Just Google the question: "What war did slavery cause in the United States?" and see what comes up. The American Civil War, naturally. There's no mention of the American Revolution (or "the American War of Independence") - and why should there be? The American Revolution was about... well, other stuff.
Wasn't it?
Um...
Looking at history and the state of the USA today, it's interesting to note what the actual causes of the American Revolution really were. It wasn't just high taxes on import goods (think the Boston Tea Party) as we're generally led to believe - a myth perpetuated by admittedly brilliant (and brilliantly sanitized) Hollywood productions like "The Patriot" (2000) and the like; no - as it turns out, it was actually sparked by an attempt to abolish slavery in England in 1772 - a mere four years before the outbreak of what Americans today call "the War of Independence".
Of course, a name like that suggests (through patriotic undertones) that it was about Americans fighting for all the various freedoms Americans traditionally espouse and cherish today - and pretend everyone living in the 13 original colonies back then, enjoyed as well.
The American colony at the time formed a pretty large piece of the pie of the then global slave trade - with a large slice of the investment pie going home to Britain. Running the colony from Britain wasn't a cheap affair after all, something had to underpin it, and aside from the trade in tobacco, the big money was in slavery. When the legal case of James Somerset in 1772 was ruled on by Lord Mansfield, who declared that slavery was incompatible with English common law, this alarmed slave owners and traders in the American colonies because it suggested a potential looming threat to the institution of slavery. This prompted the South to unify against British authority to protect their interests. Sound familiar?
While this case itself did not carry over to broader English law at the time, it did serve to set the cat among the pigeons for the profiteers running the British slave trade, as well as those in the colonies. Slavery was only later successfully outlawed by Britain in 1801, but in practice it took another 40 years to finally lay to rest - and since nobody had a crystal ball to see into the future, the mere threat of it appeared to be enough back to galvanize the South (who else?) back in 1772.
During the coming Revolutionary War (1775-1783), British forces would exploit this fear by promising slaves freedom if they fought on their side against the Revolutionaries, and many escapees sought refuge with the British forces. I can only imagine the horrific disappointment of those freed slaves when Britain withdrew from American shores - doubts of their offer being genuine nothwithstanding, and wonder how many might have opted to leave with them rather than face capture (and I'm sure, punishment) at the hands of the triumphant, slavery-dependent revolutionaries. Looking back, it seems that "liberty" didn't apply to slaves at all.
As you might work out - that is if you care to know anything about history, this is all pretty much the same thing that happened almost a century later in the period leading up to the American Civil War. Oddly enough, it's not generally talked about much, and I wonder just how much of this stark, plain reality makes it into the rose-tinted, diluted and boiled-down versions of history being taught in American schools? Popular American culture only really seems to mention slavery in the context of the later Civil War, and not so much in references to the earlier "War of Independence" - as if the two were totally separate, unrelated mechanisms - when the reality seems to indicate quite the opposite.
The same systems were in place during both periods and intrinsically linked to both individual cases, and spanning unbroken between them.
We all know the story - that is, the sanitized tale romanticized in "classic" pro-Confederate movies like "Gone With The Wind" etc. - the Southern states were patriots who were hard done by the Northern states and chose to secede because of federal interference in their domestic affairs, and it was their (interpreted) right to secede if they so wished blah, blah, blah. Whenever slavery is mentioned in pieces like these, it's generally from a paternalistic viewpoint that essentially presents slavery as a "good", normal and socially defensible thing, slaves are presented as extensions of the family, and slavery as beneficial to the enslaved, providing them with homes, jobs, education and "civilizing" - or even "Christianizing" them (don't even get me started on that!).
In contrast, when the dark side of slavery (is there even a light side?) is shown - that is, the cruel and brutal nature of it - it is usually in more realistic, factual representations ("North & South", "Glory" and "Amistad", to give just two very well-known examples). In a moment of extreme irony, it is proponents of the "Lost Cause" (ie. the pro-slavery, pro-secession, white supremacy camp) who indulge accusations of "propaganda" and "distortions of history" - but not when discussing examples of "sanitized" pro-slavery examples. I suppose a certain degree of cognitive dissonance is to be expected - after all, how else do these people salve their consciences other than to numb them with the opiate of denial?
In truth, the Southern states' economies were carried on the lacerated backs of brutally enslaved people, and their leaders (who were rich and powerful slave owners, naturally - because how else did they get to be rich or powerful?) feared losing their cherished "way of life" (built on and reliant upon slavery) and seceded from the Union to circumvent efforts by the federal government to extinguish slavery in the US for good. As before, what the alleged reasons for the start of the civil war all boiled down to, weren't "patriotism", a desire to decide their own affairs, or to create a new American nation, nor was it to preserve the "Southern way of life" - it was really just all about a bunch of vile, capricious slave owners trying to hold onto their slaves (like 1%er billionaires clutch at their wallets today), as they had done since day 1 - and which the successful American Revolution had allowed them to do.
The result was that slavery remained intact in the US all the way through the Revolutionary War, and right up to the end of the Civil War (1861-1865).
There's literally nothing at all romantic - or libertarian about that, is there?
And yet, bearing all this in mind, I can understand why so many Americans today still cling to the myth of the "Lost Cause": because so many Americans (these days we might call them "neo-cons" or "neo-confederates" or just plain Nazis) also cling to the same abhorrent white supremacist values of their pro-slavery forebears. Ever notice how obsessed the US is with the Civil War? Just look up the culture and industry that has grown up around civil war re-enactment and you might notice something: the fostering of mutual respect between enemies. The Confederates are no longer viewed as traitors to the United States, their defence of slavery is no longer maligned or presented as a character judgement. For a century and longer, Confederate statues and memorials dotted the landscape. Military bases bore the names of infamous Confederate figures. Recovered remains of Confederate soldiers receive full military honors reserved for Americas heroes instead of quiet private ones more appropriate to traitors.
This process has been slow and gradual, fostered by romanticization and obfuscation, to the point where today American racists who either don't know the history, or are so dehumanized they long to reproduce a terrifying new version of it, proudly strut their racism in public without fearing any consequences - and even run for public office claiming those same white supremacist foundations (and I'm not even talking about Trump here).
This disgusting white supremacist culture is not something new that's only emerged recently in the United States, but is laid bare as something malignant which has perpetually simmered, mostly in the background, since the very foundation of the nation that calls itself "the land of the free". Is it really?
Here's another shocker: Many of the so-called "founding fathers" themselves were actual slave-owners, in fact, according to a recent study, approximately half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and many delegates at the Constitutional Convention owned slaves at some point in their lives, with some holding onto their hundreds of slaves even until their deaths years after the war that gave them independence from Britain. Some of the more notable figures prominent to the cause of American Independence include: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (who owned over 600 slaves during his lifetime, despite expressing moral opposition to slavery), James Madison, James Monroe - and most ironically of all, a fellow called Patrick Henry, who was Known for his famous quote "Give me liberty, or give me death!".
So, was it really about freedom and "a new beginning" and democracy? Or was it really about the freedom to do what they willed with other less fortunate human beings, and the hostile takeover and preservation of an economically profitable yet morally reprehensible system?
After all, with Britain out of the American picture, local slave-owners and traders could keep more of the profits for themselves. Being a perpetual cynic, this also raised more questions for me, such as - did Britain later on work to kill the slave trade because it was the right, moral thing to do - or because they wanted to damage the young American economy? After all, Britain didn't entirely give up on taking back its former colony until after 1814, when the War of 1812 resulted in a stalemate. (Funnily enough, that war happened AFTER Britain had formally recognized the USA's independence and sovereignty in 1783, at the end of the Revolutionary War.)
Even today, when we watched the rise of neo-Nazi and white supremacist idols like Donald Trump with horrified fascination, emboldened American white supremacists have emerged from the shadows of their mother's basements to demand the return of slavery, going so far as to share their hateful views on social media, to chillingly promise people of color that they will become their "property" soon." I'd like to say the prospects of that actually happening are remote - but looking back at history, I'm not so sure of that. Even after the end of the Civil War and overt slavery, it took another 100 years before the Civil Rights Movement even gained enough traction to create the status quo in the US - and even that is a pretty uncertain-looking mess. Closer inspection reveals anti-democratic tactics like gerrymandering which takes over voting districts by subdivision based on race and ethnicities, blatantly racist practices across the board, and the US prison system, particularly in the Southern states, which appears to have worked to perpetuate slavery in one form by securing a seemingly endless supply of cheap, easy to obtain labor.
The disappointing truth is that the face America presented to the world for all this time has been nothing more than a technicolor 1950s fantasy, a PR snow-job intended to make it look like "the good guy" who stood up to tyranny, fought to preserve democracy, and went to war with itself to end slavery - because that's important, you know, when it comes to winning friends and influencing people. Nobody wants to associate with monsters, apologists and human rights abusers, do they - at least not openly. The frightening flipside to the pleasant, shiny PR fantasy is exposed when that very same nation elects a party and a president that represents the interests totally opposite to what it claims to stand for - not just once, but twice.
The sad truth of it though, is that the whole thing is, was, and always has been, a sham - rotten to the core.
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