Slavery/ Presidents Day

"Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World" is the book I am currently reading. Fantastic book, if you can stand to have your eyes opened more. The most amazing thing to me is the amount of disinformation that I learned so well as a good student at good schools.

I have talked before about how shocked I was when visiting the Old North Church in Boston and seeing for the first time the list of founders and making the connection between the founders' former jobs (governor of Havana) and the fortunes these men made. (slavery). Then I looked up some of the ways the fortunes were made 4x in each voyage. Old John Hancock taking timber or Rockport granite to England, the English fabric to West Africa, then Slaves to the Caribbean then rum and sugar to Boston. One cool fortune. This book takes it much deeper. Boat building fortunes from New England, by the same families that tax the trade, collecting metals from South America mined by the slaves to pay for the slaves, making salt cod the food of slaves- another New England fortune, same families selling the cod who sold the ships, sold the slaves, and sold the products of slavery. Throw in a few diamond mines and, oh my God.

I grew up thinking that the North was filled with righteous people who had high standards because of their stand in the Civil War. (What indeed was civil about it?) Schools and text books? Don't the teachers know better? 1/4 of all US presidents had slaves or slave business. One in eight black men are now in prison. Have we made any progress here?

I do like this book, very much. It took off from some characters in Melville's"Benito Cereno" who, it turns out were actual people. When the slave trade got too crowded, these fine New England families opened banks and insurance companies and investment firms. Life goes on. This is a well written book except for the frequent interruptions when I let out a scream. It is as upsetting as  the Monsanto book I spoke a lot about last year, it is almost as upsetting as reading Jeremy Scahill.

I think that I would feel half dead if I didn't try and keep informed. But I do balance things off with Buddhist writings which give me hope for mankind and murder mysteries which I hope are fiction.