Alyssa True’s Reviews > The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story > Status Update

"They were key to crushing revolts by enslaved people and buttressing enforcement of the slave codes, laws that maintain the racial hierarchy by banning black people's access to firearms, literacy, and unfettered movement. Southern delegates worried that placing control of the militias in the hands of Congress was risky because the federal government could decide not to fund or arm the state militias."

"The 1812 case Hezekiah Wood v. John Davis and Others concerned the situation of John Davis, a Black man born to a mother who had never been enslaved. According to the law of matrilineal descent, this should have established Davis's own freedom, but Wood, an enslaver who claimed Davis as his property, argued he had purchased Davis before his mother had proven her freedom. The Court sided with Wood." Terrible.

About the Declaration of Independence's mention of slave rebellions: "As several historians have pointed out, unlike modern writing, which often places the most important information toward the top, during the colonial period, listing this grievance last in the document indicated its importance."