About my comments



Published June 01, 2007

Dear editor:

In response to the ranters, I have made no misleading statements regarding the
issue of slavery. Every statement I have ever placed in print or spoken has
been based solely on historical fact which can be proven through the historical
records of our nation. Nor have I ever stated that I ever have condoned the
institution of slavery.

What your ranters and some readers seems to continue to miss are the points
made with regards to slavery and the issues surrounding the War Between the
States. Unlike my letters and statements, the ranters use select tid-bits of
our history to suit their ideas of slavery and continue to ignore the whole
story.

While one of the ranters was correct with the dates quoted regarding slave
importation, the outlawing of slavery, etc., the ranter still should realize
that slaves (white and black) came to these shores as indentured servants. Whites
were not the only indentured servants. This is proven through Virginia court
records which details that during the 1600s Anthony Johnson (previously an indentured
servant) was the first man to ask the courts for and receive a slave for life.
The master, as granted by the courts, as well as the slave were both black.
Anthony Johnson, a black man, is the father of judicially approved slavery in
this country. This is history that your ranters continue to ignore.

Yes, slave importation was outlawed in 1809. But against this ban, Northern
speculators, under the flag of the United States of America, continued to bring
African slaves into Northern ports against the law. These slaves were sold in
the South to planters to increase productivity of the crops thus increasing
the taxes (import and export) the government could and did impose upon the South.
By the 1860s some Northern states had outlawed slavery. But again the ranter
is guilty of not stating the whole truth. Not all Northern states outlawed slavery.
Many Northern states did not dissolve slavery until the ratification of the
13th Amendment, after the War Between the States. Your statement regarding it
being the South and other nations that kept the evil system of slavery going
is false. If you modify that statement to read, it was the United States of
America and other nations then you would be correct.

As for the ranter who states that I do not discuss “that after slavery
was abolished, blacks were still treated little higher than farm animals. They
were not allowed to vote, sent to the worst education facilities with the worst
supplies. They were harassed and murdered by the Klan, not allowed to attend
white institutions, made to use separate and less than adequate public facilities.”
I will point out to you that I have discussed these issues on several occasions.
I will also point out to the ranter that all of these things were done after
the War Between the States and was done as under the watchful eye of the government
of United States of America. Many of the laws limiting blacks got their start
during Reconstruction, when the North and the Federal government was in control
of the South. Leading men of the South had no voice in the political matters
from 1865 til the mid 1870s.

Every article I have ever written, with regards to slavery, has been done based
on proven historical fact. I have never sugar coated the role of Southern planters,
nor the role the South played in the institution of slavery. The South and our
ancestors (white, black, Indian and other races) who loved and fought for the
Constitution, for the limited Federal government as designed by our forefathers
and in trying to uphold these institutions broke away from the United States
and formed the Confederate States of America are not the ones to fault. Over
the past several decades the politically correct and revisionist historians
have unjustly laid all the slavery blame upon our Southern and Confederate ancestors.

May I remind your ranters that the dates they mentioned were all dates prior
to or after the Confederate States of America was in existence. May I also refresh
your ranters to another fact. That during the debates of the 1850’s, centering
around the Missouri Compromise, the Southern states wanted to have all slaves
considered and counted as citizens. This, several years prior to the War Between
the States, would have moved the blacks closer to citizenship throughout the
United States of America but this was not allowed by the Northern states. The
famous quote against this move to citizenship for blacks was made by a Northern
congressman ….“Blacks in the North will not be citizens but rather used
as a horse is used in the South.” These Northern congressmen would only
allow blacks to be counted as 1/3 a person. Why? Because had the blacks been
counted as a whole person, as individuals, the political power of the Nation
would have swung from the North to the South as the South was heavily populated
by blacks.

And finally to your ranters, I would welcome the opportunity to openly discuss
these issues with you one on one or in a public forum. I have spent many years
studying the issue of slavery through our nation’s history and especially
as it related to the Confederate States of America. In painting my pictures
for the readers, as one ranter called it, I do use every color and all the facts
in the pictures. Unlike the ranters, I realize, discuss and celebrate the full
spectrum of my heritage and do not hide behind the anonymity of a rant.

Keith Taylor

Moultrie

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http://www.moultrieobserver.com/opinion/local_story_152223714.html