[Magdalen] right to bear arms

James Oppenheimer-Crawford oppenheimerjw at gmail.com
Sun Dec 13 08:21:49 UTC 2015


The COE parish in Poughkeepsie owned a slave. Slavery was only gradually
limited to certain areas, so it's a bit unfair to act as if the North did
not have slaves; it certainly did.

And as the comment stated, back in the day when they permitted everyone to
won a gun, they also permitted folks to own people.

We have repented of that, but, yes, we did it. Denial is part of what is
poisoning this country. And it is utterly unnecessary.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 12:21 PM, Charles Wohlers <
charles.wohlers at verizon.net> wrote:

> 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
>


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