Society and Slavery Go Way Back

Hoo-boy. America's the poster child for how to get off on the wrong foot. 

From the moment the United States was founded as a free and independent republic, dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal," slavery represented a fundamental contradiction to the nation's most cherished values. You can't just buy, sell, and breed other human beings to build your economy, and then pretend you're still the coolest country on the block.

And we'll never ever get out of this one, but the brutal truth is, slavery in human societies dates back at least to antiquity in Egypt. Aristotle once argued that, "from the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is The Father of Logic. Dude, thanks for categories and virtues—Scattergories is our jam and our New Year's resolutions are on point—but newsflash: human beings don't belong in the same category as mules and donkeys. And claiming ownership over another human isn't virtuous in the least bit.

"But hey," you say, "a concept like that must've come straight from an autocracy, right?" 

Nope. Aristotle hailed from Athens, the shining birthplace of democracy. So, the institution of slavery's had a very long history of paradoxical existence within otherwise free and democratic nations. In other words, democracy's been cuttin' corners since long before slavery was introduced to the young and reckless colonies that later became the U.S.

It's hard to put two and two together when the American Revolution against the British monarchy represented a defiance of divine birthright. That's a stark contrast to accepting slavery and subordination-from-birth, don't you think? Although paradoxical, there was a relationship at play here (some smartypants professors might call this relationship a "dialectic") between the two extremes: 

(a) the blatant inequality, inhumanity, and cruel subjection of bondage
and
(b) the idealistic self-determination of a free and equal society

Abolitionists, You the Real MVPs

Like the Chinese concept of yin and yang, the two opposites emerged alongside and in contrast to one another. Historian David Brion Davis argued that "since man has a remarkable capacity to imagine abstract states of perfection, he very early imagined a perfect form of subordination."

Yeah, that's not your vanilla, Sesame Street definition of "imagination" there, folks.

Though a situation of hypocrisy, thankfully, the comparison was not lost on many colonists, Black and white. The ideal and the real coexisted in the first 250 years of European settlement on the North American continent. But the lingering potency of the ideal—that is, "that all men are created equal"—also formed the basis for a persevering antislavery movement. 

This is a story for activists. And idealists. And anyone who ever fought for a cause that seemed impossible to win, because the odds appeared too insurmountable and because no one seemed to listen. 

Before there ever was a United States of America, people on this continent were fighting against the evils of slavery. Generations of humanitarians who would never live to see Emancipation Day still dedicated their lives to trying to make people understand why bondage was wrong. In the end, they prevailed, but only after generations of struggle, mob violence, hardships, setbacks, and betrayals.

Not all abolitionists were complete egalitarians; many shared at least some of the racial beliefs and stereotypes that infused eighteenth and nineteenth-century America. Black and white abolitionists had their differences, as did male and female abolitionists. Yet, for the sake of their cause, this small but important group of uncompromising and principled Americans somehow managed to overcome the usual boundaries of class, race, and gender that have so often separated people throughout U.S. history.

• They worked together amidst an extremely hostile environment of racist Northerners and even less receptive Southerners.
• They petitioned a federal government that tried to shut its doors to their pleas.
• They helped transform a party system that long resisted the disruptive influence that the slavery issue would bring.

But for the new western territories and the inherently racist appeal of the "free soil" movement, abolitionists may never have succeeded. And when they did succeed, it turned out that emancipation did not necessarily mean complete freedom or equality for Black people. For many more generations, through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, new waves of activists carried on the abolitionists' crusade for equal rights and freedoms for all Americans. Women who found their voices in the abolitionist rank-and-file went on to speak out on their own behalf, for suffrage and just treatment.

This is a story that unfolds over hundreds of years, across the North and South, among people of all races, genders, and religious persuasions. It is therefore appropriate that the main subject of this story centers on the one thing all those people have in common: they recognized slaves' inherent humanity, and the inhumanity of slavery. Their success may have come along with severe limitations, but it came just the same, and when it did, the whole country was forever changed as a result.

So, if you're yearning for change or working on behalf of a similarly noble-but-seemingly-lofty cause—environmentalism, the eradication of AIDS, or snuffing out your weird uncle's racist comments—you should keep reading. Your ultimate objective may not be reached during your own lifetime, but that's no reason not to make the effort while you're still alive and kicking.

Who knows? You may end up in the history books for it. And even small changes can snowball into bigger ones. Regardless, you'll be part of a legacy bigger than yourself. And that's quite a good way to spend a lifetime.