Quote:
Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS
I didn't know textbooks were saying that. Do you know when they started including this?
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There were a couple of articles about it about two or three years ago.
Also, the fact is that slavery was about race. I am trying to find the year, but early on in the existence of the institution, a law was passed that legalized perpetual servitude for Africans and African descended people. Before that, indentured servitude was the more common practice.
ETA: Found it! Courtesy of Encarta.msn.com, "Gradually by the 18th century, colonial laws were consolidated into slave codes providing for perpetual, inherited servitude for Africans who were defined as property to be bought and sold."
Read
Notes on the State of Virginia to see how Thomas Jefferson rationalized enslaving Africans and African Americans because of their alleged inferiority. Read any late eighteenth/early to mid nineteenth century writings by seccessionists and advocates of the institution, and you will find that they justified slavery based on the color and origins of the enslaved, not based on the need for low cost labor.
Here, SEC, I am talking about primary sources, where these ideas are plainly stated without any need for interpretation. In fact, it would take a Herculean effort of misinterpretation to advance the notion that slavery was not, on multiple and significant levels, about race given the details in these documents.