Charleston White and Adam22 Get Into it Over Who Ended Slavery, My Response

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01]So, I know you guys maybe seen Charleston White on No Jumper. If you haven't seen it, I don't know if you what guys want to look at or not, man, but I got to check uh something on the history again. And forgive me for the format of this video, man. I'm just walking around the crib.

[00:00:15]I'm back in Chicago for those of you guys who uh don't know right now, man.

[00:00:18]And uh tomorrow, this is just a little side note, tomorrow I'm actually going to go over to O Block and try to get my old channel back from the uh from the pastor.

[00:00:30]He cuz he's he's really hard to get a a hold of, man. He uh you know, he's a big celebrity. So, I'm going to go back over there in person and try to get it back from him. I don't know if he's in Chicago right now, man, but I'll be on O Block tomorrow.

[00:00:41]For those of you guys who uh are down there and want to want to holler at me in any way, shape, or form, >> [laughter] >> then But anyways, uh so, Charleston White was on No Jumper and they they got into an argument about who ended slavery. Adam 22 was saying that white people had ended slavery.

[00:00:58]Uh Charleston White was saying, "No, no, they didn't." Uh I'm not going to replay the clip. You know, you guys can see that uh on his page if you want, but so, I I did my degree in history. Um not advanced degree, just bachelor's, man, but uh you know, I worked as a social social studies teacher. So, the reason why this is such a contentious issue is because there isn't really a clear answer. You can't really say one race or the other ended slavery, okay?

[00:01:27]Technically, I mean, technically, slavery is still legal until today in various forms. I know what they're talking about with chattel slavery, you know, uh that that America was basically using for for pure profit in the American South. That's a different type of slavery, but various other forms of slavery are still legal today. And anybody that doesn't think prison is slavery probably has never been to prison and doesn't know anything about prison. That is definitely slavery. The military technically according to the strict definition, you know, once you sign the contract, you're basically signing up to be a a slave cuz you can't quit at that point. You can debate that as far as, you know, the pay grade and stuff like that, but but something that you can't quit okay, technically is a state of bondage.

[00:02:19]Even even if you voluntarily sign up for it. Okay, all the the definition of slavery is way more expansive than people think. People tend to think of like a black person picking cotton in the South getting whipped here in the United States. So, the definition is way broader than that. So, it's technically still legal till today.

[00:02:36]But I get what they were what they were talking about. Okay, so there were several stages.

[00:02:41]It's going to look like I'm avoiding the answer because when people give a long answer, it seems like that, but this this is a question that does actually have a long answer.

[00:02:51]When the country was expanding, okay, up until the 1860s, the country was expanding state by state.

[00:03:00]Okay, this was a gradual process. For most of the history of this country, there's been a frontier.

[00:03:06]West of that frontier was free, you know, Native American controlled land.

[00:03:13]East of the frontier was municipally, you know, the United States.

[00:03:18]We didn't have 50 states at that point.

[00:03:21]There was a balance of power between the north and the south. Okay, I'm making this I'm putting this in as simple terms for like kids as I possibly can. It's way more comp- complicated than this, but I'm just trying to simplify this.

[00:03:33]There was a balance of power, okay, in Congress between the free states in the north and the slave-holding states in the south. Okay, as we expanded west, that balance of power was going to be disrupted. Okay, and so there were the debate was about are the new states going to be free states or are they going to be slave states? Because slavery was the defining issue politically that put you on one side or the other.

[00:04:00]Like the Democrats and the Republicans fight today, back then it was free states, slave states.

[00:04:05]Okay, that that was the issue that that this broke down according to.

[00:04:09]So, the South realized, okay, that you know, we're about to be stepped on here. Like, we're smaller than the north of population-wise.

[00:04:21]Politically, we're not going to have any power as the country continues to expand.

[00:04:26]So, we've got to we've got to secede.

[00:04:28]We've got to we've got to separate from the Union because practically, that's the best thing for us.

[00:04:36]So, Jefferson Davis, you know, the head of the Confederacy, South, they decided to to separate from the United States and become their own separate nation.

[00:04:46]That technically, the secession of the South was what the Civil War was was mainly about, at least at first.

[00:04:55]You can say it was about slavery because slavery was the defining issue. If if the South had been a a a free territory as far as like slavery being illegal, it's arguable that the that the secession never there never would have been a reason for it and the and the Civil War never would have happened. So, so you can make the argument it was about slavery, but it really Lincoln was going to war with them to keep them in the Union.

[00:05:20]Okay?

[00:05:21]When he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, that didn't actually free any black people. And I think this is possibly what Charleston White was referring to when he said that, you know, whites didn't free black people because the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free any slaves due to the simple fact that the South wasn't listening to Lincoln at that point.

[00:05:43]The South was in secession. Like they Lincoln wasn't in control of them at that point. So, any document that he released, any proclamation that he made, they weren't listening to it.

[00:05:54]You see what I'm saying? Now, there's another layer to this and that it was the Native American slave owners, okay?

[00:06:00]Um after the Civil War was over, the Native American tribes actually still owned slaves in the in the US government actually had to send troops to force the Native Americans to free their black slaves. It wasn't every tribe. I can't remember off the top of my head which tribes it was, but um there [clears throat] were, you know, there I think there was something like 15,000 black slaves that still were being held by Native Americans. So, those particular slaves that the Native Americans held were directly freed by white people. I mean, those 15,000 white troops went over there and said, "You got to let them go."

[00:06:41]Okay, the rest of them, the ones that were freed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, there were a bunch of things being done practically in in the South to to actually keep them not as slaves, but as basically like low-wage workers. Like the equivalent to what you have now with a lot of illegal immigrants.

[00:07:03]So, you know, some black people make the argument that slavery didn't end right away because they were still, you know, working in agriculture and stuff like that for wages that were practically nothing.

[00:07:14]So, you know, you can you can make that argument both ways, but Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, okay, in not immediately, but down the line, did become kind of like the linchpin around which that issue ended.

[00:07:34]So, technically, you can say it was Lincoln.

[00:07:39]You can say that.

[00:07:41]Now, it he didn't want, I don't think at first, and no one really ever interviewed him about this as far as I know, but there was speculation that he didn't want um to free black people at first because he didn't want the European powers to think that the war was about slavery.

[00:08:01]So, you know, he was like, "We want to make just just make this look like a political struggle." I think he was he he may have been afraid there's at least speculation that he may have been afraid that uh European powers would come into the war on the side of the South uh because you got to remember like the cotton market, you know, everybody in the world was paying lower prices for cotton because of American slavery. The the labor cost in the industry was practically nothing.

[00:08:30]So, you know, if black people are free now, we're going to have to pay these people, the price of cotton is going to skyrocket.

[00:08:37]Whether they would have actually whether that was a realistic um speculation or whether they would have actually gotten involved over that, who knows. Th- This is all just speculation. A lot of this stuff is speculation because in these days you couldn't actually, you know, we didn't have like podcasts and all that stuff back then, dudes going to these guys and asking them, you know, interviewing them all 24/7, press conferences, all that stuff. Th- Th- This dude was just, you know, in the White House doing his own thing. So, it's like this is all guessing games.

[00:09:05]But, Adam Adam is more right than Charleston White was because I think what Adams was trying to say is train going by, man. I live right off the uh I live right off the the uh metro over here.

[00:09:20]But, I think I think what Adam was trying to say was that black people didn't have a rebellion. They they didn't have a successful revolution or rebellion like the Haitians did. And that's true.

[00:09:31]Th- There There were certain sub-ethnic groups like the Maroons that got their freedom through rebellion, but as a whole, black Americans did not get their freedom through rebellion.

[00:09:40]It was the government eventually just let it go.

[00:09:45]You know, so Adam is more right than Charleston White was.

[00:09:49]Um but it was a combination of things.

[00:09:51]If the South would not This is the big unanswered question of history, man. If the South would have just said, "You know what? We're just going to have to take a backseat to the north. As as the nation expands, we're going to have less power and we're just going to have to live with that. So, we're just going to stay You know, we're just going to stay in the Union."

[00:10:07]I mean, who knows what would have happened?

[00:10:10]It's [snorts] hard to imagine any scenario in which slavery would still be legal today in 2026.

[00:10:15]You know, it it would have been like a global embarrassment geopolitically that to own slaves, you know, based on race today.

[00:10:23]So, I don't think slavery would have lasted until today anyways. But you know the series of circumstances and events came together at the right time to end it at that point.

[00:10:36]And we were kind of late in the game, man. Like I like I said, you know, the Turks had freed my ethnic group from slavery in 1823.

[00:10:42]Like two three generations before that.

[00:10:45]You know what I'm saying? And uh you know, the everybody was freeing their slaves around this time in the 1800s. Everybody owned slaves in the world, but it was it was falling apart. The The one exception to that was in Africa.

[00:10:58]Um you know, the Arab Arab slave trade over there, the Islamic slave trade.

[00:11:03]You know, that persists a lot of you know, the underground human trafficking and stuff.

[00:11:08]That's that's still persistent today, but legally you got to you got to give Lincoln his his flowers, man. And I know Lincoln had his flaws. He wasn't perfect. But he was he was the guy that did it. He didn't have to do it.

[00:11:22]I mean, I think a lot of people especially a lot of black Americans, they don't really give him credit.

[00:11:29]He had a lot of He had some stances on certain things, you know, wanting to send black people to Haiti and stuff like that that could be considered highly racist.

[00:11:37]But, if he wouldn't have picked up that pen and signed that Emancipation Proclamation, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't have continued for decades beyond that. So, I think Adam is more right.

[00:11:51]So, that's the that's the best answer I can give you guys, man. You guys let me know what you think in the comments section. Again, sorry for the format of this video, man. And guys, wish me We wish me well tomorrow, man, going down to O'Block to try to get that channel back, man. We'll see what happens. Your boy Shine News. I'm out.