The manga carts basically gave power to landlords, the American revolution protected slavery, the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated the slaves were not people.
No one should be beholden to the “giants whose shoulders we straddle”. Note that that phrase is actually applied to scientists who developed evidence based theories rather than old “pure thought” silliness.
As far as despotic rule - England had an elected government at the time of the American revolution (not saying that America wasn’t justified), but it’s also worth noting that a large number of the early English colonists left England because they wanted to enforce religious domination that wasn’t legal in England.
> the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated the slaves were not people.
That is categorically not true. It said some problematic things about Native Americans for sure, but they could never have gotten away with pro-slavery language in the Declaration. It's a propaganda document that had to unite wide swaths of revolutionary ideologies; abolitionists included.
I assume that you are actually thinking of the 3/5ths compromise in the Constitution, which is still more complicated than just "saying slaves aren't people." Counting slaves as people was the slave-owner position, because being counted wasn't about rights or freedom, it was about State power. It was the abolitionist arguing that slaves shouldn't count as people, not to de-humanize them, but to keep the slave-owners from being able to have it both ways.
You're right, it's an implicit assumption in the declaration, made explicit in the Constitution.
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
Rests on the assumption that slaves are not "men". But something else.
The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI.
That said the “State power” argument in this case has always been the justification for the treason committed by the confederacy. When faced with a legally elected president, making a legal change that they didn’t like, the confederate states mutinied.
They have retroactively tried to call it the “war of northern aggression” (hint, you committed treason, so it’s not). Then they’ve claimed it was about states rights - if it was, then the Supreme Court would have ruled it unconstitutional, they’ve also never mutinied over anything else.
>The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI.
You're treating two different documents that were written 14 years apart by two diffent, though strongly overlapping, groups of people as if they were statements someone made back to back. Did Thomas Jefferson believe the words "All Men" included the slaves he owned when he penned those words? Fuck no! But he still wrote the words in a way that men who did believe that "All Men" meant ALL men could get behind it. Compare this to how he describes the Natives.
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
By examining the nuance, you can start to see a fuller shape of the society. Slavery was a hot button issue that was left unspoken until the moment it unquestionably has to be addressed. The Native Americans are considered savage and warlike, and that is an uncontroversial view.
I understand the impulse to fight back against whitewashed history, but throwing out all nuance isn't helpful no matter what cause it is in service to.
No one should be beholden to the “giants whose shoulders we straddle”. Note that that phrase is actually applied to scientists who developed evidence based theories rather than old “pure thought” silliness.
As far as despotic rule - England had an elected government at the time of the American revolution (not saying that America wasn’t justified), but it’s also worth noting that a large number of the early English colonists left England because they wanted to enforce religious domination that wasn’t legal in England.