In the comment field of a long and informative Daily Beast article by J.P. O'Malley, “The Civil War is Not Just For Americans,” I was engaging in verbal combat with old right-wing foes. They don't call it The Daily Beast for nothing, and I was living up to my TDB screen name of Wee Beastie, a Scottish nickname for the Loch Ness Monster, in a rather juvenile manner. Then the poster "EkR" took the field like a veteran no-nonsense school marm entering an unruly classroom and I immediately sat up straight and started taking notes.

I first noticed the terse, professorial astuteness of her comments, clearly the words of a master historian. Then I saw that her keyboard had British pound signs, a rarity on this side of the Pond. This made me take a closer look at her screen name. Her Majesty's royal monogram is E II R – Elizabeth II Regina – and I am fairly certain that EkR is a slight modification of her monogram, employed in an attempt at royal anonymity. She has a strong German heritage - the Windsors were Saxe Coburg-Gothas until they changed their name as a means of politically divorcing themselves from their half-crazy, power-mad first cousin Kaiser Wilhelm, who turned Europe into a vast charnel house during World War One. So I surmised that EkR stood for Elizabeth konigin Regina – 'konigin' being the German word for 'queen.'

Elizabeth has been a voracious reader all her long life and was deeply tutored in British constitutional history by Henry Martin, Vice Provost of Eton College. She also sent her first email in 1976 and is no stranger to the Internet. I had seen a few of her very rare posts in TDB before, only in scholarly articles and never in gossipy stories about the British Royals. Holding true to a dignified sense of fairness and lack of favoritism, she never deigns to “like” any comments by others. All these clues convinced me that she was in fact Elizabeth konigin Regina, so I did my best to engage her in conversation in order to learn from her. 

Below are the excerpts of our chat that led up to her telling me of the British trade in Irish slaves in America that this 60 year old historian was ignorant of until then. I knew that about 75% of early colonists in America were slaves or indentured servants, but had no idea of the huge trade in white slaves before African slaves were brought here. The full Daily Beast article and all comments can be viewed in this link, and I think you will agree that every one of EkR's comments reek of royal authenticity, but in the interests of staying on topic, it might be best to explore them afterwards:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/05/the-civil-war-is-not-just-for-americans.html



WeeBeastie

I have a theory that if we had stayed a British colony, the Civil War would not have happened, since England abolished slavery in 1833.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin (engine), that made growing cotton exponentially more profitable and thus required many more slaves for vastly expanding cotton fields, didn't really start to affect the Southern cotton economy until after 1833. In 1830, only 750,000 cotton bales were produced.  By 1850, 2.85 million bales were being produced. In 1790, there were only 700,000 slaves here. By 1850, there were about 3.2 million. 

Thus by 1850, the economy of the South had become inextricably entwined with the evils of slavery. In the year 1833 when Britain abolished slavery, it had yet to become so very important to white Southerners. Amazing what a difference a few decades can make, eh?

Also, the Civil War settled NOTHING:  8 years after the war, the KKK had run all northern troops out of the South, sharecropping and prisoner chain-gangs became slavery by another name and black men were in far more personal danger after the war than before it. More than 200 anti-lynching measures were proposed to Congress, but NONE of them reached the floor for a vote! Then our Civil Rights "Era" really only lasted about 10 years or so, and now, with one in 3 or 4 black men being imprisoned and working for a dollar or two a day for corporations profiting from prison labor, they are slaves AGAIN!

EkR

@WeeBeastie The economy of the South had been a plantation economy based on slavery since at least 1660.  Before 1800, the plantations crops were tobacco, rice, sugar and indigo.  After 1800, cotton became the most important plantation crop.  Until about 1900, the core of the US economy still depended on the export of the same agricultural commodities that had been produced by slave labor before 1866.

I think that is why Reconstruction ended and the former slaves became share croppers and day laborers doing essentially the same thing they were doing before 1860 and often for the same masters.

WeeBeastie 

@EkR   Well said, and well met, Madam. But I MUST humbly ask your opinion about  my theory about blacks in America being more prosperous, overall, if  the American Colonies remained British.  Since I suspect you are Elizabeth konigin Regina, I would value your opinion on that matter above all. If you are not, you are still very astute and knowledgeable on all things British!


EkR

@WeeBeastie @EkR That is a hard question.  As Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, black bond slavery was brought to the Americas by the British.

Cromwell's Western Design depended upon slavery and after Preston in 1648, Cromwell sold Irish and Scots captives into slavery in the West Indies.  That is probably how Hamilton's ancestor got to St Nevis.  

Immediately after the Restoration in 1660, Charles II allowed the plantation economies in the American colonies to change the common law so that a child assumed the civil status of its mother rather than its father.  This was important since under the common law if the father of a child was unknown it was presumed that the father was a freeman not a slave.  The colonial courts had adopted that rule.

After the war of Spanish Succession (1701-14), the British won the Spanish Asiento, the monopoly on selling African slaves to all Spanish possessions in the New World.  

It was also the policy of the Crown to exploit the American colonies by maximizing the profits from the plantation economies in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas.  This greatly enhanced the New England economy as New England farmers, fisheries, shippers and manufacturers profited greatly from the sale of cheap food, transportation and manufactured goods to all of the plantation economies in the New World.

On the other hand, slavery had not been common in either England before 1707 or in Great Britain after 1707. In 1641, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties specifically forbid bond slavery and in 1646 a dozen or so Africans landed in Boston as slaves were immediately returned to Guinea at the colony's expense and with a letter of apology signed by Gov. Winthrop.  Later, Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 and so did Massachusetts in 1781.

WeeBeastie 

@EkR  Thank you so very much for your masterful, complex and thought-provoking replies that have given me new tangents to explore. I expected no less from you, Ma'am. You have inspired me to renew my efforts to convince my wife that a Welsh Corgi puppy is the perfect dog for us and our granddaughters! (She never travels far without her four Corgis)

*Note that I did not ask her directly if she was the Queen, since I did not want to put her on the spot and cause her to vanish. When she neither confirmed nor denied my suspicions, I saw that they were totally irrelevant to her, since she was posting as a historian, not as a royal personage. She took about 2 hours to respond to my question to her, and her complex, superbly balanced and non-prejudicial reply shows that she kindly took some time to research the question I posed to her. I stand in awe of her erudition and open mindedness - a rare thing indeed in historians on either side of the Pond that so often have political agendas.

This is the part of her reply to me that inspired me to research British enslavement of the Irish:

"Cromwell's Western Design depended upon slavery and after Preston in 1648, Cromwell sold Irish and Scots captives into slavery in the West Indies.  That is probably how Hamilton's ancestor got to St Nevis."  

And THIS is the atrocity that I – and probably 99.9% of Americans - was clueless about until our dearest old girl Queen Elizabeth told me of it, my friends. Excerpts from the book, “White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America,” by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh:

“The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.

“Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

“From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.

“During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.”

“African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

"In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.”

In appreciation of her tutelage and her integrity as a historian - revisiting this dark side of British history could not have been pleasant for her, for she is the gentlest and kindest of Mums to all members of her far-flung United Kingdom - I ask you all to join me in a toast of, "Long live the Queen!" Here is a song by the incomparable Chad Mitchell Trio that is both lovely and sad, that I send dear Elizabeth Regina, from one historian to another:

The Bonny Streets of Fivie-O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43tmYYYeA1s