INTRODUCTION

We think it was a terrible thing that haunted the world – ages ago. We think modern civilization is way beyond it. And yet, the incredible fact is this: there are more slaves in our world today, than at any other time in history.

Why is human slavery still such an issue? And what can we do to finally eliminate it?

This ‘Magnolia Plantation’, near Charleston, South Carolina, is one of those places people love to visit in the American South. It’s a beautiful plantation, which embodies elevated “Antebellum” culture, that’s the southern world before America’s Civil War.

People still like to wander through these fields, where cotton, tobacco and many other crops flourished. They like to visit this mansion where classy banquets and social gatherings brought in those lovely southern belles in their elegant gowns.

This is in fact, the kind of setting for one of the biggest movies in history: Gone With the Wind.

But what’s ironic is this: a beautiful plantation also tells us why slavery is still a problem today. It suggests why we haven’t eliminated that barbaric practice.

INTERVIEW EXCERPTS

Lisa Randle, Magnolia Plantation/ Carl B Westmoreland, and Dina Bailey, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Lisa Randle: The impact of slavery on the southern states was very huge, and very instrumental, because the South was predicated on slavery. They were predicated on the fact that they had slave labour, and the south was very agricultural. 

So without slavery the south never would have existed, it wouldn’t have functioned like the North, which had a lot of industry. So slavery actually was the foundation of the South.

Carl Westmoreland: Alexander Stevens, who became the vice-president of the Confederacy after 1861, wrote a document and he made a famous speech where he talked about the absolute right of each individual to determine who would be free, and who would be enslaved.

And then he went on to delineate the fact that without slavery, the South would not be economically able to compete with the rest of the world. And he felt that, in owning human beings, it would be just like owning a piece of industrial equipment right now.

He had the absolute right – he, and his neighbours – had the absolute right to own people of African descent, to own Native Americans, to own anyone who was not Anglo-Saxon and to exploit them for free labour.

LR: The southern states were very reluctant to give up slavery because all their money was tied up in the institution of slavery. Their money was mainly used to buy land and to buy slaves, so they were able to buy and borrow against the slaves that they owned. They owned the people here and they used them as collateral to maintain their wealth.

Slavery was why America prospered – in the South. Slavery was the essential component of its economy. These plantations would never have grown so big, these mansions so high, if it hadn’t been for all those slaves. Cotton would never have become such a profitable and widely sold crop if it weren’t for all those people labouring—for free.

Now, southerners in the 1800s weren’t exactly uncivilized. They weren’t barbarians. They lived in nice homes like this Magnolia Plantation house in Charleston. Many
regarded themselves as part of America’s elevated culture. Many regarded themselves as Christians.

But the economics of their world compelled them to keep slavery going— in these quarters. Yes, to justify it, to defend it, saying, “We treat our slaves very well.” And yes, to fight a violent Civil War against the Emancipation Proclamation.

That’s why slavery is alive and well in our world. It’s all about economics. It’s all about profit. People still find ways to justify slavery. They make excuses. They try to make others believe their slaves have a better life than they would otherwise!

Well, let’s take a look at precisely how slavery is happening today.

SLAVERY TODAY

Dina Bailey:  There are about five examples that we talk about with modern day slavery here at the Freedom Centre. The first being child labour, where they’re 18 years old or younger doing hard labour, not working at their parents’ shop. 

We talk about domestic servitude, which has to do with nannying, or working at country clubs. We talk about bonded labour, which is borrowing money and then never being able to pay it back. 

We talk about sex trafficking, which is the forced body labour, where you are doing things sexually, usually with children or young women. And we talk about forced labour, which is the most like antebellum slavery in the United States, where  you are forced to do something against your will. 

Of all of these it’s really just about doing things against your will. Once it becomes involuntary, that’s when we talk about modern day slavery.  

It’s going on in contemporary cities around the world. Yes, many cities that have freeways, office buildings, traffic lights and railroad tracks,  also have slaves hidden away somewhere. Now, these are the most common types  of slavery:

First there’s Bonded Labor. That starts with debt. People in very hard times, may pledge themselves to labour – to get a desperate loan. And they often end up working on and on for nothing, because they’re under that debt.

The services required, the duration of the labor may not be clearly defined. And   often people in bonded labour find that their debt is growing, not diminishing, because  the loaner provides food and shelter.

Tragically, debt bondage doesn’t just go through a lifetime. It has actually been passed on from generation to generation. Children are required to pay off their parents’ debt!

This bonded labour, this debt bondage, is the most widespread form of slavery today.

But there’s another form that’s all too common. And that involves what is called human trafficking. It involves the women you’ll see standing on the streets in many cities, selling their bodies – Prostitution.

Many of these women started out very young and very distressed. Something had     probably kicked them out of a home. And some pushy business guy promises to take them somewhere else where they can find a life.

Human trafficking. These young women, these children, often end up in another country, often there illegally. And they are made to fear the police – they have to keep their identity a secret. That’s how their supposed rescuer forces them into some sex  industry. Sadly, these trafficked women and children come to believe that giving up their bodies is the only way they can survive.

A recent study revealed that about 80 percent of transnational slaves  are women and girls. And some 50 percent of them are minors.

DB: Slavery is very extensive today. We often don’t have very good numbers, because we’re talking about the differences between historical slavery in the United States, and modern day slavery. So historically it was legal, so you had a lot of numbers to work with. People were keeping track. 

Today it’s illegal, and so a lot of this is kind of black market, and ‘under the rug’ as we might say, so you don’t have all of the exact numbers, but a lot of people do say that the percentages, that there are more people enslaved today than there ever have been before. And so when we’re looking at that, we say yes, there probably are more people trafficked around the world. But also just enslaved within their own country. 

And the number today, although people are going back and forth because we don’t have the actual numbers, can be anywhere from 27 million to about 30 or 31 million, depending on your definition of slavery.

Today slavery is illegal in every country, almost every society. And yet there are some 27 million slaves worldwide. Debt bondage and sexual bondage. All kinds of bondage.

MODERN DAY EXAMPLES

For example, about 40 million people in India are bonded workers. Most are Dalits, or ‘untouchables’. They are forced to work in terrible conditions – trying to pay off a debt, year after year.

In China, slavery was officially abolished in 1910. But in some regions in that vast country, it still sneaks in. Brick manufacturers in the provinces of Shanxi and Henan try to get away with it. In 2007 the Chinese government had to free 550 people, stuck there in brick factories. And 69 of them were children!

In that Shanxi province, 95 provincial officials had to be punished for allowing slavery to continue.

The North Korean government, however, does the opposite. It operates six very large political prison camps. Some 200,000 people are subject to hard slave labor there. Political prisoners, and their families, are subject to inhumane treatment, and torture.

In the Caribbean, Haiti has been plagued by poverty, and there are over 225,000 children who work as Restaveks – that’s unpaid household servants.
The United Nations sees this as a form of slavery.

Mauritania, in Africa, was the last country to abolish slavery – not until 1981. And yet today 20% of the population is enslaved. Many men, women and children are used as bonded labor.

Do you get the picture? It’s happening all over the world. Countless people are being recruited into slavery. They are tricked and deceived. They get false job offers, false migration offers, even false marriage offers. Some are even sold by family members! Some are simply abducted.

And so many are kept as slaves – because of debt, or through isolation and threats. Many, especially those in sex bondage, are kept as slaves through drug addiction.

SLAVERY IS ALIVE AND WELL

DB: Slavery is still alive today, I think for a lot of reasons, some of it having to do with power. The internal need, the inherent need of people to have control over others – to think themselves better than other people – so I think that’s kind of the sociology of it. 

On the other hand, there’s a lot about economics. There is a material, a product that people need – in this case human beings – labour; and other people who are willing to pay for that product. So some of it’s about power, some of it’s about domination, but a lot of it is about economics and what people are willing to pay for, unfortunately.

So what can we do to help eliminate this tragic practice? What can we do to be part of an anti-slavery movement today? Well, interestingly enough, the best answers go back to that same era – in the mid-1800s. Except they go back to a different place, up north.

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

A woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe for a time lived here in this homestead in Cincinnati. It’s architecture reflects that nineteenth century world. She grew up in a very Christian home in Connecticut. When she was twenty-one she moved here to Cincinnati with her father, who was the president of Lane Theological Seminary.

Well, slavery in America was becoming a bigger and bigger political controversy. It was threatening to split up the United States. But many people, living in these nice nineteenth-century homesteads, didn’t even want to think about that problem, that terrible thing: slavery. They
had a hard time even hearing about the awful things slave owners could do.

And Harriett Beecher Stowe could have just lived her stable, educated life too, and ignored those ugly things across the Ohio River. Instead, in 1850, she wrote a book, a novel called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was based on the narrative of a former black slave, Josiah Henson.

CW: And he was described by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the public, when they think about a gentleman called Uncle Tom – that’s the person she was describing – and he was not a fictional character. He was a gentleman who, in fact, lived and he was enslaved in Kentucky. And if you can imagine, he had a five year-old son, and a seven year-old son, and a wife. And he made two cotton sacks; he put one son in one bag, and the other son in the other bag. 

He put them on each shoulder, and he and his wife would walk almost fifteen miles a day. And they walked almost five hundred miles, from Kentucky, through Cincinnati; then they went due north to a place called Sandusky, Ohio. And from there they went to Canada.

And he not only successfully escaped, but he was able to escape with his wife and two sons. He was…later he would come back, and help other people to get out.  

IMPACT ON AMERICA

Harriet’s novel explained what the life of a slave was really like. What it’s like to be abused, day after day. What it’s like to watch family members sold away to other plantations. What it’s like to risk your life— just for a breath of free air.

Her Christian faith compelled Harriett to expose something so inhumane.  This woman’s book grew out of a contact with slaves in the ‘Underground Railroad’. Well, this book became the best-selling novel of the 19th century. It would move America to abolish slavery.

Harriett Beecher Stowe shows us the first important step in fighting something like slavery: we don’t ignore it. We don’t just push it aside as someone else’s problem, as something ugly in some other part of the world.

The first step is to face it, acknowledge it, deal with it. We have to confront the fact that some 27 million human beings today, cannot get a life of their own.

ABE LINCOLN

Let me tell you about a man who made many speeches, passing through these New   England towns in 1848. He campaigned for the Whig Party, as the anti-slavery movement was growing. This was Congressman Abraham Lincoln – before he ran for president.

And his speeches would become very memorable, printed all over the East Coast. As a young congressman in Illinois, he proclaimed “slavery is bounded on both injustice and bad policy.” That was a time when his fellow legislators wanted to pass a resolution against abolition societies, against people trying to help runaway slaves.

Southerners were arguing that slaves in the South were better off than hired laborers in the North. But Lincoln stated this: “Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”

That issue would erupt into the American Civil War, which began near here at Fort Sumter, where a Confederate army began cannon fire on this Union fortress. That battle would turn into a very long conflict.

But Abraham Lincoln’s passion would eventually bring the real issue of slavery home to the heart. After signing the Emancipation Proclamation as president, he said this: “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.”

During the Civil War, when the city of Vicksburg in the South, fell to General Grant, Lincoln would describe a big Union victory in this way, “Those who opposed the declaration that ‘all men are created equal’ turned tail and ran.”

DB: Abraham Lincoln was extremely significant in the freeing of slaves. He is one of the most complex characters, I think, when we talk about it, because some herald him as the great emancipator. He wrote the emancipation proclamation, which was really a wartime measure that freed slaves in rebellious territory. 

However, once the war was over, there had to be something that Congress passed, which then brought about the 13th Amendment. So between this wartime measure that kind of stirred everything up and gave enslaved people the idea that they could be free, and become a movement up to the north, then we have after the war we have reconstruction, we have the 13th Amendment, and so he was really important in kind of, getting the ball rolling to make slavery illegal in the United States. 

Abraham Lincoln, the man behind the end of slavery in America, embodies something very important. He didn’t just believe the right thing. He didn’t just support the right political organizations, those opposing slavery. He expressed his convictions passionately. He spoke out against something an entire culture had justified for so long.

Yes, it’s like standing at a battlement near Fort Sumter and facing that Confederate cannon fire. It was about opposing slavery anyway.

OUR ROLE TODAY

Today, I believe it’s people who speak out who will really make a difference, who will really build the momentum of an anti-slavery movement. It’s when passionate expressions circle around towns, around neighborhoods, that they impel more and more people to do something about it.

DB: The Freedom Center, to me, means a place where we can have safe dialogues, where we can talk about all these things that people are still very uncomfortable about talking about. But also very unclear about what their history was, and so again, we talk about what is relevant, and bring it back, and talk about how we can make a better world – whether you are white, black, from Australia, from the United States – no matter where you are, we have a story for you!

And today, we don’t have to use cannons. We can express convictions in all kinds of ways that really get around. We can email. We can post things on Facebook. We can tweet on Twitter. We can put things up on a blog.

Slavery is so often ignored today. It’s so often rationalized. It really makes a difference, when we give a personal voice to why it must end.

Remember that Christian principle about God’s law sinking into our
hearts? Well, the Bible also emphasizes expressing those moral principles, giving them a voice. The word ‘testify’ pops up quite a bit in the New Testament. As Jesus would say about himself, and his disciples in John 3:11, “We speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen.”

Now primarily those apostles would testify about the gospel, about what Christ accomplished. But that Messiah is the one who proclaimed, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Christ set people free in all kinds of ways: free from disabilities, free from illness, free from guilt, free from oppression.

Yes, freedom is an essential part of the truth of the gospel. And the New Testament urges us to speak that truth. Here’s Paul in Ephesians 4:25, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbour.” 

In that same chapter, Paul writes this in verse 15, “Speaking the truth in love, we will     in all things grow up into him who is the Christ.”

Yes, speaking the truth helps us grow; it helps us grow into the One who makes people free.

And when we express our convictions, our passions; it’s important to do that in love. It shouldn’t be just getting our anger out. It shouldn’t just be a way to vent our issues. It shouldn’t be just about hating slave owners. It needs to be about love. We want to help people; we want individuals to have better lives.

We can make a difference. We can put our energy behind something that’s bigger than us. We can help eliminate one of the biggest tragedies in our world today.

How do we help fight slavery?

Well, first of all, by facing it. It’s real. It’s a present problem. It’s hidden in all kinds of devious ways. It’s promoted in all kinds of economic ways.

Secondly, we can invest in organizations that are opposing slavery, that are helping implement laws that will abolish it. Do some research. Find one that you feel is effective. Find one that you feel is taking on a critical issue. And become a part of it.

And finally, express the truth that every human being should be free. Yes, freedom! That’s God’s intention. That’s what he helps us to grow toward. That’s what the Saviour Jesus Christ laid out in this sinful, wounded world. He longs to make people free.

What does freedom mean to you? Freedom of choice? Freedom from addictions? Freedom from pain and suffering? Freedom from the past? Or maybe, it’s freedom from all of the above?

SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER

If you would like to experience this kind of perfect freedom, then I’d like to recommend the free gift we have for all our Incredible Journey viewers today.
It’s the booklet, Freedom: Worth the Sacrifice. This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely free. I guarantee there are no costs or obligations whatsoever. So, make the most of this wonderful opportunity to receive the gift we have for you today.

If you have enjoyed our journey to America, and our reflections on the freedom that Jesus can offer each one of us, then be sure to join us again next week when we will share another of life’s journeys together. Until then, let’s pray for God’s blessing.

Dear Heavenly Father, we see the many terrible problems in our modern world. You are the answer to all the problems we face. Please help us to find a way to accept your gift of freedom. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.