by nobody9999 | 2025-08-13 23:30:21+00:00
Thanks for your thoughtful post!

>I guess all that changed when the colonies revolted, states united, and got their own domestic stock exchange.

>OTOH I have guessed wrong quite a bit, maybe for the majority of regular citizens, whether of African origin or not, nothing else changed other than which continent the stock exchange is located on.

I think it's a bit (okay, a lot) more complex than that.

Even the plantation system of what's now the southeast and Chesapeake Bay was, at least by the mid 18th century much more than a bunch of tenant farmers sending all their goods to faceless corporations. Those colonies had already created their own elites, their own governing (albeit not very 'small d' democratic) bodies, their own ideas about how their lives and economies were run.

Much the same can be said of the colonies of the Northeast as well, although they were always much less dependent (in fact, by the end of the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts had abolished slavery[0]) on slavery which, by the mid 19th century pretty much ensure that the Union would prevail during the US Civil War due to the focus on automation and manufacturing in the northern states.

Also, the northern colonies were less beholden to the large multi-national corporations and more to the Crown and Royal Governors.

In fact, it was wealthy merchants and plantation owners whose profits were being skimmed by both the big corporations back in England as well as the Crown, who bankrolled (by lending money to the colonies/newly proclaimed states, as well as foreign governments -- notably France) the revolution.

There was also great deal of discussion around why the colonies should be independent from the crown, which convinced a significant proportion (a majority, by the end of the war?) of the population to support the independence movement.

For the slaves (well, except the ones that moved over to British lines when promised their freedom and managed to get out of Dodge before the end of the war), not much changed until after Appomattox[1].

The Reconstruction Amendments[2] (13th, 14th and 15th) and the Union occupation of the states of the failed rebellion[, ushered in a still not equaled level of African-American elected officials in the US until widespread White Supremacist violence and terrorism[3] and the disputed election of 1876[4], ended the Reconstruction era and doomed millions of Americans to second-class (if that) status for a hundred years.

I'd note that I'm glossing over a great deal as well as the history of the foundings[5] (note the plural) of the US is enormously more complex, especially WRT the industrial revolution, the expansion of the US across North America, etc., etc., etc. And later, the 19th[6] and 26th[7] Amendments,as well as the Civil Rights act of 1964[8] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965[9] further extended the political franchise.

Further movement (opposed by the same folks who opposed the above laws) legalized contraceptives and abortion as well.

In any case, there had been a slow movement toward more freedom, more liberty more widely distributed. Sadly, the inheritors of the folks who terrorized and murdered newly freed slaves in the late 19th century continued to do so for another hundred years until they were forced to stop. Since then, a concerted effort over the past 75 years or so has attempted to roll back many of these expansions of liberty, with significant progress being made over the past thirty years or so.

There's so much more, of course the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment[10], rolling back the Voting Rights Act, rampant gerrymandering and a host of other anti-democratic (small 'd') actions, big and small, with folks not being content with the will of the people, but pushing their own views on others whether they like them or not. It's pretty disgusting, in my view.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Massachu...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Appomattox_Court_Hou...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Amendments

[3] https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/46/1/53/102853/White-Sup...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Founding

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_to_the_...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment