The Worst American Presidents on Slavery
* What: The genocide of the slave trade and slavery, central to the American economy from colonial times until it was abolished in steps. The Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in new northern states in 1787. Most other northern states banned slavery after the American Revolution. The US international slave trade was abolished by Jefferson and Congress in 1807, though an internal slave trade continued until abolition. (See Section Eight.)
* During the Civil War, slavery was abolished in Washington DC and Union liberated Louisiana in 1862. In 1863, Emancipation abolished slavery in areas under rebellion, and the last of Africans and Natives held under slavery ended in 1865. Some American Indians in isolated parts of California remained illegally enslaved as late as the 1890s. Some undocumented workers in the US live and work today under de facto slavery conditions.
* The Body Count: African plantation slavery in the Americas was one of the worst genocides in human history, at least 60 million deaths. This includes deaths from wars to enslave captives in Africa. These wars generally killed several Africans for each one enslaved. Then forced marches to the coast caused more deaths, deaths from disease during imprisonment on the African coast, up to a 50% death rate in the Middle Passage, another 50% death rate breaking or “seasoning” slaves before sale, and infant mortality rates on plantations double that of even the poorest free people.
* From 10-12 million Africans were enslaved by the slave trade. About 800,000 Africans kidnapped in Africa and enslaved for sale ended up in what became the US, about 6-8% of the total. Thus proportionately, the US share of responsibility for slave trade deaths comes to 3.6 million-4.8 million. This includes during colonial times. The share of deaths since independence would likely be less than one fourth the last figure. At the start of the Civil War, there were perhaps 4,000,000 Blacks forcibly enslaved, one third of the southern population.
* Who Else Gets the Blame:
* Colonial powers Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and even Sweden took part in the slave trade. Of all these nations, the British had the worst record, but also had the strongest and earliest abolitionist movement. The British Royal Navy played the greatest role in stopping the Atlantic slave trade.
* American slave traders continued legally on an international scale until 1807, illegally all the way until the end of the Civil War. The internal slave trade continued until abolition, forcibly removing one million Africans, and became almost as big a part of the economy of the South as plantations. Well known Americans involved in the slave trade included Presidents Andrew Jackson and James Polk. Jim Bowie, best known for his knife and the Battle of the Alamo, was an illegal slave smuggler along with pirate Jean Lafitte. *
* American industries that profited off the slave trade included banks, insurance companies, and the textile industry. Banks held slave trade profits. The insurance industry got its start from insuring slave ships and slaves, especially from losses where the ships' crews forced to dump slaves overboard if caught smuggling slaves after the overseas trade had been banned. The textile industry depended on cotton grown and picked by slaves.
* African slave trading nations played a central role. Entire African empires rose and fell based on enslavement of weaker neighboring peoples. In some ways slavery within Africa itself was not as horrific as in the Americas, though punishments were equally brutal. Slaves often married masters and lived in a similar culture. Internal African slavery was not racially based, and it was easier for slaves to gain their freedom. But slavery in African persisted longer, in some countries like Liberia into the twentieth century.
* Arab slave traders played an intermediary role in some cases. Most of the Arab slave traders took their captives to the Middle East. The slave trade across the North African desert likely killed at least as many Africans proportionately as the Atlantic slave trade.
* American slave owners, especially large plantation owners, from 5-8% of Southern white families owned slaves. Most slave owners owned fewer than ten slaves. Large plantation owners with more than 100 slaves owned the majority of slaves.
* The American government and the US Constitution both recognized and protected slavery and the slave trade in the beginning. The Constitution protected the slave trade for twenty years and gave slave owning states greater representation in Congress.
* There were fifteen US presidents before Lincoln ended slavery. By any reasonable standard, the slave trade and slavery itself were genocide. It fits all the conditions of genocide, mass murder of non-combatants, forced displacement, mass rape, and attempts to wipe out a people in whole or in part. That slave traders and owners were not trying to kill every last African does not make it any less genocide. Hitler did not try to kill every last Pole either, only about every tenth. Yet his actions against Poles are still widely considered genocide.
* What is the record of US presidents on slavery? It is not a valid excuse to claim that since slavery was legal it was not considered immoral. Legality and morality are not always linked, such as in drug abuse, where most consider drug abuse to be immoral, but some favor the legalization of drugs. Many Americans were strongly opposed to slavery long before it was finally banned. The irony is that American presidents often more strongly opposed slavery at the start of US history, when much of the US public did not yet, and were more likely to be defenders of slavery as the time came close to it being abolished. No one president shares the majority of the blame for slavery or the slave trade, thus this entry was placed at the end of the section on ignoring genocide.
* Washington, both Adams, Jefferson, and Madison all questioned the morality of slavery. All wished, privately or publicly or both, that slavery would be abolished. As discussed elsewhere, Jefferson and John Quincy Adams spent much of their political careers fighting to end slavery, with some limited success. Yet Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were all large scale slave owners who lacked the courage to take the steps to end their own participation in an immoral genocide. All three vaguely hoped future generations would end slavery.
* James Monroe is somewhere in the middle. He also owned dozens of slaves, but called for ending slavery. As Virginia Governor, he called out the militia to crush Gabriel's slave revolt. Then he pushed for mercy for many of the rebels, though they had planned to kidnap him. Some were saved from hanging and instead sold. Monroe was also a leader in the American Colonization Society, helping send several thousand Free Blacks and former slaves to Liberia.
* Five presidents have the worst records on slavery:
* 1. Jackson was a slave trader, making a huge fortune off of human misery. He was the first president to not have any criticisms of slavery or question its morality. As general, he threatened a war with Spain and invaded Florida to prevent it being a sanctuary for runaway slaves.
* Jackson personally owned at least 300 slaves. He fancied himself a model slave owner and spread the image far and wide, claiming that he kept slave families together. In fact, he also had a reputation for brutality, offering higher bounties if slave catchers would severely whip runaway slaves before returning them.
* Jackson's slaves lived in cabins twenty feet across, with five to ten slaves per cabin. A sure sign of his lack of mild treatment on his plantation is that his most favored head slave, “old Hannah,” ran away during the Civil War before Emancipation even though she was quite elderly by then.
* 2. William Harrison died in office after only a month. His successor John Tyler not only expanded slavery, he committed treason. During the Civil War he joined the Confederacy and was elected to the Confederate Congress, dying shortly before taking office. As President, Tyler pushed for the annexation of Texas as a slave state, though the war to expand slavery would be provoked by Polk. As congressman, he opposed the Missouri Compromise, believing slavery should be allowed everywhere. The one positive thing to be said about Tyler is that by most accounts his punishment of slaves was not especially brutal.
* 3. Polk fought a war with Mexico to expand slavery. (See Section Three.) Polk was also a slave trader, though he carefully concealed that fact while running for president, having his cousin purchase and sell slaves for him. He was a brutal slave owner, breaking up slave families, selling off disobedient slaves, and punishing slaves severely, even publicly stating that slaves needed to be kept in line with whipping. More than half of all slave children on Polk's plantation died before fifteen, a high rate even for slavery.
* Zachary Taylor was president less than a year and a half before his death. Though a slave owner, his sole influence on the slavery question was arguing for California to be admitted as a free state. When slavery advocates called for secession, Taylor publicly threatened to hang them and they backed down. His successor Millard Fillmore, though not a slave owner, strongly supported and enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring all Americans to return runaway slaves to their owners.
* 4. Franklin Pierce's record on slavery is one of incompetence as well as evil. He tried to buy Cuba to expand slavery and pushed for using force to take it when Spain would not sell. Pierce was president during the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which ended previous compromise on slavery. He did little to stop violence in Kansas, and appointed a pro slavery governor despite free state proponents being the majority. Pierce was so unpopular he declined to run for a second term and became the first president to need bodyguards.
* 5. Buchanan's weakness and defense of slavery almost guaranteed the Civil War to be a long bloody mess. (See Section Four.)