Was slavery America's "original sin"?

James Goodman has an interesting piece on why It's time to stop calling slavery America's 'original sin' CNN 02/16/2021.

Historian Jeff Ostler is a specialist in the history of the North American indigenous peoples, and he highlights this aspect of Goodman's article:

Good points by James Goodman:

1. Slavery a crime against humanity, not an "original sin."

2. "If our British and then American ancestors had a first sin, it surely must include taking that land, which continued for hundreds of years."https://t.co/VF0CHnCuQ0

— Jeff Ostler (@Jeff__Ostler) February 16, 2021

Godman reminds us that historical metaphors always have to be used with care, including the slavery-as-original-sin one:

The habit might seem harmless, shorthand for saying that slavery was distant, deeply embedded and bad. All history is hindsight. We often see things that people couldn't or didn't see at the time. We tell stories and offer interpretations that depend on our knowledge of events that happened between then and now. We make comparisons and all kinds of judgements. We employ metaphors.

And he continues, "The problem is that it is a weak, misleading metaphor, concealing much more than it reveals about early American history, the institution of slavery, the aftermath of slavery and the messy business of making a nation."

But I'm also particularly interested how he describes the risk of using the Christian religious concept of Original Sin in this historical context. Because the notion of Original Sin has a strong element of inevitability about it. The religious version doesn't eliminate individual guilt. But it also sees guilt as a historical destiny. And Goodman also describes how it echoes pro-slavery arguments in America.

And this is also a real problem for using Original Sin to understand American slavery:

Then there is the question of who committed "our" original sin. Was it the European slave traders and enslavers -- first Portuguese and Spanish, then Dutch, French and English, all aided and abetted by African enslavers and traders -- who began to transport Africans to the Americas in the early 1500s? Were they our Adam and Eve, leaving everyone who came after them as the inheritors of their sin? Or was it the former British colonists, who, in the Declaration of Independence, nearly three centuries later, argued that all men are created equal and condemned King George III for inciting domestic insurrection?

Or was it the men in Philadelphia, 11 years later, who produced a Constitution that preserved and protected slavery in significant ways, including the fugitive slave clause and the three-fifths clause[?]