Liberty and Slavery - The Paradox of the Founding Fathers
HG12-10-Thu3
Steve Messinger
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email.
March 13 - May 22
(No Class April 17)
“All men are created equal” was a noble statement by the Founding Fathers. Yet the same men who saw Parliament's actions as enslaving them, viewed Africans as an inferior race and had no compunctions about owning them as slaves and treating them as property. Looking back at the founding of this nation has classically been from a white Anglo-Saxon male property owner perspective. The role and influence of the Black man, slave and free, in the establishment of a new government formed through revolution to free America from tyranny and political slavery has been minimized or ignored. How did the white Founding Fathers reconcile their passion against political slavery with the cries of Africans against chattel slavery? Was the cry “Give me Liberty or Give me Death”, coined by a slave holder, applicable to all people in America?
In this course we will attempt to revisit the last half of the eighteenth century in America with a more inclusive eye. We will look at the good, the bad and the ugly in asserting and establishing our rights to control our destiny. Why does the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 ban slavery while the new Constitution, also written in 1787, protects slavery?
We will put ourselves into that time, judge the words and actions of individuals in that time and only then return to the 21st century.
More lecture than facilitated discussion.
American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation-1765-1795 Edward J. Larson
SGL will provide links to relevant documents.
30-40 pages a week.
Steve Messinger has degrees in chemical engineering from Columbia University and spent his career in technical marketing of membrane processes to the pharmaceutical, dairy, and water industries. During his travels, plane time gave him the opportunity to read, become interested in, and finally passionate about history. While he has read widely on all Western history, he has had an ever- growing fascination with the formation of this country. He has read extensively and hopes to transmit some of the passion he has developed. This will be his twenty-first opportunity to be an SGL.