"If we are going to heal, we must remember..."

 

The War of 1812 and the European Colonization of Africa and the Americas

Collusion and Competition

at the service of

Corporate Imperialism
1776-2021

In the War of 1812, the British promised refuge to any enslaved Black people who escaped their enslavers, raising fears among White Americans of a large-scale revolt. The final provocation was that men who escaped their bonds of slavery were welcome to join the British Corps of Colonial Marines in exchange for land after their service. As many as 4,000 people, mostly from Virginia and Maryland, escaped. Some of them participated in the burning of the White House in 1814.

 

The British kept their word to Colonial Marines after the war, refusing the United States’ demand that they be returned and providing them land in the Caribbean island colony of Trinidad and Tobago to resettle with their families. The Island colony had only been under British control for a decade, having transitioned from the original colonial occupation of Spain, the Dutch, and finally the French. The Original Nations of the Indigenous Peoples of the islands have been victims of the systematic international pogrom of genocide and impunity across the Caribbean that is ongoing today.

 

Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner which was presented in Hollywood spectacle at the Biden inauguration on January 20th, was from a wealthy plantation family and enslaved people. He spoke of Black people as “a distinct and inferior race” and supported emancipating the enslaved only if they were immediately shipped to Africa.

 

During the Andrew Jackson administration, Key served as the district attorney for Washington, D.C., where he spent much of his time shoring up enslavers’ power. He strictly enforced slave laws and prosecuted abolitionists who passed out pamphlets mocking his jurisdiction as the “land of the free, home of the oppressed.”

 

“The elevation of the banner from popular song to official national anthem was a neo-Confederate political victory, and it was celebrated as such. When supporters threw a victory parade in Baltimore in June 1931, the march was led by a color guard hoisting the Confederate flag.”

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

Key Concept: Intellectual Slavery

From the Divine Right of Kings

to the

Divine Right of States

Historical Amnesia

and the

Institutionalization of Ignorance

The ugly reason ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ didn’t become our national anthem for a century