Instead, the state’s leaders were fully embraced as Founding Fathers and welcomed into the new nation’s halls of power. For that flat-out refusal to fight with every resource at its command, and clear willingness to sacrifice the United States simply to maintain slavery, South Carolina suffered no consequences. They, therefore, toyed with the idea of surrendering to the British, making a separate peace.
The United States of America was not nearly as important as maintaining slavery. The state’s political leaders were so appalled that they questioned whether “ this union was worth fighting for at all”. The response to Laurens’ plan was, therefore, “horror” and “alarm”. This was a crisis born of South Carolina’s decision to divert most of the state’s white men from the Continental Army to fight the Redcoats and, instead, enlist them in the militia to control the enslaved population, whom they defined as the primary threat. John Laurens, an aide-de-camp of George Washington, pleaded with the South Carolina government to arm the enslaved because the state didn’t have enough available white men to fight the 8,000-strong British force barreling toward Charleston. The insurrection on 6 January and the weak response are only the latest example.ĭuring the war for independence, after the British captured Savannah, the king’s forces set out to capture a wholly unprepared South Carolina. What makes white supremacy so lethal, however, is not just its presence but also the refusal to hold its adherents fully accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the nation. Throughout this nation’s history, white supremacy has undermined, twisted and attacked the viability of the United States.
A merican democracy’s most dangerous adversary is white supremacy.
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