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111. THE CONTRADICTIONS<br />
OF NATION & CLASS<br />
1 Crisis Within the Slave System<br />
The slave system had served Amerika well, but as<br />
the settler nation matured what once was a foundation<br />
stone increasingly became a drag on the growth of the new<br />
Euro-Amerikan Empire. The slave system, once essential<br />
to the life of white society, now became worse than an<br />
anachronism; it became a growing threat to the well-being<br />
of settler life. While the settler masses and their bourgeois<br />
leaders still intended to exploit the oppressed to the fullest<br />
extent, increasingly they came to believe that one specific<br />
form of exploitation-Afrikan slavery-had to be shattered.<br />
Nothing is gained without a price. As "natural"<br />
and "Heaven-sent" as the great production of Afrikan<br />
slave labor seemed to the planters, this wealth was bought<br />
at the cost of mounting danger to settlers as a whole. For<br />
the slave system imported and concentrated a vast, enemy<br />
army of oppressed right in the sinews of white society. This<br />
was the fatal contradiction in the "Slave Power" so clearly<br />
seen by early settler critics of slavery. Benjamin Franklin,<br />
for example, not only gave up slave-owning himself, but in<br />
1755 wrote that slavery should be banned and only Europeans<br />
permitted to live in North America.(l) Twenty years<br />
later, as the Articles of Confederation were being debated,<br />
South Carolina's Lynch stated that since Afrikans were<br />
property they shouldn't be taxed any more than sheep<br />
were. Franklin acidly replied: "Sheep will never make insurrection!<br />
"(2)<br />
Thomas Jefferson of Virginia probably personified<br />
this contradiction more visibly than any other settler.<br />
He is well-known in settler history books as the liberal<br />
planter who constantly told his friends how he agonized<br />
over the immorality of slavery. He is usually depicted as an<br />
exceptional human being of great compassion and much<br />
intellect. What was pushing and pressuring his capitalist<br />
mind was the contradiction between his greed for the easy<br />
life of the slave-master, and his fear for the safety of his<br />
settler nation.(3)<br />
He knew that successful revolution against settler<br />
rule was a possibility, and that in a land governed by exslaves<br />
the fate of the former slave-masters would be hard.<br />
As he put it: "... a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an<br />
exchange of situation is among possible events.. ." That is<br />
why, as U.S. President in 1791, he viewed the great Haitian<br />
Revolution led by Toussaint L'Ouverture as a monstrous<br />
danger. His Administration quickly appropriated relief<br />
funds to subsidize the French planters fleeing that island.<br />
Jefferson's agile mind came up with a theoretical<br />
solution to their "Negro problem"-gradual genocide.He<br />
estimated that returning all slaves to Afrika would cost<br />
Amerika $900 Million in lost capital and transportation expenses-a<br />
sum 45 times the annual export earnings of the<br />
settler economy at the time! This was an impossible cost,<br />
one that would have bankrupted not only the planters but<br />
the entire settler society as well.<br />
President Jefferson's solution to this dilemma was<br />
to take all Afrikan children away from their parents for<br />
compact shipment to the West Indies and Afrika, while<br />
keeping the adults enslaved to support the Amerikan<br />
economy for the rest of their lives.* This would<br />
theoretically generate the necessary profits to prop up the<br />
capitalist economy, while still moving towards an all-white<br />
Amerika. Jefferson mused: "...the old stock would die off<br />
in the ordinary course of nature ... until its final disappearance.<br />
" The President thought this Hitlerian fantasy<br />
both "practicable" and "blessed".<br />
It is easy to understand why this fantastic: plau<br />
never became reality: the oppressor will never willingly<br />
remove his claws from the oppressed so long as there are<br />
still more profits to be wrung from them. Jefferson himself<br />
actively bought more and more slaves to maintain his<br />
pseudo-Grecian lifestyle. As President he signed the 1808<br />
bill allegedly banning the importation of new slaves in<br />
part, we suspect, because this only raised the price he could<br />
obtain from his slave-breeding business.<br />
Jefferson gloated over the increase in his wealth<br />
from the birth of new slaves: " ... I consider the labor of a<br />
breeding woman as no object, and that a child raised every<br />
two years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring<br />
man." It sums matters up to note that President Jefferson,<br />
who believed that the planters should restrict and then<br />
wipe out entirely the Afrikan colony, ended his days owning<br />
more slaves than he started with.(4)<br />
The Northern States had slowly begun abolishing<br />
slavery as early as Vermont in 1777, in the hopes that the<br />
numbers of Afrikans could be kept down. It was also widely<br />
believed by settlers that in small numbers the "childlike"<br />
ex-slaves could be kept docile and easily ruled. The<br />
explosive growth of the number of Afrikans held prisoner<br />
within the slave system, and the resultant eruptions of<br />
Afrikan struggles in all spheres of life, blew this settler illusion<br />
away.<br />
The Haitian Revolution of 1791 marked a decisive<br />
point in the politics of both settler and slave. The news<br />
from Santo Domingo that Afrikan prisoners had risen and<br />
successfully set up a new nation electrified the entire<br />
Western Hemisphere. When it became undeniably true<br />
that Afrikan peoples armies, under the leadership of a 50<br />
year-old former field hand, had in protracted war outmaneuvered<br />
and outfought the professional armies of the<br />
* Although Jefferson never admitted it, most of these<br />
20 children would probably never survive.