Volume 7, Issue 33
Upon declaring and winning independence from England, the new United States failed in its mandate to free all peoples of servitude. During the debate at the Constitutional Convention, John Laurens, along with Alexander Hamilton, argued for the abolition of slavery. In a time of great opportunity, compromise intervened and permitted Virginia and the states to the south to deny constitutional rights to African-Americans. It was an objective of Laurens and Hamilton to prohibit the word ‘slave’ from appearing anywhere in the Constitution. This was in the hope that the defining clarion call of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” would, in the future, be afforded to all men and women of the United States.
Slavery was not legally abolished in the British Empire until 1833. Led by William Wilberforce and other abolitionists, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by Parliament. This effectively ended slavery throughout the British Empire, the remaining colonies, and certain countries in the Caribbean. Slavery was not abolished in the United States until the passing of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 and its subsequent ratification after the end of the Civil War. Had Hamilton and Laurens had their way in 1787, there never would have been a need to amend the Constitution. Freedom would have been memorialized for all mankind as a God-given right.
Patriots in 1776 broke with Great Britain on the governmental moral code of the day that man existed to serve the king. The Constitution manifested the revolutionary idea that mankind’s purpose is not to serve the government or kings. It is the government’s purpose to serve mankind. In this government facilitation, it is God’s purpose that mankind be free in his pursuit of happiness. This pursuit means working with a talent and for a purpose that God has ordained in His perfect order.
America owes African-American citizens an apology.
Native Americans were dispersed from their land differently than African-Americans. Yet they experienced the same consequence. Their rights to pursuit of happiness, in a cultural system they understood, were stolen from them as an opportunity. As Native Americans indigenous to the land, they should have been granted full constitutional rights as envisioned by the true spirit of freedom embraced by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. By not assimilating them into the system of leveraged opportunity, they were relegated to a support system of dependence by the American government. This policy abused their right to pursuit of happiness. Rick Joyner of MorningStar Ministries has presented on these issues. He equates that support system of dependence forced on Native Americans with the failed system of socialism.
America owes Native American citizens an apology.
What are the solutions to rectify the injustices? They do not include reparations. Why? Because reparations deal with a past that can never be made whole in the present. Simply giving money without future objective could cause programs or expenditures to result in the repeat of the bottomless abyss of government dependency and socialism.
What, then, is the first step?
It starts with true contrition as a country for wrongs committed. Next is the sacrificial forgiveness from those betrayed. Healing begins with acknowledgment of a grievance and the acceptance in good faith of the apology by the aggrieved. Moving forward together engages when each party agrees to seek a new future from their own present moral position. In other words, it is not necessitated that any one culture embraces another as their identity. What is incumbent upon the process is that each culture joins in a braided cord, applying the best benefits of what they have to offer to each other’s future. In so doing, they are stronger united in purpose.
Not to be trite, additionally, it is critical that a vision be cast demonstrating how all cultures realize freedom in the pursuit of happiness. Commitment to shared sacrifice will be a reality. This may require interest-free loans, new educational criteria, 21st century vocational training, and citizen support of each from birth to death. But, whatever the objective, it must be to seek an egalitarian future of opportunity and freedom, not a present recompense.
The religious community in the United States also has a burden to bear in this healing and curing of injustice. It is unconscionable that any religious leader tolerated slavery in the early 1800s. It is clearly an abomination before God and a most evil sin of mankind. The Body of Christ today understands clearly their role to reflect the love of Christ that their Savior demands. True believers are true servants whose moral authority is to fill the gaps left by mankind’s selfishness. Freedom of religion is the first right listed in the Bill of Rights. Its importance was emphasized in that morally attainable prosperity was to be accounted for by the Church, not government. This was the original intent of the exceptionalism established by America in its war for independence.
The United States of America forever changed the perception of government in 1776 by declaring that birth is not destiny. Yet this freedom escaped our brothers and sisters of Native American and African-American descent in our country’s early history. At the time, America stood as a beacon of light against government world tyranny. What America failed to do was shed all acts of tyranny perpetrated by governments in this system of things by not extending full rights of liberty to Native and African-Americans.
The old adage, ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life,’ is not comprehensive in its perspective. What must be included is the gift of unalienable rights for the pursuit of happiness defended. For when a man is free to pursue his destiny as ordained by God, not birth, if it be his desire, he may build a fleet of ships.
It is the entrepreneur with a new idea, unrestricted in his or her pursuit to perfect a new product, a discovery, or a scientific application, that makes the difference. It is the unprejudicial acceptance of his or her talent that embellishes, embraces, and supports his or her pursuit of happiness.
It is interesting to note that following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Northern states fared differently economically than the Southern states. By 1860 at the outbreak of the Civil War, the free states of the North were wealthy, industrialized and innovative. The slave states of the South were less wealthy, agricultural and stagnant. The North developed a middle class which African Americans embraced. The South concentrated wealth in an elite class of landowners. The lack of an all-inclusive free middle class thwarted their economic diversity and growth.
Our hope for the future is that America, through its component cultural parts, will enter into serious, faithful, heartfelt dialogue to establish a vision of prescient insight that all can agree is worth the total sum of human effort for the next generation.
By respecting the mandate of moral principle given to America for the development of full individual potential of all mankind, we can regain our integrity in God’s providence.
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?