Hey, Cypher here. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the institution of slavery,

especially here in the United states. These myths often serve pernicious political purposes

that can be highly detrimental to a proper conception of history,

so here are ten of those myths debunked in no particular order.

Since they aren't in a particular order, each one is fairly different from the other so you should stick around

because the list goes all over the place. Just as an aside,

I'm going to be focusing mostly on the U.S, because this is where the myths serve their most malignant

political purpose. If you are someone who is offended by these facts...

Check my sources. As per usual, they are in the description.

It is a common meme going around the internet. Anytime a Black Lives Matter issue comes up,

I'll see people putting these up on Facebook.

Well, these are all wrong. White slaves did exist but not in the American colonies.

Mostly on the Barbary coast where Muslim corsairs would capture and enslave

Whites. In the New World, the closest whites got to being enslaved was indentured servitude.

Indentured servitude is a system in which one is forced to labour for a limited period of time.

Sometimes there were cruel bosses,

but there were many more laws protecting against cruel masters of indentured servants than slaves and there was, in fact, a

legal difference. Also, sometimes people were sentenced to indentured servitude for crimes they had committed. Their

contracts could even be sold by owners, but generally these contracts would only be for five to twenty years

Slavery indentured servitude was not some might call indentured servants sentenced to life slavery

But that would be like calling a modern prisoner sentenced to life a slave

That's just weird. This myth tends to focus on the Irish who did in fact suffer tremendously

under English rule some could be said to have been put into serfdom

But that was in the old world in the new one the closest they came to slavery was indentured servitude

And it was generally voluntary not coerced nor were they treated more brutally than black slaves

the invention of slavery Predates history itself while it is generally incorrect to say that ancient persian and

Egyptian States practice slavery, We know from their records that slavery existed in Surrounding States

Furthermore there is archaeological evidence that shows it was a common practice throughout the world and nearly every place in the world

Had slavery at some point in its history or prehistory

chattel slavery as in the practice of hereditary race-based enslavement was something that was practiced throughout the middle East an

Asian step for Centuries prior to 1492 [n Fact much of

Islamic States practiced it until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in

1918 and some well after that the last African country to abolish slavery was Mauritania, and it happened in

1981 and it is still a problem for many countries Several countries, especially

Mauritania still have prominent illegal and De facto

Slavery since the government is unwilling to enforce its mandates against slavery many people still hold slaves today

European empires such as the Greeks and Romans

Had practiced slavery and were crucial to their economies the only real reason why they stopped was that the system of serfdom?

implemented after the Roman Empire made slavery kind of unnecessary for a while

no black man was the first slave owner in America as

Internet memes are apt to say the person they're referring to was an Angolan

indentured Servant contracts after he earned his freedom he even had the first written record of

Refusing to accept the end of an indentured contract

thereby making the man named John Kaiser a legal slave

But there had been slaves in that colony since before the Kaiser lawsuit in

1655

African slaves were sold in

1634 there and I'm not referring to indentured servants either. I mean straight-up slaves

This is normally meant to show that slavery in the new world was colorblind

But that doesn't show it in the slightest it had been racially based since the second voyage of Columbus

Spanish Colonies had been practicing chattel slavery for over a century

Including in Florida it took a while for the racism to build up in the English colonies

But it did so regardless of who owned the slaves

The Civil War was not initially fought to end slavery Abraham Lincoln was very clear in

1862 by stating if I could save the union without freeing any slave

I would do it and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves

I would do it and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone. I would also do that

The emancipation proclamation was not an easy decision on his part

[for] there were slave states fighting for the union, but it was prompted by people like John C

Fremont declaring slaves

emancipated under Their own authority

as

Military governors it also gave a crucial purpose to the Union's fight as people were becoming more and more disillusioned [of] the Civil war

Instead the North Fought to keep the union intact

Ending secession was their chief motivation of course the reason for secession in the first place is a bit different

oh boy is this a thorny issue

I've done an entire episode on the causes of the Civil war

But it is absolutely undeniable that slavery was a chief motivation for secession in every document

proclaiming Secession slavery is

explicitly mentioned

This is part of lost cause revisionism

they try to say that slavery was a minor factor and that the North had been trampling over the rights of the south as

Independent states they bring up the tenth amendment to the constitution which states that any power expressed by the

Constitution would instead be given to the states rather than the federal government they call out that there was a tremendous

Difference in culture and that terrorists were choking farmers these were all factors for sure but not the most important one

Lincoln being elected was and the South's fear of his position on slavery made them secede

Everything else is peripheral to this one problem. If you want more on that go watch the episode that I mentioned before

In 1860 the time of the last census before the Civil war Roughly 36 percent of freeman in the south owned slaves

That would seem insignificant since they were in the minority overall

but as one article pointed out men is roughly the same percentage of Americans with college degrees right now [it] is not an

insignificant number

Furthermore the Southern Social system was entirely dependent on their peculiar institution

So even if they were not slave owners most were heavily entrenched in a way of life

That was absolutely dependent on slavery

I've heard this from actual graduate students hell, Karl

Marx made a similar argument in dust capital it's that tired Marxist terminology of wage slavery

''We have been paid in two weeks and We want our wages.'' ''wages. You want to be waste slave answer me that.''

''costs not but what makes way slaves''

''Wages I want you to be free''

But this is a false equivocation as I pointed out in class back

then when one possesses different legal rights

It is impossible to say those same people are equal

slaves had far less legal rights than white Factory workers in some States

They had no rights whatsoever [if] a factory owner whipped their workers

They could be sued or even jailed for assault as a side myth busting

Americans were far more likely to sue each other prior to world war one than ever since

Lawsuits were extraordinarily common in comparison to today and that myth needs to go away because it is

perpetrated by big businesses and benefits them only anyways there were many business practices such as

Chaining workers to their factory position that were decidedly cruel, but that is nothing compared to what many slaves

Experienced now it is also a myth that all slave owners were cruel and abusive

For many slavery was not as unpleasant as movies like to make it out to be after all one had to keep slaves

controlled and love is often a far more potent force of coercion than fear the various acts of

Rebellion that were prevalent throughout the history of Slavery had to be curtailed

Somehow and many Masters were kind to their slaves

But the peculiar institution had a corrosive effect on anyone involved

It is true that there were slaves who were forced to work for the confederacy

There is no record of slaves voluntarily working for the confederacy save for one particular instance

Towards the end of the Civil war the

Confederate congress passed a bill [that] allowed for a slave regiment to be created

It was supposedly voluntary

but then again

so was their conscription act and conscription by no stretch of the definition can be defined as

Voluntary in either case the regiment that was created never saw action and was a divisive issue

for the confederates in General

The Columbian slave trade was created by Europeans and the place that they received slaves was in West Africa

But unlike what is commonly conceived they did not just go raiding inland with nets to grab up

unsuspecting tribesmen the African slave [trade] was

Predicated on Africans selling other Africans it was a system already in place

Before Columbus arrived to take the first slaves to the new world in 1498 like most slave

Institutions. It was created by capturing prisoners during warfare

Europeans had no need to kidnap Africans like they show in movies all the time

Africans were already doing that for them they developed an entire economy around that trade this

Devastated western Africa which has yet to recover from the economic

circumstances imposed by the transatlantic slave trade that doesn't

Vindicate Europeans for their slave trading of course two wrongs don't make a right let alone

How europeans would encourage the trade through their economic incentives and political maneuvering in Africa?

It was a lucrative business after all it just means that Africans were active participants [in] the trade and not only victims of it

First of all slavery is still an ongoing issue many countries throughout the world have

Clear slavery and not just coerced labor like Chinese factory workers. I mean chattel slavery still exists

We weren't allowed to be reporting on slavery. It's a practice the government tries to hide from outsiders

But as we would find slavery is everywhere in Mauritania

If you know where to look it is illegal worldwide

But practiced anyways in a number of countries so slavery has not ended

Furthermore abolishment of slavery was not an invention of white people the qin dynasty were the first recorded

Abolitionists, they are the reason why we called that country China, *Donald Trump repeating the word china*

and the first Chinese emperor was an abolitionist

Slavery fluctuated throughout world history the idea that slavery is inherently wrong

does not originate in Europe nor is it particularly unique their

Abolition was also motivated by slave Revolts slaves were not just docile servants

But often actively opposed their own enslavement

slave Revolts happened throughout the Modern period One of which culminated in the liberation of Haiti long before most European countries

Abolish slavery even when they were forced into the most wretched conditions possible aboard ship on the middle passage there were around

250 shipboard slave Revolts it was such a problem that slave ships often had

Barricades to defend themselves against such revolts. There's also a kind of disgusting side to claiming that whites freed the slaves

*sarcastic tone* For how wonderful it is that the captors freed the captives?

How nice of them to just decide on their own volition to stop oppressing people?

This is a particularly pernicious myth, because it makes slaves

Objects rather than actors in their own right as well as completely forgetting the western powers were

Particularly egregious when it came to the abolition of slavery ALL of these myths need to be stopped