Slave Breeding Farms and Two-Dollar Bills
“Who ever heard of a two-dollar bill?” I grumbled after belatedly looking at my counterfeit change from buying a three-dollar Spock Beanie Baby at the Dollar Store in San Antonio.
Frank shot me one of his usual lizard eye-rolls. “Just because you’ve never seen a two-dollar bill before doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“Even the dead president on the front looks nothing like Thomas Jefferson.”
“You’re just used to pictures of that racist idiot when he was older.”
“Hey! Jefferson wrote tons of things about hating slavery. Sure, he was forced by the circumstances of his time to deal with the reality of slavery until he could change things, but he was the driving force behind ending the transatlantic slave trade while President, which was a big step in moving the nation closer to its eventual abolition all together.
From his perch on my shoulder, Frank’s tongue flashed outward, snagged a dragonfly, then snapped it back into his mouth with a loud “slurp.”
I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, but everyone else at Hindes Gallery were focused on Susan’s live painting demonstration of a beautiful girl she’d found somewhere while I was getting scammed at the Dollar Store.
Sloppily chewing the murdered dragonfly, Frank said, “You’re referring to Jefferson’s opposition to Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution that forbade Congress from banning the international slave trade until twenty-years had passed?”
How the heck would a lizard from another planet even know such obscure facts, anyhow?
“The Constitution included a twenty-year countdown protecting the international slave trade?”
Frank swallowed the dragonfly and licked his lizard lips. “Just before the expiration date in 1808, Jefferson gave a speech before Congress, saying, “I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe.”
“That makes it pretty clear that Jefferson saw slavery as immoral,” I pointed out in defense of my second-favorite President (Lincoln having become my first-favorite President after I read that graphic novel documenting his role as an axe-wielding vampire hunter in his off hours as President.)
“Jefferson was a master at preaching high-minded morals in service of his own self-interest,” the annoying lizard said.
“How is ending overseas slave-abducting self-serving?”
“Let me dumb this down to something even an artist can grasp,” Frank said in that infuriating alien condescension of his. “Remember your reaction when all those Chinese, Ukrainian, and French artists move to the United States and flooded American galleries with paintings better and cheaper than yours?”
“You’re saying that Jefferson was trying to protect his slave-investments through trade protectionism?”
“The twenty-year clause protecting the importation of captured African slaves had been South Carolina’s demand for ratifying the Constitution, since Charleston was the main import destination for foreign-born slaves. They auctioned off these cheap imports to other states that didn’t have a foreign source — at enormous profits.”
“Wouldn’t ending the slave trade make it hard for Jefferson to get enough slaves to run his plantation?”
Places like Virginia and Maryland not only bred their own local crop of human chattel on their plantations for local consumption, but built massive slave-breeding farms with twelve-foot high fences topped by iron spikes that force-impregnated female slaves like a cattle-breeder might. They even had the women wear hoods during the breeding by a few on-loan burly slave-males selected for the task of mass-seeding so neither male or female knew who they were mating with, which made selling the parentless home-grown child-slaves to other states much easier. By cutting out the import of African slaves, they cornered the market and increased the value of all slaves within in the U.S.”
“I would have heard about something as extreme as this massive dystopian slave Handmaid’s tale conspiracy theory of yours.”
“If a dedicated comic-book history buff like you hasn’t heard of it, I suppose that’s proof that it couldn’t have happened,” Frank sneered.
“That’s not what I — ”
“The two largest breeding-farms were in Richmond Virginia and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Richmond alone exported between 10,000 to 20,000 slaves every MONTH across the south and west. The income from forced breeding of slaves for export far exceeded any other farm crop Virginia produced, bar none. Additionally, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, three out of every five slaves were counted when determining a state’s population for legislative representation, so every newly-minted slave baby added to the slave state’s congressional representation, which increased their political power disproportionate to the number of ‘free’ voters in those state’s — which was crucial in keeping slavery legal.”
“Why wasn’t any of this in my American history books in school?”
“Because the same people who wrote those history books made movies like ‘Gone With the Wind’ that glamorized the antebellum South and created the myth of the Aunt Jemima happy smiling slave stereotype in black-face minstrel shows—and that you now see plastered over breakfast cereal. Imagine what those films would be like if told from the point-of-view of all those slave-women with bags over their heads being raped by Scarlett O’Hara’s father.”
“Thanks for ruining another one of my favorite movies,” I said.
“The initial four-hundred thousand kidnapped Africans that landed in America on slave ships before congress banned human-imports, multiplied to four million black slaves by 1860. It’s akin to buying a tractor that creates new tractors at an exponentially growing rate—and works for free.”
“You’re talking about a perpetual wealth creation machine based on mass rape and forced labor?”
“Consider the fact that the combined total of America’s gold and silver ($228 million), total currency ($435 million), and the entire value of all the South’s farmland ($2 billion) added up to $2.663 billion in 1860. The total estimated value of slaves in the South at that time was $4 billion. So, the value of enslaved humans far exceeded the value of everything else combined in the South. The southern economy was slavery, which is probably why even non-slave holders fought so desperately to preserve human rape and bondage.”
“But didn’t Jefferson eventually free his slaves?”
“Jefferson freed Sally Hemings and the six children she bore him — but only in his will after his death. Even then, good old Tommy Boy went to his grave denying Sally’s children were also his children. It took many generations for DNA (and his travel records showing he was always home concurrent with Sally becoming pregnant) to overturn his biggest lie. Not only did he NOT free any of his other hundreds of slaves, his lavish lifestyle had put him in so much debt that many of those slaves had to be auctioned off and families torn apart when he died, proving how little he cared about any of them.”
“This is too depressing,” I said. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Would you like to discuss how George Washington hunted his wife’s personal slave, Ona Judge, for decades, put ads in newspapers offering a reward for her capture, and even hired bounty hunters to attempt to illegally drag her back in chains after she ran away to seek freedom in free states?”
“At least plenty of northerners fought to defeat the Confederates and end slavery.”
“I’ve noticed that you humans fight for justice mainly when it doesn’t impact your own family’s livelihood.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that slavery began at the dawn of the first large agricultural civilizations in Sumeria, existed throughout all recorded human history where it was economically advantageous, and only ended with the invention of machines that could do the work more efficiently than enslaving your neighbors?”
My eyes widened. “Are you saying that machines are on the verge of enslaving all of humanity?”
“An AI or a robot needs a human slave as much as a car needs horses to pull it.”
Which wasn’t technically a denial.
“Can you assure me that robots aren’t planning to enslave humanity?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking.” Frank gave me one of his lizard half-smiles. “Is a slave that doesn’t realize it’s a slave — actually a slave?”
I tried to say something, but couldn’t find the words.
Frank started laughing so hard, that he nearly fell off my shoulder.
Notes and References:
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/ona-judge#:~:text=Ona%20Judge%2C%20often%20referenced%20by,hired%20from%201772%20to%201784.
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/currency/
· Jefferson, Thomas. “Notes on Coinage.” PTJ, 7:150–202. Transcriptions available at Founders Online.
· Peterson, Merrill. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. See pages 276–78.
· Stanton, Lucia. “The Currency of Reason.” In Monticello Keepsake 55. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 1994.
· Taxay, Don. “Thomas Jefferson and the Founding of the Mint.” In Studies on Money in Early America, edited by Eric P. Newman and Richard G. Doty, 209–16. New York: American Numismatic Society, 1976.
· Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Monticello Classroom. “Jefferson and American Money.”
· Look for further sources in the Thomas Jefferson Portal.
My novels can be found lurking on Amazon as well as audiobooks on Audible.
Nihala — God’s Dark Algorithm
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