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				In Defense of the Indians: The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome De Las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa by Bartolomé de las Casas Edition: Paperback Price: $20.52 Availability: In Stock		47 used & new from $12.99
An Amazing and Suprising Work., September 22, 2012 Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: In Defense of the Indians: The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome De Las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa (Paperback) I am presently reading my way through the history of Catholicism and slavery. Naturally, Bartolome De Las Casas' name has come up repeatedly, generally as a witness to and critic of the Spanish treatment of the Indians. De Las Casas' vivid descriptions of the butchery of the Indians is often used by those who are critical of the West and of the Catholic church. So, I was prepared to slog my way through serial accounts of Spanish brutalization of the Indians. I was surprised to find that this book - In Defense of the Indians - is not an account of that brutalization, but is a work of a first rank Thomist humanist. This text is, in fact, nothing less than a legal brief, which argues that the Spanish continual wars on the Indian populations was unjustified under either Natural Law or Christian principles. Along the way, De Las Casas redeemed my faith in Christianity and reason. De Las Casas seems to have been a phenomenal man. The professor in a lecture series I'm listening to through the Teaching Company on the Conquest of the New World called De Las Casas the greatest man in Spanish history. De Las Casas was born in 1484 and went to the West Indies in 1502 with his father, where he became a slave owner. His experience caused him to repudiate slavery, first of the Indians, and then all slavery. He gave up his slaves and "encomienca" - the Spanish practice of granting alotments of Indians for labor and tax purposes - and became an ardent defender of the Indians. De Las Casas travelled across the Atlantic 15 times in order to press his case on behalf of the Indians. He truly was a remarkable man. De Las Casas opens his book with a discussion of the classic Aristotelian position that it was just to enslave barbarians. De Las Casas points out that there are many kinds of barbarians, but that the barbarians of whom Aristotle had in mind - people who had no paractical abilty to govern themselves - are out of the norm for human beings, who are rational beings, and therefore it is unreasonable to enalave all Indians on that basis. De Las Casas therefore argues for the humanity of the Indian people, something which was controversial at the time, albeit the humanity of the Indians was recognized by the Catholic Church in Sublimis Dei in 1537. De Las Casas also provides sophisticated arguments about why the idolatry and human sacrifice of the Indians did not justify Spanish wars of conquest. The arguments he makes are rigorous and deeply informed by the philosopy of Aquinas. As an example of how to "do" practical Thomistics, De Las Casas' work is exemplary. I was put in mind that De Las Casas' arguments that the sins and crimes of another culture do not justify intervention into that culture is one that we moderns might learn from. In many ways, De las Casas comes across as the true humanist and authentic multi-culturalist. De Las Casas was not a multi-culturalist based on a lack of confidence in his own culture; he firmly affirms the truth of Christianity. He did, however, believe that religious faith could not be compelled. His repeated point throughout his work is that the Spanish should win the hearts and souls of the Indians by presenting themselves as true Christians and by teaching the Indians. He also repeatedly decries how the barbarism of the Spanish was having the effect of alienating Indians from the Christian faith. One interesting side-note I picked up from De Las Casas was the way that the medieval mind distinguished between heretics and non-believers. While De Las Casas viewed non-believers as outside the jurisdiction of the Church, such was not the case with heretics. Heretics were people who had given a solemn oath in baptism to adhere to Christian beliefs and to the Christian church. Heretics were therefore nothing less than oath-breakers, who could be compelled to their oath in the same way as a person who breached a contract could be compelled to perform. I don't believe that I'd heard that point before, but once explained it seems like a position that might under some circumstances be held as plausible and it does provide a window into understanding phenomena like the Inquisition. This is a great book for those interested in understanding the past, or who have a background in Thomism, or who appreciate a well-constructed rational argument. Comment | Permalink

"Every act of historical understanding is an act of empathy."

Dick Morris on a new theory about the inevitability of the Civil War.

From our safe perspective, we often forget that real people were living through real events. I'd known about the Nat Turner Rebellion and the Haitian revolt, but I hadn't thought about how those events could "radicalize" the South and cement a change in its attitude from slavery as an evil that would eventually die to slavery as a noble institution.

The End of Slavery.

This is timely.

I'm reading on the Catholic approach to the issue of slavery. One of the best kept secrets is that the Catholic Church took a consistent position against unjust slavery, i.e. a slavery imposed by forcing people into servitude by force or fraud. On the other hand, it took a more sanguinary attitude to forced servitude as a matter of punishment or where the servitude was "voluntary," as in the case of indentured servitude.

Naturally, sneering faux-intellectuals profess to see no difference between the two species of forced labor, by which ignorance the fail to understand (a) how important forced labor on the part of prisoners and indentured servants was historically and (b) how we still maintain traditions of "being bound to service" in the military draft, jury service and prisons to this date.

So, it's interesting how Vermont has finally gotten rid of slavery for prisoners in 2012:

NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - A man who claimed he was forced to do manual labor while detained pending trial can proceed with claims against the state of Vermont under the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.

In an opinion on Friday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals found that a lower court wrongly denied Finbar McGarry a chance to argue that he was forced, against his will and under threat, to work in a prison laundry.

McGarry was a PhD student in chemistry at the University of Vermont at the time of his arrest in December 2008. Denied bail, he was jailed at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vermont, pending trial on charges relating to a domestic disturbance.

For six weeks, McGarry said he was forced to work three days a week for up to 14 hours at a time washing other inmates' laundry at a pay of 25 cents an hour.

The work was hot, unsanitary and resulted in his getting an infection in his neck, McGarry said. If he refused to work, McGarry said prison officials threatened to send him to "the hole," where inmates were confined for 23 hours a day.

McGarry was released in June 2009 and charges were subsequently dropped.

A month before his release, McGarry sued the State of Vermont and a slew of prison officials on a variety of grounds, including that his 13th Amendment right to be free from involuntary servitude, was violated.

His lawsuit, which he filed himself, asked for $11 million in damages.

In dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Garvan Murtha in Brattleboro, Vermont, ruled that the state was immune from McGarry's claims because he had failed to show that the prison work was sufficiently akin to African slavery.

Appeals judges Robert Katzmann, Barrington Parker and Richard Wesley, however, disagreed with the judge's reading of the 13th Amendment, which was enacted in 1865.

"The Amendment was intended to prohibit all forms of involuntary labor, not solely to abolish chattel slavery," the opinion, drafted by judge Parker, said.

More broadly, the appeals court said Vermont could not treat people in custody pending trial the same way it treats convicted prisoners, such as compelling them to participate in work programs designed to rehabilitate inmates.

"The Supreme Court has unambiguously and repeatedly held that a state's authority over pretrial detainees is limited by the Constitution in ways that the treatment of convicted persons is not," the opinion said.

Robert LaRose, an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Vermont, declined comment on the ruling.

Friday's opinion reversed the lower court and sent the case back to Murtha for further proceedings.

"We are gratified that the court vindicated the important constitutional principles at issue here," said Daniel McLaughlin, McGarry's court-appointed lawyer. "We hope that the result of the 2nd Circuit decision will be a change in how the State of Vermont handles pretrial detainees."

HOUSEKEEPING CHORES

Lawyers for Vermont had argued that McGarry had not shown that being forced to work in the laundry had been a punitive measure and thus a violation of his 13th Amendment right. In forcing him to work in the laundry, the State had a "non-punitive governmental objective" in rehabilitating its inmates, Vermont lawyers said.

However, because McGarry was not a convicted felon but a pretrial detainee, he was to be considered innocent and should not have been an object of rehabilitation.

"It was clearly established that prison officials may not rehabilitate pretrial detainees, and it was not 'objectively reasonable' for defendants to conclude otherwise," the opinion said.

Vermont also argued that states are allowed to force inmates to perform certain chores, including the laundry work McGarry was assigned to do.

The circuit, however, said that based on McGarry's allegations and because, once again, he was a pretrial detainee and not a convicted prisoner, doing other peoples' laundry "cannot reasonably be construed as personally related housekeeping chores."

The case is McGarry v. Pallito, et al., 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 10-669.

For McGarry: Daniel McLaughlin of Sidley Austin.

For the Defendants: David McLean, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Vermont.

Did you know that the Pope condemned the slave trade...

...in 1837...

...in the slave state of Maryland?

Here is the text of In Surpremo Apostolatus:

IN SUPREMO APOSTOLATUS

(Apostolic Letter condemning the slave trade, written by Pope Gregory XVI and read during the 4th Provincial Council of Baltimore, December 3, 1839.)

Placed at the summit of the Apostolic power and, although lacking in merits, holding the place of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who, being made Man through utmost Charity, deigned to die for the Redemption of the World, We have judged that it belonged to Our pastoral solicitude to exert Ourselves to turn away the Faithful from the inhuman slave trade in Negroes and all other men. Assuredly, since there was spread abroad, first of all amongst the Christians, the light of the Gospel, these miserable people, who in such great numbers, and chiefly through the effects of wars, fell into very cruel slavery, experienced an alleviation of their lot. Inspired in fact by the Divine Spirit, the Apostles, it is true, exhorted the slaves themselves to obey their masters, according to the flesh, as though obeying Christ, and sincerely to accomplish the Will of God; but they ordered the masters to act well towards slaves, to give them what was just and equitable, and to abstain from menaces, knowing that the common Master both of themselves and of the slaves is in Heaven, and that with Him there is no distinction of persons.

But as the law of the Gospel universally and earnestly enjoined a sincere charity towards all, and considering that Our Lord Jesus Christ had declared that He considered as done or refused to Himself everything kind and merciful done or refused to the small and needy, it naturally follows, not only that Christians should regard as their brothers their slaves and, above all, their Christian slaves, but that they should be more inclined to set free those who merited it; which it was the custom to do chiefly upon the occasion of the Easter Feast as Gregory of Nyssa tells us. There were not lacking Christians, who, moved by an ardent charity 'cast themselves into bondage in order to redeem others,' many instances of which our predecessor, Clement I, of very holy memory, declares to have come to his knowledge. In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people having been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity, it at last comes about that, since several centuries, there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations. But - We say with profound sorrow - there were to be found afterwards among the Faithful men who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely and distant countries, did not hesitate to reduce to slavery Indians, negroes and other wretched peoples, or else, by instituting or developing the trade in those who had been made slaves by others, to favour their unworthy practice. Certainly many Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to the duties of their charge, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous for the spiritual welfare of those engaged in the traffic and a shame to the Christian name; they foresaw that as a result of this, the infidel peoples would be more and more strengthened in their hatred of the true Religion.

It is at these practices that are aimed the Letter Apostolic of Paul III, given on May 29, 1537, under the seal of the Fisherman, and addressed to the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, and afterwards another Letter, more detailed, addressed by Urban VIII on April 22, 1639 to the Collector Jurium of the Apostolic Chamber of Portugal. In the latter are severely and particularly condemned those who should dare 'to reduce to slavery the Indians of the Eastern and Southern Indies,' to sell them, buy them, exchange them or give them, separate them from their wives and children, despoil them of their goods and properties, conduct or transport them into other regions, or deprive them of liberty in any way whatsoever, retain them in servitude, or lend counsel, succour, favour and co-operation to those so acting, under no matter what pretext or excuse, or who proclaim and teach that this way of acting is allowable and co-operate in any manner whatever in the practices indicated.

Benedict XIV confirmed and renewed the penalties of the Popes above mentioned in a new Apostolic Letter addressed on December 20, 1741, to the Bishops of Brazil and some other regions, in which he stimulated, to the same end, the solicitude of the Governors themselves. Another of Our Predecessors, anterior to Benedict XIV, Pius II, as during his life the power of the Portuguese was extending itself over New Guinea, sent on October 7, 1462, to a Bishop who was leaving for that country, a Letter in which he not only gives the Bishop himself the means of exercising there the sacred ministry with more fruit, but on the same occasion, addresses grave warnings with regard to Christians who should reduce neophytes to slavery.

In our time Pius VII, moved by the same religious and charitable spirit as his Predecessors, intervened zealously with those in possession of power to secure that the slave trade should at least cease amongst the Christians. The penalties imposed and the care given by Our Predecessors contributed in no small measure, with the help of God, to protect the Indians and the other people mentioned against the cruelty of the invaders or the cupidity of Christian merchants, without however carrying success to such a point that the Holy See could rejoice over the complete success of its efforts in this direction; for the slave trade, although it has diminished in more than one district, is still practiced by numerous Christians. This is why, desiring to remove such a shame from all the Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions.

We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices abovementioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter.