1776 Revolution - Another Lie Exposed - It Was Much About Slavery!

[Peter Lemkin]

"Counter-Revolution of 1776": Was U.S. Independence War a Conservative Revolt in Favor of Slavery?

As the United States prepares to celebrate Independence Day, we look at why July 4 is not a cause for celebration for all. For Native Americans, it may be a bitter reminder of colonialism, which brought fatal diseases, cultural hegemony and genocide. Neither did the new republic's promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" extend to African Americans. The colonists who declared their freedom from England did not share their newly founded liberation with the millions of Africans they had captured and forced into slavery. We speak with historian Gerald Horne, who argues the so-called Revolutionary War was actually a conservative effort by American colonists to protect their system of slavery. He is the author of two new books: "The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America" and "Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow." Horne is professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in Chicago with our next guest. Juan González is in New York.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, next weekend, the United States celebrates the Fourth of July, the day the American colonies declared their independence from England in 1776. While many Americans will hang flags, participate in parades and watch fireworks, Independence Day is not a cause for celebration for all. For Native Americans, it is yet another bitter reminder of colonialism, which brought fatal diseases, cultural hegemony and full-out genocide. Neither did the new republic's promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extend to African Americans. As our next guest notes, the white colonists who declared their freedom from the crown did not share their newly founded liberation with the millions of Africans they had captured and forced into slavery.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Gerald Horne argues that the so-called Revolutionary War was actually a counterrevolution, in part, not a progressive step forward for humanity, but a conservative effort by American colonialists to protect their system of slavery.
For more, Professor Horne joins us here in our Chicago studio. He's the author of two new books: The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America and another new book, just out, Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow. Professor Horne teaches history and African American studies at the University of Houston.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It's great to have you with us. So, as we move into this Independence Day week, what should we understand about the founding of the United States?
GERALD HORNE: We should understand that July 4th, 1776, in many ways, represents a counterrevolution. That is to say that what helped to prompt July 4th, 1776, was the perception amongst European settlers on the North American mainland that London was moving rapidly towards abolition. This perception was prompted by Somerset's case, a case decided in London in June 1772 which seemed to suggest that abolition, which not only was going to be ratified in London itself, was going to cross the Atlantic and basically sweep through the mainland, thereby jeopardizing numerous fortunes, not only based upon slavery, but the slave trade. That's the short answer.
The longer answer would involve going back to another revolutionthat is to say, the so-called Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, which, among other things, involved a step back from the monarchfor the monarch, the king, and a step forward for the rising merchant class. This led to a deregulation of the African slave trade. That is to say, the Royal African Company theretofore had been in control of the slave trade, but with the rising power of the merchant class, this slave trade was deregulated, leading to what I call free trade in Africans. That is to say, merchants then descended upon the African continent manacling and handcuffing every African in sight, with the energy of demented and crazed bees, dragging them across the Atlantic, particularly to the Caribbean and to the North American mainland. This was prompted by the fact that the profits for the slave trade were tremendous, sometimes up to 1,600 or 1,700 percent. And as you know, there are those even today who will sell their firstborn for such a profit. This, on the one hand, helped to boost the productive forces both in the Caribbean and on the mainland, but it led to numerous slave revolts, not least in the Caribbean, but also on the mainland, which helped to give the mainlanders second thoughts about London's tentative steps towards abolition.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gerald Horne, one of the things that struck me in your book is not only your main thesis, that this was in large part a counterrevolution, ourthe United States' war of independence, but you also link very closely thewhat was going on in the Caribbean colonies of England, as well as in the United States, not only in terms of among the slaves in both areas, but also among the white population. And, in fact, you indicate that quite a few of those who ended up here in the United States fostering the American Revolution had actually been refugees from the battles between whites and slaves in the Caribbean. Could you expound on that?
GERALD HORNE: It's well known that up until the middle part of the 18th century, London felt that the Caribbean coloniesJamaica, Barbados, Antigua, in particularwere in some ways more valuable than the mainland colonies. The problem was that in the Caribbean colonies the Africans outnumbered the European settlers, sometimes at a rate of 20 to one, which facilitated slave revolts. There were major slave revolts in Antigua, for example, in 1709 and 1736. The Maroonsthat is to say, the Africans who had escaped London's jurisdiction in Jamaicahad challenged the crown quite sternly. This led, as your question suggests, to many European settlers in the Caribbean making the great trek to the mainland, being chased out of the Caribbean by enraged Africans. For example, I did research for this book in Newport, Rhode Island, and the main library there, to this very day, is named after Abraham Redwood, who fled Antigua after the 1736 slave revolt because many of his, quote, "Africans," unquote, were involved in the slave revolt. And he fled in fear and established the main library in Newport, to this very day, and helped to basically establish that city on the Atlantic coast. So, there is a close connection between what was transpiring in the Caribbean and what was taking place on the mainland. And historians need to recognize that even though these colonies were not necessarily a unitary project, there were close and intimate connections between and amongst them.
AMY GOODMAN: So, why this great disparity between how people in the United States talk about the creation myth of the United States, if you willI'm not talking about indigenous people, Native American peopleand this story that you have researched?
GERALD HORNE: Well, it is fair to say that the United States did provide a sanctuary for Europeans. Indeed, I think part of the, quote, "genius," unquote, of the U.S. project, if there was such a genius, was the fact that the founders in the United States basically called a formal truce, a formal ceasefire, with regard to the religious warfare that had been bedeviling Europe for many decades and centuriesthat is to say, Protestant London, so-called, versus Catholic Madrid and Catholic France. What the settlers on the North American mainland did was call a formal truce with regard to religious conflict, but then they opened a new front with regard to racethat is to say, Europeans versus non-Europeans.
This, at once, broadened the base for the settler project. That is to say, they could draw upon those defined as white who had roots from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains, and indeed even to the Arab world, if you look at people like Ralph Nader and Marlo Thomas, for example, whose roots are in Lebanon but are considered to be, quote, "white," unquote. This obviously expanded the population base for the settler project. And because many rights were then accorded to these newly minted whites, it obviously helped to ensure that many of them would be beholden to the country that then emerged, the United States of America, whereas those of us who were not defined as white got the short end of the stick, if you like.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gerald Horne, as a result of that, during the American Revolution, what was the perception or the attitude of the African slaves in the U.S. to that conflict? You alsoyou talk about, during the colonial times, many slaves preferred to flee to the Spanish colonies or the French colonies, rather than to stay in the American colonies of England.
GERALD HORNE: You are correct. The fact of the matter is, is that Spain had been arming Africans since the 1500s. And indeed, because Spain was arming Africans and then unleashing them on mainland colonies, particularly South Carolina, this put competitive pressure on London to act in a similar fashion. The problem there was, is that the mainland settlers had embarked on a project and a model of development that was inconsistent with arming Africans. Indeed, their project was involved in enslaving and manacling every African in sight. This deepens the schism between the colonies and the metropolisthat is to say, Londonthereby helping to foment a revolt against British rule in 1776.
It's well known that more Africans fought alongside of the Redcoatsfought alongside the Redcoats than fought with the settlers. And this is understandable, because if you think about it for more than a nanosecond, it makes little sense for slaves to fight alongside slave masters so that slave masters could then deepen the persecution of the enslaved and, indeed, as happened after 1776, bring more Africans to the mainland, bring more Africans to Cuba, bring more Africans to Brazil, for their profit.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to historian Gerald Horne. He's author of two new books. We're talking about The Counter-Revolution of 1776. The subtitle of that book is Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. And his latest book, just out, is called Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow. He's professor of history and African American studies at University of Houston. When we come back, we'll talk about that second book about Cuba. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Slavery Days" by Burning Spear, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in Chicago. Juan González is in New York. Before we talk about the book on slavery, I want to turn to President Obama's remarks at the White House's Fourth of July celebration last year. This is how President Obama described what happened in 1776.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: On July 4th, 1776, a small band of patriots declared that we were a people created equal, free to think and worship and live as we please, that our destiny would not be determined for us, it would be determined by us. And it was bold, and it was brave. And it was unprecedented. It was unthinkable. At that time in human history, it was kings and princes and emperors who made decisions. But those patriots knew there was a better way of doing things, that freedom was possible, and that to achieve their freedom, they'd be willing to lay down their lives, their fortune and their honor. And so they fought a revolution. And few would have bet on their side. But for the first time of many times to come, America proved the doubters wrong. And now, 237 years later, this improbable experiment in democracy, the United States of America, stands as the greatest nation on Earth.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Obama talking about the meaning of July 4th. Gerald Horne, your book, The Counter-Revolution of 1776, is a direct rebuttal of this, as you call, creation myth. Could you talk about that?
GERALD HORNE: Well, with all due respect to President Obama, I think that he represents, in those remarks you just cited, the consensus view. That is to say that, on the one hand, there is little doubt that 1776 represented a step forward with regard to the triumph over monarchy. The problem with 1776 was that it went on to establish what I refer to as the first apartheid state. That is to say, the rights that Mr. Obama refers to were accorded to only those who were defined as white. To that degree, I argue in the book that 1776, in many ways, was analogous to Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the country then known as Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in November 1965. UDI, Unilateral Declaration of Independence, was in many ways an attempt to forestall decolonization. 1776, in many ways, was an attempt to forestall the abolition of slavery. That attempt succeeded until the experiment crashed and burned in 1861 with the U.S. Civil War, the bloodiest conflict, to this point, the United States has ever been involved in.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Gerald Horne, how does this story, this, what you call, counterrevolution, fit in with your latest book, Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow?
GERALD HORNE: Well, there's a certain consistency between the two books. Keep in mind that in 1762 Britain temporarily seized Cuba from Spain. And one of the regulations that Britain imposed outraged the settlers, as I argue in both books. What happened was that Britain sought to regulate the slave trade, and the settlers on the North American mainland wanted deregulation of the slave trade, thereby bringing in more Africans. What happens is that that was one of the points of contention that lead to a detonation and a revolt against British rule in 1776.
I go on in the Cuba book to talk about how one of the many reasons why you have so many black people in Cuba was because of the manic energy of U.S. slave traders and slave dealers, particularly going into the Congo River Basin and dragging Africans across the Atlantic. Likewise, I had argued in a previous book on the African slave trade to Brazil that one of the many reasons why you have so many black people in Brazil, more than any place outside of Nigeria, is, once again, because of the manic energy of U.S. slave traders and slave dealers, who go into Angola, in particular, and drag Africans across the Atlantic to Brazil.
It seems to me that it's very difficult to reconcile the creation myth of this great leap forward for humanity when, after 1776 and the foundation of the United States of America, the United States ousts Britain from control of the African slave trade. Britain then becomes the cop on the beat trying to detain and deter U.S. slave traders and slave dealers. It seems to me that if this was a step forward for humanity, it was certainly not a step forward for Africans, who, the last time I looked, comprise a significant percentage of humanity.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gerald Horne, so, in other words, as you're explaining the involvement of American companies in the slave trade in Brazil and Cuba, thisthat book and also your The Counter-Revolution of 1776 makes the same point that slavery was not just an issue of interest in the South to the Southern plantation owners, but that in the North, banking, insurance, merchants, shipping were all involved in the slave trade, as well.
GERALD HORNE: Well, Juan, as you well know, New York City was a citadel of the African slave trade, even after the formal abolition of the U.S. role in the African slave trade in 1808. Rhode Island was also a center for the African slave trade. Ditto for Massachusetts. Part of the unity between North and South was that it was in the North that the financing for the African slave trade took place, and it was in the South where you had the Africans deposited. That helps to undermine, to a degree, the very easy notion that the North was abolitionist and the South was pro-slavery.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Gerald Horne, what most surprised you in your research around Cuba, U.S. slavery and Jim Crow?
GERALD HORNE: Well, what most surprised me with regard to both of these projects was the restiveness, the rebelliousness of the Africans involved. It's well known that the Africans in the Caribbean were very much involved in various extermination plots, liquidation plots, seeking to abolish, through force of arms and violence, the institution of slavery. Unfortunately, I think that historians on the North American mainland have tended to downplay the restiveness of Africans, and I think it's done a disservice to the descendants of the population of mainland enslaved Africans. That is to say that because the restiveness of Africans in the United States has been downplayed, it leads many African Americans today to either, A, think that their ancestors were chumpsthat is to say, that they fought alongside slave owners to bring more freedom to slave owners and more persecution to themselvesor, B, that they were ciphersthat is to say, they stood on the sidelines as their fate was being determined. I think that both of these books seek to disprove those very unfortunate notions.
AMY GOODMAN: So, as we move into the Independence Day weekend next weekend, what do you say to people in the United States?
GERALD HORNE: What I say to the people in the United States is that you have proved that you can be very critical of what you deem to be revolutionary processes. You have a number of scholars and intellectuals who make a good living by critiquing the Cuban Revolution of 1959, by critiquing the Russian Revolution of 1917, by critiquing the French Revolution of the 18th century, but yet we get the impression that what happened in 1776 was all upside, which is rather far-fetched, given what I've just laid out before you in terms of how the enslaved African population had their plight worsened by 1776, not to mention the subsequent liquidation of independent Native American polities as a result of 1776. I think that we need a more balanced presentation of the foundation of the United States of America, and I think that there's no sooner place to begin than next week with July 4th, 2014.

[David Andrews]

Delete

[Magda Hassan]

Yes. Seems to be the case. Jose Perez covers this on his history blog too. I'll see if I can find a link.

[Peter Lemkin]

Yes. Seems to be the case. Jose Perez covers this on his history blog too. I'll see if I can find a link.

Well, it was fairly obvious based on what they did to the Native Americans - and they only did the same with the Africans they 'found'. The interesting thing to me, that I didn't know, was that the British [some of them] were actually slightly less racist than the Colonists. One can download the first chapter of the book on Scribd, and it looks very good. Another interesting fact, I'm sure he mentions in his book, is that Wall St. in NYC was once bounded on its North side by a wall, to keep the slave market to its South fortified.....how fitting....now it is wage slaves and hidden walls.

[Magda Hassan]

1763: THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 stops the seizure of Indian lands by speculators from the Thirteen Colonies and establishes a frontier, essentially the Appalachian Mountains, to the west of which vast tracts of land are to be preserved in perpetuity where Indian nations will be able to carry on their traditional way of life. Additionally, the proclamation reserves to the Crown the exclusive right to purchase land from native Americans.

Even after the frontier is established, land speculators, slave-owner George Washington, the wealthiest man in the American colonies most prominent among them, arrange to "hunt out and mark" Indian land beyond the frontier to be seized as soon as the Royal Proclamation and treaties can be safely ignored. Washington who, generations of American children have, with the fabricated story of the cherry tree, been indoctrinated to believe, "cannot tell a lie", writes to his criminal co-conspirator, Captain William Crawford, that their "scheme must be snugly carried on by you under the pretence of hunting other game."

Washington was only one of many wealthy land speculators engaged in laying the groundwork for the theft of Indian lands in violation of the law and of legally-binding treaties. His much-propagandized fellow slave-owner Benjamin Franklin was the major promoter behind the Walpole, later the Vandalia, Company, a group of Philadelphia land speculators who had their eyes on ten million acres of Indian land protected by the Proclamation. Other groups of speculators were anxious to steal Indian land in "Charlotiana" (most of Illinois and Wisconsin), in Kentucky and Tennessee. Plans were underway to steal almost all of Michigan.

1766-1776: THIRTEEN COLONIES. Deeply in debt from its war with France, the British government attempts to have the Thirteen Colonies cover part of the cost of their own defence. A series of acts imposes taxes on colonists but, in fact, they are considerably lower than the taxes levied on the people of Britain.

Due to opposition to the various taxes, they are repealed. In 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed. In 1779 the British government repealed the Townshend Acts and all duties on imports into the Thirteen Colonies with the exception of tea. In 1773, the British Parliament eliminated all British taxes on tea being imported into the Thirteen Colonies with the exception of a small levy in the Colonies themselves. Other than this, by 1773 there was no taxation of the Thirteen Colonies at all by Britain, making the revolutionary propaganda slogan "no taxation without representation" something of a mystery.

1770: THIRTEEN COLONIES. According to John Adams, who would become the second president of the United States, "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teagues and outlandish jack tarrs," were harassing a British sentry. He calls for help, but the soldiers who come to his rescue are driven back by the mob. The "rabble" grows to about fifty people armed with rocks and sticks. The crowd are warned to desist but continue to throw rocks at the British soldiers. Eventually, the soldiers open fire on the mob killing five. The first to die is a black sailor, Crispus Attucks. Several British soldiers are ultimately convicted of manslaughter.

Attucks is often said to be the first person to die in the American Revolution. The irony of a black man being the first person to die in a revolution which had the primary purpose of maintaining slavery seems to have escaped notice. In 1888, the City of Boston erected a rather florid statue to Attucks on Boston Common, again without a hint of irony.

The slaveowners' chief propagandist, Samuel Adams creates from the incident a mythological Boston Massacre in which evil British soldiers cold bloodedly massacre innocent colonists. Each year on the anniversary of the shooting, the propaganda fires are rekindled. Paul Revere does his bit by deceiving and inflaming the public (and raking in the dough) by creating and offering for sale an engraving depicting the so-called massacre which is inaccurate in almost every detail, most significantly in the fact that the soldiers are shown standing in a straight line shooting on command into an orderly and completely innocent crowd in broad daylight. In fact, it was a scene of nighttime chaos with the mob attacking the soldiers.

Among the many fallacious details in Revere's engraving is the race of Crispus Attucks, who lies dead on the ground. He is shown as being white. Can't be havin' no dead niggers in our propaganda pieces, can we now?1772-83: THIRTEEN COLONIES. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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."

Words ringing with freedom. A glorious revolution, we are told, led by high-minded lovers of liberty who fought to bring the miracle of democracy to a valiant, enterprising and freedom-loving people oppressed by an evil colonial power.

Unfortunately, like just about everything else we have all been carefully trained to believe, it's just a great big load of red, white and blue bullshit.

With more than two centuries of propaganda, brainwashing and masturbatory invention on the subject of the American Revolution, it is all but impossible to find reference in the United States, outside scholarly works, to the fact that throughout the 1760s and 1770s, there was a growing movement to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, including the Thirteen Colonies. The abolition campaign reached a climactic point on June 22, 1772 when Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of Britain, handed down an epoch-making decision in the case of the "Negro slave known as James Somerset", against the man who purported to own him, Charles Steuart of Virginia.

In his decision, Lord Mansfield declared that "slavery is not allowed nor approved by the law of England" and that Somerset must therefore be set free. Upon hearing the decision, blacks in the audience stood up and bowed to the Court. The Court also recognized that the legal principle of habeas corpus was applicable to black people, a terrifying prospect for slaveowners. The Somerset decision, and another similar one from the Scottish justices shortly thereafter, were stunning victories for the abolitionists and catastrophic defeats for slaveowners throughout the British Empire. These pivotal legal decisions would ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery in all British colonies and possessions throughout the world.

The Somerset case was followed avidly in the Thirteen Colonies with extensive press coverage. It was only too clear to the ruling class in the Thirteen Colonies that, under British rule, freedom for the slaves they owned was inevitable and that the basis of their wealth and power, slavery, would end if the Colonies remained under British rule.

The only way to retain their wealth and power was to retain slavery and the only way to retain slavery was to break away from Britain. Contrary to popular belief, every one of the Thirteen Colonies including New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware practiced slavery.

Shortly after word of the Somerset decision reached Virginia, slaveowner Thomas Jefferson and four other Virginia politicians began to meet in private. They proposed the formation of a "committee of correspondence" of the colonies which was a first step to breaking away from Great Britain. They persuaded their cronies in the Virginia House of Burgesses to present a resolution for the formation of the committees of correspondence. The resolution included a list of committee members, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and several others. Every single one a slaveowner.

Also missing from the fantasyland version of the American Revolution sold to the American public is the central fact that, in 1768, the British had entered into treaties with the American Indian nations, prohibiting further theft of their land by speculators including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois, the Treaty of Hard Labor with the Cherokee and the Treaty of Pensacola with the Cree effectively confirmed the establishment of the frontier by the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

The very word "frontier" as it applied to the Thirteen Colonies is soon perverted by propagandists for the American ruling class into a land of make-believe where valiant, freedom-loving pioneers in coonskin caps with their best girl by their side wrestle bears and struggle to tame the wilderness. In reality, the frontier was a legally-established boundary, intended to be the limit of land theft by the speculators such as George Washington, preserving forever the land on which the Indian nations were guaranteed by law the right to carry on their traditional way of life.

The majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were, in fact, slave owners or their representatives. Virtually all of the signers of the Declaration were land speculators. Most of the "heroes" of the Revolution and of early America were, in reality, resolute opponents of equality, freedom, liberty, the rule of law and, above and beyond everything else, of democracy. Their true and blatantly obvious purposes were to steal Indian land in violation of legally binding agreements, to preserve slavery in perpetuity in order to maintain their own wealth and power as the ruling class and to install a tyranny of that same elite behind a facade of democracy. In fact, like just about it everything else in this sad old world, it was all about money and power.

The Declaration of Independence was followed by the Test Laws, designed to force all colonists into swearing allegiance to their local junta. A record was kept of those who took the oath and they were issued with "a certificate for safety from arrest". Failure to take the oath meant imprisonment, confiscation of property, loss of all legal rights, banishment and even death. Those who refused to participate in the slave-owners' revolution were barred from holding office, banned from the professions and forced to pay double or triple taxes.

Eight months after supposedly giving his famous cry, "Give me liberty or give me death", which may itself be yet another invention of the propaganda machine, freedom-loving slave-owner and land speculator Patrick Henry ordered "diligent patrols" to prevent slaves in Virginia from accepting an offer of liberty by Britain. Propagandized-to-tedium land speculator Benjamin Franklin, instrumental in drafting that immortal paean to freedom, the Declaration of Independence, owned human beings as slaves. The freedom-loving "patriots" of the colony of Rhode Island, a major slave trading center, purchased African slaves who were forced to fight and die in the Revolutionary armies in the place of those lily white lovers of liberty who had purchased them as property.

In contrast, Britain, the evil colonial power, not only ultimately abolished slavery in its own possessions but fought slavery worldwide, maintaining costly naval blockades of the African coast year-round and pursuing slave ships on the high seas, freeing captured Africans. In the new "free" United States, slavery continued to exist for a century after the Revolution. Those slaves who could escaped to freedom in British territory in Canada via the Underground Railroad.

Even after the Civil War, legally mandated apartheid, carrying the seal of approval of that great defender of human rights, the United States Supreme Court, existed until the 1960s, complete with lynchings, cross burnings, mass murder and wholesale electoral fraud. De facto apartheid, systemic discrimination, entrenched racism and race-based electoral fraud exist to the present moment, two hundred and thirty years after the Revolution, most of us have been brainwashed into believing, brought freedom, liberty and democracy to America.

Ordinary colonists were forced to join the Revolution by a campaign of systematic terror carried out largely by the so-called Sons of Liberty. Those who did not wish to fight for the profits and power of the slave-owners and land speculators were harassed, jailed, tortured and murdered; their land stolen, their houses, farms, businesses and ships burned or otherwise destroyed by "patriots". Males who could not escape were forced into the Revolutionary armies, except for the wealthy who could, as always, buy their way out of the draft or buy slaves to take their place, the Texas Air National Guard having not yet been created. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnic and racial groups, more than half the population in some areas, fled the flag-waving terrorists to Canada, the Bahamas, Bermuda and other sanctuaries.

Lies and propaganda, fabricated stories of outrages and massacres, much of it invented and spread by slave-owner Sam Adams, the largely mythical "Boston Massacre" being the most notorious and ludicrous example, were used to manipulate public opinion and build support for the war.

The "republican" "patriots" allied themselves with King Louis XIV of France, whose armies and navy were largely responsible for the military success of the Revolution as part of a world-wide war against Britain. France also provided cash and arms to the "patriots" to carry on their war against Britain.

In spite of the ringing words of the Declaration, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" and the oft-quoted propaganda slogan "no taxation without representation", the instigators of the Revolution, the slave-owning and land-speculating ruling class, had no intention of allowing the people of the United States, white, black, "red" or otherwise, to give or withhold their consent to anything. "Representation" was for no one but the members of their own, very wealthy, very exclusive and very tiny clique of hypocrites, the American ruling class.

We hold these truths to be self-evident,
That all men are created equal.

Slave-owner, ethnic cleanser,
sexual abuser and bullshit artist,
Thomas Jefferson

1773: THIRTEEN COLONIES. The Boston Tea Party: valiant patriots chuck English tea into Boston Harbor to protest against unfair taxation. Well……maybe not. The Thirteen Colonies' biggest smuggler, John Hancock, who ran a huge criminal enterprise which earned him the equivalent of millions of dollars a year in today's money, had organized a boycott of tea from China sold by the British East India Company. By amazing coincidence, this created a huge and ready market for his own smuggled tea. By 1773, the East India Company had accumulated large stocks of unsold tea in its warehouses because it could not compete with Hancock and other smugglers. The British government then passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly without payment of British tax or duty. The East India Company could then sell tea at prices lower than the smugglers.

Yes, you read that right folks……the Boston Tea Party was a protest against the British government REMOVING the tax on tea. Now why on Earth would anyone want to protest the removal of a tax resulting a cheaper product? Well, if you're a big-time smuggler who makes a fortune selling smuggled tea, you might be a little upset at the prospect of having one part of your criminal empire collapse overnight. And, if you're a good buddy of Sam Adams, master propagandist and guiding hand of the so-called Sons of Liberty, it's not too hard to organize a little wanton desruction. First though, you get Sam and the boys to terrorize the agents and consignees of the East India Company with attacks on their businesses and homes. Then, the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Indians and armed with hatchets and clubs, board three ships in Boston Harbor and destroy about 100,000 pounds of tea by throwing it into the harbor. All this to protest the REMOVAL of a tax.

1775: THIRTEEN COLONIES. "The British are coming, the British are coming!" What a great story, Paul Revere riding through the night with his famous message. Makes you feel all tingly and patriotic. But hold on to your tricorn hats, because it turns out that this story is just another lie. The cry might better be, "The Bullshit is coming, the Bullshit is coming!" The truth is that poor old Paul was stopped by British troops and never delivered his message. So why do we believe this nonsense? Largely due to the fact that, in 1860, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem, Paul Revere's Ride which starts with the immortal lines, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere." Longfellow's glorification of Revere was pure invention. A better question might be, why does the falsehood about Paul Revere remain, like so many others, not only uncorrected in the public mind but continue to be nurtured and spread by the mass media?

1775-76: CANADA. American "revolutionary" troops invade Canada. Two separate expeditions are launched, which join forces before attacking Quebec City. The invaders are defeated and driven back to Fort Ticonderoga in New York State.

1776: THIRTEEN COLONIES. John Hancock places the first signature on the Declaration of Independence. Hancock was, at the time, the President of the Continental Congress and would later be Governor of Massachusetts. But there's gotta be more to old John than this, right? Not to put too fine a point on it, he was a big time gangster in a powdered wig. Hancock's family had long been involved in smuggling on a huge scale. He inherited a fortune from his smuggler uncle and went on to become the biggest smuggler in the Thirteen Colonies, accumulating a further fortune, using bribery and terror to carry out his criminal enterprises.
To take a single example, Hancock smuggled about one and a half million gallons of molasses a year into the Thirteen Colonies on which he should have paid about £37,500 duty. In fact, he typically paid only £2,500. The £35,000 a year he made smuggling molasses alone was a vast sum of money in the eighteenth century, the equivalent of millions of dollars today. Hancock also smuggled huge quantities of tea and was the instigator behind the Boston Tea Party. Hancock lived the life of Riley at the pinnacle of Beacon Hill society in Boston. The Revolution came at a good time for him: hundreds of indictments against him for smuggling were never brought before a court and he was free to live a life of luxury on his criminal proceeds.


1776-82: THIRTEEN COLONIES. Virginia planter Charles Lynch puts his name into the language when he creates a kangaroo court for the persecution of Loyalists and their forced conversion to the "patriot" cause by torture and terror. Lynch and his vigilantes kidnap Loyalists, subject them to fake trials and then immediately carry out "sentence" which might include up to thirty nine lashes, property seizure and hanging by the thumbs from the walnut tree on Lynch's property, giving rise to the term "lynching". Lynch also coerced pledges of allegiance to the rebel cause and forced conscription into the rebel forces. Lynch also facilitated the theft of property belonging to his victims.

In the interests of fairness and justice, in 1782, the General Assembly of Virginia passed a special act naming Lynch and three of his fellow vigilantes, retroactively providing them with immunity for their crimes.


1778: THIRTEEN COLONIES. The revolutionary government allies itself with France.

1779: THIRTEEN COLONIES. The revolutionary government allies itself with Spain.

1779: THIRTEEN COLONIES. Slave-owner and land speculator George Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, begins his career of ethnic cleansing in a big way when he orders Major General John Sullivan to utterly destroy the Iroquois tribes who had allied themselves with the Loyalists during the American Revolution. Washington ordered that "parties should be detached to lay waste all the Iroquois settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed."

Sullivan later reports that "the immediate objects of this expedition are accomplished, viz: total ruin of the Indian settlements and the destruction of their crops." The Iroquois nations never recovered from the Sullivan Expedition, and over the course of the next several decades lost nearly all of their land, making it available to speculators such as Washington. For his role in the campaign, Washington earned the nickname "Town Destroyer" or "Devourer of Villages."

The U.S. Government will, in 1929, proudly issue a postage stamp commemorating this ruthless rampage of mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

1783: UNITED STATES. The Treaty of Paris ends the Revolutionary War. Among its provisions are an end to the theft of Loyalist property and compensation for Loyalist property stolen or destroyed by "patriots". In fact, the theft of Loyalist property continues after the signing of the treaty and virtually no restitution is ever made. Hundreds of thousands of Loyalists move to Canada and to other British territories.

But, you have to admit that the slaveowning bastards who orchestrated the Revolution don't discriminate as to who they screw. Two years after fighting the slaveowners' war against Britain, soldiers of the Continental Army have still not been paid. Hundreds of Revolutionary War veterans march on the State House in Philadelphia where Congress is in session and demand their pay. Courageously, Congress flees to Princeton, New Jersey and, several weeks later, the U.S. Army expels the veterans by force.
http://mtwsfh.blogspot.com.au/2007/12/li...ution.html

[David Guyatt]

This all comes as a surprise to me too. I had no idea that many more slaves fought alongside the Redcoats than the rebels.

What really came as a shock was that Davy Crockett wasn't the king of the wild frontier. Fuck those Hollywood types!

I suppose it's a case of the victor always writing the history, concealing the inconvenient facts in the process. Ain't it ever the case.

Yours in disillusion!