Jamestown and Virginia P5

Last week we continued our talk about the Virginia Colony's aversion to working for themselves, wanting others to provide for them and thus the beginning of chattel slavery and the American war of Independence.

Slavery was not the primary cause of the War for Independence as the New York Times 1619 Project had wrongly asserted. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, Mason, and many other Southerners were patriots long before Great Britain tried to use slavery to divide the colonies. As will be shown later, anti-slavery sentiment drove many toward separation from Great Britain, even in the South. So many slaves were freed during the era of American Independence that this period is sometimes called The First Emancipation."

Unfortunately, by the time the Civil War commenced, the slavery mentality was so deeply entrenched in many Southerners that secession documents often cited the desire to preserve slavery as the primary reason for states leaving the Union. Some southern apologists have argued that these states seceded for economic reasons or to preserve state sovereignty, but not slavery. While there were some economic policies that adversely impacted the South, simply put, the American Civil War would not have occurred if slavery had not been an issue.

Content Sourced From “The American Story The Beginnings. By David Barton & Tim Barton”