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There would have been some students at West Point in 1828 whose families owned slaves. Slavery was only abolished in New York State one year prior to this. "Incessantly racist" is probably underselling it.

>Among the artifacts scientists uncovered were a liberty dollar coin from 1800, a 50 cent piece from 1828, a quarter from 1818, a dime from 1827, a 5 cent coin from 1795, a penny from 1827 and an Erie Canal commemorative medal from 1826, which was issued to celebrate the completion of the Erie Canal in upstate New York in 1825.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-08-30/west-point-ti...

I'm not denying there was racism and slavery at the time. I was asking if the contents would reflect a society that never had a thought or action that didn't revolve around hate, i.e. 'incessantly'. Do you think the contents meet this criteria?

Also, keep in mind that at this point the American Colonization Society (then Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America) is a thing.

The ACS isn't in favour of slavery, but it also doesn't want free black people in America. Instead, it proposes what today you'd hear yelled by bigots as "Send them back". It wants the United States of America to be a white country, and it's going to literally ship all the black people to Africa.

So yeah, no slavery there, but still "incessantly racist" seems a good characterisation.

> There would have been some students at West Point in 1828 whose families owned slaves

Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis, according to another comment on here.

1828 was probably the least racist time in history up to that point in history. All of human history prior to that is endless tribal and imperial conflict. U.S. was the first country that ever even explicitly set out to legally equalize unrelated people from different religions and ethnic backgrounds and simultaneously do away with the concept of inherited nobility entirely.

There were other multi-ethnic, multi-religious empires in the past that treated all citizens or subjects equally. Rome, the Mongols, and the Achaemenids left their constituent peoples to govern themselves as long as they paid taxes and remained peaceful. Rome even made everyone a citizen by the 3rd century or something (can't be bothered to look it up right now).

As for inherited nobility...that's just how things have been done for most of human history. The Americas were able to start over without that baggage.

> U.S. was the first country that ever even explicitly set out to legally equalize unrelated people from different religions and ethnic backgrounds

No they didn't! They could have done - racial equality was discussed at the time, as was gender equality, but they compromised in favor of allowing the slave states into the US in the first constitution. Many of which had racism embedded in the state constitutions in ways that were never even attempted back in Europe, such as prohibitions on miscegenation.

The U.S. Military Academy will open and unveil the contents of a nearly 200-year-old time capsule during a ceremony on August 28 at 10:30 a.m. in Robinson Auditorium at Thayer Hall.

This sketch depicts this well: https://youtu.be/xIiNbBQM_Go

I'm also curious if it has anything unsavory to modern sensibility. For a point of reference, "Jump Jim Crow" was written in 1828, but it had yet to become the major hit it was destined to be and wasn't published in sheet form yet. The era of minstrel shows as mainstream entertainment was still a little ways off.

It was. Fortunately the usual suspects have now been mostly deprived of power and tamed.

Top comment says this was contemporary with Robert E Lee, a man so racist that he rebelled against his country and got a lot of people killed for it, so .. yes?

>Among the artifacts scientists uncovered were a liberty dollar coin from 1800, a 50 cent piece from 1828, a quarter from 1818, a dime from 1827, a 5 cent coin from 1795, a penny from 1827 and an Erie Canal commemorative medal from 1826, which was issued to celebrate the completion of the Erie Canal in upstate New York in 1825.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-08-30/west-point-ti...

I'm not denying there was racism and slavery at the time. I was asking if the contents would reflect a society that never had a thought or action that didn't revolve around hate, i.e. 'incessantly'. Do you think the contents meet this criteria?