Pirates & Slaves: Making America

Making America was a compromise between democracy and brutality – between pirates and slavers. Piracy was a business, long accepted as valid in America – arguably still accepted today. Britain tried to end it, even tried to trick provincials into giving it up, but America held onto it tightly. Once legitimized into a sovereign, slaving nation, piracy moved to the land and became a system of economics only slightly removed from piracy itself. It became our “Manifest Destiny” to spread it across the continent and, eventually the world. Slavers fought a war that killed more than 600,000 Americans to maintain their unique brand of piracy or capitalism. Robber Barons used capitalism to monopolize and kill other businesses like pirates taking another ship. The reader can see where these ideas began – enmeshed in the violent wilderness “beyond the lines of amity” devolving human nature – competition and sport, stealing treasure and burning ships - with Caribbean Buccaneers and Pirates of the Golden Age!