Feb 12
1
Natural Law – Reparations for Slavery
“Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.”
From the response from a freed slave to his former master on the offer of employment:
“I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.”–The Freedmen’s Book
It was fascinating to read in William Garrison’s biography that one solution to American slavery in the year before the civil war was colonization. Ship all the Blacks, both slave and free, to the North coast of Africa. The incentive offered to the slave owners was a compensation package to replace their lose of property.
But it becomes more inexplicable how a nation built upon the foundations of “all created equal,” “endowed by god,” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and the church could have found excusable reasons for slavery.
How may the simple concept of justice, if it be a Christian concept or an ethic found in Natural Law not include the freedom of one’s own person and the right to benefit from one’s own labors?
Is the bumper sticker ethic “Except For Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism and Communism, WAR has Never Solved Anything” Kingdom of God ethics, Natural Law ethics or a social construct.
Thanks to Eric Pfeiffer at The Sideshow for promoting the letter.