From a Facebook post this morning

1908 Juneteenth celebration in Houston TX

 

Site: Sam Houston: American Son, Texas Legend

June 19 2022

From FaceBook

Today we celebrate Juneteenth as a national holiday for the first time. If there is anything worthy of a national holiday and celebration it is the abolishment of slavery.

Slavery was the universal scourge of every civilization on every continent from as far back as when men were living in caves until less than 100 years before many of you reading this were born. If your group was weaker than the group next to you, you were probably a slave.

It was rampant throughout Asia.

Around a million Eastern Europeans were captured and enslaved by Muslims from North Africa in the 9th century.

When the Romans controlled the Mediterranean and most of Europe from the 1st–5th centuries slavery was widespread.

It was throughout the Middle East when Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the 4th century B.C.

The ancient Greeks didn’t give it a second thought. Slavery was simply how the world worked, and had always worked.

The Egyptians enslaved untold numbers of other Egyptians 5,000 years ago and the pyramids they built are still there to this day.

Historian John Steele Gordon says as much as a third of the ancient world was enslaved.

In our country we think of slavery in racial terms because that was the American experience. But slavery was not based on race elsewhere. People on every continent enslaved others who looked just like them.

The technology to transport large numbers of people across wide oceans did not exist until a few hundred years ago so each continent, including the North American continent, had people on it who were enslaved by their neighbors.

So, the question is not, “Who had slaves?” The question is, “Who got rid of slavery?” And the answer is Western Civilization. Specifically Christians, first in England under William Wilberforce and later in the United States. They launched a massive campaign to abolish slavery based upon their religious belief that slavery is evil and against the will of God.

In 1833 Great Britain became the first country to ever pass a slavery abolition act. This was followed by Mexico in 1837, France in 1848, and by the United States in 1865 with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution after a bloody Civil War which cost the lives of 300,000 Union soldiers.

Of course, the truth is that slavery is still with us. There are an estimated 700,000 slaves in sub-Saharan Africa right now in the form of child soldiers, those forced into prostitution, and others being made to work against their will.

Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the country and named in Sam's honor, is a major hub for human trafficking right here in the United States.

So here are a couple of ideas:

Let’s recognize that human trafficking is going on right under our own noses and work together to abolish it. That is a truly worthy goal for our society. And while we’re working on it let’s celebrate Juneteenth with great national pride. The abolition of slavery is a triumph of Western Civilization that should unite us all.