I just recently said something like this aloud in a casual conversation with a friend (Ad sales guy in NYC) and, through the awkward exchange that followed realized he thought emancipation was 300+ years ago. Given slavery is the most critical part of our nation’s history, I opted to not disctract with the dates of the revolutionary war.
This from someone from a wealthy family who attended private schools and has an MBA.
Nit: the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in states rebelling against the union. Slavery was perfectly legal in Kentucky until December 18, 1865.
> That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, *the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States*, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
Slavery was legal in the border states until passage of the 13th Amendment.
So, let's see, if you were a black person in 1863 who'd been enslaved but bought your freedom prior to the Emacipation Proclamation, you'd resent the Emancipation Proclamation since from then on other wouldn't have to buy their freedom?
Yet the emancipation proclamation only freed slaves in the south. Slavery was not outlawed for the northern states and over 3 million remained slaves in the north until 1865. That is called hypocrisy. It wasn't about the slaves.
This is a weird bit of historical revisionism. The US slave trade was abolished in 1807, which was not the earliest such a law could have been passed. 1776 was. England ended the slave trade the same year (and slavery had clearly been on the way out since 1772, when the first ruling about slavery being illegal in the British isles was made). This ruling may have contributed to the interest in declaring independence from Britain among wealthy US slaveholders, like for example George Washington.
England then abolished slavery in the entire British Colonies in 1833, the US took another 30 years to free southern slaves via the Emancipation Proclamation, and another 2 years beyond that to enact the 13th amendment.
> For all of American history, most people did not own slaves.
This is irrelevant. The powerful and influential did. The people who had control over the government for the most part did. Think I'm lying? More than 3/4 of the signers of the declaration of independence were slaveholders[0].
> Moreover, slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago, which mean it has been abolished for more than half the existence of the United States... that’s quite a lot of generations ago.
Yet we have so many people today celebrating the ideas, symbols and folks that were involved in a war to keep owning slaves. Many of the statues have been erected closer to today than the war.
We might also note that what Lincoln did -- the Emancipation Proclamation -- abolished slavery only in areas that were not subject to the Union, making it questionable as an act of governance. Slaves in Union territory were emancipated by the 13th amendment three years later.
American didn't abolish de jure slavery until 153 years ago.
It retained de facto slavery for much longer, as it did little to enforce the prohibition on except terminating overt chattel slavery until WWII (the federal order to federal prosecutors announcing the policy shift that stopped eseentially ignoring this was issued five days after Pearl Harbor, 77 years ago.) [0]
The emancipation proclamation was signed January 1, 1863, or 156 years ago.
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