Slavery was never abolished in the United States of America. If you disagree with me on this I am going to ask you to go read the 13th Amendment and then come back to this diary. It's O.K. I'll wait.
I hope you really did go read it because I don't want you to think I am just quoting well-doctored excerpts when I show you that slavery was NEVER legally abolished in the U.S. That's right. If you live in the U.S. you are residing in and (maybe) paying taxes into a society that still legally practices slavery.
The full text of the 13th Amendment reads:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[1]
Now let's look at the definition of abolition:
A`bol´ish
v. t. 1. To do away with wholly; to annul; to make void; - said of laws, customs, institutions, governments, etc.; as, to abolish slavery, to abolish folly.
[imp. & p. p. Abolished ( ); p. pr. & vb. n. Abolishing.]
2. To put an end to, or destroy, as a physical objects; to wipe out.
And with thy blood abolish so reproachful blot.
- Spenser.
His quick instinctive hand
Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him.
- Tennyson.
The word abolish is defined here as "to do away with wholly", not "to do away with mostly" or " to do away with pretty much". Since the Constitution allows slavery to continue as a legal institution "as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted", it was, in truth, NEVER abolished. It was reformed.
Essentially slavery in the U.S. was changed from a public practice to a private one. Today it is even blatantly called "the privatization of prisons". Chilling stuff. I know.
I can understand why the United States might not see a need to ACTUALLY abolish slavery since most of the world, including most Americans, regard the country as though it has already done so. As you can see from the Webster Dictionary listing of the word abolition shown above, even the dictionary definition offers the United States as an example of living,breathing abolition. The U.S. can still brag on apple pie and maybe even Netflix but sorry folks, abolition has to come off of the list of great American achievements.
Let's consider for a moment the implications of the word slavery in the U.S. It does not simply mean involuntary servitude. It means that the enslaved individual is not even regarded as a human being. Please read over the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision for more clarification on this issue.
Does it matter much whether something ends entirely or not. Well, you would probably want a fire in your house to be completely extinguished, not just mostly put out. What kind of impact does this lingering atrocity have on the U.S. as a nation and the world? I think it tacitly sanctions this form of brutality as a viable economic practice. When I see the forced labor of Falun Gong practitioners by the Communist Regime in China, the trafficking of girls for rape and forced labor and the countless other unspeakable horrors carried out in the world today for the sake of profit; I am devastated but I am not surprised. Maybe everyone is just trying to keep up with the Jones'.
You might expect me to say that I would like you to help me end slavery. Well, I'm going to be a realist on this issue; I think we are actually a long way from that. I would, however, like the United States to stop getting credit for something that it didn't do. If you hear someone say that slavery was abolished in the U.S. please inform them that U.S. abolition is a myth. That is all I ask. Maybe in time the conventional wisdom that slavery is not over will be enough to awaken the conscience of this nation and finally end this god-awful peril completely. Everywhere.