[ckaihatsu]

And yet Kimberley says quite explicitly the Americans thought slavery could be in danger due to Somerset, even though in reality the case went largely unnoticed by the press at the time, and the outlets that did cover the case did so in a neutral/factual way.

You're *overgeneralizing* to 'the Americans', when in reality Kimberley specified '[some] white Americans', meaning slaveholders, who had *class* / property interests in slavery, and who felt threatened by the Somerset court decision:

[T]his narrow decision ['Somerset'] was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding.

https://blackagendareport.com/freedom-r ... s-july-4th

My point stands that the 1619 Project / Hannah-Jones *contradicts* Kimberley's position.

What Hannah-Jones described as a perceptible British threat to American slavery in 1776 in fact did not exist.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... tz/605152/

[wat0n]

@ckaihatsu "some Americans" yet not so many if the press largely ignored the ruling at the time.

You are also pretending Kimberley's position is fundamentally different from the 1619 Project's on independence: It's not, both claim that Somerset and some purported perception of a threat to slavery in the British colonies drove the process when in reality it was (at most) a secondary concern.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu "some Americans" yet not so many if the press largely ignored the ruling at the time.

So we're in agreement on the empirical facts here.

You are also pretending Kimberley's position is fundamentally different from the 1619 Project's on independence: It's not, both claim that Somerset and some purported perception of a threat to slavery in the British colonies drove the process when in reality it was (at most) a secondary concern.

Incorrect. You're saying that Kimberley's position is that the perceived threat to slavery in the British colonies was a 'secondary concern' regarding independence, when she clearly states that:

White settlers were in a constant state of fear of slave revolts and Dunmore’s actions meant to keep them in check only heightened their determination to run the country without British interference.

[wat0n]

@ckaihatsu you are again ignoring "The ruling didn’t end slavery in British territories and in fact it lasted in those regions for 50 more years. But even this narrow decision was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding."

[ckaihatsu]

My point stands that the white settler slaveowners' perceived threat to their slaveholdings was a *primary* concern regarding overcoming British interference.

@ckaihatsu you are again ignoring "The ruling didn’t end slavery in British territories and in fact it lasted in those regions for 50 more years. But even this narrow decision was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding."

In what way am I "ignoring" this statement, and to what effect?

[wat0n]

@ckaihatsu

You are ignoring it because you are pretending that's not the essence behind the 1619 Project's account of the causes of the American Revolution. That's exactly what Sean Wilentz is pushing back against, and so is the WSWS it seems.

[ckaihatsu]

"The ruling didn’t end slavery in British territories and in fact it lasted in those regions for 50 more years. But even this narrow decision was too much for white Americans who feared that the crown might undermine or even end their right to slaveholding."

@ckaihatsu

You are ignoring it because you are pretending that's not the essence behind the 1619 Project's account of the causes of the American Revolution. That's exactly what Sean Wilentz is pushing back against, and so is the WSWS it seems.

You're incorrect. I'm not pretending that the essence of the 1619 Project regarding causes of the American Revolution is other than this:

"[O]ne of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_ ... Revolution

I'm not ignoring that slavery continued to exist well past 1772, nor am I ignoring that white slaveowners felt threatened that slavery and their slaveholdings would be undermined by the crown.

[wat0n]

You're incorrect. I'm not pretending that the essence of the 1619 Project regarding causes of the American Revolution is other than this:

I'm not ignoring that slavery continued to exist well past 1772, nor am I ignoring that white slaveowners felt threatened that slavery and their slaveholdings would be undermined by the crown.

Yet Kimberley seems to agree with that, or that's how I interpret the article. I see little other reasons to be so much against celebrating the 4th, after all...

[Fasces]

Ah, 1619 Project stuff (and among the worst of it, at that). You may want to check what *actual historians* have to say about the *empirical facts* about this narrative, including in the WSWS you are so fond of.

Historical fact is an oxymoron. The criticisms in both pieces are a matter of interpretation. The historians in those letters seem to take a man's written word as the singular important source in determining a man's motivation and intent, which is absurd. Politicians lie. They lie chronically, habitually, for purpose and without need. They do in 2020 and they certainly did in 1776. What a man wrote in his letters that he was aware would be one day entered into the historical record, and his motives are two separate distinct things. What a single man (who was later exiled from the United States) wrote in Common Sense is one thing - how much that specific writing influenced the decision-making on an individual elite at the time is fundamentally unknowable. There is no empirical truth in history. If the historians in that WSWS piece are not cognizant of that, they can scarcely be called historians.

For example, there is a common criticism that the 1619 claim "Slaver elites started a war of independence to defend slavery in the United States as a reaction of 1772 decision in Britain to ban slavery in the UK." It goes along the lines that while the decision affected slavery in the UK, there was no intent to apply abolition in the colonies, and Britain would not abolish slavery in the Caribbean and other American territories until almost a century after the Revolution. Why this criticism doesn't apply to Southern slaver elites that feared Lincoln would abolish slavery in the south isn't explored, of course. The elites at the time may very well have acted against a threat that did not exist, but which they perceived to exist. This is unknowable and unprovable one way or the other, short of inventing a perfect mind reading device and a time machine.

I'm not saying the 1619 Project is True, either. No historical narrative is True. The demand to cling to historical written record as a source of truth - when a huge contingent of the population living then was illiterate by choice or law (or if they were literate, actively persecuted and records destroyed) is fundamentally flawed. The study of history does not teach Truth. It teaches Perspective and Narrative. Different Perspectives and Narratives are not more True than any other, except in their significance to the contemporary society that chooses to teach a particular narrative as True.

[wat0n]

Historical fact is an oxymoron. The criticisms in both pieces are a matter of interpretation. The historians in those letters seem to take a man's written word as the singular important source in determining a man's motivation and intent, which is absurd. Politicians lie. They lie chronically, habitually, for purpose and without need. They do in 2020 and they certainly did in 1776. What a man wrote in his letters that he was aware would be one day entered into the historical record, and his motives are two separate distinct things. What a single man (who was later exiled from the United States) wrote in Common Sense is one thing - how much that specific writing influenced the decision-making on an individual elite at the time is fundamentally unknowable. There is no empirical truth in history. If the historians in that WSWS piece are not cognizant of that, they can scarcely be called historians.

For example, there is a common criticism that the 1619 claim "Slaver elites started a war of independence to defend slavery in the United States as a reaction of 1772 decision in Britain to ban slavery in the UK." It goes along the lines that while the decision affected slavery in the UK, there was no intent to apply abolition in the colonies, and Britain would not abolish slavery in the Caribbean and other American territories until almost a century after the Revolution. Why this criticism doesn't apply to Southern slaver elites that feared Lincoln would abolish slavery in the south isn't explored, of course. The elites at the time may very well have acted against a threat that did not exist, but which they perceived to exist. This is unknowable and unprovable one way or the other, short of inventing a perfect mind reading device and a time machine.

I'm not saying the 1619 Project is True, either. No historical narrative is True. The demand to cling to historical written record as a source of truth - when a huge contingent of the population living then was illiterate by choice or law (or if they were literate, actively persecuted and records destroyed) is fundamentally flawed. The study of history does not teach Truth. It teaches Perspective and Narrative. Different Perspectives and Narratives are not more True than any other, except in their significance to the contemporary society that chooses to teach a particular narrative as True.

The problem with this idea is that it's not even clear there was such a perception of a threat of abolition after Somerset in 1772. I mean, the case was barely noticed at all in the Thirteen Colonies as Wilentz explains:

But even the evidence proffered in support of this more restricted claim—which implicitly cedes the problem with the original assertion—fails to hold up to scrutiny. Silverstein pointed to the Somerset case, in which, as I’ve noted, a British high court ruled that English common law did not support chattel slavery. Even though the decision did not legally threaten slavery in the colonies, Silverstein wrote, it caused a “sensation” when reported in colonial newspapers and “slavery joined other issues in helping to gradually drive apart the patriots and their colonial governments.”

In fact, the Somerset ruling caused no such sensation. In the entire slaveholding South, a total of six newspapers—one in Maryland, two in Virginia, and three in South Carolina—published only 15 reports about Somerset, virtually all of them very brief. Coverage was spotty: The two South Carolina newspapers that devoted the most space to the case didn’t even report its outcome. American newspaper readers learned far more about the doings of the queen of Denmark, George III’s sister Caroline, whom Danish rebels had charged with having an affair with the court physician and plotting the death of her husband. A pair of Boston newspapers gave the Somerset decision prominent play; otherwise, most of the coverage appeared in the tiny-font foreign dispatches placed on the second or third page of a four- or six-page issue.

Above all, the reportage was almost entirely matter-of-fact, betraying no fear of incipient tyranny. A London correspondent for one New York newspaper did predict, months in advance of the actual ruling, that the case “will occasion a greater ferment in America (particularly in the islands) than the Stamp Act,” but that forecast fell flat. Some recent studies have conjectured that the Somerset ruling must have intensely riled southern slaveholders, and word of the decision may well have encouraged enslaved Virginians about the prospects of their gaining freedom, which could have added to slaveholders’ constant fears of insurrection. Actual evidence, however, that the Somerset decision jolted the slaveholders into fearing an abolitionist Britain—let alone to the extent that it can be considered a leading impetus to declaring independence—is less than scant.

Slaveholders and their defenders in the West Indies, to be sure, were more exercised, producing a few proslavery pamphlets that strongly denounced the decision. Even so, as Trevor Burnard’s comprehensive study of Jamaica in the age of the American Revolution observes, “Somerset had less impact in the West Indies than might have been expected.” Which is not to say that the Somerset ruling had no effect at all in the British colonies, including those that would become the United States. In the South, it may have contributed, over time, to amplifying the slaveholders’ mistrust of overweening imperial power, although the mistrust dated back to the Stamp Act crisis in 1765. In the North, meanwhile, where newspaper coverage of Somerset was far more plentiful than in the South, the ruling’s principles became a reference point for antislavery lawyers and lawmakers, an important development in the history of early antislavery politics.

Surely, if slavery was so strongly perceived to be under threat of abolition due to Somerset, at least reporting would have been far more widespread and at the very least polarizing.

[late]

@late it's funny you talk about how lies are so bad, but are not willing to call manifest inaccuracies out.

No need, rough edges get smoothed over.

There is also the 'minor' matter of intent...

[wat0n]

No need, rough edges get smoothed over.

There is also the 'minor' matter of intent...

Then I guess you may be interested to read about historian Leslie M Harris' account of her interactions with the NYT about the project:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ake-122248

[late]

Then I guess you may be interested to read about historian Leslie M Harris' account of her interactions with the NYT about the project:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ake-122248

Still flailing blindly, I see.

That illustrates what I said. Historians are prob revising the SI, as we speak. That can take years, but the painstaking work pays off. At the same time, good schools will try to work out what they should do, once the crazies wander off on some other tangent, like child prostitution rings in imaginary cellars...

Feel sorry for the textbook makers, they will be in the middle of a tug of war between kook states like Texas, and the ones that actually want to educate their kids.

[wat0n]

Still flailing blindly, I see.

That illustrates what I said. Historians are prob revising the SI, as we speak. That can take years, but the painstaking work pays off. At the same time, good schools will try to work out what they should do, once the crazies wander off on some other tangent, like child prostitution rings in imaginary cellars...

Feel sorry for the textbook makers, they will be in the middle of a tug of war between kook states like Texas, and the ones that actually want to educate their kids.

"Flailing"? Is it honest for the 1619 Project to pretend to be historically grounded when in reality they decided to ignore the advice from historians they contacted?

[late]

"Flailing"?

Oh yeah, that was good for a chuckle.

[wat0n]

Oh yeah, that was good for a chuckle.

So is it honest for the 1619 Project to pretend to be historically grounded when in reality they decided to ignore the advice from historians they contacted?

[ckaihatsu]

You're incorrect. I'm not pretending that the essence of the 1619 Project regarding causes of the American Revolution is other than this:

"[O]ne of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_ ... Revolution

I'm not ignoring that slavery continued to exist well past 1772, nor am I ignoring that white slaveowners felt threatened that slavery and their slaveholdings would be undermined by the crown.

Yet Kimberley seems to agree with that,

You may want to specify what you're referring to here, since you're being vague / imprecise.

or that's how I interpret the article. I see little other reasons to be so much against celebrating the 4th, after all...

Kimberley is referring to the *institution* and *material interests* / economics of slavery, for the elite minority of white slaveowners.

This historical trajectory is juxtaposed to the differing political interests of the *patriots* at the time, notably Paine ('Common Sense'), for political *independence* from Britain.

The *economic* interests of the white slaveowners happened to coincide with the *political* interests of the patriots, with both camps advocating for independence from the British Empire.

Paine himself, though, notes that there *wasn't* any kind of mass disaffection from the British at the time of active hostilities:

Paine arrived in the American colonies in November 1774, shortly before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Though the colonies and Great Britain had commenced hostilities against one another, the thought of independence was not initially entertained. Writing of his early experiences in the colonies in 1778, Paine "found the disposition of the people such, that they might have been led by a thread and governed by a reed. Their attachment to Britain was obstinate, and it was, at that time, a kind of treason to speak against it. Their ideas of grievance operated without resentment, and their single object was reconciliation."[8] Paine quickly engrained himself in the Philadelphia newspaper business, and began writing Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. Though it began as a series of letters to be published in various Philadelphia papers, it grew too long and unwieldy to publish as letters, leading Paine to select the pamphlet form.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense#Publication

Zinn corroborates this situation:

Chapter 5: A KIND OF REVOLUTION

The American victory over the British army was made possible by the existence of an already- armed people. Just about every white male had a gun, and could shoot. The Revolutionary leadership distrusted the mobs of poor. But they knew the Revolution had no appeal to slaves and Indians. They would have to woo the armed white population.

This was not easy. Yes, mechanics and sailors, some others, were incensed against the British. But general enthusiasm for the war was not strong. While much of the white male population went into military service at one time or another during the war, only a small fraction stayed. John Shy, in his study of the Revolutionary army (A People Numerous and Armed), says they "grew weary of being bullied by local committees of safety, by corrupt deputy assistant commissaries of supply, and by bands of ragged strangers with guns in their hands calling themselves soldiers of the Revolution." Shy estimates that perhaps a fifth of the population was actively treasonous. John Adams had estimated a third opposed, a third in support, a third neutral.

Alexander Hamilton, an aide of George Washington and an up-and-coming member of the new elite, wrote from his headquarters: ". . . our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep... . They are determined not to be free.. . . If we are saved, France and Spain must save us."

https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnkin5.html

[wat0n]

You may want to specify what you're referring to here, since you're being vague / imprecise.

The very title of the article should already give you some hints

Kimberley is referring to the *institution* and *material interests* / economics of slavery, for the elite minority of white slaveowners.

This historical trajectory is juxtaposed to the differing political interests of the *patriots* at the time, notably Paine ('Common Sense'), for political *independence* from Britain.

The *economic* interests of the white slaveowners happened to coincide with the *political* interests of the patriots, with both camps advocating for independence from the British Empire.

Paine himself, though, notes that there *wasn't* any kind of mass disaffection from the British at the time of active hostilities:

Zinn corroborates this situation:

None of this means that she has any grounds for claiming the American Revolution had the defense of slavery as one of its primary causes. Neither does it means Kimberley can claim Somerset had any meaningful relevance given it seems to have gone largely unnoticed.

[ckaihatsu]

The very title of the article should already give you some hints

Well, as I've mentioned in past exchanges, you'll have to make your own points for yourself. If you don't make a clear point then I won't have enough information to go on, for a response.

None of this means that she has any grounds for claiming the American Revolution had the defense of slavery as one of its primary causes. Neither does it means Kimberley can claim Somerset had any meaningful relevance given it seems to have gone largely unnoticed.

Now you're confusing the claims of the 1619 Project, which you're describing here, with the premise of Kimberley.

Here's from the Kimberley article that I included:

King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian mountains. One of the speculators poised to become a wealthier man if settlements were permitted to move westward was George Washington.

He was not alone in his wish to conquer the entire continent and to get rich doing it. Property claims had already been made in these regions, and neither he nor the rest of his cohort were going to let British treaties with indigenous people stand in their way. They largely ignored the edict and went wherever they wanted to go.

https://blackagendareport.com/freedom-r ... s-july-4th

[wat0n]

Well, as I've mentioned in past exchanges, you'll have to make your own points for yourself. If you don't make a clear point then I won't have enough information to go on, for a response.

Why does Kimberley consider July 4th is a tragedy?

Now you're confusing the claims of the 1619 Project, which you're describing here, with the premise of Kimberley.

Here's from the Kimberley article that I included:

And Kimberley is not mentioning that Washington's land claims would be recognized by the British-Cherokee Treaty of Lochaber in 1770...

...

The colonists' demands were met and the boundary line was adjusted in a series of treaties with the Native Americans.[17] The first two of these treaties were completed in 1768; the Treaty of Fort Stanwix adjusted the border with the Iroquois Confederacy in the Ohio Country and the Treaty of Hard Labour adjusted the border with the Cherokee in the Carolinas.[18][19] The Treaty of Hard Labour was followed by the Treaty of Lochaber in 1770, adjusting the border between Virginia and the Cherokee.[20] These agreements opened much of what is now Kentucky and West Virginia to British settlement.[21] The land granted by the Virginian and North Carolinian government heavily favored the land companies, seeing as they had more wealthy backers than the poorer settlers who wanted to settle west to hopefully gain a fortune.[22]

...

The influence of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 on the coming of the American Revolution has been variously interpreted. Many historians argue that the proclamation ceased to be a major source of tension after 1768 since the aforementioned later treaties opened up extensive lands for settlement. Others have argued that colonial resentment of the proclamation contributed to the growing divide between the colonies and the mother country. Some historians argue that even though the boundary was pushed west in subsequent treaties, the British government refused to permit new colonial settlements for fear of instigating a war with Native Americans, which angered colonial land speculators.[38] Others argue that the Royal Proclamation imposed a fiduciary duty of care on the Crown.[39]

George Washington was given 20,000 acres (81 km2) of wild land in the Ohio region for his services in the French and Indian War. In 1770, Washington took the lead in securing the rights of him and his old soldiers in the French War, advancing money to pay expenses on behalf of the common cause and using his influence in the proper quarters. In August 1770, it was decided that Washington should personally make a trip to the western region, where he located tracts for himself and military comrades and eventually was granted letters patent for tracts of land there. The lands involved were open to Virginians under terms of the Treaty of Lochaber of 1770, except for the lands located two miles (3.2 km) south of Fort Pitt, now known as Pittsburgh.[40]

In the United States, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 ended with the American Revolutionary War because Great Britain ceded the land in question to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783). Afterward, the U.S. government also faced difficulties in preventing frontier violence and eventually adopted policies similar to those of the Royal Proclamation. The first in a series of Indian Intercourse Acts was passed in 1790, prohibiting unregulated trade and travel in Native American lands. In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh established that only the U.S. government, and not private individuals, could purchase land from Native Americans.[41]

...

The real effect the 1763 Proclamation had was to further poison the relations between the British and the future Americans, but that was hardly the only source of tension and if anything was dealt with by 1770. Issues like taxation were far more controversial and (indeed) conflictive in the relations between both sides.