What Cliven Bundy May Not Know About Slavery in America

“Because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.”

“And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”-Cliven Bundy

What an uneducated, inaccurate and insensitive statement this was for anyone to make, especially on national television, insulting and stereotyping America’s African Americans.

Having personally studied historical accounts about the dark and disturbing realities of the life of the African slave during pre-civil war America (ante-bellum) days, I was appalled. The statement made by Mr. Bundy is a gross lie and distortion of a very dark side of American history.

In fact, most Americans are not fully aware of the true horrors of what African- American slaves in America were forced to suffer and endure at the hands of their owners and overseers alike.

An excellent book, AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS-TESTIMONY-A THOUSAND WITNESSES published in 1839, exposes the horrors and grim reality of slavery in America as no other publication can.

Cliven Bundy later expresses shock that African Americans might feel his comments are racially offensive, and claims that Martin Luther King must not have done a good job educating them  if they feel offended by his terminology describing them.

However, every African American who has studied and understands the grim history of slavery in America, might have reason to feel offense due to Bundy’s insensitivity and apparent ignorance regarding this sensitive subject.

African Americans today obviously have a far better life today in America, than in ante-bellum America (prior to the civil war and it’s end.) They have that precious gift called FREEDOM. This is something the slaves did not have before the civil war ended. 

NO one can even begin to comprehend the horrors of the world of African slaves in America, without taking the time to read eye-witness accounts of what African slaves actually suffered continually in North America.

In the course of reading this book, I have actually felt compelled to stop reading it at times, simply because of the graphic horrors and abuse it describes on every page.

The following excerpt comes from the book described above. I highly recommend that my readers go to the website to see and actual copy of this book, and to read the entire account.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html

BELOW is an excerpt from the introduction of this book, “AMERICAN SLAVERY AS IT IS”

We will prove that the slaves in the United States are treated with barbarous inhumanity; that they are overworked, underfed, wretchedly clad and lodged, and have insufficient sleep; that they are often made to wear round their necks iron collars armed with prongs, to drag heavy chains and weights at their feet while working in the field, and to wear yokes, and bells, and iron horns;

That they are often kept confined in the stocks day and night for weeks together, made to wear gags in their mouths for hours or days, have some of their front teeth torn out or broken off, that they may be easily detected when they run away; that they are frequently flogged with terrible severity, have red pepper rubbed into their lacerated flesh, and hot brine, spirits of turpentine, poured over the gashes to increase the torture; 

…That their ears are often cut off, their eyes knocked out, their bones broken, their flesh branded with red hot irons; that they are maimed, mutilated and burned to death over slow fires. All these things, and more, and worse, we shall prove. 

Reader, we know whereof we affirm, we have weighed it well; more and worse WE WILL PROVE. 

Mark these words, and read on; we will establish all these facts by the testimony of scores and hundreds of eye witnesses, by the testimony of slaveholders in all parts of the slave states, by slaveholding members of Congress and of state legislatures.

Also by ambassadors to foreign courts, by judges, by doctors of divinity, and clergymen of all denominations, by merchants, mechanics, lawyers and physicians, by presidents and professors in colleges and professional seminaries, by planters, overseers and drivers. 

We shall show, not merely that such deeds are committed, but that they are frequent; not done in corners, but before the sun; not only in one of the slave states, but in all of them. 

Not perpetrated by brutal overseers and drivers merely, but by magistrates, by legislators, by professors of religion, by preachers of the gospel, by governors of states, by “gentlemen of property and standing,” and by delicate females moving in the “highest circles of society.” 

We know, full well, the outcry that will be made by multitudes, at these declarations; the multiform cavils, the flat denials, the charges of “exaggeration” and “falsehood” so often bandied, the sneers of affected contempt at the credulity that can believe such things, and the rage and imprecations against those who give them currency. 

We know, too, the threadbare sophistries by which slaveholders and their apologists seek to evade such testimony. If they admit that such deeds are committed, they tell us that they are exceedingly rare, and therefore furnish no grounds for judging of the general treatment of slaves; that occasionally a brutal wretch in the freestates barbarously butchers his wife, but that no one thinks of inferring from that, the general treatment of wives at the North and West.