Archaeology Proves What’s Politically Incorrect
Posted on March 19, 2013   

By Al Benson Jr.

We’ve all seen a ton of ‘Civil War’ movies and docudramas that inform us that the noble Union army was a body of soldiers gotten together so they could go South and free the slaves held by those mean, nasty Southern
plantation owners. And, of course, everyone knows that, in the South, everyone had hundreds of slaves that they gleefully beat every morning before breakfast, because, as we all know, that was how those mean
Southern racists got their jollies for the day. Well, what about slavery in the North? Oh, that wasn’t really worth mentioning – a manor house here or there had an occasional black servant, but that was about it. So goes the
standard line of propaganda we have all been fed over the past several decades.

Sorry to burst the bubble, folks, but the science of archaeology is busily giving the lie to such hogwash. Archaeologists have been busy digging in several places in the North, and guess what? They are finding Northern plantations that were operated by slave labor in the same manner as those in the South were. The “memory hole” is being excavated!

An article by Mike Toner, for The Atlanta Journal Constitution  a few years ago noted of slaveholding in the North that:  “Slaveholding plantations, usually thought of as uniquely Southern institutions, were deeply rooted in the fabric of ‘free’ states of the North as well, new archaeological studies are showing. The hidden history of
Northern plantations and their slaves is emerging – one shovelful of soil at a time – from excavations in and around historic manor houses in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.”

The article goes on to note that while slavery was abolished in the North before the War of Northern Aggression, recent excavations are now showing that slavery was much more prolific in the North, and
that during the late 1700s and early 1800s many of what would now be called manors were, in fact, full-fledged plantations and they kept black slaves under about the same conditions that existed further South.  Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist with the University of Maryland has observed: “Historians are stunned by some of the evidence…  The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations. It’s hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history.” With all due respect to LaRoche, it is not at all hard to believe that this portion of our history has been “erased.” All you have to remember is that in any given war the winners get to write, or rather rewrite, the history books.

Since the North won the War of Northern Aggression and she supposedly fought to free the slaves, it would hardly look very good for them to admit that the same kind of conditions pertaining to slavery existed in the North, only a few decades earlier than what they were supposedly combatting in the South.

Therefore, that rather embarrassing part of Northern history needed to be shoved down the memory hole, to be conveniently forgotten, lest later generations question why the North didn’t do something about the slavery
problem sooner than it did. LaRoche also commented that: “America was a slaveholding country – North and South – Over the years that reality has been lost, stolen, or just strayed from the history books.” Rather than
lost, stolen, or strayed, how about ‘deliberately deleted?’ As I stated earlier, the “memory hole” is being excavated!

After all, it would be a little difficult for the Northern carpetbaggers and radical abolitionists to flaunt their moral superiority in the South should it be discovered that while they had been busily castigating the South for
slavery, similar conditions had existed in their own states up until a couple decades before the war.

Donnie Kennedy, in his book Myths of American Slavery  noted that: “Some states, such as New Jersey, maintained slavery by redefining it as ‘apprenticeship.’ Thus, as late as 1860, the Federal census listed slaves in
New Jersey.” Kennedy also tells us that slavery was abolished in the North in order to protect white workers from competition with slave labor. He tells us that Connecticut prohibited the importation of slaves into her
territory because “the increase of slaves is injurious to the poor.” He notes that: “…pecuniary interests, and not ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ had more to do with the abolition of slavery in the North.”

And now, what the politically correct ‘historians’ have shoved down the memory hole for decades is being scooped back out by archaeologists with shovels and trowels. Maybe it’s time for those self-righteous radical
abolitionist types to admit to the world that they are at fault for slavery every bit as much as any Southern plantation owner. And if there were still slaves in New Jersey in 1860, years after the radical abolitionists in the
North started crusading against Southern slavery, why didn’t the abolitionists deal with the problem in their own back yard first? I recall one scene in the movie Gettysburg where Joshua Chamberlain was telling a group of Union soldiers that the Union army was an army formed “to set other men free.” What hogwash! The only thing “Sherman’s bummers” in Georgia were interested in freeing was Southern property from Southern hands and transferring that wealth into their own hands in typically Yankee/Marxist style. And if you want to find out why I call them “Yankee/Marxists” then read the book Lincoln’s Marxists written by Donnie Kennedy and myself and you will understand.

They didn’t do so because to do so didn’t fit their political agenda, which was to eventually destroy the South and Southern Christian culture. Slavery aside, that is what radical abolitionism in the North was all about–and the
Northern abolitionists were not above working with and helping Unitarians and socialists who shared the same agenda.

On The Web:   http://revisedhistory.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/archaeology-proves-whats-politically-incorrect/