AMERICA 250
Let’s call this the first highlight in this, my mini, cherry-picked history of the United States as we celebrate America 250. Remember, I’m searching for both highlights and lowlights, inasmuch as I’m neither a fetishistic basher of this country, nor am I a starry-eyed cheerleader for it.
As I’ve written previously, since this place is the most diverse country in the world, a destination for millions of people wishing to settle down here, it fully represents both the best and worst of humanity. That’s the overall message I wish to convey.
I wouldn’t necessarily characterize the Revolution as a highlight, considering the fact that countless nations have arisen via that route since humans began to gather under flags. And, for the most part, revolutions replace old bastards with new ones. Nor do I consider either of the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution highlights, simply because the lofty sentiments contained therein — liberty, equality, freedoms of speech and assembly, due process, etc. — were largely aspirational. But, okay, let’s give credit where it’s due: both documents made promises that few, if any, other national founders had ever made before.
Trying to compel the powers that run/own the United States of America to make good on the Founders’ promises has been an ordeal, a too often bloody one, throughout our history. But, okay, at least we have those promises. That’s more that 99.9 percent of the nations of the world have ever offered to their people.
Now then:
Highlight No. 1: The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is founded on April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia. It’s the first anti-slavery organization in the Colonies. In 1784, it was renamed the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
Sheesh! That gang sure as hell had no idea how to cook up a short, punchy name, no? They could have called their new group the Anti-Slavery Society, only its acronym would have been ASS, so, uh-uh.
The Society was started by a Quaker named Anthony Benezet, who also had founded the first public school in the Colonies to admit girls (1755) and the first Negro School (1773). Benezet was born Antoine Bénézet in France in 1713. His family moved to the Pennsylvania Colony in 1731. Now styling his name to reflect his more Anglo digs, Anthony, 18 years old at the time, joined the Quaker abolitionist movement. Slavery, he held, was a direct violation of his faith.
As far as I can tell, few images of Benezet exist, so use your imagination. He was white, Gallic, and probably stunk like a goat considering the colonists lacked water heaters, shower wands, and Tom’s of Maine deodorants.
BTW, before the Bénézets left France, Antoine’s daddy-o served as Voltaire‘s business manager. That Bénézet clan sure had some good, progressive chops, didn’t they?
Pennsylvania in 1780 began the gradual process of outlawing slavery within the state’s borders, largely thanks to the presence of the sizable Quaker abolitionist community there.
●