dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Found this while looking for anything to do with "Open Wound" per POTUS twat. Found following sauce to have a couple terms that stood out. One being

>The Great Awakening

restricted access 4. The Era of the American Revolution: The Challenge to Slavery and the Compromise

William McKee Evans

University of Illinois Press

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50 Chapter 4 The Era of the American Revolution The Challenge to Slavery and the Compromise In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that “all men are created equal . . . [and] are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In Britain, Dr. Samuel Johnson retorted, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”1 Slavery was practiced in every one of the thirteen original states. Yet few Patriots saw any disconnect between what they said about liberty and how they treated black people. Black slavery was normal. For some Patriots, however, all men’s “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” evoked the ancient religious tradition that freedom was the natural human condition.2 There were no slaves in God’s original creation. But long ago, mainstream Christians had come to terms with the fact of slavery in a world of sin. They knew that there were peoples who did not practice slavery, indeed peoples who had the most rudimentary class divisions of any kind. These, however, were “primitive” or “barbarous” peoples, not societies that they admired, like the Greeks and Romans. Wherever civilization had shone most brilliantly, it had cast its darkest shadows. And in those shadows there had always been slaves. A world without slaves was a fantasy of holy men, not a plan of ordinary people. Yet if the idea that God made humankind one family and made them free was too lofty for people to live by, it was also too noble for them to forget. There had always been God-intoxicated prophets who would not let them forget. One of these in Pennsylvania in the 1700s was Benjamin Lay. Like many a critic of slavery before him, Lay did not blend unnoticed into the social landscape of his day. He rarely trimmed his white beard. He observed a strict vegetarian diet and wore only homespun clothes that he made himself. For his food and clothing he would use no materials that had resulted from the enslavement of a human being or from the death of an animal. One practice of this glorious eccentric was to storm into a church during divine services and to the scandalized worshipers announce, “I came to cry aloud against your practice of slaveholding.”3 Technology and Abolition As the century progressed, abolitionist harangues were becoming more common . Something had occurred, furthermore, that had never before happened in the history of the world. Not only were more and more people listening to the abolitionists but they included people of a very different frame of mind from that ancient line of prophets extending from Benjamin Lay back over the millennia to John the Baptist and beyond.4 Many of those who now most clearly saw the virtue of free labor, and the evil of coerced labor, were those closest to the growing edge of technology. In the marvels of the Industrial Revolution, they had glimpsed a vision of the world transformed. The civilization that was to come would shine brighter than any in the past, and there would be no slaves except machines. Many of these new opponents of slavery were Quakers, who both in England and America had an unusually keen interest in such earthly problems as the best way to recover lead from ore, how to bring light into a mine without causing an explosion, or how to deal with its poisonous gases. They were investigating the mysteries of electricity, were captivated by “useful improvements ,” such as watches, scientific instruments, and all kinds of mechanical contrivances.5 England, the wicked stepmother of American Patriots, was at the center of this scientific and technological revolution. But its shock waves extended far: to the French and Scottish Enlightenment and to the great minds of America, including the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.6 the era of the american revolution 51 The Great Awakening If the revolution in science and technology was forcing secular thinkers to take a new look at slavery, its impact on religious thinkers was equally great. In the English-speaking lands, especially, a vibrant upsurge of religious activity was redefining faith. There was an exciting rediscovery of John 1:9, a biblical text more often shelved and forgotten than remembered and quoted: “That was the true light of the world which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” This was the doctrine of the “inner light.” To many, these words said that the…

>https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/609397