"We didn't go into the war to put down slavery but to put the flag back" Lincoln, Reply to the church committee September 13, 1862:

"In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is the destruction of property property acquired by descent or by purchase; the same as any other property" Lincoln, Annual message, December 1, 1862.

NOW that the traditional writing chores for the end of the year are finished I can turn to some detractors who recently took offence to my opinion that the only white man I respect in American history was anti-slavery campaigner and abolitionist John Brown.

I know American history very well, not only what I have read about, but also that which I have learnt through years of listening to the Voice of America's short wave radio programmes which often feature the history of the development of the Untied States of America.

Regrettably in the age of the world wide web and satellite communication, short wave radio has become extinct and is no longer used on the scale that it once was.

I had good reason to cite John Brown as the only white man in American history that I respect because of the special category in which I place him.

As a black man with a free black mind I certainly would not have the same respect for the Founding Fathers of the United States because no matter what principles the United States was founded on (and they were great principles for the setting up of a nation which had great respect for the rights of its citizens) at its centre it had one great flaw those rights and principles did not extend to my black brothers and sisters who were held in slavery.

I cite the words of Abraham Lincoln because even though he is credited with freeing the slaves, that in fact is not the whole truth.

While it is true that he had great distain for slavery, he was prepared to live with it if it preserved the United States of America as a single nation.

To quote from the book Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America by historian Lerone Bennett Jr. : "January 1st, 1863 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that 'freed' slaves in rebel states with the exception of 13 parishes (including New Orleans) in Louisiana; 48 counties in West Virginia; seven counties (including Norfolk) in eastern Virginia and the State of Tennessee."

The Proclamation did not apply to Border States of Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky and Delaware. Lincoln's policy was a policy of appeasement to the white slave owning class of the Southern confederacy The fact is the famous Emancipation Proclamation was flawed in that it did not call for the complete and unconditional end of slavery in the United States of America.

How then did slavery end in America and what was the main factor in its collapse? \

It was the Union army's advance into the Southern, slave-holding Confederate States of America during the Civil War (1861-65) and the subsequent economic collapse of the South (which depended on slave labour). As the Union army approached the plantations, the slaves simply walked away. They in fact declared their own freedom and many wanted to help the Union army, motivated greatly by the appearance of their fellow African-Americans in the Union ranks as soldiers.

Interestingly in 1862, the year before President Lincoln (pictured at right) signed his flawed Emancipation Proclamation, he signed a contract with adventurer Bernard Koch, to colonise 5,000 African-Americans on Isle a Vache in Haiti at a cost of $50 a head. It is clear that President Lincoln wanted to preserve the United States as a nation, but he did not foresee a Untied States of America with former slaves as part of that Union.

Now, when it comes to John Brown and his vision of the United States of America, I place him higher than those early American leaders because he clearly saw African-Americans as full citizens of the United States with all the rights as their fellow Americans. I could have mentioned the ten white Americans who along with five African-Americans who went to the gallows with him in the wake of the failed raid on the armoury at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. I know many other white Americans who gave up their lives in the cause of civil and union rights for African-Americans, but I used John Brown as a symbol of that sacrifice.

Dr. Barbara Ball is another one of those symbols in the context of Bermuda's history. Much beloved by the black community and embraced by black Bermudians when some in the white community sought to punish her for her stand on the side of justice in this country.

I can separate race when it is justified to do so, but I will never compromise the truth because some people are prepared to ignore that truth because it disturbs their view of what the historical reality is and the legacy of that reality that still forces us to confront it.