slavery

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Slavery in Massachusetts


Forward: I wrote this paper almost 40 years ago while I was a graduate student at Harvard. As I reread it, I thought how I could have done a better job. Yet, much, if not most, of the content is unknown to the public at large today. And so, I offer it as a view of Massachusetts, and really all of New England, prior to the Revolutionary war. What follows has been edited from the original where I have left out passages. Also, I have additional sources of my material which I will willingly give to any who ask.

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The first positive proof we have of slavery coming to Massachusetts is in the log of the ship Desire. Lt. Davenport reported in a marginal note of the ship’s log that, “disbursed for the slaves, which, when they have earned it, hee is to repay it back againe.” (Williams, George W. History of the Negro Race in America 1619 – 1880, 1st ed., 2nd Vol., (New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968) p. 175) In payment to Lt. Davenport the Colony of Massachusetts, at the charge of the General Court, ordered Lt. Davenport be paid the sum of 3 pounds 8 shillings. It would appear that not only were slaves delivered by Lt. Davenport but that the Government found the practice acceptable.

These slaves, as was true in all the colonies, were first introduced into individual families. From there they found their way into the community. There was never much use for slavery in Massachusetts and from the outset a slave’s chief occupation was more along the lines of a servant or indentured worker. According to Lorenzo Greene in his book, “The Negro in Colonial New England,” there are no records of slavery existing on the farms of Massachusetts. With the black people in the public’s midst, and having a penchant for law making, the famous “Body of Liberties” became the first statute establishing slavery in America. It stated: “It is ordered by this court, and the authority thereof; that there shall never be any bond slavery, villainage or captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and such shall have the liberties and Christain usage which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require; provided this exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority.” (Williams, George W., 1: 117) This law, as full of holes as appears, stood for the duration of slavery in the state and was not once changed. The interpretation of the law was, however, challenged.

Until the year 1644 slaves arrived in Massachusetts at a very slow pace and always from the West Indies, Barbados in particular. It was in that year that New England traders attempted a direct trade from Africa using Barbados as a weigh station. The Boston ships sailed directly to Africa to purchase slaves. From there they took the slaves to Barbados and exchanged them for sugar, salt, wine and tobacco. This practice, however, was short lived. Fearing confiscation of their cargo by the powerful Dutch and Royal English Trading Companies, the Massachusetts shippers were quick to abandon this particular form of trade. There were a few who continued but chose to get slaves from the eastern coast of Africa and Madagascar.

The “Body of Liberties” law was actually put to test when in 1678 a Sandwich man was brought to trial for attempting to sell 3 Pequod Indians. The court decided that since the Indians had done harm to the3 man’s property and the Pequods could not repay him, he had the right to sell them into slavery. (Washburn, Emory, Slavery As it Once Existed in Massachusetts, diss., The Lowell Institute, 1869, Boston: Press of John Wilson and Son, p. 15)

But an even more interesting case happened some ninety years later. In the case of James v. Lechmere involving the right of a master to hold slaves, Dr. Belknap, prosecutor for the colony, cited English law which stated, “. . . all persons born or residing in the Province to be as free as the King’s subjects in Great Britain; that by the laws of England, no man can be deprived of his liberty, but by the judgment of his peers;” (Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Extinction of Slavery in Massachusetts, Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1858, p. 335)

The decision of the court went in favor of the Negro. This seems to have set a precedent; the government of Massachusetts would no longer tolerate slavery, even though a law protecting it still existed. The judgment spelled the beginning of the end of slavery in Massachusetts.

Although the Puritans of Massachusetts were able to accept the existence of slavery within their colony, it was never very popular. In 1680, slaves accounted for less than 200 of the total population and by 1700 there were but 400.

It is likely that economics played a large role in keeping down the total number of slaves. Massachusetts was by and large a colony of relatively small farms. There were no plantations as existed in the middle and southern colonies. Massachusetts was founded by merchants who fully expected to set up a lucrative trade with England. Massachusetts always prided itself on self-reliance since the two largest industries of the colony were fishing and ship building. It is easy to see how there was little use for slavery.

The slave in Massachusetts, and in most of Northern New England, enjoyed a dual status. He was subject to what few slave laws there were but was also accorded the rights to all the laws afforded free men. The slave law, of course, always took precedent.

In 1681 a Mr. Saffin was brought to court for smuggling slaves out of Rhode Island and into Massachusetts. He was found guilty and fined accordingly. Although slavery was legal, the courts looked upon this as a clear case of abduction of one man by another. The fine, however, was minimal in this case. Saffin openly continued in his occupation. Many of his letters to potential customers in the towns surrounding Boston still exist which attest to this fact.

Interestingly, many of the people who bought the slaves from Saffin in turn sold them to people in New Hampshire. Also, and curiously, Saffin was a judge in the Massachusetts colony.

There exists little information on what slaves did exist in the colony up to 1700. First consider the number of slaves present was always fewer than 400. Also, the fact that there were truly no unusual incidents, that we know of, surrounding any slave or the slave trade. This lack of facts can now be put in perspective. Consider for a minute how much trouble historians have gone through to gather technically correct information about the infamous witch trials of 1692. We still are admittedly missing many important features of this most famous event. Boyer and Nissenbaum in their book, Salem Possessed, attest to the great difficulty in gathering information on an event one would expect the be well-documented. Yet such is not the case. The effort to gather information about slavery, which is quite obscure for Massachusetts, is ever so much more difficult.

One fact which may help to explain this is that the Puritans were quick to accept the Negro into their churches without any special rules. In fact, in 1693, Cotton Mather wrote a paper called, Rules For the Society of Negroes. Of the nine rules he lays out in only one, rule number VII, does he even mention the Negro. In it he states that the Puritan community shall do good towards “Negro Servants.” He advised the black person that should he run away, he shall be punished but admonished the master not to be found at fault at the pain of being driven from the fold. The remaining eight rules could be easily applied to any Puritan, and probably were.

The slave always maintained the status of a second-class citizen. He was really never fully accepted as an equal, even by the righteous Puritans. He was never to be trusted and was frequently feared. Except that this fear was transmitted by some early documents, it is not clear why the Massachusetts colonists would fear the black man. Clearly there was little reason to be concerned about an insurrection.

The early 1700s brought on a radical change. The merchants of Massachusetts had had a long time to set up the triangle trade involving slaves. It was about this time that Massachusetts slavers started taking their cargo to the Southern Colonies. This could have been caused by the fact that the colony’s fathers put a 4-pound tariff, a considerable sum, on each slave coming into the port of Boston. Still, many slavers must have found a great profit in the trade as the slave population grew to 4,500 in 1755. (Green, Lorenzo Johnston, The Negro in Colonial New England, New York: Atheneum, 1968, p. 81)

By 1705, slave trade was so open in Boston that slave traders were not afraid to publish upcoming sales of slaves in the local newspapers. Gov. Dudley pointed out the reason slave prices were so reduced was that the slaves were the worst of the lot for Virginians and were not able to be sold there. But Dudley’s assertion was incorrect. The reason they were so much cheaper was because many of them had become fluent in English, were quick docile, and to some extent, well educated. Those facts were unacceptable to the Virginia plantation owner. But this was quite favorable to the New England buyer who went to a lady who needed a companion, a blacksmith who needed a helper, the shopkeeper who needed someone to cleanup and tend to his store while he was at lunch or other engagement. They were also more than adequate coachmen, maids, and other domestics which the wealthy of Boston needed.

A curiosity was that Massachusetts Puritan Law required that slaves be married in the usual manner referring to the white population. This is just one more example of the contradiction of Northern slavery to that of the South. The Puritan code and Massachusetts laws further required masters to apply all laws to his slaves once married as were applicable to himself. All slave marriages were duly recorded alongside white marriages. There was one oddity to this law, however. When a free “Negro” man married a slave, the master gained the services of the free man and all his children. Conversely, when a free woman married a black man, she served her husband’s master, and her children were born free. This law infuriated the slave owner who happened to have a free woman married to his male slave. He was required by law to care for her children but could not retain them for servitude once they reached the age of 14.

Once free, however, many former slaves found themselves in lucrative positions. Many former slaves had worked them same position as an apprentice. These former slaves continued their work, now as free men, as ship carpenters, anchor makers, rope makers, coopers, blacksmiths, printers, tailors, sawyers and house carpenters. (Green, Lorenzo, p. 113) These former slaves, unfit for southern slavery, did quite well in the north. In the long run they outstripped their southern counterparts by aiding a labor short market and bringing wealth into the community.

By the time of the Revolution, slavery, as it existed in al New England, was of the token variety, not hard to live under and easily gotten out of. To wit, it was not unusual for a slave to simply walk away from his master forever. He had little fear of being chased down. Even once discovered, a runaway slave had an excellent chance of being protected by the community in which he was living than being returned to his master. New Englanders carried this to an extreme, as infrequently a slave from a southern state made his way to Massachusetts. Once there, the citizens did all they could within their power to keep him. He was protected by English and Colony Law.

For the most part, slaves, once freed, were just as mistrusted and hated as their southern brethren. They were required to become members of the church and baptized.

The beginning of the end of slavery in Massachusetts happened when Elihu Coleman of Nantucket wrote a book against slavery. By 1765, the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts had caught on. Pamphlets and newspapers were increasingly discussing the subject. In March 13, 1767, a bill was presented to the house of representatives of Massachusetts demanding that slavery as a practice was “unwarrantable and unlawful.” The bill was ultimately defeated but a compromise was agreed upon which stated that slavery had to be abolished. In 1773 another bill to abolish slavery was introduced but this time, passed.

By the time of the Revolution, few slaves still existed, and slave ships were no longer welcomed in Boston. Other New England colonies quickly followed suit.

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History of America, Chapter 1 — Who Came First?


Your average high school history book awards this idea to the Spanish in the form of Christopher Columbus, who was actually an Italian for Genoa.

The location of the first settlement is actually in Salem New Hampshire at a site known as “America’s Stonehenge.” This site is dated at about 4000 years old. But who occupied the site is unknown. Its contruction leads anthropologists and historians to compare it to the Stonehenge in England. But even in England the builders are unknown. As easily as it could have been Saxons in the area, it could also have been a Nordic people who were regular raiders and occupiers. We just do not know.

Now we need to look at Greenland where it is believed Europeans first settled this island 2500 years ago. Greenland is not that far from eastern Canada and Maine. The waters off those coasts teamed with fish, an important part of the European diet. But again, no one knows who those first settlers were.

The first English permanent settlement in North America Roanoke Island in 1587 under the auspicies of Sir Walter Raleigh. But this settlement is not continuous as it disappeared under unknown circumstances by 1590. The longest continuous settlement is St. Augustine Florida starting in 1565 when the Spanish settled there. The Spanish additionally explored the San Diego California area in 1542 but made no permanent settlements. Curiosly, the French in 1564 settled on the St. John’s River in Fort Caroline Florida. That settlement was unsuccessful after repeated battle losses to the Spanish.

English America got its start in 1607 in Virginia by the Virginia Company. During its early years the Virginia Company fought for its very existance against disease and food shortages. Unlike the New England tribes of that day, the Virginia tribes were warriors and had little interest in aiding the English settlers. In 1609, when the Native leader Powhatan realized the English were not leaving, aid was given the English. However, when it was realized the English did not intend to return aid in kind, wars broke out and again challenged the settlement’s survival. What the natives had given the English was tobacco, unknown to Europeans, which quickly turned the colony around as demand for tobacco skyrocketed. This colony has the ignomonous distinction in bringing the first slaves to America.

In 1620, as is well-known, the Pilgrims made their way to Plymouth. As with their southern neighbors, these colonists struggled to survive their first winter, losing 50% of all settlers that winter. But unlike the Virginia Colony, the Pilgrims were quick to make friends with the Wampanoag tribe and its leader, Squanto. These natives showed the Pilgrims the basics in farming the New England soil.

To the northern, on the Shamut penninsula, today known as Boston, Samuel Maverick in 1624 brought two slaves there. The Puritans did not arrive until 1630. And even though their religion banned slavery, they not only tolerated it, they bought into it. None of the New England colonies had a large number of slaves but every colony had them.

To the north of the New England colonies, the French settled Quebec and New Brunswick. With American domination in mind, the French moved southward over the Michigan penninsula down the Ohio and Mississippi River to New Orleans founding the settlement of St. Louis along the way.

The Spanish interest in North America was in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. But the early years found no conflict between the Spanish and either the English or French.

It is necessary to point out, when discussion who came here first, that African slaves existed in all 13 colonies. To be certain, the black American predates almost every European save the French and English. They must be counted as an original settler. Additionally, although the exact number is not known, between 6 and 7 million slaves were brought here.

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Cancel Culture? Not so Fast!


Let me start my little diatribe by saying that the whole idea of “cancel culture” seems to be a misnomer, and in the worst possible way. First there is the changing of names of military bases and other institutions which sport the names of slave owners and others of disrepute. There are those among them who are quite deservedly being brought to task. There are people today, both Democrat and Republican, are taking a very narrow view of our ancestral leadership.

I start with a man who is know as a great patriot of our early nation. His name was Major General Henry Lee, or, Light Horse Harry Lee as he became known. Lee was an important figure in our country’s struggle for freedom during the Revolution. He later served as the governor of Virginia and a representative to Congress. Importantly, he was also the father of General Robert E. Lee.

I have a master’s degree from Harvard University where I studied U.S. History. A lot of time was spent in my studies in dealing with various reform movements, slavery and the Civil War. Now, there are a lot of people who want Fort Lee’s name changed. To what and why? The why is simple, he was a slave owner and prominent soldier for the Confederacy. But Lee was not an idealogue. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, President Lincoln spoke long and personally to Lee, offering him the position as Commander of the Armies of the Potomac. In today’s lingo, he who be one of the joint chiefs of staff. Lee and Lincoln were friends and Lincoln knew full well that Lee was a slave owner but still asked him to serve. Why? Because he was the best candidate, by a lot. Lee went home and spent many a sleepless night angonizing over what his answer should be. Lee graduated in 1829 from West Point second in his class. Conversely, U. S. Grant, class of 1839 at West Point, graduated 21 of 39 graduates. In the end, Lee chose the Confederacy only because of his desire to honor his home state of Virginia. Lee was never a politician, except as his military duties demanded, but the ultimate soldier. His devotion was to his men and the uniform he wore. Once he accepted his role as an officer from Virginia, he assumed his role as a military leader but never a political leader.

An example of a more modern time General who had the same issue was the German General Erwin Rommel. Rommel was the hero of World War One for the Germans and got swept up in the Nazi wave. Like Lee, Rommel knew only the Army and did not care at all for the politics involved. He was constantly at odds with the political hieracy, finally plotting to kill Hitler which brought about his own death.

Even later, many us, myself included, fought in the Vietnam War, a widely unpopular war. But as soldiers we knew our duty to the military and to follow all legal orders, We did that even though many of us, if not most, hid silent views of being against the war. I suspect, although this is not written anywhere, that General Lee harbored similar views. What to do? When the hostilities of the Civil War broke out, both sides thought the war would be a very short one. Neither side anticipated the future.

When the war was over, all officers and politicians of the Confederacy were barred from any further military or political service. This was their sentence, similar to one a court would hand down, for life. I suspect, had anyone asked, Lee would have abandoned slavery.

This brings me to General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Was Jackson really a slave owner or one who had an indentured servant. Jackson may be the most peculiar of all the famous southern generals. He was born in Virgina, now West Virginia. As the other generals, Jackson graduated from West Point in 1846. Jackson held a seven slaves, who are described in a paper written by Larry Spurgeon, Stonewall Jackson’s Slaves. One slave, Albert, begged Jackson to buy him and free him once his debt was paid. Another slave, Amy, was sold to Jackson so her owner could pay a debt. Amy became the cooks for the Jacksons. Other such accounts can be found and in every case of a male slave, Jackson insisted up their becoming well educated. And in the end, you find that each took a place in the Jackson house much like servants and not of slaves. And like so many of those in the north who in the mid-1700s held “slaves,” each were allowed to live in the main house, frequently the only house. Jackson steadfastly believed in both freeing all slaves and embracing state’s rights. That dichotomy is an anathema to most today but it is good to remember that he was a product of his times. Jackson’s only desire was to become a general in the army and be the ultimate soldier. He had absolutely no political inclinations. And like Lee, his allegiance to Virginia was unassailable and so he felt the obligation to join the Confederacy.

By today’s logic, we must also include George Washington, the father of our country, in that group. We must also included every President from Washington through Grant because all owned slaves! Washington, Jefferson, each owned over 600. Others who owned over 100 include Madison, Jackson and Taylor. Even U. S. Grant owned a slave.

Before we go off and start renaming any installation because of their relationship with slavery, and “worse,” to the confederacy, we necessarily must ask ourselves, “Where these men of their day?” To answer in any was but the positive is to deny the truth. In a cursory look at various fort names, only a few seem to arise to the level that whom they were named after were nafarious enough to warrant change; Fort Gordon, GA, Fort Bragg, NC, and Fort A. P. Hill, VA. Both Washington and Jefferson were aggregious in their slaveholdings. Should we tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson memorial? Should every “Washington Street” in our country be renamed? I think not! The era of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were quite different from those of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but each must be given fair consideration as men of their times. Today, we do not see things in the same light as any of the aforementioned men. It would be foolish to thing otherwiase. It is necessary to treat each very evenhandedly.

As sort of an addendum, which I find most distasteful, but which Sen. Cruz is hell-bent about, is this idea that “liberals” are trying to rid us of a Dr. Seus on the premise that he was either racially or gender biased. They do not nor does anyone else. It serves no purpose to create such scenarious other than to promote self-interest and to appeal to those who allow that person to think for them

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Legislating Morality


Until 1789, morality in the United States was entirely the dominion of the churches and its ministers.  Until our Constitution became the law of the land, we were a common law nation, born in England and brought to these shores.  Common law is law derived from custom and judicial precedent.  With the adoption of the Constitution, the United States became a statutory law nation.  The original statute in the United States, therefore, is the Constitution.  With the enactment of the 1st Amendment, however, legislators became required to decide issues of morality as church law had no standing in the new American courts.  The infamous Salem witch trials are the most cogent example of how common law embraced church law to dictate what was permissible in a person’s actions.

The temperance movement is probably the first instance of the peculiar American desire to legislate morality.  In 1808 New York, the first temperance movement in the United States was founded.  Soon afterward, other U.S. cities had movements of their own.  The movement was mainly headed by women which meant hard drinking men felt little to fear of such groups.  After all, they couldn’t vote!  In 1840 the temperance movement was co-opted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her suffrage movement.  Women activists were easily moved from temperance to suffrage.

By the 1850s, however, the hot button issue of the day was the Abolitionist movement.  This movement attracted the very same people who were behind women’s suffrage.  Stanton herself felt the abolition of slavery the more important issue and dedicated her energies in that direction.  The framers of the Constitution believed slavery would be abolished in their lifetime, and if not, then shortly thereafter.  What America learned from this is how slowly reform comes to this country, and never easily.

Once slavery was eradicated, suffrage re-emerged.  But it lacked the energy of the early days when the movement was founded in Seneca Falls NY.  America had to first rebuild from its great civil war.  Then it had to deal with large numbers of immigrants and industrialization.

In 1910, however, congress passed what is known as the “Man Act.”  The stated purpose of this law was the ending of child pornography.  It was also the first attempt at eliminating interstate prostitution.  But behind the act was the desire of politicians to keep sex behind closed door and out of the public discussion.  It was used to make the dissemination of birth control information illegal via the US Mail, and it was on this point that Margaret Sanger, head of the birth control movement, was found guilty.  She had made up fliers about sex and birth control which she sent through the mail to the women of New York City.

The period 1912 to 1919 saw suffrage and temperance merge into an unstoppable force.  Each movement had attracted wealthy and well-placed women, and with them came their powerful husbands.  The first hint that women, even without the vote, held sway, came in the form of Helen Taft, wife of President William Howard Taft, when she brought the plight of the children of poor families in Lawrence Massachusetts during its great textile strike of 1912.  Anemic, malnourished, and poorly clothed children arrived in New York City in February 1912 from Lawrence.  The socialist IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Party had seen to it that their arrival was well-covered by the New York press.  Their desire to stir a moral outrage by the public at large succeed beyond even their dreams when Helen Taft intervened and asked her husband to look into the problem.  Taft quickly assembled a congressional committee to look into the working and living conditions of the Lawrence workers.  In March 1912 those congressional leaders held open hearing at which these same children attended.

When the 18th Amendment was enacted in 1919, it also brought an end to legal prostitution and gambling in the United States via the Volstead Act.  The women of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union used stories of drunkenness, and with it whoring and gambling, to stir a moral outrage and gain the moral high ground.

Prohibition brought forth the idea of “the law of unintended consequences.”  That is, Prohibition gave rise to the large crime syndicates.  Prohibition’s target of lawless drunkenness brought out even worse evils, and in 1933 it was finally repealed.  It is no coincidence that two years later, 1935, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith founded Alcoholics Anonymous.  Their stories show that America’s attempt to sober up its citizenry merely pushed the problem underground.

On June 13, 1934, the Production Code Administration was founded.  At its head was William H. Hays, a well-connected Republican who thought the American public was being scandalized by increasingly racy movies.  From July 1, 1934 onward all movies had to adhere to a set of standards.  One of its first victims was the cartoon character Betty Boop who was forced to trade in her flapper girl attire, above the knee dress and cleavage, for a more respectable neck high dress that reached below her knees.

Vaudeville and movie star Mae West took exception to such censorship, and her movies of the era are replete with sexual nuances she specifically wrote into the scripts to thumb her nose at censorship.  Her famous line, “is that a pistol you’re packing or are you just glad to see me” went right over the censor’s heads.  The 1934 release of the movie “It Happened One Night” titillated audiences when Clark Gable removed his shirt, a first in any movie, and with co-star Claudette Colbert, shared a bed, also a first, albeit divided by a sheet hung so it divided the bed in two.

The 1930s had its own set of sex stars with Mae West leading the way.  By today’s standards not only was she not particularly attractive, she was rather overweight, but she was in her mid-40s already.  The much younger, and prettier, Jean Harlow graced American screens her unfettered breasts obvious beneath her minimalist clothing.  We unfortunately do not have a full accounting of her ideas as she died at age 26 in 1937.  Still, for decades to follow, all films printed the disclaimer that the film had passed the board of review.  The failure of dictating what a person could ingest was followed up by what a person could see or hear.

In 1966 the US SJC attempted to define what was pornographic.  What they came up with is as follows:  be “utterly without redeeming social value” and “patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description of sexual matters.”  If you think this definition is vague then you understand perfectly the intent of the law.  The federal government pushed the issue entirely out of federal hands and, seemly, straight through state hands, down to individual communities and that the issue had to be decided at that level.

Inn 1973 the SJC decided the Roe v Wade issue, deferring to the states in part, but stating a women did indeed have a right to control her body.  The US SJC routinely returns issues to lower courts or, in its decisions, gives the individual states great discretion when it issues its findings.  In Roe v Wade, while the SJC did state a woman has the right of final say over her body, it demurred to the states what the boundaries of the issue were.  Those who favored abortion on demand desired the SJC to rule that abortions in the 3rd trimester be allowed nationally.  But the court recognized that the sentiments of the state of Texas, where the issue originated, could, and probably would, differ greatly from community attitudes in Northeastern states.  And so, as in the pornography case, it left the final design to community values.  That the decision went as it did came as a surprise to the conservative community as the SJC had a decidedly conservative flavor to it as most of its members had been appointed by Eisenhower and Nixon.

For the most part, the entirety of the original Volstead Act have been reversed either nationally or, in the case of prostitution, locally by statute.  There are only a few states which do not participate in some sort of state-wide lottery, gambling.  And many states have opened casinos, once the sole domain of Las Vegas Nevada.  Many states are now allowing the use of the once illegal substance marijuana.  Does this mean other street drugs will be decriminalized and possibly legalized?  Maybe, but that is a tough issue at this time.  Still, it does point to the changing moral values of the United States and the grow resistance to legislated morality.

In the United States today there are a fair number of religions which consider the consumption of alcohol to be immoral.  Other religions extend such morality clauses to things like caffeine, shell fish, and pork.  But unlike some countries, the United States has to look at itself as anything but a homogenous society.  The Society of Friends, the Quakers, considers all sorts of war to be immoral but recognize that theirs’ is a minority view and do not attempt to extend it beyond their own community.  There are other Christian religions who share this view but these religions may also believe owning anything which shines to be immoral as well.  The point being, the fabric of American society is so diverse as to defy any and all attempts in define universal moral ideals and identities.

It would do Americans well to take a step back when championing any issue and ask themselves if what they are espousing is a moral issue.  If the answer is yes, which it frequently is, then they are better served championing the issue through their own actions.  It is quite well for them to say “this is what we practice and we believe you would do well to do the same.”  But it is always wrong for such groups to say, “and we are going to force you through the law to do the same.”