NORTH AMERICA
WAS INHABITED BY ISRAELITES
1000 YEARS OR MORE BEFORE 1492
When embarking upon a study such as this, one will find that there are archeological discoveries that have been made which show a strong correlation to the Bible.
For when people think of Israel in the Bible they assume that all the events which happened to Israel did so in the little country known as Palestine; today it is called Israel. And therefore the Israelites could not have been very important in the ancient world.
However, Daniel told us that knowledge would increase in the latter days:
"But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." [1]
Also, Daniel tells us that many things will be kept secret until the latter days:
"And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." [2]
Many of these recent archeological discoveries combined with secular and Biblical history give us a shockingly different perspective of the ancient world in general and ancient Israel in particular. In this chapter we will attempt to show you evidence which will prove ancient Israel was an empire. It had a homeland in Palestine, and a far-flung empire much the same as Britain did until just a few decades ago. Britain once ruled over a far-flung empire from a small homeland, located in the British Isles.
In the years from about 1050-850 B.C. Israel was the dominant power of the world with an empire that rivaled and perhaps exceeded that of the Caesars.
The empire included areas of the world now inhabited by the Israelite people and that included portions of North America. We full well understand this is a bold statement, but the evidence will follow. In this study we will examine the real extent of Israel's power and empire in the ancient world; the Israelite presence in North America with considerable specifics.
The impact of the drought of Elijah's day on the weakening of Israel and the rise of Cartage, which we will show was an Israelite colony. Cartage continued Israel's presence in the New World, very possibly even during Christ's lifetime here on earth.
The time of Israel's greatness really began with King David and its rise to empire status. This happened in about the year 1050 B.C. 2 Samuel 8 discusses David's defeat of the Philistines, Moab, Amalek, Edom, and the Syrians for example lost more than 80,000 men in just three battles [3]. That is more men than the United States lost in the 14 years of the Vietnam War. To give you a perspective of the ferocity of the battles.
1 Chronicles 21 shows that David could mobilize over 1½
million men. With an army of that size you are not insignificant, not even in this age, this day and time. In 1 Chronicles 18:3 it states the border of his dominion went to
the Euphrates River which bordered the area of Assyria and Babylon; or Mesopotamia who viewed David as an upstart rival.
The Phoenicians were the city states of Tyre and Sidon, and had a far flung empire on land and sea. They were the best sailors in the ancient world at that time, and they saw the rise of David and Israel and made an alliance with them. They were a common race of Semitic people; they also had a common language.
There were only dialectic differences between Hebrew and the Phoenician tongue. 1 Kings 17:9-16 relates where Elijah met with a Phoenician or Zidonan widow, and they had immediate discourse, with no difficulty at all in communication.
King Hiram the king of Tyre made David a palace and they became very close allies as 1 King 5:1 shows. The Israelite Phoenician alliance was an ancient super power, with all twelve tribes of Israel united they sat astride the area where three continents met; they had the world's greatest navy in the Phoenicians combined with David's one and one-half million man army. And David was not the least bit reluctant to use it.
They were challenged by Assyria and Mesopotamia, which is almost totally unknown by most and yet it is related in the Bible. There was a revolt in Amon which is a pretext for war between many nations and the Israelites.
It is discussed in 1 Chronicles 19 and 20 in some detail. There were 32 thousands chariots from Mesopotamia alone [4] that came to fight David's army in this battle. There was also an unknown number of men from Mesopotamia and Syria which included a number of different people which fought with Ammon against Israel.
In verse 9 we can see it was a national effort with a number of different nations to destroy Israel as it states their kings came to watch the battle.
"And the children of Ammon came out, and put the battle in array before the gate of the city: and the kings that were come were by themselves in the field." [5]
So, we can clearly see, this was not just a mercenary effort, this was a matter of national commitment against Israel.
Israel won the first round and also the second which left them with no one in the area to challenge them.
If you will look at Psalm 83, which was likely written by David at this time where he lists many nations that come to help the children of Lot, which also included Ammon to destroy Israel from off the face of the earth.
"Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones. They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee: The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah. Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison: Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth. Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna: Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession. O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Lord. Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish: That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth." [6]
Secular history has recorded that Assyria's Empire went into eclipse or confusion, some encyclopedias call it, between 1100-900 B.C. Halley's Bible Handbook comments on it also, and states that ancient Israel was much stronger than Assyria, Babylon or Egypt.
This is the same period as Israel's golden age under David and Solomon. And is glossed over in almost all historical texts, if they even cover it at all.
What happened to Assyria? It was defeated badly in a war against Israel's army, as we learn from 1 Chronicles and Psalm 83. The texts of ancient history will not tell you this nor will it give great credibility as the Bible is the Word of God.
Assyria and other nations had provoked Ammon to start this war, and this will give you a little indication of how large an area that David ruled. In Psalm 83 he named the nations that became a part of this war, which included Assyria and in all likelihood became a vassal state to David. It included the Ishmaelites, which included the Arabian Peninsula and people we don't know where they lived in the east, so we really don't know how large an are David actually ruled.
But he did rule from Egypt to somewhere about the middle of the modern nation of Iran. Ether directly or through vassal states as a result of that war. But Israel was the dominant super power of the ancient world at this time.
Is there evidence of an Israelite Empire? The answer is Yes! But the secular historians will rarely call it an Israelite Empire, they will call it a Phoenician Empire.
Most people who do not realize the difference between Judah and Israel balk at this major role for Israel because they think the Jews were the Israelites and the Jews have always been few in number, but they don't realize that the men from Judah were only a small part of David's army at this time. It is true that David was of the tribe of Judah but he, also, had eleven other tribes to provide manpower.
The Phoenician Empire is credited by historians as being dominant in the Mediterranean Sea; as being present in substantial numbers in the British Isles, the West Coast of Europe and Africa in the period of about 1100-800 B.C. and they are not at all bashful in calling it a Phoenician Empire.
This coincides with the exact time that Assyria was put down and the Bible tells us that David had defeated the Assyrians.
It coincides with Israel's greatness and the allegiance of the Phoenician city Israelites; show Phoenicia took pains to join with them because they did not wish to be their enemy.
1 Chronicles 22 relates that David accumulated for the Temple of God iron and brass beyond calculation. [7] Warrner Keller in his book "The Bible is History" states:
"Israel was using the Bessemer system of smelting, which was nor re-discovered until recently in the modern era...Essian Gebar was the Pittsburgh of ancient Palestine."
That nowhere else in the fertile crescent which includes Mesopotamia could such a large smelting facility be found. We see by this that Israel was not just an agriculture only nation but they were also the industrial power house of the ancient world.
Dr. Berry Fells book "Bronze Age America" cites evidence that 1/2 billions of copper ore was taken from mines near Lake Superior in North America, in roughly 2000-1000 B.C. The dates include the time of David's reign, at the tail end of it, as the ore apparently ran out for they have no evidence that it was mined after that.
It could be that the Israelites simply worked the mines to death, or to where they could not be mined economically at that point. Which Fell states that this New World copper mine output there is no evidence what became of it.
There is no evidence it was used in this hemisphere at all. And they have no idea where the copper came from which was smelted in Palestine during this time.
Putting this evidence together and one comes up with the assumption that this copper was shipped from North America to Palestine by boat and was used by Israel in its huge smelting facilities in Palestine. The Phoenician/Israelite presence in America has abundantly shown to be real.
At this point, we must, in all fairness, present just one of the many stories which abound which make reference to our Israel ancestors coming to America thousands of years BEFORE Columbus. The following is taken from an article in National Geographic, Vol. 152, No. 6, December 1977, pp. 769.
"The New Word: Who, from the Old first touched its shore? Historians held for centuries that it was Christopher Columbus. By current consensus, it was Norse voyagers of a thousand years ago. But perhaps it was a group of shadowy, yet very real, Irish seafaring monks who predated even the Vikings by more than four centuries. In the great pantheon of New World explorers no name is more intriguing, or more clouded in controversy, than that of Ireland's St. Brendan. His legend, today more tantalizing than ever, has persisted through the centuries in the form of a Christians imram, an Irish saga: Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot. With 17 fellow monks, it relates, Brendan sailed to Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum, THE LAND PROMISED TO THE SAINTS, SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE FAR REACHES OF THE WESTERN ATLANTIC. Was the Promised Land North America? Did St. Brendan actually reach it in the sixth century? Neither history nor archeology offers proof."
This statement is totally untrue, and I believe the publishers of National Geographic knew it at the time of the publication.
Most of us have read (from reputable history books) of the adventures of Lief Eriksson and his party in the founding of Vinland circa A.D. 800-1400 in the area of the St. Lawrence River in the North-eastern United States and Canada.
Although they predated the Columbus voyage by many centuries, were the expeditions of Lief Eriksson the first discovery of what is now known as the United States?
There were Christians living in America over 100 years before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. The official historians of this country have known this for many, many years. Yet, none of this is discussed as a national heritage. Why is this?
Those of us who are interested in finding petroglyphs, or ancient symbols and pictures engraved on stones, have wondered about the meaning of them. All we could do was wonder and speculate until the science of deciphering ancient and unknown languages was developed.
The science is called Epigraphics and it has been developed into a rather sophisticated science. Symbols, for example, mean something, but what?
Epigraphics. Until a few years ago geologists told us that the numerous short and repetitive lines inscribed on rocks found in the Northeastern United States and Canada were simply scratches made from the movement of ice and rocks during the recent ice-age. Because of Epigraphics, we now know that it was a language and it has been deciphered.
The Celts. This language is that of the Celts from Ireland, Scotland, England, France and the Rhineland country of Germany.
The language dates from long before Christ and was in use in Ireland and England at the time of Celtic Druids. It is called Ogam script and has been found all over America, from the West Indies to Newfoundland and west into Oregon and British Columbia.
We know that Julius Caesar described the vessels that the Celts had built and used. In Book III of his De Bello Gallico he described these vessels against which his small, puny (by comparison), ships of the Roman fleet fought. He described them as being capable of sailing "upon the vast open sea."
This is exactly what they did. It appears that there were many different expeditions and migrations by the Celts during the period of many centuries before Christ until circa 400-800 A.D. They came, not only just once to colonize, but they came and returned to Europe on a repetitive basis.
The Vikings. The Vikings were here in America when King Woden-lithi sailed the Atlantic seventeen centuries before Christ and entered the St. Lawrence River. He established a trading post at a site near where Toronto now stands. It became a religious and commercial center that is now known as Petroglyph Park at Peterborough, Canada. King Woden-lithi's home was in Norway.
He remained in Canada for five months, from April to September and traded his woven fabrics for copper ingots obtained from the European settlers. He called these people Wal, which is a word cognate with Wales and Welsh. He gave these Celts his religious beliefs, the ability to measure woven cloth and an astronomical observatory for measuring the Nordic calendar and for determining the dates of the pagan Yale and Ishtar festivals. Remember, this was seventeen centuries (1700-years) before Christ!
Ogam Script. The Celts were already here when King Woden-lithi arrived. What was their written language like? We have already shown that they wrote with the Ogam script which can be described simply as an alphabet, comprising fifteen consonants and five vowels, together with a few other signs representing double letters such as diphthongs. The letters are made by inscribing single parallel strokes placed in sets of one to five, in position above, across, or below a guide line.
The Languages. But what words were made from this Ogam alphabet? Here again the science of Epigraphics gives us the answer. We know that there is no language of any of the American Indians that is made up of the Greek language.
And yet the ancient Celts in the area of the St. Lawrence River spoke a language that was directly derived from the Greek! As we shall see, the different Celts in America spoke yet other languages!
The type of Greek that was spoken by the Celts of the area is known as Ptolemaic which means that it is a dialect of Greek that was spoken in Egypt, Palestine and the other countries in the area that Alexander conquered.
Alexander forced upon the area his idea of one-world government, one-world people, one-world religion and one-world language. It was this Ptolemaic dialect that Alexander forced upon the citizens of the area.
The dialect was composed of Greek, Egyptian and Aramaic. This is why Jesus spoke Aramaic and Greek, instead of Hebrew. We will study the effect that Alexander had on Israel and Christianity in a future lesson.
The obvious question from the previous paragraph is, who were the Celts? Did the Celts from Iberia (THE SPANISH PENINSULA) and the Rhineland go to Egypt and Palestine and learn the Greek spoken language at the time of Alexander or did the Israelites (NOT JEWS) learn the Greek and Aramaic when they were in Palestine and then go to the new world to escape the dictatorship of Alexander? Remember, Israel lost the knowledge of ancient Hebrew (not modern Yiddish) before and during the time of Alexander.
The language of the Celts who were already here in the St. Lawrence River Valley when King Woden-lithe arrived has since been lost. Why has the language disappeared? This is probably at least partly because through the subsequent years they intermixed with other peoples and in the process the language was lost.
It doesn't take much to lose a language. Notice the difference between American English and the English language spoken in England. But that doesn't account for the fact that a grace of people totally vanished from the continent. Some of the Ogam Script is with the Gaelic influence.
The Gaelic language came from the highlands of Scotland. In the New England area, artifacts such as grave headstones have been found, all with Ogam script in Gaelic script. [8] The Celts with the Gaelic dialect came from the highlands of Scotland. According to the Scottish Declaration of Independence written by Robert Bruce and his noblemen, the Scotland people came from ancient Israel through the Rhineland area of France and Germany and then through Iberia or Spain.
The Mariners from Tarshish. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs [9]. The Celts were well established in foreign trade.
In 1780, Ezra Stiles, who later became the president of Yale College, found and recorded a Tartessian inscription on a rock along the seashore near Mount Hope Bay, Rhode Island.
The deeply cut inscription clearly shows the outline of a typical high-sterned ship from Tarshish. Under the outline of the ship are the words in Tartessian (Tarshish) Punic, "Mariners of Tarshish this rock proclaims."
Near Union, New Hampshire, another Tartessian inscription was found with a similar Tarshish ship hull and the words, "VOYAGERS FROM TARSHISH THIS STONE PROCLAIMS."
On Mohegan Island, off the coast of Maine, is, in Ogam script in Gaelic dialect, an inscription showing that the Celts traded with the traders from Tarshish. It is obvious that the mariners from Tarshish were not residents of the area as were the Celts. They were trading with the Celts for their furs and raw materials from the mining done by the Celts. Thus, there was a lively trade being conducted between the Japhetic sons of Tarshish [10] and the Celtic sons of Shem.
Some of the trading was done with goods in exchange for the furs and metals of the Celts. But there was also an exchange for coins. It seems that modern historians won't believe the facts of history such as the Ogam inscriptions. They only like to see the money! Well, there is that, too!
Coins. From about the fourth century B.C. the ancient mariner traders brought coins in addition to goods. In the year 1787, Pastor Thaddeus Madson Harris came upon a group of men working on a road known as the Cambridge-Malden road (now Route 16) in Massachusetts.
The workers had uncovered a flat stone underneath the surface. Under the stone was a cache of ancient coins, nearly two quarts of them. The coins were square pieces made of a copper-silver alloy. Each coin was stamped on both sides with an unknown script.
Pastor Harris recorded the incident in a letter to John Quincy Adams. The inscriptions were taken to the Harvard Library for translation but with no success. The letter was then buried in the archives for nearly two hundred years until James Whittall, of the Early Sites Research Society, re-discovered the letter with the inscriptions and researched them with the American Numismatic Society and with Epigraphic scientists.
The inscriptions proved to be that of Kufic origin which is a form of Arabic. Undoubtedly, one of the trading mariners brought the coins to America to purchase the Celtic goods which were for sale.
After the newly designed steel plow was invented by Charles Newbold in 1797, the earth could be turned over to a much greater depth. The furrow that the plow made opened up the soil and there, by the thousands, were found Roman coins!
In days of early America, the extensive study of Latin and Roman history was required for a college degree. Thus, the people of America readily knew that Europeans came to America and lived in America much earlier than Christopher Columbus.
But later, from American history books, our school children were taught the Columbus mystique and they were taught that the world was considered flat by all educated people until Columbus discovered America!
All of those Roman coins that were discovered were ignored and it has remained that way until very recently. As we continue our studies, we will realize why the truth was buried.
In 1961, Frederick J. Pohl raised the nagging question of the Roman coins in his book Atlantic Crossings Before Columbus. He describes notable finds of Roman coins in the United States.
Other scientists have carried on the task of proving the European travels to this continent long before Columbus. One of the notable men in this field is Professor Cyclone covey of Wake Forest University. Much will be discussed about his investigations later in this lesson.
Roman coins are not the only money found in America. Carthaginian, Celto-Iberian, Greek, Libyan and Norse coins have been found in locations all over the United States.
Near Castle Gardens, Wyoming a petroglyph was found, written in Celto-Gaelic, describing the location of what would be the description of a bank. Yes, the petroglyph says that this was the first money-changing location to reach the area and that the bank operated with no usury!
Undoubtedly, this was a location for exchanging the value of one coin for another for the purpose of trading and traveling. The petroglyph written in Celto-Gaelic undoubtedly means that the Celts were located in Wyoming and the fact that they operated in Wyoming and the fact that they operated with no usury is significant. We will shortly discuss the type of law the Celts exercised.
From 400 B.C. to 1100 A.D., the Western world realized six maritime powers. They all came out of the Mediterranean area except for the last one. They are, in order of their appearance, (1) the Carthaginians of Tunisia; (2) the Greeks and Libyans of North Africa; (3) the Romans; (4) the Byzantine Greeks who succeeded Rome; (5) the Islamic powers of North Africa and Asia; and (6) the Norse sea-rovers.
Although the Celts were never realized as a maritime power, since they were a people scattered over many countries, their ocean-going ships were among the best. These ships were huge in comparison to the Roman ships. They were two thousand tons in capacity as compared to about four hundred tons of the average Roman ship.
The ships that the uncle of Jesus, Joseph of Aramathea, used to haul lead and tin from the Glastonbury area of England for sale to the Romans were Celtic in design and operation. Again, Julius Caesar spoke very highly of the sea-going prowess of the Celts and their ships. Throughout this period, each of these maritime powers sent ships all over the high seas and to America.
But it was the Libyans who transcended all of the others in the span of their voyage. A Libyan, named Eratosthenes of Cyrene, accurately calculated the earth's circumference. He reasoned that the earth's oceans had to be continuous and consequently a ship could sail around the world in either direction and return to the starting point. The date was approximately 239 B.C.!
Eratosthenes developed the system of the meridian circles of the map of the globe. The meridian circles are simply the points on the globe where the USN is directly overhead at noon at the local time. He set these meridian circles in a grid in such a way that a mariner could accurately locate his position. He drew the primary meridian circle to pass through Alexandria.
The Libyans then set sail in their ocean-going vessels to prove that Eratosthenes was right. Their ships were equipped with magnetic compasses. Their compass consisted of a ceramic bowl with the compass points engraved around the edge. A lodestone (a strongly magnetic variety of the mineral magnetie) was floated on the water in the bowl.
Sometimes, a magnetized iron strip was suspended in the bowl. They also had a device for navigation that was the forerunner of the modern sextant. The Libyans traveled eastward, through the Suez Canal that King Darius had built, then sailed down the Red Sea, and then around the tip of India, through the Indonesian straits and then into the Pacific Ocean.
They arrived on the West Coast of America, disembarked and traveled inland to Nevada. These ancient Libyans settled in the arid Nevada country because it was very similar to their own home country. In various locations in Nevada are petroglyphs, written in Aramaic-Libyan and Celto-Gaelic which reflect their mariner skills.
There is a map of North America, showing the outline of both coasts from the Hudson Bay country of Canada to Panama in the South. It was obviously taken from one of their meridian circle navigation charts that Eratosthenes developed. In addition, examples of their mathematics is displayed along with oceanography. Their alphabet was written in stone for us to see. Astronomy as a science is displayed. Remember, before the fall of the Roman Empire, the Center of Western Civilization rested along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
The modern day epigraphic scientists are puzzled as to what happened to all of these people, from the Celts, to the Carthaginians, to the Libyans and all the other original settlers who have come to this land.
Certainly educated people in the sciences and mathematics lived here many years ago, that is now obvious. But when the American colonists arrived, the natives had no written language nor any knowledge of higher education.
For example, the Paiute and Shoshone tribesmen of Nevada were asked where all of the petroglyphs we now know to have been scribed by the Libyans came from, they could tell the archaeologists and epigraphists nothing except that neither they nor their forebears had cut them.
However, some of the methods and style of living that were taught by these ancient settlers have come down through the centuries by the indigenous peoples who were here and then remained after the mysterious disappearance.
For example, in the modern, Libyan North African region there are two Distinct ecological groups.
1). The first is the modern Berber who is of lighter skin with obvious and European features with many having blond hair and blue eyes. He prefers to live in the mountainous regions where there is more water and better soil. He is an agriculturist and he builds his home pueblo style out of sun-dried mud which he calls in Arabic attobi which in America is called adobe.
Their buildings are multi-level with the floors and ceilings strengthened with wooden beams which project beyond the outer walls. His dress code calls for the women not to wear the face veil but to tattoo their chins.
The men have the custom to cover their heads and faces with a scarf-like cloth, showing only their eyes to strangers. Even today, these modern Berbers still speak the Berber language which came to them from their Celto-Iberian background.
2). The second ecological group is the Arabs. They are nomadic, moving their herds from place to place in the lowlands. They live in tents. The women cover their heads with veils and are not tattooed. The men do not veil the face. Their language is Arabic.
In the Peabody Museum of Harvard University are ancient bowls made by these Libyan mariners who built their temporary colonies in the Southwestern United States. The bowls very clearly show a man and woman painted on the sides of each.
The women have no veil but have their chins tattooed. The men have the Berber type of scarf covering their faces with only the eyes showing! Beyond a doubt, these people were a part of the Libyan expeditions into the Western United States.
They, too, suddenly disappeared in the 10th to 12th century A.D., after having been here from about 500 B.C. All of these people abandoned their towns and simply vanished.
The ancient Berbers were of Celto-Iberian origin. They spoke a Gaelic Celto-Iberian language. When we again return to the Scottish Declaration of Independence and read that they travelled through Iberia (THE SPANISH PENINSULA) on their way to Scotland and Ireland, it would account for the Celto-Iberian-Gaelic dialect. It is in this language that the great majority of the petroglyphs are written.
It is obvious that the Libyan Berbers associated with the Celts of the Eastern and Northern United States during the apex of their civilization here. It is apparent that they had a flourishing trade with their home countries of Europe.
Not only did they travel to and from Europe on occasion in their own ships, they conducted commerce with the traders from Tarshish and Cartage.
Just as the Celts in the Glastonbury and Avalon areas of England mined for tin and lead and shipped the finished metal to Rome in Joseph of Aremathea's ships, the same Celts conducted mining operations in America and either sold or traded their metal with Europe. But it all vanished around the end of the first millennium A.D.
Christianity and the American Celts. When the first Celts arrived in America, they were as pagan as their brothers in Europe. Many of the earlier inscriptions in America depicted Baal worship and classical Phallic worship.
Then, all of sudden, there came the appearance of Christian inscriptions. In fact, whenever it was possible, the later Christian inscriptions were inscribed over the top of the earlier pagan writing. This was obvious to the epigraphic scientists because the later inscriptions were cut deeper and partially obliterated the earlier work. In Cripple Creek, Colorado there is a memorial in Greek that states,
"Herein is the last resting place of Palladis (a priest), the servant of God."
At Oak Island, Nova Scotia is found an inscription in Libyan dialect of the North African Coptic Church, which states,
"To escape contagion of plague and winter hardships, he is to pray for an end or mitigation, the arif: The people will perish in misery if they forget the Lord, alas. [11]."
Wherever Christianity has gone, the Laws of God have been adapted into the legal system of the community. The Christian Celts of Iberia, Ireland, Scotland as well as the Christian Celts of America had a legal system that reflected the teachings of the Christian Bible. The system was called the Tanistry which means the administration of law by deputies of the king. The system as it is preserved from ancient times is rather lengthy so here are just a few examples to show the influence of the Christian Bible:
1). "In the obscurity of the mists of olden time a desire would arise to replace armed combat by arbitration. [12]
2). And it would seem a desirable thing that land boundaries should be fixed without recourse to moats. [13]
3). Henceforth cases involving wrongdoing are to be made over to the wisest men. [14]
4). Any case is to be brought to judgment without delay.
5). Henceforth in any case involving false utterances let amends be paid in compensation for the harm. [15]
6). Henceforth if a complainant be merciful, let the judges also be merciful. [16]
7). If a malicious man utter lying words that another declares to be slanderous, to the measure of his tongue- loose recklessness shall he transport heavy burdens for the other man [17].
8). The common people may eat corn, together with game bird but they may not hunt bears. They may kill stags, goats and red deer." [18]
There is much more to the Tanistry but this gives you information that the early Celts became Christian and this was imparted to those Celts living in the United States long before Columbus "discovered" America.
The Norsemen. The Columbus mystique has been so impressed on the American people that we are blinded to facts. Such again is the case of the colonists from Norway. When Thormod Torfason wrote his authenticated works titled Historia Vinlandae Antiquae in 1705, very few historians and other scholars knew anything of the many trips to America by the Norse mariners and colonists. For over two more centuries, nearly everyone continued to disbelieve Torfason's studies.
The American's minds were made up, don't confuse us with facts! We will understand why we have been misled by the conclusion of the next lesson in history.
On May 24, 1934, a mining prospector named James Edward Dodd was blasting in the Great Lakes region of Canada and his dynamite uncovered a sword and a shield. These artifacts were taken to the royal Ontario Museum and they were accurately dated to the first quarter of the eleventh century, about 1025 A.D.
It was at this time that Leif Eriksson began his first ventures to the land that he called Vinland. The name itself was given to the St. Lawrence River area because of the abundance of wild grapes that the Norsemen found to make a very good grade of wine.
Because of the find of the sword and shield, along with much other evidence, we Americans began to believe that the Norsemen did, indeed, predate Columbus' discovery.
In the 1930's, we began to learn about the tremendous amount of European travel and commerce predating Eriksson by many centuries.
Then in 1940, we were reconvinced that Eriksson didn't exist and that there was absolutely nobody who proceeded Columbus. Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison was an author who appeared to be "puffed" by the establishment.
His style of writing was light and airy and he was very capable of mixing legends in with archaeological and historical facts in such a way that it became easy to question the technical analysis.
In 1940, from his Harvard position, he was adamant in his position that Columbus was the first and in 1942 he wrote Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus to prove his point. By 1961 the Royal Ontario Museum was obliged to re-evaluate their analysis of the sword and shield by stating that it "was not possible to authenticate the story of the alleged discovery."
In Admiral Morison's book The European Discovery of America, he refutes the Vinland story by stating that nearly all of the seacoast towns from Newfoundland to the Virginia Capes boast in their histories that Lief Eriksson was there. But he says that there have been no artifacts to prove his presence. He states that the Newport stone tower which is cherished as the first Christian Church in America is a fake and that it was built around 1675 by a colonial governor of Rhode Island.
Yet, in 1946 an authenticated inscription was found on one of the rocks of the tower. The inscription is in Nordic Runes and simply declares the lower to be the "cathedral church" and the "Bishop's Seat."
The Newport Tower is a part of the church that the Norsemen built in the early 1300's. To further authenticate this, the Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano in 1524 sailed up the East coast of the United States from Florida to labrador.
He rediscovered Long Island Sound and the Hudson River. He drew a map, which is officially shown in the Archives, of the Narragansett coast and in his writings he described the stone' built "Norman Villa." He went ashore and found friendly Indians who knew nothing of the building of the villa. Verrazano recognized it to be Norse because of the style of architecture and other evidence.
An English document (of the period of the Pilgrims) proposed a settlement in Rhode Island. The document gave the location of the Norman Tower as the place where the settlement should be made.
In Rhode Island today, the local name for the tower is often given as "Governor Arnold's Mill," because the first governor made use of the tower as a flour mill. Here is an example of how a historian can take partial facts, along with legend, and make it fit the "politically correct thing to say."
There is evidence now being discovered that shows the Norsemen to have sailed South, along the Eastern seashore, into the Gulf of Mexico and then up the Mississippi River.
Not only have Viking Battle Axes been found but more inscriptions to prove their presence. The Heavener runestone inscription in the Oklahoma State Park on Poteau Mountain has been definitely judged to be Nordic script of the Viking Age of not later than 1350 A.D. Viking inscriptions have also been found in Colorado. No longer can we deny the presence of the Norsemen in America several hundred years before Columbus.
We have left for last what is perhaps the most striking evidence of pre-Columbus Europeans in America. In the Southwestern part of the United States the climate is generally arid or semi-arid and the soil is more alkaline. As a result of these conditions artifacts, including human remains, are left intact for a very long time.
There is mounting evidence that Europeans, in significant numbers, colonized a portion of the Southwestern United States during the period from approximately 700 A.D. until about 1300 A.D. It is very significant that all of the colonies in North America, including this one under discussion, appeared to simply vanish within an approximate 100 year time frame.
We may never know the exact reasons and there could have been several. We know that the Europeans transmitted diseases that were specific to Europe to the indigenous natives who were vulnerable to them.
Conversely, the natives gave the Europeans specific diseases to which they were vulnerable, such as some of the social diseases. Or, there could have very easily been a universal uprising and this is even probable. Whatever the reasons were, we must believe that the ventures did not please God. There had to be things that were done that were seriously breaking some of His Laws.
About 700 A.D. there appeared in the area of West Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, a literal empire apparently made up of a city-state system. The empire was Christian and they had succeeding kings.
The people came from the British Isles, Gaul (France), Germany, Rome and apparently North Africa. Undoubtedly, the North Africans were the Berbers who had already arrived from Libya and had previously taught the natives to build the pueblo style structures and to irrigate for farming.
Some of the ancient ruins that were very skillfully built of stone masonry that are dotted over the Southwest are probably associated with the empire. Some of these ancient ruins have been rebuilt with later construction over the top of the original.
The modern Amerindian knows nothing about the builders of these ancient cities. However, they have given a name to these earlier inhabitants. They call them the Hohokam, which means "Those who have gone" or "The old ones."
After the Spaniards occupied Mexico in the early 1500's, they headed north to investigate the persistent stories of the fabulously wealthy "Seven Cities of Cibola."
Of course they never found them because the empire had simply vanished a couple of hundred years earlier. Even in 1300 A.D. the empire had already waned in its importance as a kingdom so there wasn't much left.
In New Mexico, south of Albuquerque and west of Los Lunas about 14 miles, is a huge Basalt (volcanic) boulder. The rock is nestled in a small draw on the side of a group of hills which overlooks the stream called Rio Puerco. The front side, protruding from the soil, is very flat and provides a perfect place for an inscription.
On this boulder, inscribed in old Hebrew with a Greek influence, is the Decalog or The Ten Commandments!
As early as 1850, when New Mexico became a territory, people knew of the inscription but it was not until a century later when Professor Robert Pfeiffer of Harvard University, an authority on the Old Testament, determined it to be The Ten Commandments. The inscription was then re-authenticated as being The Ten Commandments by Dr. Barry Fell, the country's foremost epigraphic scientist.
The most revealing discoveries of this ancient kingdom came from the Tucson, Arizona area. Along the Santa Cruz River, in the vicinity of Tucson, beneath six or more feet of undisturbed cliché soil, were found many artifacts that unquestionably prove that European people lived in the area. Cliché soil is made up of crusted calcium carbonate mixed with ordinary dirt.
Through many years, water mixes with the combination and turns it into a very hard, concrete like, soil. After it is once formed, if it is then removed, the soil never returns to the original configuration. Thus, when the artifacts were found, it is certain that they are of ancient origin and not a recent fraud.
The artifacts included lead swords, spears, a patriarchal monstrance or shrine used in the religious ceremonies, and eight heavy crosses. All of the artifacts were made of molded lead which was mined in the area.
This is known because some of the molds were also found. Each of the crosses was actually two thin lead crosses which were riveted together with lead rivets. When the two halves were separated, it was found that the inner sides were protected with wax in order to preserve the inscriptions which were on the inside parts.
It became obvious that the crosses were made for the purpose of a permanent recording of events that were taking place at the time. The swords were not to be used for combat.
They were made of lead and also contained inscriptions. They were for ceremonies of some sort.
The inscriptions contained words in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Following are some of the translations: On one of the crosses, at the top are the words "In Memoriam."
On the cross arm at the left is a profile of a head with the words "Britain, Albion, Jacob." In the center is another head profile with the words "Romans, Actim, Theodore." On the right is another head profile with the words "Gaul, Seine, Israel."
On the vertical beam of the lead cross is this inscription. "Counsels of great cities together with seven hundred soldiers A.D. 800, Jan. 1."
"We are borne over the sea to Calalus, an unknown land where Toltezus Silvanus ruled far and wide over a people. Theodore transferred his troops to the foot of the city Rhoda and more than seven hundred were captured. No gold is taken away. Theodore, a man of great courage, rules for fourteen years. Jacob rules for six. With the help of God, nothing has to be feared. In the name of Israel, OL."
The inscriptions on these artifacts is a sort of history of one of the city-states of the European migration to this country. The first inscription reveals that Theodore was the ruling king over the city-state of Rhoda.
The Toltecs (which history shows existed in Mexico in this time frame) were under Chief Toltezus Silvanus who ruled over a very large area and people.
Theodore was a Roman and he moved his troops to the foot or outskirts of the city Rhoda for defense against the Toltecs. Apparently the troops could not hold against the Toltecs and 700 troops were captured but the Toltecs did not take any gold. Theodore must have been killed in that battle.
The second cross has the following inscription which, of course, has been translated from the Latin and Greek.
"Jacob renews the city. With God's help Jacob rules with mighty hand in the manner of his ancestors. Sing to the Lord. May his fame live forever. OL."
Jacob a native of Britain and he succeeded Theodore for six years while counterattacking the enemy. He personally fought at the font lines and it appears that he died in battle.
The third cross yielded this inscription.
"From the egg (the beginning) A.D. 700 to A.D. 900. Nothing but the cross. While the war was raging, Israel died. Pray for the soul of Israel. May the earth lie light on thee. He adds glory to ancestral glory. Israel, defender of the faith. Israel reigns sixty-seven years."
Israel I was born on the Seine River in France and must have been just a boy when he assumed the throne in 785. These dates are known because of other inscriptions but there are too many of them to include here.
The year 790 under Israel I's reign was important because of his decisive victory over the Toltecs. He subjugated them to be under his rule. On January 1, 800 he presided over a council of allied city-states. Because of the present peace, he turned his attention tot he priesthood.
The next inscription.
"Israel II rules for six. Israel III was twenty-six years old when he began to rule. Internecine war. To conquer or die. He flourishes in ancestral honor day by day."
The next inscription.
"A.D. 880. Israel III, for liberating the Toltezus, was banished. He was first to break the custom. The earth shook. Fear overwhelmed the hearts of men in the third year after he had fled. They betook themselves into the city and kept themselves within their walls. A dead man thou shall neither bury nor burn in the city. Before the city a plain was extending. Hills rung the city. It is a hundred years since Jacob was king. Jacob stationed himself in the front line. He anticipated everything. He fought much himself. Often smote the enemy. Israel turned his attention to the appointment of priests. We have life, a people widely ruling. OL."
The next inscription.
"A.D. 895. An unknown land. Would that I might accomplish my task to serve the king. It is uncertain how long life will continue. There are many things which can be said while the war rages. Three thousand were killed. The leader with his principal men are captured. Nothing but peace was sought. God ordains all things. OL."
The author of the book Calalus is a history professor at Wake Forest University. He mistakenly describes the people of Rhoda as Roman Jews. This is undoubtedly because of the names of the individuals.
But again, Dr. Berry Fell, the nation's foremost expert epigraphist SHOWS THEM TO BE CHRISTIANS FROM ENGLAND, FRANCE, ROME AND NORTH AFRICA.
The crosses would have been unacceptable if they were Jews. The use of the chronological term A.D., which was started by Dionesius in 532 A.D., would certainly have been unacceptable to the Jews. To this day they term the present chronological time the "Christian Era" instead of A.D.
The Toltecs went on to totally destroy these people. Why didn't these European Christians survive? Why did all of the other Europeans mysteriously vanish with the last of them having been gone since the 1300's?
It was for several reasons, all of which are distasteful to God for His Celto-Saxon people. The Apostle Paul summed it all up when he said:
"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." [19]
For one thing, they had to interbreed themselves out of existence, at least in part. They also apparently came for the riches of gold and silver.
In nearly all cases, there appears to be mining as a principle purpose for being here. They also apparently tried to subdue the native population. In other words, use them as slave or cheap labor.
If we will look back into history, all of the great civilizations of the Celto-Saxons fell when they brought in cheap labor or slaves and then mixed with them.
The process destroys both cultures. If we will but look at our own history we will see a lesson. That part of our culture that came from the Pilgrims and then moved westward as the needs required used their own labor.
They had large families and the children worked in their enterprises, be it farming or a shop in town. They remained separated from other peoples and they were told in their churches that gold would be used for street paving in the future!
As long as our forefathers stayed separate, feared God, loved their neighbor as themselves and did not love mammon more than their gifts form God, they were a peculiar people to Him. Look around us in modern America and what we see speaks for itself. But it is not too late. It is not too late. Not yet. [20]
Now back to where we left off in our story, as related in National Geographics.
"Early mapmakers and explorers gave credence to the legend. Place-names from the Navigatio appear on later charts, and early navigators sought vainly for 'St. Brendan's Isle.' Fact or fantasy, the Navigatio had incalculable impact on the great European voyages of discovery, INCLUDING THAT OF COLUMBUS.
According to the legend, St. Brendan and his fellow monks set sail from Ireland in a leather-hulled curragh; this same type of boat, now covered with tarred canvas, is still used by Irish fishermen. The voyage lasted seven years and introduced the monks to such wonders as demons who hurled fire at them, a floating crystal column, and a sea creature as great as an island. Scholars wonder today: Mighty they have been volcanic eruptions...an iceberg...a whale? Finally, Brendan and his shipmates reached the Promised Land, a huge, lush island divided by a mighty river.
Soon afterward they sailed home to Ireland, where Brendan died. There the legend of St. Brendan ends, to be given new vitality in the 1970's by a real-life sequel. In the following article, British author and explorer Timothy Severin recounts his epic Atlantic crossing aboard a leather boat. In proving that such a long-ago voyage could have been made, Tim Severin and his crew have brought one of history's most intriguing takes a giant step closer to the realm of possibility. -- THE EDITOR." [21]
When David died as the world emperor, he was ruling over the Mediterranean Sea in conjunction with the Phoenicians; he ruled over conquered territory from Egypt somewhere in the interior of Asia. And Israelites were present in Britain and America.
During the reign of King Solomon he inherited a huge domain, great power and he devoted himself to wisdom and good rule during the first part of his reign. 1 Kings 4:20-25 related that Israel dwelt safely all the days of Solomon, indeed, how could they not, there was no one left in that area to challenge them.
1 Kings 5:12 show King Hiram and the Phoenicians were allied to Israel.
"And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together."
1 Kings 4:31-34 makes some statements which the world's historians hate. It states that Solomons' wisdom was known to all the nations of the earth.
"For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom."
2 Chronicles states all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon and brought their tributes year by year and presents to hear his wisdom.
"And all the drinking vessels of king Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold: none were of silver; it was not any thing accounted of in the days of Solomon. For the king's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. And king Solomon passed all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom. And all the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart." [22]
Is this just some imagination exaggeration of some Hebrew writer? He couldn't actually mean it could he? Well 2 Chronicles 8, 18:9-10 and 1 Kings 9 also show that Israel and Phoenicia joined their navies into one navy, and it mentions they mingled the crews on the same ship.
Berry Falls book "America B.C." has some remarkable revelations of the real extent of just how much the Israelites and the Phoenician alliance was in the area which consists of the United States today. He states in his book "America B.C." that the Phoenicians had a regular port of call of the coast of Maine. Where an old inscription was found which he translates: "Ships of Phoenicia cargo platform."
Fell states:
"It is obvious that the flat topped island would not have been set aside for the loading and unloading of Phoenician ships were they not regular visitors to America, with a predictable time table of ports of arrival and departure and expected dates."
He adds:
"These inscriptions suggest that international maritime commerce was well established in what he calls the late bronze age. That North American ports were listed on a sailing timetable of the overseas vessels of the principle Phoenician shipping companies. And that the same information was circulated to customers in America."
This, along with the above information, gives us an entirely different perspective on just how wide spread was international commerce in the ancient world, and just how intelligent these people were.
These people were not cavemen or neanderthals or some people evolutionary revolving from some primitive background, they were intelligent.
How permanent were these settlements in the new world? The book "America B.C." also shows the evidence that the Phoenicians had a twenty acre temple site to Baal and pagan deities in New Hampshire.
This is not the evidence of people who were just coming for just a few years to trade with the Indians and go. They had very substantial settlements here.
Israel, as we know, quickly joined itself to the Baal worship of the Phoenicians, so it is not surprising that the Baal worship was dominating the old world colonies of the Israelites and the Phoenicians.
There were, also, worshippers of the True God of Israel were present in the new world. In "Saga America" another book by Berry Fell in two issues of the occasional publications of the Uppergrafic Society of which he was president, showed that the Ten Commandments were written in the ancient Hebrew and they were carved into the rock in New Mexico, as we have shown above.
A tablet which contained the Ten Commandments was also found in Ohio; this was found in 1860 at the opening of the Civil War or it very likely would have gotten much more attention.
So, obviously, there were Israelites who were serving the True God in America. How many is very difficult to guess, since the worshippers of the True God did not build pagan temples or leave monuments to the pagan gods, as the Phoenicians did.
Soon after Solomon became king, Egypt joined the Israelites Phoenician alliance, which is discussed in 1 Kings 3:1.
"And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about."
The Pharaoh of Egypt conquered a city it states:
"For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife." [23]
Which was dowry for his daughter who was Solomon and was apparently his first wife.
So, we can see that both King Hiram and Egypt's Pharaoh took the classic action of lesser powers toward a greater power, initiating the efforts to try to bind themselves to a superior power.
Egypt's sailors were a fair skinned group of maritime people who settled in the area of ancient Lybia. This is covered in "America B.C." and "Bronze Age America" where he goes into the classical writers, and it is not his own idea.
There is evidence of ancient Egyptians found in Maine, they were known as the Knickknack Indians which Dr. McDonald states was the Algonquian or Iroquois Race. There have also been Egyptian hieroglyphics found on Long Island. While the ancient Libyan language of their sailors has been found in Quebec, Canada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, California, Texas and New York.
This may sound like a roll call for a lot of people in these areas but we highly recommend these books so that you can see for yourself.
There are other states where a person by the name of Gloria Sally has found evidence of inscriptions left by the Celts, the Libyans and the Phoenicians who ascended the Mississippi, Cimmeron and Arkansas Rivers.
The Bible does tell us that the Israelites, Phoenicians and the Egyptians were allied in the first millennium B.C. so we should not be shocked to find that these groups were the ones found in the North American Continent. Is it any coincidence that the Archeological discoveries of America's past have shown these three groups were working together and exploring what has become the territory called the United States?
There is a smoking gun to show that these groups were working together, the new world equivalent of the Rosette Stone has been sitting, largely unappreciated in a Davenport, Iowa museum.
Its a trilingual parallel ancient inscription recording a pagan ceremony which looked very much like a May Pole or May Day celebration.
It had joint inscriptions of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the ancient Libyan, which was the language of their sailors and what is now called an Iberian Tunic. This is a language which was descended from the Hebrew Phoenicians. It was found in 1874; so it was not found just yesterday, it has been here and ignored for a long time. But it proves these groups were working together in the new world and it was in inscriptions that could be understood by anyone in those three groups of people.
Another artifact found in Oklahoma refers to the Phoenician god Baal and the Egyptian god Ra, and is dated by Fells to be about 800 B.C. Comment has to be made on the closeness of the Israelite Hebrew and the Phoenician language of Tyre and Sidon to show that the Phoenician inscriptions are also Hebrew or Israelite.
George Wellington a famous British historian of the late 1800s comments in his book "Phoenicia:"
"The words most commonly in use, particles, the pronoun, the forms of the verb, the principle inflections and we may add the numerals in Phoenician are identical or near identical to the pure Hebrew. Many other sources comment on the similarity as well; and many sources reflect that the English language came from the Hebrew."
In the book "Short History of the Near East" by Philip Piffy, he states:
"The Phoenician trade on an international scale on textiles, metals, glass, pottery and etc., gave the country three centuries, beginning around 1000 B.C. a prosperity unmatched in its history."
Now the world recognizes the Phoenicians had an empire at that time, but they do not wish to acknowledge that in 1000 B.C. which was the time that David and Solomon rose to power and three centuries later when the Phoenician power seem to disappear was when the Israelites left the area of Palestine. The Phoenicians did not have them around to be allied to.
Ecclesiastes Two mentions that Solomon collected the best that the world had to offer in architecture, music, art, etc., and there was no bounds to his wisdom.
The Bible says that God had given him a heart as big as a sea-shore. It also states that the kings when they brought their gifts to Solomon year by year, included animals, gold, silver, many types products and artwork. Which very likely occurred during the feast of tabernacles, which Israel was keeping at that time. There were several types of the millennium that parallel the prophecies at that time. For the world was at peace during the time that Solomon was a righteous king living by God's Laws.
He was a peaceful king of kings, living in Jerusalem, and the rest of the world was flowing to Israel; he was preceded by an era of great wars, just like the millennium will be, when he and David his father put down many enemies.
So we can see that Solomon ruled an area greater than the Caesars of Rome. The Mediter-ranean was an Israelites lake; it was ruled by Israel and its allies the Phoenicians and Egyptians; he was in charge of the Mid-East and the Mesopotamians were ruled by Israel; but we don't know how far that went into Asia; Egypt was his ally and he had extensive presence in the new world; America was extensively explored and colonized.
Historians also record that Cadez, a city in Spain that is called Cadez now, was founded by the Phoenicians about 1000 B.C., which, again, was during the reign of David and Solomon.
When one looks at the historic records of the Phoenicians the period of 1000 B.C. is very common when they mark their ascension to greatness, which the Bible also identifies as the time when David and Solomon began their golden age.
Early British historians record that the Phoenicians were heavily involved in colonizing and mining in the British Isles. In Raymond Capt's book "The Traditions of Glastenbury" mentions some of the early historical accounts of the Tribe of Asher of Israel overseeing the mining operations in Britain.
Now when Israel split into Israel and Judah this alliance weakened. Wars were fought between the Israelites and the Judeans, and yes at times they were allied.
But Israel went very deep into the Baal worship of Phoenicia and around 870-850 B.C. Israel was ruled by King Ahab, who was married to a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel from the city state of Sidon. Which shows that the Phoenician/Israelites alliance was still followed.
When God sent a prophet name Elijah in the middle of the ninth century B.C. Israel's King Ahab had gotten to a point where he was so evil that Elijah had prayed for a drought on the land of Israel.
James 5 shows that it lasted 3½ years.
"Elias (Elijah) was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months." [24]
1 Kings 17 and 18 show that the drought was so severe that the creeks dried up, and there was no vegetation was left for the animals.
Starvation was prevalent in both Israel and the Phoenician city states as we can see from the example of Elijah when he was sent to the home of the Sidonian widow.
1 Kings 18 states that King Ahab had searched for Elijah in all the nations.
"As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not." [25]
Now that we know those international maritime routes included the area now known as the United States in the new world, that takes on new meaning as it was not just in the mid-east where the search took place.
For Israel was still among the great nations of the earth with a large population. During this drought, they had one choice, they could either stay and starve or they could migrate elsewhere and live.
Now Israel had a colonial empire that was quite large, and they had many places to go. However, when one has women and children you do not want to put them on a boat and cross the ocean to America, or Great Britain or even to Spain, you wanted to take them somewhere as close to home as possible, to avoid the rigors of distant travel, yet was away from the drought.
History records that Cartage was founded by the Phoenicians in the middle of the 9th century B.C. Which coincides, roughly with the same time that Israel was experiencing its drought. Alfred Church's book called "Cartage" written in 1890 shows that the name Cartage was the Roman name for the city but that is not the name the Carthagenians called themselves.
They called the city, according to Alfred Church's book, the Carthegians called themselves Cherjaf-habashaf, which Hebrew meaning "new town." A very appropriate name for a new colony, which was being started. Now several historians of Cartage records the magistrates were called the Saphetes by the Romans, but again, that is not the name they called their own magistrates.
In the Carthagenian language when looking at their artifacts, they called them the Shepheta, which is also Hebrew for the word judges. The name of one of the Books of the Bible - Judges.
One of their early kings was named Marcus, a Hebrew name, still present during the time of Christ, when the High Priests servant was named Marcus. Remember, he's the one who had his ear cut off, when Peter tried to cut off his head but got his ear instead. Also they had a reference to the Hebrew El, which is depicted in Carthagian artifacts as sitting between the Cherubims.
In the book "Daily Life in Cartage" it states the priestly laws of Cartage was:
"A very significant resemblance to the Book of Leviticus, and many of the sacrifices corresponded exactly to those of the Hebrews."
Many historians have noticed the similarity of the Carthagenians or as the Romans called it the Tunic tongue, to Hebrew.
As late as the fourth century A.D., which was many centuries after Cartage fell, remnants of the Tunic culture were recognized by early church writers such as St. Augustine and St. Jerome as having their roots in the Hebrew language.
The Encyclopedia Judicia, when it talks about the fall of Samaria, to the Assyrians it mentions that the Africans, which was their word for the Carthagenans contested with the Jews over the rights of Arab/Israel, or the land of Israel.
Now this would make no sense at all if Cartage did not consist of the descendent of the Tribes of Israel. Who had gone into captivity, or had left that area. But they clearly recognized that the land of Palestine was a cultural heritage to the people of Cartage, since they claimed that land as their own at that time.
Cartage became very powerful in the middle of the first millennium B.C. In their early days they were much stronger than Rome and imposed a treaty on Rome, which basically forbade them from sailing in the Western Mediterranean and telling them where they could sail their ships.
They were the enemies of Greece and Rome, they kept them out of the Atlantic Ocean with the Carthagenian Navy. But the Greeks did record some information about what Cartage had found in their Atlantic voyages. And a lot of this will probably be quite new to you. The Greeks record:
"In the sea outside the pillars of Hercules, that's Gibraltar, an island was found by the Carthagians, a wilderness having wood of all kinds, and navigatable rivers; remarkable for various kinds of fruit, many sailing distance day away. When the Carthagenians, who were the masters of the western ocean, observed that many traitors and other men were attracted by the fertility of the soil and the pleasant climate, they frequented it. And some resided there. They feared that knowledge of the land would reach other nations."
You can check the historical accounts and see that Cartage at that point became very protective of what was going on west of the Atlantic Ocean, and did not allow the sailors of other nations past Gibraltar.
A Greek, in the first century by the name of Diatrous, wrote:
"Over against Africa, on the other side of Africa lies a very great island in the vast ocean. Many days sail westward of Libya or from Libya westward, the soil is very fruitful, a great part is mountainous and much likewise is a plane. It has several navagatable rivers, it has very large woods, fresh water and all sorts of wild beasts to hunt."
If one will take a globe of the earth and go westward from Libya to that part of the globe, you will come right into the heartland of what is now called the United States. This land was obviously America; and it stayed in the hands of the Israelite Carthageians for many many years after Cartage fell.
It was the secret of Cartage's wealth, and Cartage is acknowledged as a very wealthy city at that time. In giving America's land to the Carthagians God was passing on to them the promises to Abraham's seed. Also they inherited the promise of possessing the gates of their enemies. And they held a lock-hold on Gibraltar during much of this time.
Heroticus a Greek historian records that,
"the Carthagenians sent an expedition westward from Gibraltar, which included 30,000 men and women, sixty ships, in a time frame of 500-480 B.C. that was when Cartage was much stronger. Westward through the pillars of Hercules to a destination he did not know."
Think for a moment, 30,000 men and women; that's a colonizing expedition, in 60 ships: by doing a little math that is 500 people per ship. Which will give you an idea of the size of the vessel, which even the Greeks acknowledge the Carthagenians were sailing. This also gives us an idea of the size of the ships the Phoenicians and Israelites had during the reign of David and Solomon's time.
Carthagian coins and artifacts have been found in North America, which is a story that is basically not told anywhere. It is in Berry Fells book, but the typical academic writers do not want to really deal with what he has discovered.
These coins have been found in Colorado, New York, Alabama, Connecticut and Nevada. You can even take some of the Carthagenan inscriptions which Fell discusses in his book; you can get a Hebrew Lexicon out of your Concordance and you can come to the exact same translation that Fell does by using those Hebrew Lexicons.
Most people do not realize this because history has been taught from the Greco-Roman perspective but America was long known about, in ancient history. And that Cartage was Israelite in it inception.
However, in later years they became a pyelograph people, they became very degenerate. How long they had worshippers of the True God we do not know. But they became extremely evil; indulging in child sacrifice, mass sacrifices of human beings - they became extremely violent.
When Rome in the second Tunic war, finally won that war it was actually God's judgment against Cartage and its Israelite people as punishment for their sins. But even in that second Tunic War Cartage came very close to exterminating Rome from off the face of the earth. When Hannibal, who was named after Baal, took an army into the Italian area and was therefore years waging war against the Romans, conquering city after city trying to start a revolt but they were not blessed with victory.
When Cartage fell in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., where did its people go? Since some of the historians talk about the population of Cartage being some 600,000, it also relates that only a few thousand stayed to fight the Romans to the bitter end. Some of them probably sought a new life in Cartage's secret territories in America. For America has been a land of refuge for a long time before the Pilgrims came.
These people which came at that time, were Baal worshippers as the remains in America shows. They had gotten degenerate also, and likely died out in wars, intermarriage with the Indians and possibly from VD from their wild sexual practices; which their monuments testify to.
The Carthagenian Israelites in their empire had Southern Spain including the area of Gibraltar, parts of West Africa, and America in their domain. They traded exclusively in the British Isles.
The book "Judah's Scepter and Joseph's Birthright," goes into the story of how Dan and Simeon arriving in Wales and Ireland. The Carthagenians traded extensively with these people, but there is no evidence that those areas were part of Cartage Empire, they were only mercantile contacts.
Let's repeat, America was given to the Israelites by God in the 1600 and 1700s as the British and European Israelite settlers came again. Historians ignore this part of history because it proves their ideas of evolution as a bunch of bologna. [26]
Addendum
WHITE SLAVERY IN EARLY AMERICA
In the Midrash Rabbah, a rabbinical commentary, there is a prediction one day all gentiles will be slaves of Jews. [27]
In the British West Indies much of the early capital to finance White Slavery came from Sephardic Jews from Holland. They provided credit, machinery and shipping facilities.
In the 1630s Dutch Jews had been deeply involved in the enslavement of the Irish, financing their transport to slave plantations in the tropics. By the 1660s, this combination of Zionist finance and White Slave labor made the British island colony of Barbados the richest in the empire. The island's value, in terms of trade and capital exceeded that of all other British colonies combined. [28]
Of the fact that the wealth of Barbados was founded on the backs of White Slave labor there can be no doubt. White Slave laborers from Britain and Ireland were the mainstay of the sugar colony. Until the mid‑1640s there were almost no Blacks in Barbados.
George Downing wrote to John Winthrop, the colonial governor of Massachusetts in 1645, that planters who wanted to make a fortune in the British West Indies must procure White Slave labor "out of England" if they wanted to succeed. [29] From their experience with rebellious Irish slaves, Dutch Jews would eventually be instrumental in the switch from White to Black slavery in the British West Indies.
Blacks were more docile, and more profitable. The English traffic in slaves in the first half of the seventeenth century was solely in White slaves. The English had no slave base in West Africa, as did the Dutch Sephardim who were not only bankers and shipping magnates but slavemasters and plantation owners themselves.
Jews were forbidden by English law to own White Protestant slaves, although in practice this was not uniformly enforced, Irish slaves were allowed to the Jewish slavers but were regarded by them as intractable.
Hence certain Jews became prime movers behind the African slave trade and the importation of Negro slaves into the New World. [30] White Slavery was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constructed.
"...the important structures, labor ideologies and social relations necessary for slavery already had been established within indentured servitude...White Servitude...in many ways came remarkably close to the 'ideal type' of chattel slavery which later became associated with the African experience." [31]
And:
"The practice developed and tolerated in the kidnapping of Whites laid the foundation for the kidnapping of Negroes." [32]
The official papers of the White Slave trade refer to adult White Slaves as "freight" and White Child Slaves were termed "half‑freight." Like any other commodity on the shipping inventories, WHITE HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN STRICTLY IN TERMS OF MARKET ECONOMICS BY MERCHANTS.
The American colonies prospered through the use of White Slaves which Virginia planter John Pory declared in 1619 were "our principal wealth."
"The White Servant, a semi‑slave, was more important in the 17th century than even the Negro slave, in respect IN BOTH NUMBERS and economic significance." [33]
Where Establishment history books or films touch on White Slavery it is referred to with the deceptively mild‑sounding title of "indentured servitude," THE IMPLICATION BEING THAT THE ENSLAVEMENT OF WHITES WAS NOT AS TERRIBLE OR ALL‑ENCOMPASSING AS NEGRO "SLAVERY" BUT CONSTITUTED INSTEAD A MORE BENIGN BONDAGE, THAT OF "SERVITUDE."
Yet the terms servant and slave were often used interchangeably to refer to people whose status was clearly that of permanent, lifetime enslavement. "An Account of the English Sugar Plantations" in the British Museum [34] written circa 1660‑1685 refers to Black and White Slaves as
"servants...the Colonyes were plentifully supplied with Negro and Christian {White} servants which are the nerves and sinews of a plantacon..." (Christian was a euphemism for White)...In the North American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries and subsequently in the United States, servant was the usual designation for a slave." [35]
The use of the word servant to describe a slave would have been very prevalent among a Bible‑literate people like colonial Americans. In all English translations of the Bible available at the time, from Wycliffe's to the 1611 King James version, the word slave as it appeared in the original Biblical languages was translated as servant. For example, the King James Version of Genesis 9:25 is rendered:
"Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be."
The intended meaning here is clearly that of slave and there is little doubt that in the mind of early Americans the word servant was synonymous with slave. [36] In original documents of the White merchants who transported Negroes from Africa the Blacks were called servants:
"...one notes that the Company of Royal Adventurers referred to their cargo as 'egers,' 'Negro‑Servants,' 'Servants...from Africa..." [37]
Oscar Handlin, Professor of History at Harvard University, debunks the propaganda that slavery was strictly a racist operation, part of a conspiracy of White Supremacy. Prof. Handlin points to the facts that:
1). Whites as well as Blacks were enslaved.
2). In the 17th century slaves of both races were called servants.
3). The colonial merchants of 17th century America had no qualms about enslaving their own White kindred:
"Through the first three‑quarters of the 17th century, the Negroes, even in the South, were not numerous...They came into a society in which a large part of the (White) population was to some degree unfree...The Negroes lack of freedom was not unusual. These (Black) newcomers, like so many others, were accepted, bought and held, as kinds of servants...It was in this sense that Negro servants were sometimes called slaves...For that matter, it also applied to White Englishmen...in New England and New York too there had early been an intense desire for cheap unfree hands, for 'bond slavery, villeinage of Captivity,' whether it be White, Negro or Indian..." [38]
A survey of the various ad hoc codes and regulations devised in the 17th century for the governing of those in bondage reveals no special category for Black slaves. [39]
"During Ligon's time in Barbados (1647‑1650), White indentured female servants worked in the field gangs alongside the small but rapidly growing number of enslaved black women. In this formative stage of the Sugar Revolution, planters did not attempt to formulate a division of labor along racial lines. White indentured servants...were not perceived by their masters as worthy of special treatment in the labor regime." [40]
The contemporary academic consensus on slavery in America represents history by retroactive fiat, decreeing that conclusions about the entire epoch fit the characterizations of its final stage, the 19th century Southern plantation system.
Prof. Handlin informs us that legislators in Virginia sought to cover‑up the record of White bondage and its equivalence to Negro servitude:
"The compiler of the Virginia laws (codifying Black slavery for the first time) then takes the liberty of altering texts to bring earlier legislation into line with his own new notions." [41]
FOR EXAMPLES OF ALTERATIONS TO INSERT THE WORD SLAVE AS A REFERENCE TO BLACKS IN VIRGINIA WHEN IT HAD NOT BEEN USED TO DESCRIBE THEM THAT WAY BEFORE, see Hening, Vol. 2, pp. iii, 170, 283, 490. What was later lawmakers sought to cover‑up? THE FACT THAT THE WHITE RULING CLASS OF COLONIAL AMERICA HAD CAST THEIR OWN WHITE PEOPLE INTO THE SAME CONDITION AS THE BLACKS, OR EVEN WORSE.
Richard Ligon's EYEWITNESS REPORT OF A WHITE SLAVE REVOLT IN BARBADOS IN 1649 HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY REFERRED DOWN THROUGH THE YEARS AS A REBELLION OF NEGRO SLAVES BY AT LEAST A DOZEN LATER HISTORIANS such as Poyer, Oldmixon, Schomburgh et al.
In their cases this does not seem to have been a matter of deliberate falsification, but rather a complete inability to conceive of Whites as Slaves.
Ligon had written that the rebels in question had not been able to "endure such slavery" any longer and the later historians automatically assumed that this had to have been a reference to Negroes.
IT IS THIS PERSISTENT COGNITION BY CATEGORICAL PRECONCEPTION THAT RENDERS MUCH OF WHAT PASSES FOR COLONIAL HISTORY IN OUR ERA INACCURATE AND MISLEADING.
17th century colonial slavery and 19th century American slavery are not a seamless garment. Historians who pretend otherwise have to maintain several fallacies, the chief among these being the supposition that when White "servants" constituted the majority of servile laborers in the colonial period, they worked in privileged or even luxurious conditions which were forbidden to Blacks.
In truth, WHITE SLAVES WERE OFTEN RESTRICTED TO DOING THE DIRTY, BACKBREAKING FIELD WORK WHILE BLACKS AND EVEN INDIANS WERE TAKEN INTO THE PLANTATION MANSION HOUSES TO WORK AS DOMESTICS:
"Contemporaries were aware that the popular stereotyping of (White) female indentured servants as whores, sluts and debauched wenches, discouraged their use in elite planter households. Many pioneer planters preferred to employ Amerindian women in their households...With the... establishment of an elitist social culture, there was a tendency to reject (White) indentured servants as domestics...black women...represented a more attractive option and, as a result, were widely employed as domestics in the second half of the 17th century. In 1675 for example John Blake, who had recently arrived on the island (of Barbados), informed his brother in Ireland that his White Indentured Servant was a 'slut' and he would like to be rid of her...(in favor of a 'neger wench')." [42]
In the 17th century White slaves were cheaper to acquire than Negroes and therefore were often mistreated to a greater extent. Having paid a bigger price for the Negro,
"the planters treated the black better than they did their 'Christian' White Servant. Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their contempt for those White Men who, they could see, were worse off than themselves..." [43]
IT WAS WHITE SLAVES WHO BUILT AMERICA FROM ITS VERY BEGINNINGS AND MADE UP THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF SLAVE‑ADORERS IN THE COLONIES NOT BLACKS in the 17th century. Negro slaves seldom had to do the kind of virtually lethal work the White Slaves of America did in the formative years of settlement.
"The frontier demands for heavy manual labor, such as felling trees, soil clearance, and general infrastructural development, had been satisfied primarily BY WHITE INDENTURED SERVANTS (Slaves) BETWEEN 1627 AND 1643." [44]
The merchant class of early America was an equal opportunity enslaver and viewed with enthusiasm the bondage of all poor people within their grasp, including their own White kinsmen. There was a precedent for this in the English legal concept of villeinage, a form of medieval White Slavery in England.
"...as late as 1669 those who thought of large‑scale agriculture assumed it would be manned not by Negroes but by servile Whites under a condition of villeinage. John Locke's constitutions for South Carolina envisaged an hereditary group of servile 'leet men'; and Lord Shaftsbury's signory on Locke Island in 1674 actually attempted to put the scheme into practice." [45]
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines servitude as "slavery or bondage of any kind." The dictionary defines "bondage" as "being bound by or subjected to external control." It defines "slavery" as "ownership of a person or persons by another or others."
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WHITES IN COLONIAL AMERICA WERE OWNED OUTRIGHT BY THEIR MASTERS AND DIED IN SLAVERY. THEY HAD NO CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN LIVES AND WERE AUCTIONED ON THE BLOCK AND EXAMINED LIKE LIVESTOCK exactly like Black slaves, with the exception that these Whites were enslaved by their own race. White Slaves,
"found themselves powerless as individuals, without honor or respect and driven into commodity production not by any inner sense of moral duty but by the outer stimulus of the whip." [46]
Upon arrival in America, White Slaves were,
"put up for sale by the ship captains or merchants ...Families were often separated under these circumstances when wives and offspring were auctioned off to the highest bidder." [47]
Another example:
"Eleanor Bradbury, sold with her three sons to a Maryland owner, was separated from her husband, who was bought by a man in Pennsylvania." [48]
White people who were passed over for purchase at the point of entry were taken into the back country by "soul drivers" who herded them along "like cattle to a Smithfield market" and then put them up for auction at public fairs.
"Prospective buyers felt their muscles, checked their teeth...like cattle..." [49]
White Men and Women were driven by their Jewish slavers, just as a cowboy would a herd of cattle:
"They are frequently hurried in droves, under the custody of severe brutal drivers into the Back Country to be disposed of as servants." [50]
Those Whites for whom no buyer could be found even after marketing them inland were returned to the slave trader to be sold for a pittance. These Whites were officially referred to as "refuse." The Virginia Company arranged with the City of London to have 100 POOR WHITE CHILDREN "out of the swarms that swarm in the place" sent to Virginia in 1619 for sale to the wealthy planters of the colony TO BE USED AS SLAVE LABOR. The Privy Council of London authorized the Virginia Company to,
"imprison, punish and dispose of any of those children upon any disorder by them committed, as cause shall require."
The trade in White slaves was a natural one for English merchants who imported sugar and tobacco from the colonies. Whites kidnapped in Britain could be exchanged directly for this produce. The trade in White Slaves was basically a return hall operation. The operations of Captain Henry Brayne were typical.
In November of 1670, Capt. Brayne was ordered to sail from Carolina with a consignment of timber for sale in the West Indies.
From there he was to set sail for London with a load of sugar purchased with the profits from the sale of the timber. In England he was to sell the sugar and fill his ship with from 200 to 300 WHITE SLAVES TO BE SOLD IN CAROLINA.
The notion of a "contract" and of the legal status of the White in "servitude" became a fiction as a result of the exigencies of the occasion.
In 1623 George Sandys, the treasurer of Virginia, was forced to sell the only remaining eleven White Slaves of his Company for lack of provisions to support them. Seven of these White People were sold for 150 pounds of tobacco.
The slave‑status of Whites held in colonial bondage can also be seen by studying the disposition of the estates of the wealthy Whites. Whites in bondage were rated as inventories and disposed of by will and by deed along with the rest of the property. They were bought, sold, bartered, gambled away, mortgaged, weighed on scales like farm animals and taxed as property.
Richard Ligon, a contemporary eyewitness to White Slavery, in his 1657 A True and Exact History tells of a White Slave, a woman, who was being traded by her master for a pig. Both the pig and the White Woman were weighed on a scale.
"The price was set for a groat a pound for the hog's flesh and six pence for the woman's flesh..." [51]
In general, WHITES WERE NOT TREATED WITH THE RELATIVE DIGNITY THE TERM "indentured servants" connotes, BUT AS DEGRADED CHATTEL ‑‑ part of the personal estate of the master and on a par with his farm animals.
The term "indentured servitude" therefore IS NOTHING MORE THAN A PROPAGANDISTIC SOFTENING OF THE HISTORIC EXPERIENCE OF ENSLAVED WHITE PEOPLE IN ORDER TO MAKE A FALSE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEIR SUFFERINGS AND THOSE OF NEGRO SLAVES!
This is not to deny the existence of a fortunate class of Whites who could in fact be called "indentured servants" according to the modern conception of the term, who worked under privileged conditions of limited bondage for a specific period of time, primarily as apprentices. These lucky few were given religious instruction and could sue in a court of law. They were employed in return for their transportation to America and room and board during their period of service.
But certain [Jewish, or their lackys] historians pretend that this apprentice system, the privileged form of bound labor, was representative of the entire experience of White bondage in America.
In actuality, the indentured apprentice system represented the condition of only a tiny segment of the Whites in bondage in early America.
"Strictly speaking, the term indentured servant should apply only to those persons who had bound them-selves voluntarily to service but it is generally used for all classes of bond servants." [52]
Richard B. Morris in Government and Labor in Early America notes that,
"In the colonies, however, apprenticeship was merely a highly specialized and favored form of bound labor. The more comprehensive colonial institution included all persons bound to labor for periods of years as determined either by agreement or by law, both minors and adults, and Indians and Negroes as well as Whites." [53]
In a reversal of our contemporary ideas about White "indenture" and Black "slavery," many Blacks in colonial America were often temporary bondsmen freed after a period of time.
Peter Hancock arranged for a Negro servant named Asha to serve for twelve months, thenceforth to be a free person. [54]
"...free Negro boys bound out as apprentices were sometimes given the benefit of an educational clause in the indenture. Two such cases occur in the Princess Anne County Records; one in 1719, to learn the trade of tanner, the master to 'teach him to read,' and the other, in 1727, to learn the trade of gunsmith, the master to teach him 'to read the Bible distinctly." [55]
Newspaper and court records in South Carolina cite,
"a free Negro fellow named Johnny Holmes...lately an indented servant with Nicholas Trott..." and "a Negro man commonly called Jack Cutler ‑‑ he is a free Negro having faithfully served out his time with me four years according to the contract agreed upon..." [56]
David W. Galenson is the author of an Orwellian suppression of the horrors and conditions of White Slavery entitled White Servitude in Colonial America. He states concerning White slaves,
"European men and women could exercise choice both in deciding whether to migrate to the colonies and in choosing possible destinations."
THIS IS POSITIVELY MISLEADING! At the bare minimum, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WHITE SLAVES WERE KIDNAPPED OFF THE STREETS AND ROADS OF GREAT BRITAIN IN THE COURSE OF MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AND SOLD TO CAPTAINS OF SLAVE SHIPS IN LONDON KNOWN AS "WHITE GUINEAMEN."
Ten thousand Whites were kidnapped from England in the year 1670 alone. [57] The very word "kidnapper" was first coined in Britain in the 1600s to describe those who captured and sold White Children into slavery ("kid‑nabbers").
Another whitewash is the heralded "classic work" on the subject, Abbot Emerson Smith's Colonists in Bondage which is one long cover‑up of the extent of the kidnapping, the denial of the existence of White Slavery and numerous other apologies for the establishment including a cover‑up of the deportation and enslavement of the Irish people. But the record proves otherwise. [58]
"Cromwell's conquest of Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century made slaves as well as subjects of the Irish people. Over a hundred thousand men, women and children were seized by the English troops and shipped to the West Indies, where they were sold into slavery..." [59]
On September 11, 1655 came the following decree from the Puritan Protectorate by Henry Cromwell in London:
"Concerning the young (Irish) women, although we must use force in takinge them up, yet it beinge so much for their owne goode, and likely to be of soe great advantage to the publique, it is not in the least doubted, that you may have such number of them as you thinke fitt to make use uppon this account."
The "account" was enslavement and transportation to the colonies.
A WEEK LATER HENRY CROMWELL ORDERED THAT 1,500 IRISH BOYS AGED 12 TO 14 ALSO BE SHIPPED INTO SLAVERY WITH THE IRISH GIRLS IN THE STEAMING TROPICS OF JAMAICA AND BARBADOS IN CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH KILLED OFF WHITE ADULT SLAVES BY THE THOUSANDS DUE TO THE RIGORS OF FIELD WORK IN THAT CLIMATE AND THE SAVAGE BRUTALITY OF THEIR OVERSEERS.
In October the Council of State approved the plan. Altogether more than one hundred thousand Irish were shipped to the West Indies WHERE THEY DIED IN SLAVERY IN HORRIBLE CONDITIONS. Children weren't the only victims. Even eighty year old Irish women were deported to the West Indies and enslaved. [60] Irish religious leaders were herded into,
"internment camps throughout Ireland, and were then moved progressively to the ports for shipment overseas like cattle." [61]
By the time Cromwell's men had finished with the Irish people, only one‑sixth of the Irish population remained on their lands. [62] Cromwell did not only enslave Catholics. Poor White Protestants on the English mainland fared no better. In February, 1656 he ordered his soldiers to find 1,200 poor English Women for enslavement and deportation to the colonies. In March he repeated the order but increased the quota to "2,000 young women of England."
In the same year, Cromwell's Council of State ordered all the homeless poor of Scotland, male and female, transported to Jamaica for enslavement. [63] Of course, Cromwell and the Puritan ruling class were not the only ones involved in the enslavement of Whites.
During the Restoration reign of Charles II, the king with Catholic sympathizers who had been Cromwell's arch‑enemy, King Charles enslaved large groups of poor Presbyterians and Scottish Covenanters and deported them to the plantations in turn.
Legislation sponsored by King Charles in 1686, intended to ensure the enslavement of Protestant rebels in the Caribbean colonies, was so harsh that one observer noted,
"THE CONDITION OF THESE REBELS WAS BY THIS ACT MADE AS BAD, IF NOT WORSE THAN THE NEGROES." [64]
Further we are told:
"BY FAR THE LARGEST NUMBER and certainly the most important group OF WHITE INDENTURED SERVANTS (Slaves) WERE THE POOR PROTESTANTS FROM EUROPE." [65]
There were four categories of status for White People in colonial America: White freemen, White freemen who owned property, White apprentices (also called "indentured servants," "redemptioners" and "free‑willers") and White Slaves.
The attempt by Abbot Emerson Smith, Galenson and many others at denying the existence and brutal treatment of White Slaves by pretending they were mostly just "indentured servants" learning a trade, regulated according to venerable medieval Guild traditions of apprenticeship runs completely counter to the documentary record.
"...the planters did not conceive of their (White) servants socially and emotionally as integral parts of the family or household, but instead viewed them as an alien commodity... Having abandoned the moral responsibility aspect of pre‑ capitalist ideology, masters enforced an often violent social domination of (White) servants by the manipulation of oppressive legal codes...transform(ing)...indentured servitude, with its pre‑industrial, moral, paternalistic superstructure, into a market system of brutal servitude...maintained by the systematic application of legally sanctioned force and violence." [66]
Informal British and colonial custom validated the kidnapping of working‑class British Whites and their enslavement in the colonies under such euphemisms as "Servitude according to the Custom" which upheld the force of "verbal contracts" which shipmasters and press‑gangs claimed existed between them and the wretched Whites they kidnapped off the streets of England and sold into colonial slavery. These justifications for White slavery arose in law determined by penal codes.
In other words, White slavery was permitted and perpetuated on the claim that all who were thus enslaved were criminals. No proof for this claim was needed because the fact of one's enslavement "proved" the fact of one's "criminality."
The history of White Slavery in the New World can be found within the history of the enforcement of the penal codes in Britain and America.
Slaves were made of poor White "criminals" who had stolen as little as one sheep, a loaf of bread or had been convicted of destroying shrubbery in an aristocrat's garden. They would be separated from their parents or spouse and "transported" to the colonies for life.
In 1655 four teenagers were whipped through the streets of Edinburg, Scotland, burned behind the ears and "barbadosed" for interrupting a minister, James Scott, while he was preaching in church. [67] The "convict" label was so ubiquitous that it prompted Samuel Johnson's remark on Americans:
"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be content with anything we allow them short of hanging."
But even an exclusive focus on the indentured servant or "apprentice" class cannot conceal the fact of White Slavery because very often the distinctions between the two blurred. Through a process of subterfuge and entrapment, White apprentices were regularly transformed into White slaves, as we shall see.
White Slaves were owned not only by individual aristocrats and rich planters but by the colonial government itself or its governor.
White Slaves included not just paupers but such "wicked villaines" as "vagrants, beggars, disorderly and other dissolute persons" as well as White Children from the counties and towns of Britain who were stolen from their parents through no Harriet Beecher Stowe rose to prominence in chronicling the anguish and hardship of these enslaved White Children.
A large number of the White Slaves arriving in America described as "convicts" were actually political prisoners. Of the Scottish troops captured at the battle of Worcester more than 600 hundred were shipped to Virginia as slaves in 1651. The rebels of 1666 were sent as slaves to the colonies as were the Monmouth rebels of 1685 and the Jacobites of the rising of 1715.
"It is now commonly accepted that the African slave trade could not have operated for over three centuries without the active participation of some African states and political leaders. The human merchandise was obtained largely as a result of political conflicts between neighboring states and tribes. Less well known are the ways in which...(WHITE SLAVE LABORERS WERE OBTAINED)...from the British Isles for the West Indies plantations in the seventeenth century. The English state ruthlessly rounded up victims of political conflict and prisoners of war at places like Dunbar, Worcester, Salisbury and, during territorial expansionism, in Ireland, for sale to West Indian merchants. In this respect English governments and African political leaders were responding to the same market forces." [68]
The Crown put tens of thousands of political dissidents in slavery, some being shipped to New England while others were deported to the plantations of the West Indies and worked to death in the island's boiler houses, mills and sugar cane fields. Cromwell sold the White survivors of the massacre at Drogheda to slave‑traders in the Barbados,
"and thereafter it became his fixed policy to 'barbadoes' his opponents." [69]
By 1655, half of the total White population of Barbados consisted of political prisoners sold into slavery. [70]
Establishment historians claim that only Blacks were slaves because Whites were released after a term of seven or ten years of servitude. But the history of the enslavement of Britain's political prisoners disproves this notion. Plantation owners saw it as their profitable and patriotic duty to extend the servitude of the political prisoners on the plantations far beyond the supposed ten or twenty year limit. British political prisoners were shipped into slavery in America for life, not seven or fourteen years:
"...those who survived the voyage worked out their lives in bondage on the plantations of America." [71]
Then:
"After the battle of Worcester in 1652 the first mention is made of Royalists having been brought out to Barbados and sold as slaves...they had been taken prisoner at Exeter and IIchester... From there they were driven straight to Plymouth, put on a ship where they remained below deck, sleeping amongst the horses. On arrival in Barbados they were sold as chattel and employed in grinding the mills, attending to the furnaces and digging in the hot sun, whipped at the whipping post as rogues, and sleeping in stiles worse than pigs." [72]
This was no "temporary bondage." Of 1300 Cavaliers enslaved in 1652 in Barbados almost all of them died in slavery. [73] The enslavement of White political prisoners in the West Indies was debated in the English Parliament on March 25, 1659.
The practice was allowed to continue and was still in operation as late as 1746 when Scottish Highland infantrymen and French and Irish regulars of the Jacobite army were transported into slavery in Barbados after the battle of Culloden. [74]
Whites convicted of no crime whatever were made slaves by being captured by press‑gangs in Britain and shipped into slavery in colonial America. These slave raids (also known as "spiriting") began under the reign of King Charles I, continued during the Commonwealth period and throughout the reign of Charles II.
It was an organized system of kidnapping English, Welsh and Scottish workers, young and old, and transporting them to the American colonies to be sold, with the profits split between the press‑gangs and the shipmaster to whom the captured Whyites were assigned in chains.
These slave hunting gangs were viewed with covert approval by the British aristocracy who feared the overpopulation of the White underclass.
Confiscatory levels of taxation and the enclosure laws had driven British small farmers and village dwellers off the land and into the cities where they gathered and "loitered," a threat to the order and comfort of the propertied classes.
17th and 18th century economists advocated the enslavement of poor Whites because they saw them as the cheapest and most effective way to develop the colonies in the New World and expand the British empire. It was claimed that by making slave laborers out of poor Whites they were saved from being otherwise
"chargeable and unprofitable to the Realm."
As the plantation system expanded in the Southern American colonies, planters demanded the legalization of the practice of kidnapping poor Whites. As it stood laws were on the books forbidding kidnapping but these were for show and were enforced with very infrequent, token arrests of "spirits."
The planters' need for White slave labor expanded to such an extent that they tired of having to operate in quasi‑legal manner.
In response in February, 1652 it was enacted that:
"...it may be lawful for...two or more justices of the peace within any country, citty or towne corporate belonging to this commonwealth to from tyme to tyme by warrant...case to be apprehended, seized on and detained all and every person or persons that shall be found begging and vagrant...in any towne, parish or place to be conveyed into the port of London, or unto any other port...from where such person or persons may be shipped...into any forraign collonie or plantation..." [75]
Parliamentary legislation of 1664 allowed for the capture of White Children who were rounded up and shipped out in chains. Judges received 50% of the profits from the sale of the White Youths with another percentage going to the king. With these laws, it was open season on the poor of Great Britain as well as anyone the rich despised.
In 1682 four White men from Devon, England were enslaved and transported to the colonies. The judges indicated the four for "wandering."
From 1662 to 1665, the judges of Edinburgh, Scotland ordered the enslavement and shipment to the colonies of a large number of "rogues" and "others who made life unpleasant for the British upper classes." [76]
In Charles County court in Maryland in 1690 it was agreed that the "indentures" under which seven White Slaves were being held were "kidnapper's indentures" and therefore technically invalid.
But the court ruled that the White Slaves should continue to be held in slavery to their various colonial masters based on the so‑called "custom of the country." The ladies of the royal court and even the mayor of Bristol, England were not beneath profiting from the lucrative traffic in poor White People.
Every pretense was used to decoy the victims aboard ships lying in the Thames. The kidnapping of poor Whites became a major industry in such English port cities as London, Plymouth, Southhapton and Dover and in Scotland at Aberdeen where the kidnapping of White Children and their sale into slaver "had become an industry."
The kidnapping of English children into slavery in America was actually legalized during the first quarter of the 17th century. In that period a large number of the children of poor parents, as well as orphan children were targeted for the White Slave trade. The poor White Children were described as a "plague" and a "rowdy element."
Aristocrats who ran the Virginia Company such as Sir Thomas Smythe and Sir Edwin Sandys viewed the children as a convenient pool of slave laborers for the fields of the Virginia colony.
In their petition to the Council of London in 1618 they complained of the great number of "vagrant" children in the streets and requested that they might be transported to Virginia to serve as laborers. A bill was passed in September of 1618 permitting the capture of children aged eight years old or older, girls as well as boys.
The eight year old boys were to be enslaved for sixteen years and the eight year old girls for fourteen years, after which, it was said, they would be givne land. [77]
A directive was issued for the capture of children in London, empowering city aldermen to direct their constables to seize children on the streets and commit them to the prison‑hospital at Bridewell, where they were to await shipment to America. [78]
"...their only 'crime' was that they were poor and happened to be found loitering or sleeping in the streets when the constable passed by." [79]
The street was not the only place child slaves were to be procured however. The homes of indigent parents with large families were also on the agenda of the slave‑traders. Poor English parents were given the "opportunity" to surrender one or more of their children to the slavers. If they refused they were to be starved into submission by being denied any further relief assistance from the local government:
"To carry out the provisions of the act the Lord Mayor [80]... directed the alderman...to (make) inquiry of those parents 'overcharged and burdened with poor children' whether they wished to send any of them to Virginia...those who replied negatively were to be told they would not receive any further poor relief from the parish." [81]
The grieving parents were assured that the shipment of their children to Virginia would be beneficial to the children because it was a place where "under severe masters they may be brought to goodness." [82]
In January of 1620 a group of desperate, terrified English children attempted to break out of Bridewell where they had been imprisoned while awaiting the slave‑ships to America. They rose up and fought:
"...matters were further complicated by the refusal of some of the children to be transported. In late January a kind of 'revolt' occurred at Bridewell, with some of the 'ill‑disposed' among the children declaring 'their unwillingness to go to Virginia..." [83] "A hasty letter from (Sir Edwin) Sandys to the King's secretary (Sir Robert Naunton) quickly rectified the situation."
On January 31 the Privy Council decreed that if any of the children continued to their "obstinance" they would be severely punished.
It is possible that ONE OF THE CHILDREN WAS ACTUALLY EXECUTED AS AN EXAMPLE TO THE OTHERS!
What is certain is that a month later the children, mostly boys, were forced on board the ship Duty and transported to Virginia. From thence onward, English male child slaves came to be known as "Duty Boys." [84]
There would be many more shipments of these doomed children bound for the colonies in the years ahead.
"From that time on little is known about them except that very few lived to become adults. When a 'muster' or census of the (Virginia) colony was taken in 1625, the names of only seven boys were listed (of the children kidnapped in 1619). All the rest were dead...The statistics for the children sent in 1620 are equally grim...no more than five were alive in 1625." [85]
On April 30, 1621 Sir Edwin Sandys presented a plan to the English parliament for the solution of the threat poor English people posed to the fabulously wealthy aristocracy: mass shipment to Virginia, where they would all be "brought to goodness."
When control of the colony of Virginia passed from the privately‑held Virginia Company directly to the king, it was deemed more expedient, as time went on, to privatize the traffic in White Children while placing it on an even larger basis to meet the cheap labor needs of all the colonies. In this way the Crown avoided the opprobrium that might have been connected with the further official sale of English children even as the aristocracy covertly expanded this slave trade dramatically.
The early traffic in White Children to Virginia had proved profitable not only for the Virginia Company but for the judges and other officials in England who administered the capture of the children: J. Ferrar, treasurer of the Virginia Company, indicated that he had been approached by the Maarshal of London and other officials who had been involved in procuring children for the colony, proclaiming that they were owed a financial reward,
"for their care and travail therein, that they might be encouraged hereafter to take the like pains whensoever they should have again the like occasion."
The officials subsequently received the handsome "cut" for their part in the loathsome traffic in kidnapped White Children which they had desired. [86]
This collusion between the public and private sphere generated profits and established a precedent for many more "occasions" where "liek pains" would be eagerly taken. The precedent established was the cornerstone of the trade in Child‑slaves in Britain for decades to come; a trade whose center, after London, would become the ports of Scotland:
"Press gangs in the hire of local merchants roamed the streets, seizing 'by force such boys as seemed proper subjects for the slave trade.' Children were driven in flocks through the town and confined for shipment in barns...So flagrant was the practice that people in the countryside about Aberdeen avoided bringing children into the city for fear they might be stolen; and so widespread was the collusion of merchants, shippers, suppliers and even magistrates that the man who exposed it was forced to recant and run out of town." [87]
This man was Peter Williamson who as a child in 1743 was captured in Aberdeen and sold as a slave for America with 70 other kidnapped Scottish Children in addition to other freight. After eleven weeks at sea, the ship ran aground on a sand bar near Cape May on the Delaware river.
As it began to take on water, the crew fled in a lifeboat, leaving the boys to drown in the sinking ship. The Planter managed to stay afloat until morning however, and the slavers returned to salvage their "cargo."
Peter Williamson was twice‑blessed. He not only survived the Planter but had the great good fortune to have been purchased by a former slave, Hugh Wilson, who had also been kidnapped in Scotland as a child.
Wilson had fled slavery in another colony and now bought Williamson in Pennsylvania. He did so solely out of compassion, knowing the boy would be bought by someone else had Wilson not bought him first. Wilson paid for Williamson's education in a colonial school and years later on his death, bequeathed to the lad his horse, saddle and a small sum of money, all Wilson had in the world.
With this advantage, Williamson married, became an Indian‑fighter on the frontier and eventually made his way back to Scotland, seeking justice for himself and on behalf of all kidnapped children including his deceased friend Hugh Wilson. This took the form of a book, The Life and Curious Adventures of Peter Williamson, Who Was Carried Off from Aberdeen and Sold for a Slave.
But when he attempted to distribute it in Aberdeen he was arrested on a charge of publishing a,
"scurrilous and infamous libel, reflecting greatly upon the character and reputations of the merchants of Aberdeen."
The book was ordered to be publicly burned and Williamson jailed. He was eventually fined and banished from the city.
Williamson did not give up but sued the judges of Aberdeen and took sworn statements from people who had witnessed kidnappings or who had had their own children snatched by slavers. Typical was the testimony of William Jamieson of Oldmeldrum, a farming village 12 miles from Aberdeen.
In 1741, Jamiesons's ten year old son John was captured by a "spirit" gang in the employ of "Bonny John" Burnet, a powerful slave‑merchant based in Aberdeen.
After making inquiries, Jamieson learned that his son was being held for shipment to the "Plantations." Jamieson hurried to Aberdeen and frantically searched the docks and ships for his boy.
He found him on shore among a circle of about sixty other boys, guarded by Bonny John's slavers who brandished horse whips. When the boys walked outside the circle they were shipped. Jamieson called to his son to come to him. The boy tried to run to his father. Father and son were beaten to the ground by the slavers.
Jamieson sought a writ from the Scottish courts but was informed,
"that it would be vain for him to apply to the magistrates to get his son liberate: because some of the magistrates had a hand in those doings."
Jamieson never saw his son alive again,
"having never heard of him since he was carried away."
The testimony from Jamieson and from many others helped Peter Williamson to prevail. The Aberdeen merchants were ordered by the Edinburgh Court of Sessions to pay him 100 pounds sterling. Williamson was personally vindicated and his book would later be printed in a new edition. The kidnapping continued, however.
The enslavement of WHITE CHILDREN FROM GREAT BRITAIN became the subject of a much better known book, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped which was based on the real‑life case of James Annesley whose uncle, the Earl of Anglesey, had arranged for him to be seized and sold into slavery in America, in order to remove any challenge to the Earl's inheritance of his brother's estates.
Annesley was savagely whipped and brutally mistreated in America and it appeared as if he would die in chains. He was eventually re‑sold to another master who accepted his story that he was an English lord and the heir to the Anglesey barony.
He managed to make his way back to Scotland where he wrote a book, Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Returned from Thirteen Years' Slavery in America, which came to the attention of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Unfortunately this rare case involving the enslavement of a member of the English nobility attracted attention only because it involved royalty. The far more common plight of hundreds of thousands of poor British children who languished and died in slavery in the colonies was ignored and their lot remained unchanged in the wake of the publication of Stevenson's classic.
The head of one kidnapping ring, John Stewart, sold at least 500 White youths per year into slavery in the colonies. Stewart's thugs were paid twenty‑five shillings for Whites they procured by force, usually a knock in the head with a blunt instrument, or fraud. Stewart sold the Whites to the masters of the "White Guineaman" slave ships for forty shillings each. One eyewitness to the mass kidnapping of poor Whites estimated that 10,000 were sold into slavery every year from throughout Great Britain. [88]
White Slaves transported to the colonies suffered a staggering loss of life in the 17th and 18th century. During the voyage to America it was customary to keep the White Slaves below deck for the entire nine to twelve week journey. A White Slave would be confined to a hole not more than sixteen feet long, chained with 50 other men to a board, with padlocked collars around their necks.
The weeks of confinement below deck in the ship's stifling hold often resulted in outbreaks of contagious disease which would sweep through the "cargo" of White "freight" chained in the bowels of the ship.
Ships carrying White Slaves to America often lost half their (White) Slaves to death. According to historian Sharon V. Salinger,
"Scattered data reveal that the mortality for [White] servants at certain times equaled that for [Black] slaves in the 'middle passage,' and during other periods actually exceeded the death rate for [Black] slaves." [89]
Foster R. Dulles writing in Labor in America: A History, p. 6, states that whether convicts, children 'spirited' from the countryside or political prisoners, White slaves,
"experienced discomforts and sufferings on their voyage across the Atlantic that paralleled the cruel hardships undergone by Negro slaves on the notorious Middle Passage."
Dulles says the Whites were,
"indiscriminately herded aboard the 'white guineamen,' often as many as 300 passengers on little vessels of not more than 200 tons burden, overcrowded, unsanitary...THE MORTALITY RATE WAS SOMETIMES AS HIGH AS 50% and YOUNG CHILDREN SELDOM SURVIVED THE HORRORS OF A VOYAGE which might last anywhere from seven to twelve weeks."
Independent investigator A.B. Ellis in the Argosy writes concerning the transport of White Slaves,
"The human cargo, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on each other. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunder busses. In the dungeons below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death."
Marcus Jernegan describes the greed of the shipmasters which led to horrendous loss of life for White Slaves transported to America:
"The voyage over often repeated the horrors of the famous 'middle passage' of slavery fame. An average cargo was three hundred, but the shipmaster, for greater profit, would sometimes crowd as many as six hundred into a small vessel...The mortality under such circumstances was tremendous, sometimes more than half...Mittelberger (an eyewitness) says he saw thirty‑two children thrown into the ocean during one voyage." [90]
And:
"The mercantile firms, as importers of (White) servants, were not too careful about their treatment, as the more important purpose of the transaction was to get ships over to South Carolina which could carry local produce back to Europe. Consequently the Irish, as well as others, suffered greatly...It was almost as if the British merchants had redirected their vessels from the African coast to the Irish coast, with the White Servants coming over in much the same fashion as the African slaves." [91]
A study of the middle passage of White Slaves was included in a Parliamentary Petition of 1659. It reported that White Slaves were locked below deck for two weeks while the slave ship was still in port. Once under way, they were
"all the way locked up under decks...amongst horses."
They were chained from their legs to their necks.
One White Woman Slave, Elizabeth Dudgeon, had dared to talk back to a guard. She was trussed up to a ship's grating and mercilessly whipped. One of the ship's officers relished watching her whipped:
"The corporal did not play with her, but laid it home, which I was very glad to see...she has long been fishing for it, which she has at last got to her heart's content." [92]
In order to realize the maximum profit from the trade in White Slaves, the captains of the White Guineamen crammed their ships with as many poor Whites as possible, certain that even with the most callous disregard for the lives of the Whites the financial gain would still make the trip worth the effort.
A loss of 20% of their White "cargo" was regarded as acceptable. But sometimes losses were much higher. Out of 350 White Slaves on a ship bound for the colonies in 1638 only 80 arrived alive.
"We have thrown over board two and three a day for many days together"
wrote Thomas Rous, a survivor of the trip. A ship carrying White Slaves in 1685, the Betty of London, left England with 100 White Slaves and arrived in the colonies with 49 left. A number of factors contributed to the higher death rates for White Slaves than Blacks. Although the goal of maximum profits motivated both trades, it cost more to obtain Blacks from Africa than it did to capture Whites in Europe.
WHITE SLAVES WERE NOT CARED FOR AS WELL AS BLACKS BECAUSE THE WHITES WERE CHEAPLY OBTAINED AND WERE VIEWED AS EXPENDABLE.
"The African slave trade was not fully established in the early 17th century...The price of African slaves was prohibitively high and the English were neither familiar with nor committed to black slavery as a basic institution." [93]
"Sold to a master in Merion, near Philadelphia, David Evans was put to work 'hewing and uprooting trees,' land clearing, the most arduous of colonial labor, work that was spared black slaves because they were too valuable." [94]
"Before 1650, however, the greater victims of man's inhumanity were the mass of White Christian servants who suffered at the hands of callous, White Christian masters. For the time being, with all of their troubles, the blacks had it better." [95]
In the British West Indies the torture visited upon White Slaves by their masters was routine. Masters hung White Slaves by their hands and set their hands afire as a means of punishment.
To end this barbarity, Colonel William Brayne wrote to English authorities in 1656 urging the importation of Negro slaves on the grounds that,
"as the planters would have to pay much for them, they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was wanting in the case of (Whites)..."
many of whom, he charged were killed by overwork and cruel treatment.
Ship Captains involved in the White Slaves trade obtained White Slaves with penal status free of charge and for all other categories of White Slaves paid at most a small sum to an agent to procure them, forfeiting only the cost of their keep on board ship if they died. Moreover, traders in Black slaves operated ships designed solely for the purpose of carrying human cargo with the intent of creating conditions whereby as many Black slaves as possible would reach America alive. White Slave ships were cargo ships with no special provisions for passengers.
In addition, transportation rules decreed that, in cases where White Slaves were sold in advance to individual planters in America, if the White Slave survived the voyage beyond the halfway point in the journey, the planter in America, not the captain of the slave ship, would be responsible for the costs of the White Slaves' provisions whether or not the slave survived the trip.
Captains of the slave ships became infamous for providing sufficient food for only the first half of the trip and then virtually starving their White captives until they arrived in America.
"Jammed into filthy holds, manacled, starved and abused, they suffered and died during the crossings in gross numbers. Thousands were children under 12, snatched off the streets..." [96]
"...the transportation...became a profitable enterprise. Traders delivered thousands of bound laborers to Pennsylvania and exhibited a callous disregard for their...cargoes." [97]
As a result, White Slaves on board these ships suffered a high rate of disease. The number of diseased White Slaves arriving was high enough for Pennsylvania officials to recommend a quarantine law for them. Thus a new torment was to be endured for White Slaves who,
"were often stopped just short of the New World, with land in sight, and forced to remain quarantined on board ships in which they had just spent a horrifying ten to twelve weeks." [98]
In 1738 Dr. Thomas Graeme reported to the colonial Council of Pennsylvania that if two ships crammed with White Slaves were allowed to land,
"it might prove Dangerous to the health of the inhabitants of the Province." [99]
Ships filled with diseased White Slaves landed anyway. In 1750 an island was established for their quarantine, Fisher Island, at the mouth of Schuylkill River.
But the establishment of the quarantine area did nothing to protect the health of the White Slaves and the island was more typical of Devil's Island than a place of recuperation.
In 1764 a clergyman, Pastor Helmuth, visited Fisher island and described it as
"a land of the living dead, a vault full of living corpses."
Even privileged 17th and 18th century "apprentices" often became slaves in the end (i.e., unpaid, forced laborers for life) based on contractual trickery, judicial malfeasance and usury employed against them during their supposedly limited term as indentured servants.
Such an apprentice would be enticed to borrow sums of money, sign a contract with impossible provisions guaranteeing his or her violation of the contractual terms and other unscrupulous means of extending both of the period of servitude as well as broadening the scope of the servant's obligations. By these means an apprentice could be transformed into a slave for life.
Free White people were sometimes induced to sign "indentures" and place themselves in voluntary "temporary" slavery with the promise of obtaining farm acreage at the end of their term of indenture. An American colony typically offered 50 acres to such persons.
This was actually little more than an organized racket. The alleged "servant" had his or her land grant entrusted to the landowner for whom they labored, with the understanding that title would pass to the servant at the end of his term of labor. But he could forfeit his rights to this promised land on the slightest pretext of his owner, on such grounds as running away (the owner's word would do) or for "indolence."
For the price of a White Slave's transport, six pounds, his owner secured a "headright" to the land which was supposedly intended to go to the "servant" but which was instead combined with the land supposedly set aside for other White Slaves and formed into an estate which would multiply in value.
By this means and with an occasional additional fee to an English merchant or "spirit" who provided the landowner with kidnapped extra White Slaves, the plantation owners of colonial America played Monopoly with the fertile valleys and wooded uplands of Maryland and Virginia.
Meanwhile the rightful owners of this land lay in paupers' graves or enshackled for life. This monopolistic grip on the land market was detrimental to all White laborers. Those White slaves who did manage to obtain their freedom alter thirty or forty years as chattel, were swindled out of the spectral "freedom dues" of acreage, left to exist as landless peasants and scorned as "hillbillies" and "White trash," in spite of decades of labor under monstrous conditions of hardship.
"One would like to think that some of the few survivors went on to become prominent leaders of the colony or were the founders of great families. This does not appear to be the case...Some were doubtless the progenitors of the 'poor white trash' of the South...many of the free whites who had descended from the poorer elements of the white servant class became objects of charity..." [100]
"...at no time after 1640 in either Barbados or St. Christopher, and probably Nevis, was there any cheap land enough for a man to purchase with his freedom dues...the vast majority never became landholders..." [101]
"It then became the custom to give the servant at the end of his term, not land, but three hundred pounds of sugar, worth less than two pounds sterling...It was hardly worth the servant's while to endure the conditions which have been described for... ($4 worth) of sugar." [102]
These former White Slaves' share of the accumulated wealth of the American colonies, measured by any standard, was negligible; their say in the planter aristocracy was virtually non‑existent.
They were the "expendable" by‑products and survivors of a system of exploitation governed solely by merchant companies chartered in England by aristocratic fiat.
It was the exclusive government by a merchant company which Adam Smith assailed as the worst of all governments for any country.
Often working conditions were made especially gruesome toward the end of the period when the [White] servant's contract was due to expire in order to induce him to run away, lose his 50 acres and be held extra years in enslavement for fleeing.
"Toward the end of the term of servitude, working conditions would often be deliberately worsened, tempting the man to run away so the master might gain these advantages." [103]
Of 5,000 "indentured servants [Slaves]" who entered the colony of Maryland between 1670 and 1680, fewer than 1300 proved their rights to their 50 acre "freedom dues." What had become of the others? More than 1400 DIED FROM OVERWORK, CHRONIC MALNOURISHMENT AND DISEASE. THE OTHERS WERE DEFRAUDED.
"By the 18th century the White Servant class was disillusioned ...The planters had...squashed the laboring Whites...They were the easy pawns of the planters, who despised them..." [104]
The statutes overseeing non‑penal indentures servitude in colonial America were mere window‑dressing and neither these statutes or the Common Law proved any obstacle to the gradual enslavement of those with the non‑penal status of "indentured servant," by means of tacking on extra time to be served, on the basis of fabricated or trumped charges and minor offenses. A Virginia law of 1619 provided that
"if a servant willfully neglect his master's commands he shall suffer bodily punishment."
When Wyatt became Governor in 1621 he was ordered to see that punishment for offenses committed by White slaves would also be in terms of labor on behalf of the colonial government, such labor to be performed after the slave fulfilled his original period of service to his master.
This is the evil practice of lengthening the time required for the White Person's term of labor, a practice which quickly resulted in the lengthening of the term of "service" by years and ended in the perpetual enslavement of the White.
"While it is true that the Common Law of England had the status of national law with territorial extent in the colonies, the relation of Master to servant in cases of what began as non‑penal indentured servitude, was unknown to the Common Law and could neither be derived from nor regulated by it." [105]
Both indentured servitude and the White Slavery were permitted under of the penal codes, depended for their regulation and sanction on special local statutes and tribunals which acted as the "necessities of the occasion" demanded.
The legacy of White enslavement bound up in the medieval English legal concept of "villeinage" contributed an informal framework or milieu at least, for legitimizing the enslavement of the White poor in British‑America. In this light, Richard B. Morris is only partially correct. There was in fact precedent for White Slavery in Common Law but it was little cited in the colonies, perhaps because such former legal citation would have exposed the indentures racket for what it was.
Old English law did have something of a White Slave code, based on the concept of "villeinage" from which we derive the words villain and villainy with their now blatantly pejorative connotations.
With the emergence of the English Common Law (1175‑1225) came the ruse of the writ of novel dissension which dealt with who was qualified to contest land evictions. The aristocrats who drafted the writ established a category of juridical unfreedom known as villein tenure which could defeat any English peasant's claim to land, no matte how long his family had held it.
At first villain denoted a White peasant (from the French Carolingian word vilani, a general description for a peasant dependent upon a lord), and the sense of evil that was attached to the word was largely a construct of the rich who would naturally want their world order to be seen as good and therefore any White kinsman enslaved was seen as "justly deserving" of such treatment and hence had to have been bad, evil, a "villain."
It was as important for the English nobility to make this claim about English slave "villeins" as it was for American colonial merchants to label the Whites they enslaved as criminals and traitors or in the common parlance found in original documents of the period, as "rubbish and dung."
The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition of villainy,
"The condition or state of a villein, bondage, servitude, henace base or ignoble condition." [106]
In other words, the connection between villaniny and evil first came about from a premeditated association between the condition of being a slave and the state of being an evil person. Who is it that would benefit from stigmatizing White Slaves as evil beings? who but the slave holding aristocracy who could then justify any crime they committed against these "villains."
Much of the common understanding of the land swindles perpetrated against the English villein class is derived from the legal treatise, De legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, commonly known as Bracton after Sir Henry de Bracton.
The Bracton code equates the English villein with the Roman servus or slve. The Bracton code denies all rights to the villein by placing him in the same category as the Roman servus. Villeinage was considered a hereditary condition:
"Neither of Duke, earl or lord by ancestry but of villain (vylayne) people." [107] "Thou are of vylayn blood on thy father's side." [108]
This propaganda‑labeling of enslaved Whites may be better understood if we examine the original meaning and the subsequent connotations associated with the use of another name, that of "churl."
We call someone a churl today who is badly bred or bad acting. Yet according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, originally a churl was an English "freeman of the lowest rank" ‑‑ the poorest White who was not a slave.
It is no coincidence that the names for White Slaves and White poor came to be linked with evil and bad breeding as part of a self‑serving process of appellation manufactured by their rulers.
A revealing display of the opprobrium associated with both words is exhibited in a description by Sir Walter Scott,
"Sweeping from the earth some few hundreds of villain churles, who are born but to plow it."
The association of these names with what Scott views as a degraded existence of plowing the earth is a holdover from plutocratic ancient Roman philosophy.
"Romans considered manual occupations...as degrading in themselves..." [109]
Since these were associated in the aristocratic mind with the work of slaves. Up until recently, European history was largely written from the point of view of institutional Churchianity, the wealthy, the aristocracy and the merchant class, at the expense of the laboring people. Rodney Hilton further cautions that,
"historians risk falling into the trap dug for the peasants by the lawyers, for most of our evidence about freedom and serfdom depends on evidence which is a by‑product of the legal... process." [110]
The creation of an exculpatory nomenclature rigged to justify the depredations of the ruling class against the White poor by establishing an intrinsic relationship between being poor and being evil, is a masterstroke of propaganda. It leads to the internalization of these negative images in the minds of the White poor themselves.
Some memory of these connections and connotations were no doubt extant in the minds of colonial Americans and has surely contributed to the dearth of material on those who survived or were descended from White Slavery. In Britain and Europe under the laws of villeinage, survivors and descendants of White Slavery were susceptible to discrimination before the law and even reenslavement:
"The former (White) Slaves, now serfs, might gradually shift into another legal category over several generations, or the taint of servility might lose much of its practical meaning as they became de facto independent, but...the descendants of (White) Slaves were for centuries considered unfree in a way that other people in equally dependent economic positions were not." [111]
This taint, which the ruling class cleverly asserted was the result of some hereditary defect among White Slaves, has been applied to many nations of White peoples from the Slavs to the Irish, Welsh and Scottish. The stigma attached to White "slave blood" by the rulers served as an effective device for:
1). Keeping such descendants from seeking redress for past wrongs.
2). Being ashamed to identify their heritage and background in the form of written memorialization.
3). Serving as a neat propaganda justification for the continuing privileges and governance of the aristocracy.
This pattern is occasionally overturned when we examine unfiltered folk literature or music.
For example, in such 13th century Icelandic folk sagas as the Frostbroeora and the Laxdoela, White Slaves are portrayed as fair and Nordic in general appearance and possessed of great personal courage and honor.
Biblical provisions for bound and hired labor were cited to justify White Slavery in early America, on the grounds that it was Scriptural and therefore humane.
The Body of Liberties of 1641, the first law code of Puritan New England, established four categories of servitude, citing Exodus 21:2; Leviticus 25:39‑55 and Deuteronomy 23:15‑16. However, had those Scriptures actually been obeyed, the enslavement of Christians (the heirs of the Israelites) would never have taken place.
Deuteronomy mandates that a bondsman is not to be oppressed. Exodus decrees that the term of service will under no circumstance exceed six years. Leviticus forbids forced slavery for the payment of debts as well as child slavery. [112] The permanent enslavement of racial aliens and their children was permitted. [113]
Abraham Lincoln's use of the Bible, which according to his law partner he did not believe in, to justify rights for Negro slaves, is another example of this masterful politician's distortion of fact. While it is true that Galatians 3:28 contains the famous passage about there being "neither slave nor free...in Christ Jesus," this statement is meant to have only a spiritual application.
The passage also contains the statement that there is neither male nor female in Christ, but I rather doubt Paul intended to sanction transvestitism or homosexuality. In Ephesians 6:5 slaves are ordered to obey their masters "with fear and trembling as unto Christ."
In considering the Biblical stand on slavery, it is necessary to differentiate Biblical laws concerning the enslavement of aliens and Israelites. The former could be permanent, the latter was to be temporary, even though many who claimed to be the Christian heirs of the Israelites acted otherwise.
In America, those who enslaved Blacks and disparaged the manual laborer generally did not derive their philosophy from Biblical sources, however: that legacy falls in the camp of ancient Rome. [114]
Southern planters would sometimes justify the bondage of the Negro with Biblical arguments, but this was usually a rejoinder to abolitionist attacks, rather than the main source of enslavement praxis, it is chiefly from the aristocratic notions of the Romans toward manual labor that the classic mindset of the modern slaver in the West evolved. These concepts differ considerably from the status of the manual laborer in the Bible. Jesus Christ, the "King of Kings," toiled as a carpenter for most of His life.
Then as now, religious hypocrites of "Churchianity," as it more properly may be called, ignored Bible teachings on the subject even as they cited them for purposes of their own justification in enslaving fellow White Christians for pecuniary gain. It should be noted that some individual masters in early America who felt convicted by the Scriptures regulating bonded kinsmen moderated their treatment of White bondsmen accordingly.
In colonial America, White people could be enslaved for such an "offense" as missing church services more than three times or for "prevention of an idle course of life."
In 1640 a Virginia master needed to ensure further labor from his White servants in order to place his investments and land improvements on a more secure basis. He therefore falsely accused a number of his servants of a conspiracy,
"to run out of the colony and enticing divers others to be actors in the same conspiracy."
As a result of his accusation the alleged "runaways" were severely whipped and had their term of forced labor lengthened an additional seven years, to be served "in irons."
This can be regarded as a light sentence in view of the fact that seven years was a standard addition of the term of labor for the crime of running away, or conspiring to do so, to which would then be added, in terms of additional time, the expenses incurred for capture and return of the White to his master, such costs being likely to include rewards, sheriffs and slave‑hunters' bounties and jail fees.
These latter were not fixed by law until 1726 and were a source of tremendous abuse by tacking on huge costs to the capture of the runaway and then commanding that the runaway pay for these inflated costs in terms of years of his life in further forced‑labor.
A White Slave who fled or was accused of fleeing often had his term of labor extended fifteen, twenty or even fifty years, as a result. White Slave Lawrence Finny received an additional seven years, eleven months of forced labor for running away, while escaped White Slave William Fisher on being caught, received an additional term of six years and 250 days. [115]
Just for being absent from the plantation at any time, a White Slave would be forced to undergo one additional year of slavery for every two hours he was absent. [116]
Starving White Slaves who took extra food from their masters' overflowing larders were enslaved another two years for each commission of that "crime."
Further accusations, infractions and violations added to these additions and in sum amounted to a lifetime of total enslavement and not the allegedly limited, benign White "indentured servitude" our court historians fleetingly refer to on their way to their semester‑long devotion to Negro slave studies.
Indeed, one‑half of White "indentured servants" did not live to attain their freedom. Lest anyone think this grim datum refers mainly to Whites enslaved in old age, it actually refers to Whites who were first "indentured" between the ages of 16 and 20. [117]
"The truth is," wrote White Slave Edward Hill, "we live in the fearfullest age that ever Christians lived in."
Young white females in bondage were denied the right to marry, a clever device for helping extend their servitude into full‑fledged slavery since the penalty for a woman having a baby out of wedlock while a slave, was an extension of her term of slave labor another two and a half years.
A white male slave had at least four years added to his time for having sex with a White female slave or for entering into a compact of marriage with her. Twenty‑three year old Henry Carman, a White slave since he had been kidnapped in London at the age of seventeen, made White Slave Alice Chambers pregnant and received an additional seven years slavery for this "crime." [118]
A Virginia law of 1672 recognized that there were masters who had lengthened the enslavement of their White Female Slaves by making them pregnant by the slavemaster himself. No punishment was given to the master for such acts, however.
As bad as this may seem it cannot compare with the dreadful fate that awaited the children of the enslaved White mother. The "bastard" or "obscene" children, as they were called, of unmarried White women‑slaves were bound over to the mother's slavemaster for a period of thirty‑one years!
This heinous child‑slavery from birth was not modified until 1765 when the Assembly of Virginia declared it to be "an unreasonable severity to such children" and limited the term of bondage for such White Children to a "mere" 21 years for boys and 18 years for girls.
The following is an entry describing one such case of infant‑ enslavement:
"Margaret Micabin servant to Mr. David Crawley having a bastard Child, Mr. Crawley prays the gentlemen of this Vestry to bind out the said Child as they think fit. It is ordered by the Vestry that the Church‑Wardens bind out the said Child named John Sadler born the 26th July last 1720. The foresaid child is by indenture bound unto Mr. David Crawley to serve according to Law." [119]
At other times the baby was forcibly separated from the White Slave mother shortly after birth. White woman Sally Brant was enslaved to the wealthy Quaker family of Henry and Elizabeth Drinker. The Quakers were strong campaigners against Negro slavery BUT HAD NO QUALMS ABOUT WHITE SLAVERY!
When Sally Brant's baby was born in the Drinker's country house. Sally was forced by the Drinkers to return to their main house in Philadelphia, leaving the newborn infant behind with a stranger. The White Slave father of the child was also not allowed to see his baby and the infant subsequently died.
Elizabeth Drinker, the wealthy Quaker slaveowner, kept a diary in which she philosophically noted that the death of her White Slave's baby had most likely worked out for the best.
"Unmarried (White) women servants who became pregnant, as did an estimated 20 percent, received special punishment. All had to serve additional years; some had their children taken from them and sold, for a few pounds of tobacco, to another master." [120]
By 1769 all children born to even free White women who were unmarried were also candidates for enslavement:
"...in 1769...the church wardens were instructed to bind out illegitimate children of free single White women." [121]
Long hours and exposure to disease and the elements were considered part of a first year "seasoning" process it was thought a good White Slave would require.
A White Slave would work form sunrise to sunset in the fields and then might be put to work in a shed grinding corn until midnight or one a.m. and expected to return to the fields the next day at dawn.
In some southern colonies with extreme heat, as many as 80% of a shipment of White Slaves died in their first year in the New World. Richard Ligon, a traveling writer and eyewitness to White Slavery has written that he saw a White Slave beaten with a cane,
"about the head till the blood has followed for a fault that is not worth speaking of; and yet he must be patient, or worse will follow." [122]
How many White tourists today who take winter vacations in such Caribbean islands as Jamaica and Barbados know that they are visiting the site of a gruesome holocaust against poor White people who died by the tens of thousands and were slaves in those islands long before Blacks ever were?
Historian Richard Dunn has stated that the early sugar plantations of the British West Indies were nothing more than mass graves for White workers. [123] Four‑fifths of the White slaves sent to the West Indies didn't survive the first year. [124]
In 1688 a member of the nobility wrote from a British colony in the Caribbean islands to the British government,
"I beg...care for the poor White Servants here, who are used with more barbarous cruelty than if in Algiers. Their bodies and souls are used as if hell commenced here and only continued in the world to come." [125]
"Twenty or more (White) servants laboring under the supervision of an overseer led the most wearisome and miserable lives...if a servant complained, the overseer would beat him; if he resisted, the master might double his time in bondage...the overseers act like those in charge of galley slaves...The cost in (White) lives of such inhuman treatment is incalculable, but it was very, very high." [126]
One example of the horrible conditions White Slaves labored under can be seen in the case of the White Slave known to history as Boulton.
In 1646 Boulton's master was suspected of cheating a colonial official of a large shipment of cotton. The master asked the White Slave if he would take the blame. If Boulton made the bogus confession in place of his master he was liable to have both his ears cut off by the colonial officials as well as having more time added to his period of bondage.
However Boulton's master promised that he would not only ignore the extra time if Boulton agreed to take the blame for him, but that he would free Goulton from slavery after Boutlton had been punished by the authorities. So desperate was Boulton to be free that Boulton agreed to pretend that his master had told him to give the cotton to the officials, but that instead he had embezzled it for his own use. Both of the White Slave's ears were subsequently cut off. Afterward, his master kept his part of the bargain and Boulton was emancipated.
"Some planters grew so desperate for help that they would ransom White captives from the Indians, returning them to a servitude which, according to one complainant, 'differeth not from her slavery with the Indians." [127]
"Fugitive Slave" laws, enacted to facilitate the apprehension and punishment of runaway White Slaves is another suppressed aspect of the history of early America. William Hening in his 13 volume Statutes at Large of Virginia records that the punishment for runaway Whites was to be "branded in the cheek with the letter R." they also often had one or both of their ears cut off.
In 1640 the General Court of Virginia ruled that two White slaves,
"principal actors and contrivers in a most dangerous conspiracy by attempting to run out of the country and (by) enticing divers others to be actors in said Conspiracy,"
be whipped, branded and required to serve the colony an additional seven years in leg irons.
In the stock scenes from Hollywood films liek Glory the Negro slave's shirt is dramatically lifted to reveal a back full of hideous scars from repeated shippings. This brings tears to the eyes of one of his White New England commanders in the fictional film Glory.
Yet in reality, among the White soldiers in that scene there would have been more than a few who also bore massive scars from a whip or who had seen the scars of the lash on their White fathers' backs. The current image of Blacks as predominantly the ones who bore the scars of the whiplash is in error.
On September 20, 1776 the Continental Congress Authorized the whipping of unruly American enlisted men with up to one hundred lashes. There are cases on record of rank and file White troops receiving up to two hundred‑fifty whip‑lashes! [128] This incredible savagery represented the level of treatment poor Whites sometimes experienced at the hands of the authorities in 18th century America,
"...the officer class...came to use the lash unsparingly (on)...unpropertied... recruits...the poor white rank and file..." [129]
White slaves,
"found themselves powerless as individuals, without honor or respect, and driven into commodity production not by any inner sense of moral duty but by the outer stimulus of the whip." [130]
"In 1744 provision was made for whipping escaped servants through the parish, after proof had been made before a justice of the peace that they were fugitives...Dennis Mahoon was sentenced to be stripped naked to his wait and receive thirty‑ nine lashes upon his naked back.' This was his punishment for a second offense in persuading fellow servants to run away..." [131]
"(White) servants were tortured for confessions (fire was inserted between their fingers and knotted ropes were put about their necks)..." [132]
Not only White Slaves were brutalized but also those who dared to aid them in gaining their freedom. The image of whites being hunted, whipped and even jailed for assisting fellow Whites out of slavery is completely absent from modern textbook accounts of slavery in America.
Those who helped White Slaves run away in colonial America were known as "enticers" and received 30 lashes with a whip if caught. Merely to counsel a White Slave to seek his freedom was considered by the colonial courts as illegal interference with the property rights of the rich and resulted in criminal penalties. Hening states that to reduce the number of runaway White slaves a pass was required for any person leaving the Virginia colony and masters of ships were put under severe penalty for taking any White Slave to freedom.
Advertisements regularly appeared in early American newspapers for fugitive White Slaves. One such wanted notice described a slave who had run off as having a,
"long visage of lightish complexion, and thin‑flaxen hair; sometimes ties his hair behind with a string, a very proud fellow...very impudent..." [133]
Notices of runaway White Slaves in South Carolina newspapers included specific warnings against harboring or assisting the fugitive White Slaves and listed the statutory criminal penalties for doing so. Certificates of freedom were required to be carried on the person of freed White Slaves at all times.
All White workers and poor in colonial America were regarded as suspect, guilty of being fugitive slaves unless they could "give an intelligent account of themselves" or show their certificate; a very convenient arrangement for enslaving free White men and women in America by claiming they were fugitive White Slaves.
White Slaves who ran away found safe haven in portions of North Carolina which became known in Virginia as the "Refuge of Runaways." The mountains of Appalachia also served as hideouts for fugitive White Slaves. The hunting of White slaves became a lucrative practice.
In Virginia in 1699 persons who successfully hunted a White Slave received 1000 lbs. of tobacco, paid for by the future labor that would be extracted form the White Slave. Richard B. Morris describes the appearance of fugitive White Slaves:
"One culprit was described as having a string of bells (fastened) around his neck which made a hideous jingling and discordant noise, another wore an iron collar, and others bore the scars of recent whippings on their backs." [134]
The history of "racist White toleration" of the hunting of Negro slaves as well as the controversy surrounding the capture of fugitive black slaves in the North just prior to the Civil War is incomprehensible without being placed in the context of the body of Fugitive Slave Law that was first established for use against White Slaves.
In colonial America the fugitive White slave was considered the property of the master and the legal right to recovery was universally recognized.
The Articles of the New England Confederation provided that where a White Slave fled his master for another colony in the Confederation, upon certification by one judge in the colony to which the White Slave had fled, the fugitive would be delivered back into slavery.
Classed with "thieves and other criminals," the fugitive White Slave could be pursued "by hue and cry" on land and over water, and men and boats were often impressed in the hunt for him.
Magistrates, sheriffs or constables were authorized by statute to whip the fugitive white Man severely before returning him to his master, twenty to thirty‑nine lashes being the usual sentence imposed [Blacks were not commonly treated the same].
Massachusetts authorized that any White Slave who had been previously whipped for running away was to be whipped again just for being found outside his master's farm without a note of permission from the slavemaster.
Between February 12, 1732 and December 20, 1735, the South Carolina Gazette carried 110 wanted notices for fugitive Black slaves and forty‑one notices for fugitive White Slaves. The claims of masters in one colony upon the fugitive White Slaves in another jurisdiction were allowed from the beginning of colonial settlement in America.
The U.S. Constitution upheld the colonial fugitive White Slave laws in its Article IV, section 2:
"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the Laws thereof escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on a claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due."
This law was enacted by Whites against fellow White people and allowed White slavery to continue in some parts of America right up until the Civil War. The first legal blow to the system of White bondage didn't occur until 1821 when an Indiana court began to enforce the Ordinance of 1787 prohibiting White Slavery in the old "Northwest Territory."
The decision cited the Constitution of the state of Indiana which in turn drew its base from the 1787 ordinance in holding all White Slavery null, void and unenforceable. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution dealt a fatal blow to White Slavery.
The enslavement of Whites in one form or another has proved very durable. bound White servitude for orphans and destitute children on contracts of indenture still occurred in New York State up until 1923 when they were finally banned.
During the American Revolution the Continental Congress, desperate for fighting manpower, permitted the recruitment of White Slaves into the army, which was tantamount to granting them their freedom. This was not particularly radical however, in view of the fact that "four score and seven years" before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Lord Dunmore, the Royal governor of Virginia, freed the Negroes in his jurisdiction in the hope they would join the "Ethiopian Regiment" he had formed and fight the patriots. [135]
In 1765, a fourteen year old Irish lad, Matthew Lyon, was orphaned when his father was executed along with other leaders of the "White Boys," an Irish farmer's association organized to resist British government confiscation of their farmlands. The boy was enslaved and transported to America where he was purchased by a wealthy Connecticut merchant. Later he was made to endure the shame of being sold to another master in exchange of two deer
"which was a source of no end of scoffs and jeers" at Lyon's "irreparable disgrace of being sold for a pair of stags." [136]
By the spring of 1775 Matthew Lyon had taken advantage of the manpower shortage of the American Revolution and joined an obscure, rag‑tag band of guerrilla fighters. Lyon and his fellow rebels were destined to enter the annals of historical fame when not long afterward they appeared out of nowhere at Ticonderoga in northern New York where their commander, Ethan Allen, demanded the surrender of the mighty British fort. Matthew Lyon had joined the Green Mountain boys. "Eighty five of us," Lyon would later recall with pride, "took from one hundred and forty British veterans the Fort Ticonderoga."
The guns, cannon and ammunition obtained at Ticonderoga would supply the American army throughout the war. One of the founders of the state of Vermont, he was elected to its assembly and later to the U.S. Congress, where the eponymous firebrand wrestled a Federalist on the floor of the House of Representatives.
He was the first American to be indicted under President John Adams' Sedition Act, for publishing material against central Federal government and Adams. Forced to run for Congress from a jail cell, Lyon was overwhelmingly re‑elected and returned to a tumultuous hero's welcome in Vermont.
The colonies of Rhode Island, New Jersey and Maryland declared White Slaves eligible to enlist in the Continental Army without their master's consent. Though such decrees had the effect of granting the freedom of those slaves who fought, the American Revolution did not result in a prohibition of the institution of White Slavery itself.
In rhetoric it was conceded that White Slavery was "contrary to the idea of liberty" but the system remained profitable and many Southern and middle colony White Slaves had not been allowed to join the Revolutionary Army and they remained in bondage. The importation of White Slaves was resumed on nearly as large a scale after the American Revolution as it had existed before. Fear of rebellion by White Slaves led to the passage of a Virginia law to suppress
"unlawful meetings" and directed that "all masters of families be enjoyned to take especial care that servants do not depart from their houses on Sundays or any other days without particular lycence from them."
Individual acts of rebellion by White Slaves were constant and many slavemasters were killed.
"...unrest among White servants was more or less chronic." [137]
In the Caribbean colonies White Slaves revolted by burning the sugar cane of the slavemaster "to the utter ruin and undon of their Masters." Lured to colonial America with the promise of teaching job, Thomas Hellier was instead enslaved as a field worker. That betrayal combined with the viciousness of his slavemaster's wife led him to kill the slavemaster's entire family with an axe in 1678. Hellier was believed to have been inspired by Bacon's Rebellion two years before.
In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led an uprising in Virginia. A small army of former White Slaves and fugitive White Slaves joined with the 30 year old Indian fighter Bacon against the House of Burgesses and the Governor, sparked by anger at the govern-ment's apathy in the face of warring Indians and their own penurious condition after having been cheated out of the "head" acreage they were promised.
There was great fear among the circle of the royal governor, William Berkeley, that the White Slaves of the entire region would rise with Bacon and "carry all beyond remedy to destruction."
Bacon's rebels burned down the city of Jamestown, plundered the plantations and expelled the royal Governor. Bacon died suddenly, allegedly of dysentery, on October 26 at the height of the insurrection, "...an incredible number of the meanest (poorest) of people were everywhere armed to assist him and his cause," and these fought on through the winter, until the last of them were captured or killed by January of 1677.
Other White Slave rebellions included the risings of 1634 which took 800 troops to put down, and 1647 in which 18 leaders of the White revolt were tortured and hung.
The rulers of Barbados even passed a proclamation in 1649,
"And act for an Annual Day of Thanksgiving for our deliverance from the last Insurrection of servants."
Richard Ligon was an eyewitness to this White Slave plot on Barbados:
"Their sufferings being grown to a great height, and their daily complainings to one another...being spread throughout the Island; at the last, some amongst them, whose spirits were not able to endure such slavery, resolved to break through it, or die in the act; and so conspired with some others...so that a day was appointed to fall upon their Masters and cut all their throats..." [138]
And in Virginia:
"After mid‑century the number of runaway (White) servants increased steadily, and in 1661 and 1663, servants in two separate (Virginia) counties took up arms and demanded freedom. The first episode occurred in York County, where servants complained of 'hard usage'...Isaac Friend, their leader, planned to bring together about forty servants. They would then 'get arms' and march through the country, raising recruits by urging servants 'who would be for liberty, and free from bondage,' to join them. Once a large enough force had been aroused, the rebels would go through the country and kill those that made any opposition, and they would either be free or die for it." [139]
More White Slave "plots" and revolts occurred in 1686 and 1692 including a rebellion the "Independents," an insurgent group of White Protestant slaves and freedmen who revolted against Maryland's Catholic theocracy.
In 1721 White slaves were arrested while attempting to seize an arsenal at Annapolis, Maryland, the arms to be used in an uprising against the Planters.
In Florida in 1768 White Slaves revolted at the Turnbull plantation in New Smyrna. The government needed two ships full of troops and cannon to put down the revolt.
"If the servant class threw up one radical hero, it was Cornelius Bryan, an Irish servant, imprisoned for mutiny on countless occasions and regularly whipped by the hangman for assembling servants and publicly making anti‑planter remarks." [140]
The colonial powers were not adverse to call on unlikely policemen to suppress White slave revolts: Blacks. BLACKS WERE ADMITTED TO THE COLONIAL MILITIA RESPONSIBLE FOR POLICING WHITE SLAVES!
The aristocratic planters had felt the necessity to "arm part of their blackmen" to assist in suppressing White Slave revolts. [141] Armed Black militias patrolled the Carolinas from the end of the 17th century to at least 1710 when Thomas Nairne reported that Blacks continued to be members of armed colonial militias organized by local governments.
These White rebellions foreshadowed the later switch from reliance on masses of White slaves to greater and greater importation of Blacks because of their pliability and passivity.
But throughout the 17th and much of the 18th century, the tobacco, sugar and cotton colonies maintained a sizable White Slave population. Negro Slaves simply cost too much to import and purchase. Whites were cheaper and more expendable, until they began to fight.
"...planter, especially in the South, eventually elected to replace the restive White Servants with the more identifiable and presumably less criminal black slaves." [142]
The toughness and sturdiness of the White Slaves who not only fought in Bacon's Rebellion but took the worst duty in the French and Indian wars and the American Revolution may have been due in part to the presence of convicts in their ranks.
Not all colonists looked with favor on the reliance upon White convict‑slave‑labor to build America. Benjamin Franklin totally opposed White Slavery and supposedly referred to White convict‑slaves shipped to America as "human serpents."
Yet when attempts were made to abolish White Slavery and thereby stop the flow of both kidnapped and convict labor into colonial America, the measures were generally voted down, as when in 1748 Virginia's Burgesses upheld the Act of 1705, which legitimized the White Slavery under a veil of legal phraseology. White convict‑labor was used for the very harshest and life‑threatening jobs others would not do, such as fighting the Indians and French in Arctic conditions with few, if any, firearms.
Benjamin Franklin had been apprenticed at age 12 to his printer‑brother, the term of his indenture was to have been for nine years, but he managed to have his contract voided while his brother was in jail for seditious publishing. As a young man, Franklin was once mistaken for a fugitive White Slave, "and in danger of being taken up on that suspicion."
The notion that Whites are particularly "hardhearted" and "racist" because they upheld a fugitive slave law against Blacks is specious when considered in light of the enactments against rebellious and fugitive White Slaves.
If a tiny clique of wealthy Whites didn't feel sorry for their own people thus enslaved, and hunted them when they escaped or revolted, why would anyone expect them to exempt Negroes from the same treatment?
Sometimes the reverse was true. Whites like Harriet Beecher Stowe were solely concerned with the plight of Blacks AND AVOIDED THE SLAVERY OF WHITES TO DENY THE OPPRESSION OF WHITES. Like the wealthy White elite of the 1990s who do nothing for the White poor but campaign tirelessly for the rights of colored people. The Quakers of colonial Philadelphia were early advocates of Black rights and abolition of Negro servitude EVEN AS THEY WHIPPED AND BRUTALIZED THE WHITE SLAVES THEY CONTINUED TO OWN.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE WAS ONE OF THE GREAT HYPOCRITES OF THE 19th CENTURY, A PIOUS FRAUD WHOSE LEGACY OF MALIGNANT HATRED FOR HER OWN KIND HAS INFECTED MANY ANOTHER WHITE MAN AND WOMAN OF THIS DAY.
During her triumphal 1853 tour of Britain in the wake of the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe was the guest of Duchess of Sutherland, a woman of vast wealth who had an interest in the "betterment of the Negro."
The Sutherland wealth was based in part on one of the most criminal land‑grabs in British history. The Sutherlands had seized the ancient holdings of the traditional clans of Scotland and burned the Highland crofters off their lands, resulting in pauperism and in many cases, outright starvation of Scottish women and children. [143]
At one point the Sutherlands even hired armed guards to prevent famine‑stricken Scottish Highlander "rabble" from catching fish in the Sutherland's well‑stocked salmon and trout rivers. [144]
When Harriet Beecher Stowe returned to America she wrote a glowing account of the Sutherlands in her travel book Sunny Memories, specifically praising them for their "enlightened land policies" in Scotland, which she described as
"an almost sublime instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in shortening the struggles of advancing civilization." [145]
In response to Stowe's appalling whitewash of the crimes committed against the Scottish Highlanders, a London newspaper described Uncle Tom's Cabin as a "downright imposture" and "ranting, canting nonsense." [146]
White Slaves were punished with merciless whippings and beatings. The records of Middlesex County, Virginia relate how a slavemaster confessed;
"that he hath most uncivilly and inhumanly beaten a (White) female with great knotted whipcord, so that the poor servant is a lamentable spectacle to behold."
A case in the country from 1655 relates how a White Slave was "fastened by a lock with a chain to it" by his master and tied to a shop door and "whipped till he was very bloody."
The beating and whipping of White Slaves resulted in so many being beaten to death that in 1662 the Virginia Assembly passed a law prohibiting the private burial of White Slaves because such burial helped to conceal their murders and encouraged further atrocities against other White Slaves.
A grievously ill White Slave was forced by his master to dig his own grave, since there was little likelihood that the master would obtain any more labor from him. The White Slave's owner,
"made him sick and languishing as he was, dig his own grave, in which he was laid a few days afterwards, the others being too busy to dig it, having their hands full in attending to the tobacco." [147]
In New England, Nicholas Weekes and his wife deliberately cut off the toes of their White Slave who subsequently died. Marmaduke Pierce in Massachusetts severely beat a White Slave boy with a rod and finally beat him to death. Pierce was not punished for the murder.
In 1655 in the Plymouth Colony a master named Mr. Latham, starved his 14 year old White Slave boy, beat him and left him to die outdoors in sub‑zero temperatures. The dead boy's body showed the markings of repeated beatings and his hands and feet were frozen solid.
COLONIAL RECORDS ARE FULL OF THE DEATHS BY BEATING, STARVATION AND EXPOSURE OF WHITE SLAVES in addition to tragic accounts such as one of the New Jersey White Slave boy who drowned himself rather than continue to face the unmerciful beatings of his master. [148]
Henry Smith beat to death an elderly White Slave and raped two of his female White Slaves in Virginia. John Dandy beat to death his White Slave boy whose black and blue body was found floating down a creek in Maryland.
Pope Alvey beat his White Slave girls Alice Sanford to death in 1663. She was reported to have been "beaten to a Jelly." Joseph Fincher beat his White slave Jeffery Haggman to death in 1664. John Grammer ordered his plantation overseer to beat his White Slave 100 times with a cat‑o'‑nine‑tails. The White Slave died from his wounds. The overseer, rather than expressing regret at the death he inflicted stated,
"I could have givne him tenn times more."
There are thousands of cases in the colonial archives of inhuman mistreatment, cruelty, beatings and the entire litany of Uncle Tom's Cabin horrors administered to hapless White Slaves.
In Australia, White Slave Joseph Mansbury had been whipped repeatedly to such an extent that his back appeared,
"quite bare of flesh, and his collar bones were exposed looking very much like two Ivory Polished horns. It was with difficulty that we could find another place to flog him. Tony [Chandler, the overseer] suggested to me that we had better do it on the soles of his feet next time." [149]
Hughes describes the fate of White slaves as one of "prolonged and hideous torture."
One overseer in Australia whose specialty was shipping White Slaves would say while applying his whip on their backs.
"Another half pound mate, off the beggar's ribs."
The overseer's face and clothes were described as having the appearance of,
"a mincemeat chopper, being covered in flesh from the victim's body." [150]
In colonial America, in one case, the sole punishment for the murder of a White Slave (explained as an accident) consisted of the master and his wife being forbidden from owning any White Slaves for a period of three years.
A White girl enslaved by a woman called "Mistress Ward," was whipped so badly that she died from it. On the finding of a jury that such action was "unreasonable and unchristian like" Mistress Ward was fined 300 pounds of tobacco.
"...it was no easy task to secure the conviction of a master for the murder of his (White) servant...Convictions of masters for the murder or manslaughter of their servants were definitely the exception. In a preponderance of such trials they were acquitted or let off lightly, often in the face of incontrovertible evidence of guilt." [151]
In 1678 Charles Grimlin, a wealthy American colonial planter, was found guilty of murdering a female White Slave he owned.
He was pardoned and set free. In the same year a White woman "of low origins," killed her husband, a man of some wealth.
The same judge who pardoned Grimlin sentenced the White woman (who was probably a descendant of White Slaves) to be "burned alive according to the law."
Nor should it be concluded that because some trials were held for those masters who murdered their White Slaves that this reflected a higher justice than that given to Black slaves.
In thousands of cases of homicide against poor Whites there were not rials whatsoever, murdered White Slaves were hurriedly buried by their masters so that the resulting decomposition would prohibit any enquiry into the cause of their deaths. Others just "disappeared" or died from "accidents" or committed "suicide."
Many of the high number of so‑called "suicides" of White Slaves took place under suspicious circumstances, but in every single case the slavemaster was found innocent of any crime. [152] At the same time, White Slaves, White Servants and poor White working men were forbidden to serve on a jury.
Only Whites who owned property could do so. Judges were recruited solely from the propertied class. When the few cases regarding the torture and murder of white Slaves reached a court it was not difficult to predict the outcome.
A White orphan boy was kidnapped in Virginia and enslaved under the guise of "teaching him a trade." The boy was able to get the Rappahannock County Court to take notice of his slaver:
"...an orphan complained on July 2, 1685 that he was held in a severe and hard servitude illegally and that he was taken by one Major Hawkins 'under pretense of giving him learning.' The case came before the court on August 2, but the justices decided that he must continue in the service of his present master." [153]
"They possessed one right, to complain to the planter‑ magistrates concerning excessively violent abuse. But this right, which by custom was also available to black slaves in some societies, had little or no mitigating effect on the overall nature of their treatment on the estates." [154]
Constables and local magistrates in Virginia to whom mistreated White slaves might appeal were often the same men who enslaved and assaulted them.
It should be recalled that the killing and maiming of White Slaves was visited upon them by kinsmen of the same race and religion as their slaves, making the callous disregard for their human rights doubly heinous. White Slaves were whipped, broken on the wheel, shot, hung or even burned alive. [155]
The whole apparatus of the institution of human slavery in English‑speaking America, which has been sparingly memorialized in the voluminous literature on Negro slavery, was first put into place in the enslavement of Whites who were kidnapped in their native land, died on board ship, suffered child slavery and separation of parents from children forever; endured fugitive slave‑laws, the banning of White Slave meetings and severe and extreme corporal punishment, sometimes unto death.
THE MOTIVATION FOR THE COVER-UP OF THE EXTENT OF WHITE SLAVERY BY ESTABLISHMENT‑FUNDED AND APPROVED HOUSE SCHOLARS IS OBVIOUS. TO ADMIT THE TRUE HISTORY OF WHITE SLAVERY AND RECORD IT FAITHFULLY IN MODERN HISTORY IS TO FURNISH EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT WHITE SKIN DOES NOT NECESSARILY EMBODY POWER OF STATUS; that the "poor White," "redneck" of the 1990s who is asked to subsidize with his taxes and make sacrifices in his living wage and job prospects so that Blacks may be "compensated for slavery." IN REALITY OWES NOBODY FOR ANYTHING!
A 1679 colonial census of Whites who fled slavery to scratch out an existence as subsistence and tenant farmers shows that they had to flee to the worst land where they existed in extreme poverty, forming yeoman peasant communities in the hills. It is instructive to note that this White yeomanry was mocked and scorned by both the wealthy White planter elite as well as the Negroes.
Rich, White plantation owners joined with the Negroes in insulting White Slaves and poor White people, referring to them as "poor‑white earthscratching scum," "redshanks," "redlegs" [forerunner of the "redneck" racial insult current nowadays], "Hill Billys" and "Scotland Johnnies." "The servants were regarded by the planters as 'white trash.'" [156]
White Slaves were taunted in the West Indies by Blacks who would chant the ditty, "Yella hair, speckly face and dey feet brick red" at them. [The epithet "redshanks" developed into the name redlegs which has since become a term for all survivors and descendants of White Slaves in the Caribbean region.
Various merchants and aristocrats of the 18th and 19th centuries despised the independence of these survivors of White Slavery when they encountered them in the British West Indies.
The chief hallmark of the redlegs has been their absolute refusal to interbreed with the Negroes and their independent subsistence lifestyle of fishing and gardening. Her is a typical 19th century description of them by an aristocrat:
"...that lowest of all beings, the 'redshanks.' The latter were miserable and degraded White Men who, priding themselves on their Caucasian origin, looked with contempt upon the African race." [157]
In 1654 Henry Whistler called the White slaves of Barbados "rubbish, rogues and whores." [158] In England they had been referred to by Edmund Burke as a "swinish multitude," by Samuel Johnson as "rabble" and by Sir Josiah Child as "loose, vagrant...vicious...people."
While the public articulation of such negative epithets against Black people as "nigger" is regarded as a sacrilegious incitement to "hate crimes," hateful terms of abuse of White people such as "redneck" are gleefully used in newspapers and television today to express the contempt with which the corporate elite openly hold White working and poor people.
It is a travesty of historiography that out of deference to the vast political house‑of‑cards that has been built upon the myth that only Blacks were merchandised in the Atlantic lave trade, historians have failed to consistently describe White Chattel by the scientifically accurate term for their condition, THAT OF SLAVE.
By avoiding this description, many academics have perpetuated the propaganda of the plutocracy which inflicted these horrors upon White humanity.
Powerful colonial land companies motivated by gigantic profits were loath to admit truths subversive of the fictions which permitted the smooth functioning of "business as usual."
The label given the White laborer in bondage was crucial to a correct understanding of his condition.
In the founding era of colonial America, both White and black slaves were referred to as "servants." Once the term slavery came into universal usage (a word derived from the enslavement of Slavic peoples), objective observers of the time who were without mercenary ties to the traffic in White "servants" called them slaves:
"Contemporary observers described it as 'White Slavery' and referred to indentured servants as 'White Slaves.'" [159]
Some who in England lived fine and brave,
Was there like horses forc'd to trudge and slave.
Some view'd our Limbs turned us around,
Examining like Horses we were sound.
Some felt our hands others our legs and Feet,
And made us walk to see we were compleat,
Some view'd our Teeth to see if they was good,
And fit to Chaw our hard and homely food.
No shoes nor stocking had I for to wear
Nor hat, nor cap, my hands and feet went bare.
Thus dressed unto the fields I did go,
Among Tobacco plants all day to hoe.
Till twelve or one o'clock a grinding corn,
And must be up at day break in the morn.
For I was forc'd to work while I could stand,
Or hold the hoe within my feeble hands.
Forc'd from Friends and Country go go...
Void of all Relief...Sold for a Slave.
From the writing of White Slave John Lawson, 1754. [160]
"Honored Father: '...O Dear Father...I am sure you'll pity your distressed daughter. What we unfortunate English people suffer here is beyond the probability of you in England to conceive. Let it suffice that I am one of the unhappy number toiling day and night, and very often in the horse's druggery, with only the comfort of hearing me called, 'You, bitch, you did not do half enough.' Then I am tied up and whipped to that degree that you's not serve an animal. I have scarce anything but Indian corn and salt to eat and that even begrudged. Nay, MANY NEGROES ARE BETTER USED...after slaving after Master's pleasure, what rest we can get is to wrap ourselves up in a blanket and lay upon the ground. This is the deplorable condition your poor Betty endures..." [161] [162]
In spite of this history of White Slavery [163] the controlled mass media and contemporary history distorters have misrepresented the scope of Caucasian involvement with Negro slavery during the period of it was legally practiced in this country. Additionally, they have purposefully ignored the disproportionate percentage of FREE NEGROES WHO OWNED SLAVES, as well as the ocuous effect the percentage of black slaves had on the free White workingmen in the South.
In 1860 the vast majority of whites, including Southerners, did not own slaves. According to United States census reports for the year, there were nearly 27 million Whites in the country, including approximately 8 million in the South. The census also determined that there were less than 350,000 slave owners. Even if all the slave holders had been White, which was not the case, that would calculate to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country, or 4.8 percent of Southern Whites, owning one or more slaves.
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by Free Negroes is acknowledged by the mass media, justification is provided based on a fictitious claim that the black slave masters were simply individuals who had purchased the freedom of a spouse or a child from a White slave owner. The misrepresentation is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves, including Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. IN fact, it 1830 one-quarter of the free Negro slave holders in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; 8 owned 30 or more.
According to Census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, under 4 million of whom lived in the Southern slave holding states. Of the blacks living in the South, 261,988 were not slaves; 36,855 of them resided in the Deep South. Of this number, 10,689 lived in the city of New Orleans.
According to the country's leading African American historian, Duke University Professor John Hope Franklin, in New Orleans alone over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves. That calculates to approximately 28 percent of the free blacks in the city owning slaves (compared to less than 1.4 percent of Southern Whites), indicative that, when in a position to do so, Negroes disproportionately become slave masters.
The majority of slave holders owned one to five slaves, and worked along side them wherever they were employed, be it in the house or in the field. The few who owned 50 or more slaves were ranked in the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more black slaves. The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who were sugar cane planters.
Another magnate black slave master, with over 100 black slaves, was Antoine Dibuclet, a sugar cane planter whose estates were valued at $264,000 in 1860. That year the wealth of Southern White men was $3,987.
Outside of Louisiana, William Ellison, at Stateburg, South Carolina was the largest Negro slave master. Ellison, who purchased his freedom at age 27, owned 63 slaves at the time of his death in 1861, and had bought and sold hundreds of slaves during his lifetime. His sons, who lived with him, owned an additional nine slaves. At the time of his death, Ellison was conservatively worth $65,000; 15 times that of the average White Man in the South.
One hundred and twenty-five free Negroes in the city of Charleston, South Carolina owned slaves; six owned 10 or more. Of the million and one half dollars in taxable property by free blacks in Charleston, more than $300,000 was in black slaves.
In 1935 the father of Louisiana Senator and leader of the Populist-Socialist Share Our Wealth Society, Huey "Kingfish" Long, told a visiting journalist:
"My Father and my mother didn't have slaves. They didn't even have decent land. The rich folks had all the land and all the slaves; why their women didn't even comb their own hair! They'd sooner speak to a nigger than a poor white."
The senior Long was among Louisiana Socialists who, in September 1903, petitioned to join the American Socialist Party with a plank in their charter that denied membership to non-whites.
The situation in Charleston just before the start of the American Civil War (War for Southern Independence, or War of Northern Aggression) is illustrative of the debilitating impact slavery had on white working men in the South, and their struggle with the slave holding oligarchy (both black and white) and their toadies who profited from it.
Urban masters often found it both convenient and lucrative to hire out their slaves. Especially during the busy fall and winter months when the year's rice and cotton crops funneled through the city on their way to Norther and European markets. slave masters took advantage of the increased demand for labor, and hired out any of their slaves they could do without. By confiscating most or all of the slave's wages, the masters pocketed the cash without selling their slaves or supervising their labor.
Employers were not at all reluctant to hire slaves. They were a handy source of labor, and they could not strike, or walk off the job and leave the city. But of far greater potential significance to the White workingmen were laws prohibiting the slaves from hiring their own time. A master who wanted to hire out a slave was supposed to negotiate directly with the employer about the terms of the slave's employment.
If a slave carpenter, for example, reached an agreement about work and wages with an employer without intervention of his master, then the slave was hiring his own time. He was, in a sense, participating in the labor market as if he were free. A municipal ordinance in 1796 prohibited slave skilled labor from hiring their own time and an 1822 law extended the ban to all male slaves. A master who violated the 1822 law was subjected to a penalty up to forfeiture of any slave who was allowed to hire his own time.
BUT WHITE SLAVES WERE NOT PROTECTED BY THESE LAWS, THEY WERE NEVER ALLOWED TO HIRE THEMSELVES OUT AS THE BLACKS DID. NOR WERE THEY EVER ALLOWED TO KEEP ANY OF THEIR EARNINGS FROM BEING HIRED OUT BY THE SLAVE OWNER!
Free White workingmen wanted to work at a decent wage in order to support themselves and their families, but that was impossible to do since it ran head on into the slave master's prerogative to hire out their slaves.
Until laws were slowly changed state by state, between 1829 and 1840, White workingmen had no more political power than the black slaves that took work from them. This was due to state qualifications for voting and holding political office that allowed only those owning a significant amount of property to participate.
White skilled workers who attempted to protect themselves from slave competition were also hindered by their small numbers and by the specialized nature of their concerns. The majority of skilled Whites lived in the country, and their problems were far removed from the hiring practices.
The only way that White workingmen could avoid slave competition was by leaving for the North. The turnover of White laborers in the city was compounded by the seasonal job market, as hundreds of them emigrated South for the Winter, then left during the spring and summer lull. Many of these men had only recently immigrated from Germany and Ireland, which further distanced them from the native-born majority of the state.
In the fall of 1858, the White workingmen of Charleston were struck by a Yellow Fever epidemic that raged through the city for three months. In that period, 645 Whites died from the disease. As thousands of White skilled workers and laborers lay sick and dying, their jobs were filled by black slaves, who were almost immune to Yellow Fever.
The epidemic and the loss of jobs made it more urgent than ever for White workingmen to attempt to jointly protect themselves from slave competition. Meeting in the Masonic Hall when the epidemic waned in October, they formulated a petition requesting that the Charleston City Council enact two laws.
The more moderate proposal asked that the penalty on the owner of a slave who hired his own time be extended to the employer, and that the fine for each violation be $100. The more drastic proposal would have prohibited slaves from working at any "mechanical pursuit" and from being hired-out either on their own or by their owners. The White workingmen complained:
"slaves are permitted to go at large, exercising all the privileges of free persona; making contracts, doing work, and in every way living and conducting themselves as if they were not slaves."
The Whites then attempted to gain support among the citizens of Charleston; and of the 1200 slaveholders in the city, only four agreed to support the petition. The city's wealthy slave holding oligarchy (black and white) and their large merchant and attorney synchopathants, joined together to actively oppose the petition.
The city's legislative committee referred the proposals to a special committee made up of the slave holding oligarchy and their cohorts. After delaying for six weeks, the committee reported that passage of the proposed laws would be "both inexpedient and improper." They determined that to agree to the White worker's proposal, or even to enforce current law, "would create a revolution." It would,
"drive away all slave labor from any employment in the towns and villages of the State."
Instead of sixing with the White workers, the committee recommended gutting existing laws by exempting from the prohibition on slaves hiring their own time, those who worked as domestic servants, common laborers, porters, draymen, wagoners, carters, or stevedores; in sum, most of the slaves with whom Charleston's White workingmen competed.
Hardships experienced by Whites due to the presence of the Negro slaves also extended to the middle-class. The previously mentioned Negro slave masters, William Ellison, owned a large cotton plantation. White farmers who did not utilize slaves could not compete with him due to his lower production costs. Ellison was also the largest cotton gin builder and repairer in the state. There he also employed his slaves. Several White men set up competing operations, but did not utilize slave labor, and they soon went out of business. Wherever cheap slave labor was used, Whites who were not themselves slaves, could not compete.
The vast majority of White workingmen and middle classes, especially those in the South, suffered because of the presence of black slaves. A relatively small number of individuals profited from slaves; however, the various Indian tribes in the area owned over, 8,000 black and white slaves in 1860.
Until 1840, Free White workingmen and the majority in the middle-class were not allowed to vote or to hold political office, and consequently had no involvement in the institution and practice of slavery. When they were in a position to participate in the political process, they attempted to limit the practice, but this was not due to a "humanitarian interest," but rather one of self-survival. They had no sympathy for either the black or White slaves, but they treated the White slaves and treated him as the deadliest enemy.
Descendants of the White working class, who had no involvement in the legalization of or the use of slaves, but also were victimized by the presence of black slaves, today are expected to pay the penalty for this countries use of slaves. The sons of the oligarchy are not passed over for the entrance to the universities due to racial and sexual quotas, where they effect only the White working and middle classes.
Instead of hiring unemployed citizens of this country and paying a decent wage, the oligarchy and their ilk hire illegal aliens and avoid paying taxes. They come from both the so-called left-wing and right-wing. [164]
[1] Daniel 12:4.
[2] Daniel 12:9.
[3] 2 Samuel 8:5, 13, 10:18.
[4] 1 Chronicles 19:7.
[5] 1 Chronicles 19:9.
[6] Psalm 83:1-18.
[7] 1 Chronicles 22:3.
[8] To this date no one has found the remains of the bodies because of the acid content of the soil which destroys all remains in less than 100 years. Additionally, our early American settlers removed the headstones from the burial sites and placed them in hedgerows along the sides of the fields and so the headstones are not now located near the actual graves.
[9] Ezekiel 27:12.
[10] Genesis 10:4.
[11] The arif was a precentor in charge of a small congregation lacking an ordained priest of the North African Coptic Church.
[12] 1 Kings 3:16-28; 1 Corinthians 6:1-8.
[13] Deuteronomy 19:14; 27:17; Job 24:2; Proverbs 22:28; 23:10; Joshua 5:10.
[14] Exodus 18:21-22; 22:9; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:13-15.
[15] Deuteronomy 19:16-20; Proverbs 6:16-19; and Leviticus 19:16.
[16] 2 Samuel 22:26; Psalm 18:25.
[17] Leviticus 6:2-6.
[18] Leviticus 1-30.
[19] Isaiah in 52:11 says the same thing.
[20] See the following: Barry Fell, Bronze Age America, Ruggles De Latour, New York; Barry Fell, America B.C., Simon & Schuster, New York; Barry Fell, Saga America, Times Books, New York; Cyclone Covey, Calalus, Vantage Press, New York; Samuel Morison, The European Discovery of America, Oxford University Press; Samuel Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Little, Brown & Co., Boston; and Christian Crusade For Truth, Intelligence Newsletter, March-April 1992, Deming, New Mexico.
[21] National Geographic, Vol. 152, No. 6, December 1977. p. 769.
[22] 2 Chronicles 9:20-23.
[23] 1 Kings 9:16.
[24] James 5:17.
[25] 1 Kings 18:10.
[26] This entire chapter was taken from "Intelligence Newsletter," written by Pastor Earl F. Jones, and a much more complete and informative book by Pastor Jones can be purchased from: "Christian Crusade For Truth," HC 66 Box 39, Deming, NM 88030, (505) 895-5365.
[27] Soncino edition, section Ecclesiastes, p. 58.
[28] The British Empire in America, John Oldmixon, Vol. 2, p. 186.
[29] Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Elizabeth Donnan, pp. 125‑126.
[30] An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the British West Indies, Dalby Thomas, pp. 36‑37; The Role of the Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area in the Seventeenth Century, G. Merrill; Caribbean Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 [1964‑65]; 32‑49.
[31] White Servitude, Hilary McD. Beckles, pp. 6‑7, 71.
[32] From Columbus to Castro, Eric Williams, p. 103.
[33] Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, Marcus W. Jernegan, p. 45.
[34] Stowe Manuscripte 324, f. 6.
[35] Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 2,739.
[36] cf. Genesis 9:25 in the New International Version Bible.
[37] Handlin, p. 205.
[38] Handlin, pp. 202‑204, 218.
[39] Hening, Vol. 1, pp. 226, 258, 540.
[40] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 29.
[41] Handlin, p. 216.
[42] Natural Rebels, Beckles, pp. 56‑57.
[43] Bridenbaugh, p. 118.
[44] Natural Rebels, Beckles, p. 8.
[45] Handlin, p. 207.
[46] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 5.
[47] Labor in America: A History, Foster R. Dulles, p. 7.
[48] Van der Zee, p. 165.
[49] To Serve Well and Faithfully, Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, Sharon Salinger, 1682‑1800, p. 97.
[50] Jernegan, p. 225.
[51] p. 59.
[52] A History of Colonial America, Oliver P. Chitwood, p. 341.
[53] p. 310.
[54] Bridenbaugh, pp. 120‑121). Black indentured servants in the 18th century even had an "education clause" in their contracts.
[55] Jernegan, p. 162.
[56] Warren B. Smith, p. 106.
[57] History of the United States, Vol. 2, Edward Channing, p. 369.
[58] For more on Abbot Emerson Smith's errors cf. Warren B. Smith, White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina, p. ix.
[59] Slavery in Colonial America, America's Revolutionary Heritage, George Novack, p. 142.
[60] The Curse of Cromwell: A History of the Ironside Conquest of Ireland, D.M.R. Esson, 1649‑53, p. 176.
[61] D.M.R. Esson, p. 159.
[62] Esson, p. 168.
[63] Eric Williams, p. 101.
[64] Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados, Richard Hall, p. 484.
[65] Warren B. Smith, p. 44.
[66] White Servitude, Beckles, pp. xiv and 5.
[67] Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, Vol. 5, p. 1,113.
[68] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 52.
[69] Eric Williams, p. 101.
[70] The 'Redlegs' of Barbados, Jill Sheppard, p. 18.
[71] Glencoe, John Prebble, p. 65.
[72] A History of Barbados, Ronald Tree, p. 35.
[73] Bridenbaugh, pp. 110‑111; Heinrich von Uchteritz, Kurze Reise, pp. 3‑10.
[74] Sheppard, p. 3.
[75] Egerton Manuscript, British Museum.
[76] Register for the Privy Council of Scotland, third series, Vol. 1, p. 181; Vol 2. p. 101.
[77] The Transportation of Vagrant Children from London to Virginia, 1618‑1622, Robert C. Johnson, in Early Stuart Studies, p. 139.
[78] Johnson, pp. 130‑140.
[79] Johnson, p. 142.
[80] Sir William Cockayne.
[81] Johnson, p. 142.
[82] Johnson. p. 143.
[83] Johnson, p, 143.
[84] The First Republic in America, Alexander Brown, p. 375.
[85] Johnson, p. 147.
[86] The Records of the Virginia Company of London, Susan M. Kingsbury, ed., Vol. 1, p. 424 and Johnson, pp. 144‑145.
[87] Bound Over, Van der Zee, p. 210.
[88] Information in a pamphlet by M. Godwyn, London, 1680.
[89] Salinger, p. 91.
[90] Jernegan, pp. 50‑51.
[91] Warren B. Smith, p. 42.
[92] Journal of Ralph Clark, entry of July 3, 1787.
[93] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 3.
[94] Van der Zee, p. 138.
[95] Bridenbaugh, p. 120.
[96] Kendall, p. 1.
[97] Salinger, p. 88.
[98] Salinger, p. 89.
[99] Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Colonial Records, 4:306.
[100] Johnson, p. 147; Jernegan, pp. 56 and 178.
[101] Bridenbaugh, p. 113.
[102] Eric Williams, pp. 102‑103.
[103] Kendall, p. 7.
[104] Rebels and Ractionaries, Beckles, pp. 18‑19.
[105] Massachusetts and the Common Law, American History Review, cf. Richard B. Morris, 1926.
[106] Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, p. 3,631.
[107] St. Werburge, Bradshaw, 1513.
[108] Caxton, 1483.
[109] William Phillips, p. 28.
[110] Freedom and Villeinage in England, Past and Present, Hilton, July, 1965, p. 6.
[111] Karras, p. 36.
[112] cf. 25:40‑41.
[113] Leviticus 25:45‑46, Exodus 21:4, which destroys the whole basis of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
[114] see Classical Antiquity and the Proslavery Argument, Slavery and Abolition, J. Drew Harrington, May 1989.
[115] Petitions, Chester County, Pennsylvania, Court of Quarter Sessions, August 1731 and June, 1732.
[116] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 84.
[117] Bridenbaugh, p. 123.
[118] Johnson, p. 148.
[119] The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish Virginia, 1720‑1789.
[120] Levine, p. 52.
[121] Jernegan, p. 180.
[122] Ligon, p. 44.
[123] Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, p. 302.
[124] Van der Zee, p. 183.
[125] Sir Thomas Montgomery to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, August 3, 1688, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1685‑1688, p. 577.
[126] Bridenbaugh, p. 107; Pere Biet, Voyage, p. 290.
[127] Van der Zee, p. 85.
[128] Reflections of 'Democracy' in Revolutionary South Carolina, in The Southern Common People, Walter J. Fraser, Jr., p. 16.
[129] Frasher, p. 17.
[130] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 5.
[131] Warren B. Smith, p. 76.
[132] Rebels and Reactionaries, Beckles, p. 14.
[133] Jernegan, p. 51.
[134] Government and Labor in Early America, Morris, p. 435.
[135] Ronald Hoffman, pp. 281‑282.
[136] Life and Services of Matthew Lyon, Pliny H. White, p. 6.
[137] Bridenbaugh, p. 108.
[138] Ligon, p. 45.
[139] Levine, p. 56.
[140] Rebels and Reactionaries, Beckles, p. 18.
[141] Rebels and Reactionaries, Beckles, p. 17.
[142] Van der Zee, p. 266.
[143] The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, Henry C. Carey, pp. 204‑209; The Highland Clearances, John Prebble, pp. 288‑295.
[144] Prebble, p. 293.
[145] Cunliffe, p. 18, Prebble, p. 292.
[146] Cunliffe, ibid.
[147] Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour of Several American Colonies, Jaspar Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, 1679‑1680.
[148] American Weekly Mercury, September 2‑9, 1731.
[149] The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes, p. 115.
[150] Hughes, p. 115.
[151] Morris, pp. 485 and 487.
[152] For acquittals of masters in Virginia or instances of failure to prosecute them for the murder of White slaves, see Virginia General Court Minutes, pp. 22‑24, VMYH, XIX, 388.
[153] Jernegan, pp. 159‑160.
[154] White Servitude, Beckles, p. 5. For information on blacks allowed to accuse White slavemasters in court and who were freed from slavery as a result of hearings before White judges, see the Minutes of Council of March 10, 1654 in the Lucas Manuscripts, reel 1, f. 92, Bridgetown Public Library, Barbados.
[155] The Tragicall Relation of the Virginia Assembly, 1624 in the Library of Congress.
[156] Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams, p. 17.
[157] Sheppard, p. 3.
[158] Journal of the West India Expedition.
[159] Beckles, p. 71.
[160] Quoted in Van Der Zee, Bound Over.
[161] From a letter by White Slave Eliabeth Sprigs in Maryland to her father John Sprigs in London, England, September 22, 1756.
[162] Public Record Office, London, England, High Court of Admiralty, 30:258; No. 106.
[163] Taken, in part, from "They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America, by Michael A. Hoffman II, Wiswell Ruffin House, P.O. Box 236, Dresden, New York 14441, ISBN 0-929903-02-1. Mr. Michael A. Hoffman II, is also the author of "Masonic Assassination," "The Great Holocaust Trial," "Psychology and Epistemology of Holocaust Newspeak," "A cnadidate for the Order," and "Secrets of Masonic Mind Control."
[164] The American Negro, Ray Logan and Irving Cohen; Black Masters, Michael Johnson and James Roark; The Forgotten People, Gary Mills; Reconstruction 1863-1877, Eric Foner; Men and Wealth in the U.S. 1850-1870, Lee Soltow; and The Stream of American History, Leland Baldwin.