[Magdalen] right to bear arms

[Charles Wohlers]

It should be noted that slavery was legal in all states *North* of the 
Mason-Dixon line (other that Vermont!), with those states not outlawing it 
until shortly after the Revolution. Doing genealogy uncovered that fact that 
several of my wife's ancestors in Connecticut owned slaves. As did some of 
mine, but they were in what became West Virginia, which was then part of 
Virginia. Also, I have an old Book of Common Prayer in which the owner 
recorded how he got rid of his slaves (he had ~8 of them) right around the 
year 1800. The man was a prominent doctor living in Bristol, Pa. - 
Pennsylvania didn't outlaw slavery until 1800 or shortly thereafter.

Finally, it should also be noted that the majority of white people in the 
South before the Civil War did not own slaves - slaves were expensive, so 
only rich folk owned them. I have lots of ancestors who lived around 
Fairmont, WV (part of Virginia until the Civil War), who were all poor 
farmers. AFAIK, none of them owned slaves.

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Sibyl Smirl
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 7:04 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] right to bear arms

Nope.  You have to go a long way to get "the Right to own people" out of
that compromise.  At that time, the states determined who could vote (I
could not have done)(maybe still do: I had to wait to turn 21 before I
could, in Kansas, it didn't change to 18 until later), and the slave
states wanted their non-voters to be counted as full people so they'd
have more representation in Congress.  The Abolitionists knew that
slavery existed, and were _not_ going to allow it in the Federal
Constitution, but couldn't do anything about it without a Civil War,
which the nation couldn't afford right then (couldn't afford it in 1861,
either, but it happened).


On 12/11/15 4:46 PM, Scott Knitter wrote:
> The right was assumed in the Three-Fifths Compromise. Take away the
> free persons, "Indians," and those bound to Service for a Term of
> Years, and who's left? "three fifths of all other Persons." Art. 1,
> Sec. 2, Par. 3
>
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> wrote:
>> On 12/10/15 10:07 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
>>>
>>> Just read a wonderful thought.
>>>
>>> Back when they wrote the Constitution,
>>> the Founding Fathers said you could own a gun.
>>> They also said you could own people.
>>>
>>> Dang. Why didn't *I* think of that?
>>
>>
>> Our brother Louie put around a photo with that quote on Facebook 
>> yesterday
>> (In very poor grammar (Ebonics?  the photo was of a young Black man of 
>> whom
>> I've never heard otherwise, but then I'm not up on a lot of "pop 
>> culture": I
>> find it hard to believe that an English teacher sent that around).
>>
>> Anyway, the big hole in the quote is that there isn't _anything_ in the
>> Constitution or the Bill of Rights (which is part of the Constitution) 
>> about
>> a Right to own people.  Whoever said it first ("Michael Che?" IIRC) knew 
>> as
>> little about the Constitution as he did about grammar.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sibyl Smirl
>> I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
>> mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net
>
>
>


-- 
Sibyl Smirl
I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net