The Crime of the 1619 Project and the CRT for Falsifying American History

The Crime of the 1619 Project and the CRT for Falsifying American History

Ann M. Casey

By its own lack of scholarship and research, the 1619 Project has discredited itself by its falsehood that African slavery began here in 1619. These claims are the insidious lies underpinning the sand-filled foundation of the Critical Race Theory, full of self-aggrandizement to further a baseless theory.

Ms. Nikole-Hannah Jones could have read John Rolfe’s diary entry in full on that day in August. First, when Christianity became widespread throughout Europe, there was a distinction pertaining to the enslaving of Christians that endured through to the latter part of the 17^th century, a baptized Christian could not be sold as a lifetime slave.

This held true when the first black “slaves” were traded for food from what Mr. Rolfe called a Dutch slave ship in August of 1619.

His eyewitness account states the following:

“About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars. They were needed for the booming tobacco crop, but had been baptized, so as Christians they could not be enslaved for life, but only indentured, just like many of the English colonists, for 5-7 years.”^[1]

As a side note to consider, is how historians refute Rolfe’s statement, stating it was in fact a Portuguese slave trader San Juan Bautista which had been captured by the British privateers by The White Lion and The Treasurer in the Gulf of Mexico. The San Juan Bautista was bound for Mexico to sell its ‘cargo’.[2]

While the dispute can perhaps be accepted, what cannot be is the demand that African slaves began wholesale at this point in our history, and what becomes more dangerous, is the omission and absence of the rest of Rolfe’s diary entry regarding their status as Christians. This in and of itself marks of shoddy scholarship, for this was the basis for decades.

The other point that is not explored is the fact that England was unable to break into the African Slave Trade, as it was under the monopoly of African tribal leaders, the Middle East, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch; (The White Lion was flying the Dutch flag.)

The difficulty at the time for England was that her economy was somewhat spent in maintaining their fledgling colony of Virginia and with France occupying the vast territory to the north and Spain occupying the vast territory to the south, England had little inclination to invoke either country in war.

Yet with Rolfe’s smuggling of Spanish tobacco plants from a Spanish captain, in 1619, he was able to bring Jamestown and its environs a foothold on establishing a viable economy with their tobacco crop.

As tobacco is labor-intensive, cheap labor was needed and unable to gain any wedge into the African Slave Trade, other solutions needed to be utilized, which was on the streets of England, most notably London’s. What occurred was the enslavement of England’s own.

The format was simple, put in force the laws passed prior on the books by the Vagrancy Act, (passed in 1597, when the first transportation of “felons” began).

The unofficial Transportation Act, under the reign of James 1^st. did not begin until 1619, and the first vagrants charged and transported were children from the ages of eight to sixteen (they were held in Bridewell and then in chains, held in the hold of the ship prior to sailing.)

It was after this first trip was complete that the system gained rapidly in sophistication. The trade wind routes were quite beneficial to gain the riches in the vast profits to be made in tobacco and rum; the return trip thus made the business of shipping the human cargo all that more lucrative.

Under James, the Crown relied on privately owned shipping merchants to prevent expenses to its own coffers. The London (Virginia) Company realized the potential of the simple expedient of bidding one or two pounds per convict in the prisons and then tripling the original bidding price in Virginia and elsewhere.

A new resource was in the making and by the use of their own captains and ships, less cost and more profits were created.  The inception of the notorious “triangle trade” was thus established between English merchants profiting from the white slave trade to the colonies long before Africa became part of the route. To give greater clarification, here is the basis and quote that laid the groundwork for the profitable situation.

In regards to this commencement of transportation, there is a copy of the letter written by Sir Thomas Smyth containing a communication from King James to the Lord Mayor of London, reciting the following, on the date of 13 Jan. 1618:—

That  “the King to Sir Thomas Smyth, states that the Court had lately been troubled with divers idle young people, who, though twice punished, still continued to follow the same; having no other course to clear the Court from them, had thought fit to send them to him, that -at the next opportunity they might be sent to Virginia to work there, and remarking that some of these persons had already been brought by the King’s command from Newmarket to London, and others were coming. The Company of Virginians had no ship ready to sail, and no means to employ them or place to detain them in, and he requested the Lord Mayor to authorise their detention and employment in Bridewell, until the next ship should depart for Virginia.” ^[3]

The consequences of the 1619 Project and it’s offshoot, CRT, eradicates the need and necessity of seeking and searching for the truth of history, imposing a burden on generations who allow themselves to be guided by falsifying the actual events into a victim fantasy where blame can without conscience, can be placed. Slavery is as ancient a business as the human race, where none may claim exclusive subjugation of its brutality.

European slave trade by destination

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[1] From the diary of John Rolfe in the Virginia Company Colonial Records

[2] The First Africans | Historic Jamestown and Jamestown Rediscovery

[3] Letter from King James I to Sir Thomas Smyth relating to the transportation of children to Virginia 13 January 1618. Reproduced courtesy City of London, London Metropolitan Archives.

[4] “The Slave Trade”, Hugh Thomas, 1997

[5] “Transformations in Slavery”, Paul Lovejoy, 2000

~~~

Ann M. Casey

An odd influence for a writer perhaps, yet it became the starting point, ‘The Grasshopper and the Ants. I was five, my mother was teaching me how to read from McGuffey’s First Reader, have the whole collection by the by. It was then she also read me that Aesop’s tale, I remember asking how he is the bad guy when he gave the gift of playing his music for free. The query was met with puzzlement, so I stayed the path of the Grasshopper seeking the truth and still convinced he is the real hero of the story.

As with writers, the gift is given and if not applied to benefit in love, that same gift is ill-used and rescinded. Such is the honor required to write and to seek the truth however impalpable it may be. This lead to not only writing the history of my own parish of Saint John’s but searching the Catholic history of North America, for volume one of two, ‘Our Tenacity of Faith.’ Also, three plays, a collection of one short story and two novellas, and my non-fiction historical work, Thieves, Rogues and Vagabonds, America’s First Slaves, are in progress and with the first of a series of Mrs. McGinty’s Travelling Cart.

The journey has and is not without its times of difficulty, yet one carries on because that is the job, to write and to write well.

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