Who’s responsible for the end of slavery? You might think it has at least something to do with the African Americans who fought for freedom long before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.
But not according to Christian pseudo-historian David Barton, who, as usual, gave all credit to white Christians by whitewashing anyone else’s contributions.
He made the remarks on preacher Andrew Wommack‘s Gospel Today show in an episode honoring — wait for it — Black History Month.
“We have a constitutional amendment passed in 1865 to abolish slavery,” David Barton said. “In 1868, we passed another constitutional amendment to make sure all former slaves had equal civil rights in their states and the nation. In 1870, we passed a civil rights amendment to make sure that all former slaves, regardless of race, were able to vote and participate fully in the civil process.”
“At that point, the only people who could vote in America were whites,” he continued. “So when Congress passes the amendment to end slavery and to grant civil rights and to grant equal status, it’s only whites voting. So you have two-thirds of the whites in the House, two-thirds of the whites in the Senate saying, ‘We want blacks to have the same rights we do.’ Then it goes to the states where whites in three-fourths of the states — [whites] were the only ones that could vote — so it really is whites saying, ‘This is wrong for us to have status different from everybody else.’”
“It’s the whites who gave up the rights to say, ‘We want equality,’ because they were the only ones that could vote,” David Barton said.
Yes, it’s only the benevolence of white people that ended slavery. Nothing else. If only white people existed before the 1860s, we could’ve ended slavery sooner!
(Barton also ignores how the suppression of African American votes is still happening today due to white Republicans, much less other forms of racism.)
It’s not the first time he’s lied about basic U.S. history on this specific topic. In 2018, Barton insisted that the Founding Fathers (many of whom owned slaves) were in fact anti-slavery advocates. He honestly thinks the people who wrote that all men are “created equal” meant that literally… even though it was never borne out in practice. (The truth is the Founding Fathers chose to perpetuate the slave trade as opposed to fighting against it.)
For Barton, facts have never been as important as preserving his narrative of Christian fundamentalism.
(via Right Wing Watch. Portions of this article were published earlier)