (synthesis).
Each synthesis then becomes the new thesis, and the process is repeated until all power is voluntarily relinquished by the people to the dictator who promises big government solutions.
To create an antithesis, there needs to be division in society.
In Communism-A History (Random House, 2001) Richard Pipes described:
“As Fidel Castro, the leader of Communist Cuba, would explain … ‘The revolution needs the enemy … The revolution needs for its development its antithesis’ … And if enemies were lacking, they had to be fabricated.”
To create division, citizens of a country must stop thinking of themselves as citizens.
Instead, they must be made to identify with subgroups, which can then be pitted against each other.
Subgroups can social, ethnic, racial, sexual, economic or religious.
David Horowitz explained:
“An SDS radical once wrote, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’
In other words … civil rights or women’s rights – is never the real cause; women, blacks … are only instruments in the larger cause, which is power.
Battles over rights and other issues, according to Alinsky, should never be seen as more than occasions to advance the real agenda, which is the accumulation of power.”
Successive, manufactured incidents of violence between subgroups destabilizes the country.
When enough people fear for their lives, they will panic and surrender their freedoms to a big government politician promising to restore order.
Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises, in his 1947 book, Planned Chaos, described innocent youth who naively allow themselves to be organized as “useful innocents … confused and misguided sympathizers.”
They are manipulated to support minor divisive issues when the real issue is the revolution.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned June 30, 1975:
“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust … Prevent those … falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road … They are trying to weaken you.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 318):
“It goes without saying that these conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat.
Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …
For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”

Hegel was against citizens ruling themselves.
He wanted power to be in the hands of one person.
He wrote in Philosophy of Law (Section 279):
“When it is contrasted with the sovereignty of the monarch, the phrase ‘sovereignty of the people’ turns out to be merely one of those confused notions which arise from the wild idea of the ‘people.’
Without its monarch … the people are just a formless multitude.”

Similar to today’s “fake news” and “social media censorship,” Hegel wrote in Philosophy of Law (Jacob Loewenberg, ed., Hegel: Selections, NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1929, pp. 457, 461-62):
“The many … whom one chooses to call the people, are indeed a collection, but only as a multitude, a formless mass, whose movement and action would be elemental, irrational, savage, and terrible …
Public opinion deserves … to be esteemed as much as to be despised …
The definition of the freedom of the press as freedom to say and write what one pleases … such a view belongs to the uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking.”
Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for the National Socialist Workers Party, stated:
“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion …
Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Hegel’s dialectic struggle theory influenced Saul Alinsky, who taught how to identify tension “fault lines” in a society, fan real or perceived injustices into emotional flame till they reach the boiling point.
Once anarchy breaks out, everyone is so desperate to have order restored that they “knee-jerk reaction” relinquish their rights to the state.
Psalm 133:1 “How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in UNITY!”
Proverbs 6:16 “The LORD hates … he that SOWETH DISCORD.”
Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals (1971):
The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step.”
“The organizer … must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.
He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act …
An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which the people can angrily pour their frustrations.”

Crises can either be created or coincidental, but the consequence is consistently concentration of control.
Some crises include:
  • students needing safe-spaces where they will not be traumatized by hearing triggering views;
  • being offended by micro-aggressions;
  • hateful organizations projecting their hate onto innocent opponents;
  • intolerant sharia adherents claiming to be victims of intolerance”;
  • violent peace demonstrators and aggressive social justice activists;
  • occupy Wall Street protests, Flag protest, Pledge of Allegiance protest; trans activists’ day of violence;
  • school or other shootings capitalized upon to advance political agendas;
  • predictions of fearful climate crisis with urgent deadlines that pass unfulfilled; or
  • virus pandemic crisis.
Crises can be economic.
Friedrich Engels recommended creating financial crises to put bankrupt small businesses (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):
“Every new crisis must be more serious and more universal than the last. Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.
This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.
In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”
Crises can be healthcare.
Ronald Reagan recorded in 1961 an LP titled “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” for the American Medical Association’s Operation Coffeecup Campaign:
“Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism.
But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program … “
Reagan continued:
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project …
Madison in 1788 … said … ‘There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations’ …
We want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms … We do not want socialized medicine …
If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass … and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known … until, one day … we will awake to find that we have socialism.
And … you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
Crises can be ideological — a forgetting of America’s founding principles.
Coolidge explained October 15, 1924,
“Our government rests upon religion.
It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind.
Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government.”
He stated at the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 5, 1926:
“The principles … which went into the Declaration of Independence … are found in … the sermons … of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live.
They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image …
… Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government …
In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors migrated to the colonies …”
Coolidge concluded:
“The Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document …
Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are … ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world.
Unless the faith of the American in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.
We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”
Coolidge stated on September 21, 1924, in an address to the Holy Name Society in Washington, D.C.:
“Equality is recognized … from belief in the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of God … It seems perfectly plain that the right to equality has for its foundation reverence for God. If we could imagine that swept away our American government could not long survive.”
Reposted with permission from The American Minute https://americanminute.com/

Dark Slavery History & forgotten individuals who worked to end it – American Minute with Bill Federer

Slavery did not start in 1619.

It began with kings.
Whenever you had the first king on top you had slaves on the bottom.

From the beginning of recorded history, Kings fought battles.
When kings were victorious, they considered themselves merciful if they did not kill all of their defeated enemies.
All ancient cultures made slaves of those captured in battle, as seen in Babylon, Persia, Greece, China, India, and Africa.
The ancient King of Sumer, Ur-Nammu, inscribed a Sumerian law code, c.2050 B.C., defining the classes of society, where slaves were on the bottom:
  • King = “lugal”
  • Free person = “lu“
  • Male slave = “arad”
  • Female slave = “geme”
The King of Babylon, Hammurabi, a contemporary of Abraham, devised a code c.1795-1750 B.C.
The code dispensed increasing degrees of punishment depending on the class:
  • King
  • Male Nobles
  • Wives & Children of Nobles
  • Poor
  • Slaves.
Hammurabi’s Code had law number 282:
“If a slave say to his master: ‘You are not my master,’ if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.”
In the second millennium BC, during the Xia, Shang (Yin), and Zhou Dynasties, slaves were called “jianmin,” which means “base mankind”; and “nuli,” which means “debtor.”
Some slaves were used for ritual sacrifices.
The sons of Jacob sold their younger brother, Joseph, into slavery.
Genesis 37: “Judah asked his brothers, ‘What will we gain by killing our brother and covering up his death? Let’s sell him to the Ishamaelites … And his brothers agreed.”
Powerful Pharaohs of Egypt made the Israelites slaves for four hundred years, c.1800-1400 B.C.
Beginning around 1500 B.C., India began developing a caste system, where on the bottom the untouchable “Dalits” were effectively a slave class:
  • Bhramin – priests, academics;
  • Kshatryia – warriors, kings;
  • Vaishya – merchants, landowners;
  • Sudra – commoners, peasants, servants;
  • Dalits – untouchables, out-caste, street sweepers, garbage collectors, latrine cleaners.
Zedekiah, the King of Judah from c.597-586, had everyone free their slaves, but later forced them back into slavery.
The Prophet Jeremiah recorded (chapter 34):
“The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people … that everyone should set free his male and female slaves … They obeyed and let them go.
But afterward they changed their minds and made the male and female slaves return …
… Therefore the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah … saying …
You turned around and profaned My name, and every one of you brought back his male and female slaves, whom you had set at liberty … Behold, I proclaim liberty to you,’ says the Lord—‘to the sword.
And I will give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes into the hand of their enemies, into the hand of those who seek their life, and into the hand of the king of Babylon’s army.”
Ancient Greeks enslaved captives from war.
The population of Athens was estimated to have been from 10 to 40 percent slaves.
In the city of Thessaly, the slaves were called “penestae,” a class of unfree laborers.
Slaves in Sparta were called “helots,” and slaves on the Island of Crete were called “doulus.”
Julius Caesar conquered in Gaul and brought so many captured “slavic” peoples into to Rome that the term “slav” gained the connotation of permanent servant – “slave.”
Over half of Rome’s population were slaves.
The famous Greek Orthodox account is that around c.400 A.D., a bankrupt merchant in the town of Patara, Asia Minor, was about to have creditors seize his three daughters and sell them into sex-slavery. St. Nicholas threw money in the window to provide a dowry for the daughters to get married and be free from the wicked creditors.
Another form of slavery was generational indebtedness, spread by Roman Emperor Diocletian.
In the 3rd and 4th century, the Roman economy became so bad that people who were unable to pay their mortgages would simply abandon their properties, renounce their Roman citizenship, and go off to live with the barbarians.
To stop this, Diocletian made it a law that people could never run away from their debts — thus tying them and their children to the land in perpetuity, creating the feudal system.
This is essentially the case in India, with rural peasant farming families inheriting ancient indebtedness.
The Royal Commission on Agriculture described that India’s farmer “is born in debt, lives in debt and dies in debt.”
A more recent example of inescapable debt is that of young people in America locked into trillions of dollars of student loan debt that they can never escape:
  • Huffinton Post (5/08/15): “Obama Administration Improperly Denies Student Loan Debt Relief.”
  • The Hill (5/13/16): “President Obama’s horrible, terrible legacy on student loans”: “(His) lawyers fight furiously behind the scenes to keep bankruptcy protections gone from student loans.”
  • Buzzfeed (2/9/19) “Student Debt is Dragging a Whole Generation Down – Here’s Why So Many Americans Feel Cheated by Their Student Loans”;
  • TIME Magazine (2/9/12) “Why You Can’t Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy”;
  • National Consumer Law Center (June 2006) “No Way Out: Student Loans, Financial Distress, and the Need for Policy Reform”;
  • Rolling Stone (8/15/13) “Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal”: “Congress almost completely stripped students of their right to disgorge their debts through bankruptcy (amazing, when one considers that even gamblers can declare bankruptcy!)”
In the 5th century AD, marauding invaders kidnapped Patrick from Britain and sold him as a slave to the Druid pagans in Ireland.
Decades later, after evangelizing Ireland, St. Patrick wrote a letter condemning the Brittonic warlord, King Coroticus, who was kidnapping Irish that Patrick had converted to Christianity and selling them into slavery.
St. Patrick’s “Letter to Coroticus” is considered one of the first anti-slavery documents:
“Thy sheep around me are torn to pieces and driven away, and that by those robbers, by the orders of the hostile-minded Coroticus … a man who hands over Christians to the Picts and Scots …
Ravening wolves have devoured the flock of the Lord … You sell them to a foreign nation that has no knowledge of God. You betray the members of Christ as it were into a brothel …
People who were freeborn have been sold, Christians made slaves, and that, too, in the service of the abominable, wicked, and apostate Picts!”
During the Viking Age, 793 to 1096, Viking warriors sailed up rivers across Europe at attacked, killing men and carrying away thousands of Christian women as captives.

Various Qur’an verses and hadiths described Mohammed as a white Arab who owned slaves.
Qur’an verse 33:50:
“Prophet, We have made lawful to you … the slave girls whom Allah has given you as booty.”
Hadith al-Bukhari, Vol. 1, Book 3, No. 63: “’Who amongst you is Muhammad?’ At that time the Prophet was sitting amongst us leaning on his arm. We replied, ‘This white man reclining on his arm.’”
Hadith al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 56, No. 744: “’I saw the Prophet, and Al-Hasan bin Ali resembled him.’ I said to Abu-Juhaifa, ‘Describe him for me.’ He said, ‘He was white and his beard was black with some white hair.’”
Hadith al-Bukhari, Vol. 2, Book 17, No. 141: “The Prophet never raised his hands for any invocation except for that of Istisqa’ and he used to raise them so much that the whiteness of his armpits became visible.”
Hadith al-Bukhari, Vol. 1, Book 8, No. 367: “The Prophet rode and Abu Talha rode too and I was riding behind Abu Talha. The Prophet passed through the lane of Khaibar quickly and my knee was touching the thigh of the Prophet. He uncovered his thigh and I saw the whiteness of the thigh of the Prophet.”
Hadith al-Bukhari, Vol. 2, Book 17, No. 122: “I heard Ibn ‘Umar reciting the poetic verses of Abu Talib: And a white (person) (i.e. the Prophet) who is requested to pray for rain.”
The timeline of slavery added a new chapter in 711 AD, when Muslim Moors conquered Spain, then invaded Portugal and France, followed by raids the coasts of Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean.
In 1189, Muslim warriors raided Lisbon, Portugal, and enslaved 3,000 women and children.
In 1191, Muslims attacked Silves, Portugal, and enslaved 3,000.
When Saladin captured Jerusalem, according to Imad al-Din, approximately 7,000 men and 8,000 women were unable to pay a ransom so they were enslaved.
Over a million Europeans were carried off into Islamic slavery.
Medieval Catholic religious orders of Trinitarians or Mathurins would collect donations to ransom people from Muslim slavery.
In 1605, St. Vincent De Paul was captured by Muslim pirates and enslaved.
He witnessed to his master who converted, and after several years, allowed him to escape back to France, where he founded hospitals and an organization to ransom slaves.
Muslim raiders enslaved an estimated 180 million Africans over its 1,400 year expansion.
The same Arabic word was used for for African and slave — “Abeed.”
Male African slaves were often castrated and female African slaves often sold into harems.
Twice as many women were sold in the Arab slave trade than men.
Muslim slave markets existed in:
  • North Africa:
Tangier (Morocco), Marrakesh (Morocco). Algiers (Algeria). Tripoli (Libya), Cairo (Egypt), Aswan (Egypt), Khartoum, (Sudan);
  • West Africa:
Aoudaghost (Mauritania), Timbuktu (Mali), Gao (Mali), Bilma (Niger), Kano (Nigeria);
  • Swahili Coast:
Bagamoyo (Tanzania), Zanzibar (Tanzania), Kilwa (Tanzania), Sofala (Beira, Mozambique), Mombasa (Kenya);
  • Horn of Africa:
Assab (Eritrea), Massawa (Eritrea), Nefasit (Eritrea), Tadjoura (Djibouti), Zeila (Somalia), Mogadishu (Somalia), Kismayo (Somalia);
  • Arabian Peninsula:
Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Zabīd (Yemen), Muscat (Oman), Aden (Yemen), Socotra (Indian Ocean);
  • Indian Ocean:
Debal (Sindh, Pakistan), Karachi (Sindh, Pakistan), Janjira (India), Surat (India), Mandvi, Kutch (India).
Jeddiah Morse’s The American Geography, 1792):

“The island Madagascar … has several petty savage kings of its own, both Arabs and Negroes, who making war on each other, sell their prisoners for slaves to the shipping which call here, taking clothes, utensils and other necessaries in return.”
Missionary-explorer David Livingstone witnessed thousands of Africans shackled together and being forced to march hundreds of miles to the Arab slave markets, which called “a monster brooding over Africa.”
Livingstone wrote:
“If my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together.”
The Ashanti tribal chief was notorious for selling Africans into slavery, some for ritual sacrifice.
Abolitionist movements were difficult in sharia Islamic countries as they could be interpreted as an indirect condemnation of Mohammed and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, as they owned slaves.
Slavery was a significant part of the Ottoman Empire economy for centuries, until it was ended by Ataturk, founder in 1923 of the modern Republic of Turkey.
Ataturk stated:
“The purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag (them into) Arab national politics … (It) might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for a modern, progressive state.”

In pre-Columbian America, warring tribes would enslave captives, sometimes using them in ritual sacrifice and cannibalism.
Yahoo News reported (December 20. 2020):
“Photos show a tower of human skulls found beneath Mexico City. The Aztecs ritually sacrificed them, archaeologists say.”
The Inca Empire had a system of mandatory public service known as mita, similar to the Aztec’s tlacotin.
Many North American tribes made slaves of captured tribes.
  • Comanche of Texas;
  • Creek of Georgia;
  • Yurok in Northern California; Pawnee in the Plains;
  • Klamath of Oregon;
  • Haida & Tlingit of Alaska;
  • Some Pacific Northwest tribes 1/4th of population were slaves.
  • Cheyenne mastered horses left by Spanish, then attacked & enslaved other plains tribes.
In 1526, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón explored the eastern coast of America as far north as Delaware Bay, then, somewhere near Sapelo Sound, Georgia.
With 600, settlers, of which 100 were African slaves, he attempted a settlement named San Miguel de Gualdape.
The Dominican friars who accompanying them celebrated the first recorded Catholic Mass in what would later be the United States.
Unfortunately, that winter, two-thirds of the settlers died of disease, including Ayllón.
The African slaves rebelled and ran off to live with the native tribe of Guales, becoming the first non-natives settlers in North America.
Another early account was in 1528. Pánfilo de Narváez and Cabeza de Vaca led an expedition of 400 settlers to establish a settlement in Florida.
Battered in a hurricane, they were shipwrecked near St. Petersburg.
Natives misled, betrayed, and ambushed them.
One member of the expedition, Juan Ortiz, was captured and enslaved by the Tocobaga tribe, being rescued 12 years later by De Soto’s expedition.
His story was related in the Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida by a Gentleman of Elvas (1557), translated into English by Richard Hakluyt-the younger (1611:
“This Christian’s name was John Ortiz, and he was born in Seville … He was twelve years in the hands of the Indians … He came … with … Narvaez … to Florida …
A great number of Indians, which compassed them about, and took them in a place where they could not flee; and the others … they presently killed …
They took John Ortiz alive, and carried him to Ucita their lord … Ucita commanded to bind John Ortiz hand and foot upon four stakes aloft upon a raft, and to make a fire under him, that there he might be burned.
But a daughter of his desired him that he would not put him to death, alleging … that it was more for his honor to keep him as a captive …
John Ortiz … notice … the damsel that had delivered him from the fire, how her father was determined to sacrifice him … She went with him half a league out of the town by night, and set him in the way, and returned, because she would not be discovered.
John Ortiz travailed all the night, and by the morning came unto a river.”
The surviving 80 members of the Narváez expedition returned to the Tampa Bay coast.
They salvaged their wrecked vessel and fashioned it into two rafts, using deer skins for bellows to blow air into the fire, making it hot enough to forge metal nails.
They floated along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Mississippi River, where they were suddenly swept out hundreds of miles.
Narváez was never found, and Cabeza de Vaca, with two dozen others, were shipwrecked near present day Galveston, where they were enslaved by natives.
Four found an opportunity to escape:
  • Cabeza de Vaca,
  • Andrés Dorantes de Carranza,
  • Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and
  • Estevanico, or Esteban, a Moroccan Berber slave who is assumed to have been baptized a Christian by virtue of his Christian name Esteban, or Stephen.
They traveled through the areas of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and Coahuila.
Cabeza de Vaca preached the Gospel and prayed Christian prayers for sick natives to be healed, with reports of miraculous recoveries. Gaining a reputation as a “faith healer,” the Indians let him travel freely.
Cabeza de Vaca and his companions came down the coast of the Gulf of California to Sinaloa, then finally to Mexico City in 1536, eight years after the expedition began. Cabeza de Vaca sailed back to Spain.
He later returned to the New World in 1540, as governor of New Andalusia (Argentina), where he helped settle Buenas Aires.
When Spain conquered the New World in the early 1500’s, conquistadors deposed Indian government leaders and ruled in their stead.
In the Inca Empire, where native populations had been trained to obey government orders, they willingly obeyed their new Spanish leaders, even though it often meant dying in forced labor such as in the Potosi silver mines.
Spaniards set up a system called encomienda or repartimiento, which was similar to feudal France’s Corvée “unfree labour.”
Priests like Bartolomé de las Casas and the Franciscan Friars, together with Papal Bulls, fought to end the enslavement of native Americans.
Unfortunately, those wanting to continue slavery sought to replace the freed natives with African slaves purchased from Muslim slave markets.
The first African slaves brought to the English colony of Virginia came on a Dutch ship in 1619.
Over the next two centuries, the number of slaves tragically grew from “20 and odd” to an estimated 4 million by 1860.
Originally, African slaves brought to Virginia served seven years and then were freed.
Anthony Johnson was a black indentured slave from Angola who arrived in Virginia in 1621. He completed his indentured service and gained his freedom. He then became one of the first Africans to own property in America.
Acquiring a 250 acre tobacco plantation, he owned four white slaves and one black slave, John Casor. After seven years, Casor left and began working as a free man on another farm.
In 1655, Anthony Johnson brought a lawsuit and won to keep Casor a slave indefinitely. This made John Casor one of the first person of African descent in the 13 English Colonies to be a slave for life.
Another early slave was John Punch, ancestor of Ralph Bunche, the first African-American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating international recognition of the new State of Israel in 1948.

A lesser known chapters of slaves brought to America occurred in the 1600s when King James I, and later Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, sold over 500,000 Irish Catholics into slavery onto plantations in the West Indies, Antigua, Montserrat, Jamaica, Barbados, as well as Virginia and New England.
Historian Will Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization:
“The Irish scene was one of the most shameful in history.”
Dr. Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, wrote in the article “Irresponsible Education” (Oct. 14, 2014):
“More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States, or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed.
White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”
Poor Europeans sold themselves as “indentured servants” — a temporary slavery — for seven years, in exchange for transportation to America.
A second wave of Irish came to America between 1714-1756.
Thousands of oppressed Irish sold themselves as indentured slaves in return for passage, usually to Pennsylvania, hoping to take advantage of William Penn’s promise of toleration.
There are many accounts of Indian tribes who would take captives from other tribes and sell them into slavery.
Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone, was captured by the Hidatsa people and sold to the Frenchman Toussaint Charbonneau, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their explorations.
William Clark was accompanied by York, an African slave, on Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery.

Some Native Americans owned African slaves.
In 1842, there was an African slave revolt in Cherokee Territory.
After colonial conflicts with American Indians, some were sold into slavery in the West Indies.
The abolitionist movement was birthed out of Christianity.
Christian missionaries and movements, especially Quakers, Moravians, and Methodists, were the continual voice of conscience against slavery.
Some Swedish and Dutch settlers had slaves in what was to become Pennsylvania.
After the land was acquired by King Charles II and given to William Penn as Pennsylvania, there began the movement to abolish slavery.
In 1683, Pietist Lutherans and Mennonites from Germany purchased land from William Penn and settled Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Embracing Quakerism, German settlers Francis Daniel Pastorius and three others, submitted the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, the first American document protesting slavery:
“How fearful and fainthearted are many on sea, when they see a strange vessel, -being afraid it should be a Turk, and they should be taken, and sold for slaves into Turkey.
Now what is this better done, as Turks do? Yea, rather it is worse for them, which say they are Christians; for we hear that ye most part of such negroes are brought hither against their will and consent, and that many of them are stolen …
There is a saying that we shall do to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or color they are.
And those who steal or rob men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?
… Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable; here ought to be liberty of ye body …
But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against.
In Europe there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed which are of a black color …
This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear of, that ye Quakers do here handle men as they handle there ye cattle …
We … are against this traffic of men-body. And we who profess that is is not lawful to steal, must, likewise, avoid to purchase such things as are stolen …
Then is Pennsylvania to have a good report … in what manner ye Quakers do rule in their province.”
In the early 1700s, many colonies tried to end slavery but Queen Anne would not allow it, as she was part owner of the Royal African Company, and the South Sea Company, which, after the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, was granted an Asiento de Negros, supplying 4,800 slaves per year to the Spanish colonies throug Buenos Aires, Caracas, Havana, Panama, Portobello, Vera Cruz, and Jamaica. The Queen of England and the King of Spain split half the profits.
Anthony Benezet, a Protestant Christian Huguenot who fled persecution in France, joined the Quakers in Philadelphia.
In 1750, he began a school in his home to teach slave children to read. He also advocated for Indian Natives and started the first school for girls in America in 1754.
In 1758, at the yearly Quaker Meeting in Philadelphia, Anthony Benezet and Quaker John Woolman, convinced their membership to publicly oppose slavery.
In 1766, Benezet wrote in “Warning to Great Britain … of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes” that:
“Slavery … contradicted the precepts and example of Christ? …
Bondage … imposed on the Africans, is absolutely repugnant to justice … shocking to humanity, violative of every generous sentiment, abhorrent utterly from the Christian religion.”
In 1770, Anthony Benezet led Quakers to found the Negro School at Philadelphia, being encouraged by both Ben Franklin and Methodist founder John Wesley.
In 1775, Anthony Benezet helped found the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, with 17 of the 24 founders being Quakers.
It was the first society in America dedicated to abolishing slavery.
In 1784, its name was changed to Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery & the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
In 1787, Ben Franklin became its president.
In 1772, Benezet condemned slavery in his tract “Account of Guinea … An Inquiry into the Rise & Progress of the Slave Trade, Its Nature & Lamentable Effects.”
After reading Benezet’s writing, Patrick Henry came under conviction, writing to Robert Pleasants in 1773:
“I take this opportunity to acknowledge ye receipt of Anthony Benezet’s book against the slave trade. I thank you for it. Would any one believe that I am a master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by ye general inconvenience of living without them; I will not, I cannot justify it.”
Patrick Henry became one of the most out-spoken Virginia founding fathers in actively condemning slavery, as being “inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to morality.”
In 1778, he successful lobbied the Virginia Legislature to cease the importation of slaves.
Jefferson wrote that Henry was “even more determined in his opposition to slavery then the rest of us.”
Anthony Benezet’s English anti-slavery associate was Thomas Clarkson, a student at Cambridge University who was honored with first prize for writing “An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species,” 1785, in which he wrote:
“Slavery is … a crime, which being both of individuals and the nation, must sometime draw down upon us the heaviest judgment of Almighty God, who made of one blood all the sons of men, and who gave to all equally a natural right to liberty.”
In 1764, James Otis wrote in “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved”:
“The grant of GOD Almighty … has given to all men a natural right to be free …
Colonists … are men, the common children of the same Creator …
Nature has placed all such in a state of equality and perfect freedom to act within the bounds of the laws of nature and reason …
Colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black.
No better reasons can be given for enslaving those of any color than such as Baron Montesquieu has humorously given as the foundation of that cruel slavery exercised over the poor Ethiopians, which threatens one day to reduce both Europe and America to the ignorance and barbarity of the darkest ages.
… Does it follow that tis right to enslave a man because he is black?
Will short, curled hair like wool … help the argument? Can any logical inference in favor of slavery be drawn from a flat nose, a long or a short face?
Nothing better can be said in favor of a (slave) trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the in estimable value of liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman (merchant) in needles and pins on the unhappy coast.
It is a clear truth that those who everyday barter away other men’s liberty will soon care little for their own …
… In the province of the Massachusetts Bay … colonists, black and white, born here are freeborn British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights …
Has this whole continent of … millions of good, loyal, and useful subjects, white and black … the election of one member of the House of Commons? …
No man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave.”
Richard Bassett, a Signer of the Constitution from Delaware, converted to Methodism, freed all his slaves and paid them as hired labor.
Jefferson’s original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a line condemning the slave trade of King George’s Royal African Company:
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself … in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither …
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold.”
In 1780, Quaker judge William Lewis drafted “Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” which was passed by the Pennsylvania Assembly.
It was the first such legislative enactment in America:
“A serious and grateful sense of the manifold blessings which we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect gift cometh … it is our duty … to extend … that freedom to others …
It is not for us to enquire, why, in the creation of mankind, the Inhabitants of the several parts of the Earth, were distinguished by a difference in feature or complexion.
It is sufficient to know that all are the work of an Almighty Hand … that He, who placed them in their various situations, hath extended equally his care and protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract His Mercies …
We are enabled this day to add one more step to universal civilization by removing as much as possible the sorrows of those, who have lived in undeserved bondage, and from which by the assumed authority of the Kings of Britain, no effectual legal relief could be obtained …
We find our hearts enlarged with … benevolence towards men of all conditions … and give a substantial proof of our gratitude …
Be it enacted … by the … Pennsylvania in General Assembly … that all persons, as well Negroes, and Mulattos, as others … after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as servants for life or slaves.”
In England, the former slave trader John Newton, who wrote the song Amazing Grace, became an Anglican minister and helped form the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.
Newton influenced William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian member of Parliament, who worked tirelessly for decades to end slavery in the British Empire.
In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery in the territory which would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
George Washington’s original 73 page draft of his Inaugural Address, 1789, included:
“I rejoice in a belief that … mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.”

On February 3, 1790, less than three months before he died, Franklin petitioned Congress to ban slavery:

“For promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in bondage, & the Improvement of the Condition of the African Races …
an Association was formed … in this state by a number of her citizens of various religious denominations for promoting the abolition of Slavery …
A just and accurate conception of the true principles of liberty … by the blessing of Divine Providence, have been successfully directed to the relieving from bondage a large number of their fellow Creatures of the African Race …
That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of His care and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness the Christian Religion teaches us to believe and the political creed of America fully coincides …
that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, without distinction of Color, to all descriptions of People … that equal liberty … is still the birthright of all men …
They earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of Slavery … restoration of liberty to those unhappy Men, who alone, in this land of Freedom, are degraded into perpetual Bondage … groaning in servile subjection,
that you will devise means for removing this … promote mercy and justice towards this distressed Race, and … for discouraging every species of traffick in the Persons of Our Fellow Men.
Philadelphia February 3, 1790
B. Franklin.”
Jefferson pushed through legislation ending the importation of slaves into the United States, telling Congress, December 2, 1806:
“… 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.”
Slavery began in Caribbean earlier and lasted longer than most anywhere in the Americas.
A notorious trade triangle had developed with Havana, Cuba, at its center:
  • SLAVES from Africa
  • to SUGAR from the Caribbean
  • to RUM in England.

Haiti had several slave revolts against the French government.
Fear that Haitian slave revolts would spread was a compelling factor convincing Napoleon to sell the French Louisiana Territory to the United States during Thomas Jefferson’s Presidency.
Tragically, some slavery continues, with Reuters publishing an article, February 7, 2017: “Haiti hotel police exposes child sex trafficking.”
In 1820, a U.S. revenue cutter captured the slave ship Antelope off the coast of Florida with nearly 300 African slaves.
Francis Scott Key fought to free the slaves, spending seven years in an expensive legal battle which went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1825.
An international incident occurred in 1839 when a Portuguese ship from Sierra Leone transferred 53 slaves to the Cuban ship Amistad.
On July 1, 1839, the African slaves broke free of their shackles and seized control of the ship, demanding to be sailed back to Africa.
The captain misdirected the ship, sailing slowly east during the day, but quickly west at night, finally landing at Long Island, New York, where the slaves were arrested.
The Amistad case went to the Supreme Court in 1841.
74-year-old former President John Quincy Adams, known as the “Hell-hound of abolition,” defended the jailed Africans, writing:
“By the blessing of God, I will argue the case before the Supreme Court.”
This was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film Amistad, starring Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, and Matthew McConaughey.
John Quincy Adams wrote in his journal, October 1840:
“I implore the mercy of God to control my temper, to enlighten my soul, and to give me utterance, that I may prove myself in every respect equal to the task.”
Francis Scott Key gave Adams legal advice to free the slaves.
Adams shook hands with Africans Cinque and Grabeau, saying: “God willing, we will make you free.”
Against all odds, John Quincy Adams won freedom for these Africans.
John Quincy Adams died February 23, 1848. A pallbearer at his funeral was a freshman Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
When Democrats wanted to expand slavery into the new land acquired from the Louisiana Purchase and the Gadsden Purchase, it resulted in “Bleeding Kansas.”
Prior to the Civil War, America was divided into 5 categories:
1. Radical Northern Republicans: whose attitude was slavery is wrong–end it now.
2. Moderate Republicans: whose attitude was that slavery is wrong but the country should transition out of it gradually over time.
3 Practical Neutral Voters: who cared little about the value of human life. They were more concerned about their pocketbook, jobs, wages, economy and tax-tariff issues.
4. Moderate Southern Democrats: whose attitude was slavery is wrong, but it was settled law and the nation should just live with it. People should have the choice whether or not to own a slave–just treat your slaves nice.
5. Extreme Southern Democrats: whose attitude was slavery is good and should be expanded into new Territories and States.
The Civil War began in 1861, and in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Slavery was ended in the United States after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment.
Slavery continued in the Caribbean, and in areas of Latin and South America.
President James Buchanan wrote December 19, 1859:
“When a market for African slaves shall no longer be furnished in Cuba … Christianity and civilization may gradually penetrate the existing gloom.”
In 1868, a revolt began in Cuba by a farmer of Spanish descent crying out for racial equality, freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Spain put down the Cuban revolt in the Ten Years War, killing thousands.
A Spanish Royal decree finally ended slavery in Cuba in 1886.
In 1895, another rebellion began in Cuba and Spain sent 200,000 soldiers to put it down.
Thousands were put into concentration camps where they suffered from starvation, disease and exposure.
Yellow Press journalism excited the American public, who demanded President William McKinley intervene.
The U.S.S. Maine was sent to Havana, and on FEBRUARY 15, 1898, it blew up in the harbor under suspicious conditions, beginning the Spanish-American War.
President McKinley approved the Resolution of Congress:
“Whereas the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization,
culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battle ship, with 266 of its officers and crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot longer be endured …
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives … that the people of the island of Cuba are and of right ought to be free.”
There are more slaves today than at any time in human history, reported Benjamin Skinner, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
An estimated 27 million people in the world are forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence, in forced marriages, in sex-trafficking and prostitution.
Though officially illegal, slavery, by its different names, continues today in:
  • India,
  • Pakistan,
  • Nepal,
  • Bhutan,
  • Southeast Asia,
  • Romania,
  • Sudan,
  • Haiti,
  • Brazil,
  • Latin America, and
  • even sex-trafficking in the United States
Those most loudly demanding reparations for past slavery are strangely silent regarding present-day slavery.
Tragically, Muslim slave markets continue, with news reports giving shocking details of ISIS enslaving captured women, many of whom are Christian or Yazidi.
The Clarion Project (3/3/16) reported: “ISIS Sells Yazidi Sex Slaves Far and Wide.”
Liberal academia defended this practice, as reported on February 7, 2017, where Georgetown University Professor Jonathan Brown, holder of the Al-Waleed bin Talal Chair in Islamic Civilization, delivered a lecture explaining how slavery and non-consensual sex (rape) are acceptable under Islamic sharia law.
TIME Magazine reported January 18, 2010:
“Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.”
Organizations bringing relief to these victims include:
  • Voice of the Martyrs,
  • Shared Hope International,
  • New Friends New Life,
  • International Justice Mission,
  • Wellspring Living,
  • Slavery Footprint,
  • Christian Solidarity International,
  • Agape International Missions,
  • YWAM Thailand Tamar Center,
  • Persecution Project Foundation, which provides compassion, hope, and assistance in rebuilding communities though the love of Christ.
  • SavethePersecutedChristians.org
In arguing before the Supreme Court to free slaves of the Amistad ship, John Quincy Adams stated:
“The moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided.
I ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate men than this Declaration.”
Reposted with permission from the American Minute https://americanminute.com/

The Weekly Sam: Look-Say Causes Dyslexia by Sam Blumenfeld

Sam Blumenfeld discovered that there was a concerted effort to dumb the American people down as far back as the early 1960s, and by the mid 1970s, Sam concluded that the look-say method of reading used in government schools was responsible for dyslexia.  The government’s solution to dyslexia was to drug children.  Sam’s solution was to teach the victims of the look-say method, intensive phonics.  Here is a link to a speech Sam gave on the subject:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-03-23T15_24_07-07_00

Sam was more than a critic of government education; he was a man of action who helped create private schools and then he became a pioneer in the modern homeschool movement.  He also gave us, perhaps,  his most important work, Alpha-Phonics:

This book has been used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Camp Constitution makes it available in an on-line and PDF format:

https://campconstitution.net/blumenfelds-alphaphonics/

We also have a print version available from our on-line store:  https://campconstitution.net/product/alpha-phonics-by-sam-blumenfeld/

The Weekly Sam: GOD AND MAN AT HARVARD:

The following is one of many of Sam Blumenfeld’s book proposals that never turned into a book.  However, Sam did write extensively about the Unitarian and eventual Marxist takeover of Harvard.  Many contemporary conservatives don’t realize that Harvard was taken over by the Left 200 years ago.

GOD AND MAN AT HARVARD:

  Chapter Outline

Chapter One – THE CALVINIST BEGINNING. Educating a learned clergy for the Biblical Commonwealth in the wilderness. Calvinism as a world view. The meaning of the Calvinist doctrines of innate depravity, election, reprobation, and predestination. God as the supreme ruler of the universe; man as the disobedient, sinful descendant of Adam and Eve. Harvard as a Calvinist institution. (1636-1700)

 

Chapter Two – THE EMERGENCE OF A LIBERAL HERESY.

The election of John Leverett as president of Harvard in 1707 signals the beginning of a century-long protracted struggle between Calvinists and liberals for control of Harvard. The liberals reject the omnipotent “tyrannical” God of Calvin far a benevolent rational God of limited powers. Man is elevated from the status of depraved sinner to that of a benevolent, rational and perfectible being.  (l700-180~)

Chapter Three – HARVARD BECOMES THE UNITARIAN VATICAN.

The takeover of Harvard in 1805 by the Unitarians and the removal of the Calvinists to Andover (1) marks the crucial turning point in American intellectual history. Harvard becomes the citadel of religious liberalism and academic anti-Calvinism. Everett, Ticknor, Bancroft and Cogswell are sent to Germany to sop up German liberal influences. A liberal cultural elite emerges and  with it, the Anthology Society, the Boston Athenaeum., and the North American Review. Andrews Norton, as head of the Harvard Divinity School is dubbed the Unitarian Pope.  Unitarianism becomes the world-view of a privileged educated elite. (1805-1830)

Chapter Four – THE TRANSCENDENTAL PERIOD.

Emerson’s Divinity School Address in 1838 ushers in a further liberalization of Unitarianism which becomes known as Transcendentalism because of its Hegelian origin. God is transformed into pantheistic emanations throughout nature and Man is transformed into an expression or God., Human pride becomes the principle ingredient behind the new faith in modern statism. The Bible as religious authority is subverted; natural scientists, German scholars, and the influence of Carlyle, Coleridge, Cousin, Kant, and Hegel, leading to’ the secularization of learning. Interest shifts from the knowledge of God (theology) to knowledge of man (psychology). (1830-1850)

Chapter Five – HARVARD AND PRE-MARXIAN  SOCIALISM.

The Transcendentalist experiment in communal living. Brook Farm. The influences of Robert Owen, Fournier, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, etc. The issues of Darwinism and natural selection divide the academicians. The liberals win. The schizoid mind of the Brahmin elite: political conservatism and religious liberalism; anti-abolitionism; the public school movement. Protestant theology in a state of anarchy. Harvard weathers the Civil War with little inconvenience. (1850-1869)

Chapter Six – THE  BREAK WITH THE PAST.

President Eliot gradually breaks ties with the classical and Biblical past. Greek and Latin are no longer required for admission to Harvard.  Compulsory chapel is abolished. The elective system is inaugurated. The scientific spirit takes over as material progress advance~ at a spectacular rate. The Hegelian progressive world-view becomes the world-view of the Harvard elite. Man is intoxicated with his new technological and ~scientific achievements. Eliot writes of the “religion of the future.” Secularism becomes the wave of the future, and statism is its political ~expression. (1869-1880)

Chapter Seven – THE GREAT LIBERAL PROFESSORS.

Josiah Royce, William James, Hugo Munsterberg, George Santayana. The modern curriculum is developed, psychology, sociology, history, the sciences, etc. Christianity is reduced to a system of “social ethics.” Harvard leads the transition to the modern secular world.  Int influence reigns supreme.  Santayana “defects” and embraces Catholicism.

Chapter Eight – SOCIALISM AT  HARVARD

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society if founded at Harvard.  Members include Walter Lippmann, Heywood Broun, Osmond Frankel. Harvard becomes known as “the mother of radicals,” John Reed becomes a Bolshevik, dies in Russia and his buried in the Kremlin. Fabian Socialist Graham Wallas lecture at Harvard. Man marvels at his own powers.  (1900-1920)

 

 Chapter Nine – HARVARD SETS THE LIBERAL STANDARD

The academic world, for the most part, follows Harvard’s lead to the left. Through its graduate schools, the great foundations, its professors, Harvard liberalism becomes the world-view of America’s academic elite. Harvard alumni like Corliss Lamont and Robert Morse Lovett lend prestige to pro-Communist causes.  The New Deal (1920-1945)

Chapter Ten:  Harvard AND THE MCCARTHY ERA

Sen. McCarthy accuses the academic establishment, the Protestant clergy, the great foundations of aiding the Communist cause. Harvard men implicated in high treason:  Lee Pressman, John Abt, Nathan Witt, Alger Hiss.  This chapter will sow how Harvard’s prestige not only served as a cover-up for subversion but was also instrumental in stopping Congressional investigations into Leftist activities.  Academic freedom for the Left (1945-1958)

Chapter Eleven – HARVARD AND VIETNAM

Harvard’s influence during the Kennedy years reaches its high-point. McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Schlesinger, Kissinger, and others flock to Washington. The Cambridge-Washington axis. Meanwhile, back at the campus, the SDS takes over. Harvard strategists lead America to its worst military defeat. (1958-1975)

Chapter Twelve – SOCIAL ENGINEERING FOR THE FUTURE

Harvard scientific las and institutes all operate on the premise that man’s power is unlimited, and that he is the center and measure of all things. Secular humanism is the philosophy guiding the behavioral sciences.  The myth of moral progress permits any action in the name of mankind’s “improvement, Abortion, birth control, behavior modification by drugs, genetic transmutations are the natural products of this philosophy, Benevolent, rational perfectible man is now capable of causing hos fellow man more misery that event in history.  Power is now man’s rampant passion. Skinner, Eriksin, Galbraith, Reisman, Lipset, etc.

Chapter Thirteen – GOD AT HARVARD

Atheist Harvey Cox is head of the Divinity School, Cox pushes secular, “religion less” religion. He is pro-Marxist, pro-Castro,,  Christianity is dead at Harvard.  The logical end of the liberal heresy is not merely the death of God but the murder of God. Religious liberalism has reached the end of the road. It now openly espouses dialectical materialism.  The paradox of our time:  a theological school at war with the idea of God; a theology unable and unwilling to resist Communist.  Social and revolutionary action as the liberal form of piety.

Note by the editor

  • The Andover Theological Seminary

 

Please visit and subscribe to the Sam Blumenfeld Archives:  https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

Death of “Lemon Test” Returns Religious Expression to America by Liberty Counsel

Mar 17, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After years of judicial activists eradicating religious monuments and expressions of faith on public property because of the “Lemon Test,” major victories at the U.S. Supreme Court last year that led to the overturning of the legal test have changed the landscape in America.
The “Lemon Test” was binding authority for 51 years with 7,073 references in court opinions, administrative law decisions or other legal writings as cited on Thomas Reuters Westlaw. The legal test came out of the ruling in Lemon v. Kurtzman that has been used to determine if a law violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause. The High Court ruled in that case that a Rhode Island law that supplemented salaries of some parochial schoolteachers was unconstitutional.

As a result, Lemon has been used by courts to remove religious symbols and displays from the public square since 1971. In fact, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free School District regarding that the High Court’s invocation of the “Lemon Test” was “like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.”

However, all that changed last year as a result of two major victories at the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 2, 2022, Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involved censorship of Christian viewpoints regarding flag raisings.  The High Court unanimously ruled that the city of Boston violated the Constitution by censoring a private flag in a public forum open to “all applicants” merely because the application referred to it as a “Christian flag.” The High Court unanimously rejected Boston’s use of the “Lemon Test” to censor Christian viewpoints.

In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Liberty Counsel argued in its amicus brief that since the Establishment Clause provides no justification for suppressing Coach Joe Kennedy’s private, religious speech to silently pray on the football field after games, the “Lemon Test” should be overruled. Then on June 27, 2022, the High Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the high school football coach and also finally buried the court-made “Lemon” test, citing Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 decision handed down in Shurtleff v. City of Boston involving the Christian flag.

The Kennedy ruling stated, “This Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot… In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’”

As a result, the Ten Commandments, for example, can be displayed on government property, including in public school classrooms. That means that the 1980 Stone v. Graham Supreme Court decision is no longer valid. In this case, the High Court ruled that a Kentucky law requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments, purchased with private contributions, on the wall of each public school classroom was unconstitutional and violated the first part of the Lemon and the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The activist 5-4 per curium opinion in Stone v. Graham was issued without any briefing or oral argument. Incredibly, the Court wrote:

“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”

However, since Lemon has been finally buried, students across the nation can read, memorize and hopefully obey, the Ten Commandments. Now it would be nice to return to the time prior to the removal of the Ten Commandments from schools when the worst infractions were chewing gum and spitballs.

In addition, other religious symbols such as crosses can permanently remain on government property.

On June 20, 2019, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Bladensburg Peace Cross, a 40-foot cross honoring those who died during World War I, could remain standing, the High Court sidestepped the opportunity to overturn the “Lemon Test.” Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief to the High Court in support of the 93-year-old war memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland that the American Humanist Association challenged as violating the Establishment Clause and “discriminating against patriotic soldiers who are not Christian.”

Since the “Lemon Test” is now dead and the Establishment Clause must be interpreted according to its historical intent, all the cases that relied on Lemon are no longer valid, including cases that struck down Ten Commandment displays, Nativity scenes or other religious symbols. In fact, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissenting in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, wrote: “The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman and calls into question decades of subsequent precedents that it deems ‘offshoot[s]’ of that decision.”

Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The decisions from the Supreme Court involving the Christian flag and Coach Kennedy send a clear message that the ‘Lemon Test’ has finally been buried and government must not discriminate based on religious viewpoint. The Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes, crosses, religious symbols, displays, expression, meetings, and performances can no longer be brushed aside. No longer can courts divorce America from religious freedom or the First Amendment from its original and historical purpose.”

Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.

(The above was a news release from Liberty Counsel http://www.lc.org

 

 

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Climate Hustlers Deceiving on Temperature Records Says Professor Willie Soon. one the world’s leading astrophyscists

(Professor Soon asked us to repost this important interview with Alex Newman.)

Government agencies with a vested interest in the man-made global-warming agenda along with the United Nations are deceiving mankind about global temperature records using a number of flagrant errors, explained one of the world’s leading astrophyscists, Dr. Willie Soon, in this interview with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Dr. Soon, one of the speakers at the Heartland Institute’s annual climate convention, exposes these tricks, including relying on contaminated temperature data from urban areas that show more heat only due to human development rather than CO2 or global warming, he said. This has been known for over a century, and yet the climate profiteers keep peddling the fraud. Dr. Soon’s published studies on this have been cited even by top UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists in their own work, so they can’t claim to be ignorant. It is time for truth, Dr. Soon warns.