Coming Soon -- Kandace Presents: The Caucasian Opponents

How you've lived your life counts for squat.

You will obey and you will pay.

Well for openers who do you think is going to pay for the Green New Deal?

Then shouldn't it be called the White New Deal?

The Polish Legions In Haiti (1802-1805)


The Haitian revolution was arguably one of the most influential revolutions in world history.  It set the stage for the independence of most of Latin America, as free Haiti provided invaluable assistance to the Latin American Liberator Simon Bolivar.
By crippling France's foothold in the Western Hemisphere, it induced Napoleon to sell his claim on the land in the heart of the Mississippi Valley to the then upstart nation, the US of A, doubling America's size literally overnight,  setting the stage for that nation's dominance of crucial waterways that would make it a continental power able to expand westward.  And the Haitian Revolution prompted America's Founding Fathers to halt the importation of slaves after 1808.  And also to lobby furiously for the abolition
of slavery in the northern US and against its extension into the NW Territories.

Yet, for all of the ink that has been spilled analyzing the Haitian revolution and its numerous phases, plots, counter-plots, and after-effects, one aspect of the Haitian revolution is mostly overlooked:  the role of Polish Deserters
who fought on the side of the Haitians.

From the 1770 through the early 1800s, Poland was partitioned and slowly but steadily fell under the control of Austria, Prussia, and Prussia.  Large numbers of Polish soldiers, who gained experience fighting a losing battle against ever encroaching invaders, served in the army of Napoleon.   In 1802, Napoleon, desperate for cash to fund his wars, enraged at the though of those uppity Africans (not that he called them that) winning their freedom from French slaveholders, and just plain ticked off because there were  Black generals in his army who were sexier than he was (it often comes back to that, doesn't it?) launched an invasion of Haiti with over 5,000 Polish soldiers to re-enslave the embattled populace.   Once the Polish regiment arrived, it was fiercely attacked by malaria, yellow fever, and Haitians desperate to maintain their freedom. 


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Battle at San Domingo


Yet, as they fought the Haitians, it dawned on many Poles that they, a people who lost their homeland, should not fight to re-enslave a people fighting for their freedom.  So, hundreds of Poles defected, and began to fight alongside the Haitians.  (The fact that Haitian were also Catholic arguably influenced them).  Many Poles died in defense of Haitian freedom.   Once the war was over, 400 Polish soldiers remained in haiti, settling in their own little villages, inter-marrying with Haitian women, and becoming, along with neutral Germans, officially "Black" under Haitian law.

Their descendants remain in Haiti to this day:


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When Pope John Paul II visited Haiti in 1983, he mentioned the role of Poles in fighting for Haiti's freedom, and met with Polish-Haitians.

So the author would have us believe that the French sold millions of acres in a river basin because they lost Haiti?  I'm hard pressed to accept that as anything other than conjecture.  

Cool work by the Poles though.

Elihu Embree (1782-1820)   



The Haitian Revolution produced two contradictory trends concerning the institution of African Racial Chattel Slavery.  First, it produced a surge of radical abolitionism in Latin America as well as gradual emancipation in the British controlled West Indies.   Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator of Latin America from Spanish domination, received valuable assistance from Haiti on the condition that he abolish slavery in his new republic of Great Columbia (Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Chile).  The shockwaves of Haitian independence were felt in Mexico, where the people were inspired to rebel and overthrow three centuries of Spanish rule.   Mexico in turn abolished slavery.   Second, the Haitian revolution, led as it was by enslaved Africans still a generation or two removed from Africa and familiar with African military tactics, convinced Great Britain that Africans should no longer be imported to the West Indies.

The loss of Haiti to the global sugar  market produced a void, one that was filled by the newly expanded USA, which expanded slavery through its newly acquired Louisiana Territory.  It was into this world of expanding slavery that Elihu Embree was born.   The son of a Quaker minister, Thomas Embrue, Elihu and his family moved from Pennsylvania to the region that would become Tennessee in 1790.   






Elihu and his brother Elijah became  the region’s earliest and most prominent iron manufacturers.   Like many of the commercially up and coming merchant class of his society, Elihu was a slave owner.  However, at the age of 30, Elihu had an epiphany which caused him to became an ardent abolitionist.   He became a leader in the Manumission Society of Tennessee, first organized in Greene County in 1815 under the leadership of Charles Osborn and John Rankin.   In April 1820 Elihu began publishing The Emancipator, the first publication in the United States devoted exclusively to the antislavery cause. Elihu railed ferociously against the institution of slavery, , calling slaveholders “monsters in human flesh,” and denouncing the Missouri Compromise with the demand “Not another foot of slave territory!” Slavery, he argued repeatedly in the pages of his popular newspaper, “is a shame to any people,” and “freedom is the inalienable right of all men.”


It was only his untimely death from bilious fever Although his untimely death in 1820 of bilious fever that prevented him from being numbered among the nation's most prominent abolitionists.

Can I get a link to this assertion?

See Jessica Krug, Rachel Donezal.

John Jay (1745-1829) 





John Jay  was an illustrious Founding Father of the United States.  He served as President of the Second Continental Congress from 1778 to 1779. He served as Minister to Spain from 1779 to 1782, securing vital financial support form the Spanish Crown for the then shaky cause of American Independence.   He negotiated and signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which official ended the American War of Independence.  From 1784 to 1789, Jay served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the fledging American Confederacy.  While Jay did not attend the Constitutional Convention (Well, he had earned his rest), he forcefully advocated for the establishment of a stronger central government.  Upon the creation of the federal United States of America under the Constitution, he was appointed Chief Justice of the new Supreme Court, on which he served from 1789 to 1794.  Upon leaving Court (yes, Justices used to do that), Jay was elected as the  second Governor of New York, which office he occupied from 1795 to 1801.

John Jay was, like many Founding Fathers, a great Walking Contradiction.  He was an ardent champion of Liberty and an ardent slaveholder.   Like other Founding fathers, he recognized this contradiction.   Unlike many other Founding Fathers, je actually did a great deal to abolish the institution of African Chattel Slavery where he could, in the state of New York.  Early in his career, Jay was a very public advocate of Abolition.  In his 1774 Address to the People of Great Britain, Jay declared:


Friends and Fellow-Subjects: When a Nation, lead to greatness by the hand of Liberty, and possessed of all the Glory that heroism, munificence, and humanity can bestow, descends to the ungrateful task of forging chains for her friends and children, and instead of giving support to Freedom, turns advocate for Slavery and Oppression, there is reason to suspect she has either ceased to be virtuous, or been extremely negligent in the appointment of her Rulers.
 
In 1785, Jay founded the New York Manumission Society in 1785, which organized boycotts against newspapers and merchants involved in the slave trade, and provided legal counsel for free blacks claimed or kidnapped as slaves.

In 1787, the Manumission Society founded the African Free School,  which evolved into a system of several schools dedicated to the education of free African youth.   The alumni of the Free African School System includes a  Who's Who list of prominent free AAs in the mid 19th century:  Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn a university medical degree and work as a physician; actor Ira Aldridge; Minister Alexander Crummell; educator Charles Lewis Reason; and missionary and educator Alexander Crummell, etc.  

The Society helped enact the 1799 law for the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York, which Jay signed into law as governor. “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” provided that, from July 4 of that year, all children born to slave parents would be free (subject to lengthy apprenticeships) and that slave exports would be prohibited.

His sons and grandson went on to become strong advocates of Abolition.

Arthur & Lewis Tappan ---  (1786/1788-1865/1863)





The Tappan Brothers, Arthur & Lewis, were the scions of a large (11 children!) Massachusetts Congregationalist merchant family. As Congregationalists, they were theological heir of the Puritans who founded the Bay Colony nearly a century and a half earlier. Both brothers became prosperous merchants, with Arthur establishing a dry goods business base in Canada and Lewis becoming a dry goods merchant in Philadelphia. The War of 1812 proved a mixed blessing for the Tappans. Arthur was forced to abandon his Canadian business ties while Lewis, taking advantage of the commercial restrictions on british goods, achieved a windfall in business. Both brothers drifted towards New York City, then emerging as the great commercial capital of the young nation, and became stabilized in the import business, particularly the import of silks from China (even then, importing from China was a source of wealth  )

The Tappans prospered greatly in this commercial hothouse, and used their wealth to found a newspaper, The New York Journal of Commerce, which refused advertising from "immoral sources." They also were adamant about selling goods at fixed prices rather than based on the willingness and eagerness (or desperation) of customers to pay at various price levels. This practice, originally a Quaker way of doing business that was eventually embraced as a "Christian" way of engaging in commerce.
However, for both brothers, wealth was not a means to an end. Rather, not enabled them to fund various philanthropic cases such as temperance, vocational education for the poor, rehabilitation for women trapped in sex trafficking, and abolition.

The Tappans' introduction to abolitionism was sparked by a visit in 1830 from William Lloyd Garrison, the eminence anti-slavery crusader of the age. The Tappans were not, as social conscious reformers, ignorant of the evils of African racial chattel slavery. They were among the many influential anti slavery citizens who facilitated the 1828 emancipation of Abdul-Rahman ibn Ibrahima Sori, a Fulani nobleman who had been captured in battle and sold into slavery in Mississippi. Lewis Tappan supported the American Colonization Society, which planned to send free AAs back to Africa. However, Lewis and also Arthur became increasingly frustrated by the steady spread of slavery across the nation, as an institution that many at the time of the founding of the USA assumed would "whither away" (respects to Marx) instead found new life through mechanization of cotton processing through the cotton gin. So the Tappans became radicalized. They supported Garrison's newly founded American Anti-Slavery Society, and Arthur served as its president from 1833 until 1840 (He resigned when it also took up the cause of feminism). When the new college, Oberlin, was founded in Ohio to provide a higher education to AAs at a time when virtually all college education was blocked to them, the taipans were among its most prominent benefactors.

The Tappans hit the cause celebre jackpot, so to speak, when the slave ship Amistad, came to US shares after its enslaved passengers staged a slave revolt against their Cuban owners. The Africans were captured and ailed, although eventually freed and allowed to go back to Africa after their case went all the way to the US Supreme Court (and they had former president John Quincy Adams as their defense counsel )

The Tappans' activism did not go unchallenged.  Among their most inveterate foes was John Tyler, 10 President of the US of A (1841-1845).  John Tyler was a fervent defender of the institution of African Chattel Slavery.  In one of his speeches to his flow slaveholders, president Tyler held up an abolitionist publication and declared:

"You [slaveholders] are represented as demons in the shape of men; and by way of contrast, here stands [the abolitionists] Arthur Tappan, Mr. Somebody Garrison, or Mr. Foreigner Thompson, patting the greasy little fellows on their cheeks and giving them most lovely kisses."

Tyler refereed to the abolitionist literature funded by the Tappans as:

"[E]vil," "seditious and incendiary publications." 


Tyler further declared that abolitionists such as the Tappans "deserve the deepest curses of the patriot, for having put in jeopardy the noblest and fairest fabric of government the world ever saw. When I think of it, all the milk of my nature is turned into gall."

In other words, in the eyes of Tyler and other slaveholders, abolitionists were dangerous radicals, enemies of the people, and just plain un-American for defending the rights of people of African descent.   

Hmmm.  Sounds familiar.   


Anyway, as could be expected, the Tappans' abolitionist activism created a massive backlash against Arthur and Lewis's business ventures. The Tappan name became synonymous with anti-slavery agitation and many Caucasians in the South as well as the North hated them passionately. Mobs attacked their homes, burned them in effigy throughout the South, and boycotted their business across the nation when possible. The boycott began to take a considerable toll on the Tappans' business. So Lewis made a radical decision. They would tend credit to customers, rather than operate on a cash only business as they had been doing. Why was credit radical? Because the taipans viewed credit as a form of usury, a most unbiblical practice. However, Lewis wondered, what if they just kent money to people who could pay it back? That would not be exploitative.

But, how could they know who could be trusted to pay back? To solve this quandary, Lewis created a network of investigators who would examine the background of potential customers. The network supporting Tappan's Mercantile Agency began among fellow members of the abolitionist network but quickly grew to include investigators who, while not abolitionist, did not mind working for a man whose very public profile was highly abolitionist. By 1844, the Tappans had 280 clients and offices in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. Some of their more destined to be famous investigators included Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Soon, other business men came to the Tappans for advice on who was credit-worthy and who was not. By 1851, the credit reporting agency had 2000 full-time correspondents were reporting from across the nation. In 1858, it became the R.G. Dun & Company business. (In 1933 R.G. Dun & Company would merge with its main rival, Bradstreet, forming Dun & Bradstreet, the largest credit reporting entity in the world).

Life, for the Tapppans, was good, as they used their prosperity to support numerous causes dedicated to the uplift of humanity. And when they finally shuffled off their mortal coils, the institution of African Chattel Slavery was on its deathbed. Never let it be said that doing well cannot be done by doing good. )

Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802-1837) --- Martyr of Abolitionism & Free Press




Elijah Lovejoy was born in the early years of the American Republic, descended from the Puritan stock which composed the significant portion of the founding bloodlines of American society. He was a highly intelligent and dedicated pupil, excelling in public schools of Maine and matriculating at Waterville College (now Colby College). He was financially supported by Benjamin Tappan (brother of the abolitionist Tappan brothers) during his studies at Waterville, and in 1826 graduated cum laude as valedictorian of his class.

His next few years were characterized by economic privation as he worked at various jobs, as newspaper editor and teacher, and floated up and down the east coast, from New York to Boston then to Illinois. He then moved top St.Louis, MO, which had the usual distinction of being absorbed of slavery, with its prominent slave markets, as well as a hotbed of anti-slavery agitation. Lovejoy found work at the St. Louis Times newspaper, but later felt called to Princeton Theological Seminary to study and follow his father's path into the ministry

Upon graduation from Princeton, in 1834 Lovejoy returned in St.Louis, MO, where he assumed pastorate of the local Presbyterian church. There he began to punish a newspaper, the St. Louis Observer. He used this platform to advocate the abolition of African chattel slavery. This advocacy did not sit well with the local slaveholders, who were angered to have their economically foundational institution challenged. The anger of the slaveholders was amped up to 11, as it were, when in 1836 Lovejoy published a chilling, horrific account of the lynching of an AA man in St. Louis by a Caucasian mob, as well as the subsequent acquittal of the mob on all charges. This moved another Caucasian mob (or was it just the same mob?) to storm his newspaper and destroy the printing press.

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The frenzied atmosphere of St.Louis made publishing his newspaper impossible, so Lovejoy relocated to Alton, Illinois, just 15 miles north of St. Louis. In Alton Lovejoy became an active member of the local Anti-Slavery Society, edited the Alton Observer, and continued to advocate against slavery.

Unable to publish his newspaper in St. Louis, Lovejoy moved to Alton, Illinois where he became an active member of the local Anti-Slavery Society. He also began editing the Alton Observer and continued to advocate the end of slavery. The pro-slavery mobs (my they were persistent) followed Lovejoy and three times attacked the Alton Observer and threw its printing press into the Mississippi River.

In early November 1837, Lovejoy received another printing press. One again, a pro-slavery mob stormed the warehouse where the press was stored. Lovejoy and some allies were there, armed, to defend the press. In the ensuing melee, Lovejoy was murdered.


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Lovejoy's death stirred massive indignation throughout America. The pro-slavery forces were no longer seen as just oppressing AAs, but as threatening freedom of the press, a foundational freedom of the republic. Caucasians who had been aloof and indifferent to the slavery issue began to view the pro-slavery cause with suspicion. Now, it was their rights that were at stake. The anti-slavery movement gained strength. Former president John Quincy Adams compared the reaction to Lovejoy's martyrdom to an earthquake. The Boston Recorder compared the reaction to the impact of the Battle of Lexington. Many were inspired to become abolitionists.

Lovejoy's brother, Owen Lovejoy, became leader off the Illinois abolitionist movement and assisted runaway slaves via the underground railroad. He also became a friend of a rising Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Some anti-slavery activists became even more extreme in the aftermath of the brazen murder.

One quiet, still Thursday afternoon, at a little prayer meeting in a church in Ohio, messengers brought news of the murder of Elijah Lovejoy. The church attendees, ardent opponents of slavery and supporters of free AAs, silently took the sad news in. Then suddenly, a tall, lean, intense man arose, and declared in a firm voice:

Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.


That man was John Brown.

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Uh-Oh.   

Stuff just got real.   


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Frederick William Gunn (1816-1881)

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Frederick William Gunn was a son of Connecticut with deep roots, his first American ancestor arriving in the then new British colonies in the early first half of the 17th century. Gunn lost both his father and mother to death by his 10th year. Yet, he was reared lovingly and with firm guidance by his oldest brother in the picturesque little rural Connecticut village of Washington, just near the foothills of the Berkshire Hill country. Gunn was an apt pupil, and was able to matriculate at Yale College in the late 1830s, marring in botany. Despite his specialty, her did not enter the medical profession, as he found the amount of blood and guts far too much for his mental temperament. Gunn returned to his hometown of Washington in 1843 and took up the position of schoolmaster. His classrooms were frequently filled to overflowing.

Alas, despite his popularity, Gunn soon found himself in hot water, socially speaking. Gunn's older brother, John, had raised him with decidedly anti-slavery sentiments. Gunn's abolitionist views inevitably permeated his instruction. Abolitionism, however, was staunchly opposed by Washington's Congregational Parson, Rev. Gordon Hayes. Like most Caucasian Clergymen in the antebellum period, Hayes were adamantly pro-slavery and fiercely anti-abolitionism. Gunn was soon unwelcome in Washington, was a prophet, so to speak, is often without honor in his household.

Fortunately, Gunn was able to find refuge and continue his teaching at an academy in Towanda, Pennsylvania. While instructing his pupils, he would also take them on journeys into the local woodlands to experience nature. Fortunately for Gunn, the tide of opinion in his hometown turned, and in 1849 he and his new wife, Abigail returned to their mutual hometown. There they soon able to found a school on the village Green top hill, which soon welcomed girls as well as boys. (Although girls were educated separately by Abigail's sister). Gunn continued his emphasis on hiking, camping, and nature at the Gunnery. And of course Gunn's education was anti-slavery. For this reason, abolitionists, including the prominent Beecher family, sent their children to be educated at the Gunnery. Indeed, as an abolitionist Gunn saw his school as a good training ground for the military skills northern youth would have to develop in preparation for the Civil War he viewed as inevitable. His prediction of Civil War proved accurate. So, in 1861, Gunn led his first trek 30 miles from Washington to Welch’s Point at Milford, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound. There he and his male students camped there for 10 days, and in addition swimming and hunting, they performed military drills in preparation for service in the Union Army.

The Gunnery continued to operate after the Civil War, and was one of the first New England academies to open its doors not just to newly free AA students but visiting Chinese students as well. As the Gunnery grew it continued to emphasize the importance of athletics and outdoorsmanship as an integral part of its educational curriculum. And in the later 19th century Gunn was recognized as the inspiration for thine then blossoming outdoor camping movement.

The Gunnery is still in operation today.

Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909)

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Oliver Otis Howard was born in Maine, and became a pious new England Evangelical in an era where such religious zeal was by no means eccentric in New England (it is today all but extinct).  He attended Bowdoin College and then West Point, from which he graduated fourth in his class of 46.  When the Civil War broke out, Howard felt he had been called by God to fight in a righteous crusade to destroy slavery.  While he fought valiantly he experienced two major defeats as a corps commander at Chancellorville and Gettysburg.  And he lost an arm while leading the charge at the battle of Fair Oaks, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.  He fought well in the Western Theatre.

After the Civil War Howard was appoint to head the Freedmen’s Bureau, a Reconstruction program that helped former slaves. The Bureau had hundreds of agents in the South distributing food and medicine and finding jobs and schooling for the new citizens.
Howard recognized that while government assistance was needed to get the newly freed AAs on their feet, the only sure foundation for freedom would be property ownership.  With his allies the Radical Republicans, Otis began to implement  program of land redistribution, giving 40 acres and a mule to newly freed slaves, using land confiscated from rebel landowners.  Unfortunately, President Andrew Johnson,  a bitter opponent of Reconstruction and strong hater of all things AA, reversed Howard's order and returned the land to the Confederate owners.   

While the Freedman's Bureau met with brutal and violent opposition and had its mission curtailed before it could fulfill its mandate, it did leave an enduring legacy in establishing schools for AAs throughout the South, including colleges.

The capstone of Howard's career at the Freedman's Bureau was his role as a founder and president of Howard University.  

O.O. Howard's Residence on Howard University's campus
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From 1867 to 1874, Howard oversaw the school which bore his name.  Chartered by Congress, the private college would grow to become the preeminent Historically Black College/University in America.  It educated tens of thousands of college and professional students who would go on to form the backbone of the AA middle class.

In describing the Caucasian Supremacist opposition to the education of AAs, O.O. Howard spoke a truth many people would like to overlook:

"The opposition to Negro education made itself felt everywhere in a combination not to allow the freed men any room or building in which a school might be taught. In 1865, 1866, and 1867, mobs of the baser classes at intervals and in all parts of the South occasionally burned school buildings and churches used as schools, flogged teachers or drove them away, and in a number of instances murdered them."