LOIE
Gold Member
- May 11, 2017
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I just finished a book titled “The Second,” by Carol Anderson. Here are some excerpts:
“The eighteenth century origins of the “right to bear arms” explicitly excluded black people.”
“Even the “well-regulate militia” interpretation of the Second Amendment ran aground on the shoals of blackness. The militia had been active in the War of Independence, and while states wanted to keep those forces intact afterward to fend off a tyrannical president or foreign aggressor, they had actually proved to be too unreliable and ill-equipped for those roles. They were adept, however, in buttressing slave patrols to hunt down, capture and return back to their owners, blacks who had fled bondage. More important, state militias quashed slave rebellions.”
“Thus, the role of the militia and who controlled it – either the federal government or the slaveholding states – became a sticking point in ratification of the U.S. Constitution. James Madison, architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, understood what was at stake. Just as the continuation of the Atlantic slave trade for an additional twenty years, the three-fifths clause and the fugitive slave clause were embedded into the Constitution to purchase the South’s participation in the United States of America, the Second Amendment was also a bribe.”
“If there was going to be a Constitution and a United States of America, the Federalists had to respond to Mason’s, Henry’s and other Southerner’s assertions that “the federal government would in one way or another, render the militia impotent as a slave control device.”
“The Second Amendment was, thus, not some hollowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with black bodies. It was the result of Madison’s determination to salve Patrick Henry’s obsession about Virginia’s vulnerability to slave revolts, reduce enough anti-Federalists to get the Constitution ratified, and stifle the demonstrated willingness of the South to scuttle the United States if slavery were not protected.”
I had never heard of this explanation of how the Second Amendment came about and how much it had to do with race and slavery.
“The eighteenth century origins of the “right to bear arms” explicitly excluded black people.”
“Even the “well-regulate militia” interpretation of the Second Amendment ran aground on the shoals of blackness. The militia had been active in the War of Independence, and while states wanted to keep those forces intact afterward to fend off a tyrannical president or foreign aggressor, they had actually proved to be too unreliable and ill-equipped for those roles. They were adept, however, in buttressing slave patrols to hunt down, capture and return back to their owners, blacks who had fled bondage. More important, state militias quashed slave rebellions.”
“Thus, the role of the militia and who controlled it – either the federal government or the slaveholding states – became a sticking point in ratification of the U.S. Constitution. James Madison, architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, understood what was at stake. Just as the continuation of the Atlantic slave trade for an additional twenty years, the three-fifths clause and the fugitive slave clause were embedded into the Constitution to purchase the South’s participation in the United States of America, the Second Amendment was also a bribe.”
“If there was going to be a Constitution and a United States of America, the Federalists had to respond to Mason’s, Henry’s and other Southerner’s assertions that “the federal government would in one way or another, render the militia impotent as a slave control device.”
“The Second Amendment was, thus, not some hollowed ground but rather a bribe, paid again with black bodies. It was the result of Madison’s determination to salve Patrick Henry’s obsession about Virginia’s vulnerability to slave revolts, reduce enough anti-Federalists to get the Constitution ratified, and stifle the demonstrated willingness of the South to scuttle the United States if slavery were not protected.”
I had never heard of this explanation of how the Second Amendment came about and how much it had to do with race and slavery.