Year 501 (2016)
“When new bottles replace the old, the taste of the wine may change, though for victims of the “savage injustice” of the conquerors, it rarely loses its bitterness. Nor does it matter much, for the most part, whose hand wields the rod. Sometimes it does. During the American revolution, Francis Jennings writes, most of the indigenous population “were eventually driven by events to fight for their ‘ancient protector and friend’ the king of England,” recognizing what lay ahead if the rebels won. Mu...ch the same was true of the black population, their awareness heightened by the British emancipation proclamation of 1775 offering to free “all indentured servants, Negroes or others...able and willing to bear arms,” while condemnation of the slave trade was deleted from the Declaration of Independence “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia” (Thomas Jefferson). Even employees were considered chattel by the rebels. Local committees opposed granting them permission to enlist in George Washington’s army because “all Apprentices and servants are the Property of their masters and mistresses, and every mode of depriving such masters and mistresses of their Property is a Violation of the Rights of mankind, contrary to the...Continental Congress, and an offence against the Peace of the good People of this State”MoreLess
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