Amazing Grace
LAST POST I SWEAR, SORRY.
I watched Amazing Grace tonight. It's about William Wilberforce, who was an MP in 1770s-18somethings, opposed cruelty to animals, workers, and prisoners, outspoken women and labor unions, seditious meetings and writings, debauchery, slavery, and the slave trade. Your classic conservative-Christian-reformer of the sort that came to dominate the early Victorian period.
The movie kept to his good causes, with the story being his struggle to end the Atlantic slave trade. It was well done! Well acted and moving and all that. I recommend it, especially if you like history!movies, like me.
I also took pride in feeling, for once, that I don't come from a totally ass-backwards land re: slavery. I.e., the US weren't the only ones who had to argue about it. Yes, the US as a whole took ages, but slavery was abolished in Massachusetts only 11 years after it was in England, and the US ended the Atlantic trade less than a year after the English (led by Wilberforce). In fact, it was ended on January 1, 1808, the very earliest as Constitutionally permitted. And while the UK abolished all slavery in the colonies in 1833, they didn't have half of their Parliament being run by actual slaveholders so it's not like we were actually any more screwed up than would be expected.
And at one point, Wilberforce gets a chiding for RECEIVING MAIL FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON, THAT REVOLUTIONARY SCOUNDREL. OK, he was a revolutionary scoundrel and he liked the French way too much. Hush. They just wanted to write flowy letters about the evils of the slave trade and the joy of public education!
Also, it definitely put this whole "oh no New York marriage bummer" into perspective. Hey! At least it is not about people living in shackles in deadly filth and darkness for a month on a boat only to be worked to death on sugar plantations!
I watched Amazing Grace tonight. It's about William Wilberforce, who was an MP in 1770s-18somethings, opposed cruelty to animals, workers, and prisoners, outspoken women and labor unions, seditious meetings and writings, debauchery, slavery, and the slave trade. Your classic conservative-Christian-reformer of the sort that came to dominate the early Victorian period.
The movie kept to his good causes, with the story being his struggle to end the Atlantic slave trade. It was well done! Well acted and moving and all that. I recommend it, especially if you like history!movies, like me.
I also took pride in feeling, for once, that I don't come from a totally ass-backwards land re: slavery. I.e., the US weren't the only ones who had to argue about it. Yes, the US as a whole took ages, but slavery was abolished in Massachusetts only 11 years after it was in England, and the US ended the Atlantic trade less than a year after the English (led by Wilberforce). In fact, it was ended on January 1, 1808, the very earliest as Constitutionally permitted. And while the UK abolished all slavery in the colonies in 1833, they didn't have half of their Parliament being run by actual slaveholders so it's not like we were actually any more screwed up than would be expected.
And at one point, Wilberforce gets a chiding for RECEIVING MAIL FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON, THAT REVOLUTIONARY SCOUNDREL. OK, he was a revolutionary scoundrel and he liked the French way too much. Hush. They just wanted to write flowy letters about the evils of the slave trade and the joy of public education!
Also, it definitely put this whole "oh no New York marriage bummer" into perspective. Hey! At least it is not about people living in shackles in deadly filth and darkness for a month on a boat only to be worked to death on sugar plantations!