In 1793 the U.S. Congress enacted their first fugitive slave law which required every state to forcibly return slaves who had escaped from other states to their owners. It included a $500 penalty levied against rescuers. https://twitter.com/secpompeo/status/1283912748078956545

Alexander von Humboldt: "One often sees men with their mouths full of beautiful philosophical maxims, who nevertheless violate the first principles of philosophy with their conduct...”

”...abusing slaves with a copy of Raynal in their hand, and speaking enthusiastically of the cause of freedom while selling the children of Negroes only a few months after their birth."

Kentucky (1799): An act directing the county courts to appoint Patrolers "to visit negro quarters [and] suspected places of unlawful assemblies of slaves...any slave found without a pass...shall receive any number of lashes on his or her back, at the discretion of the captain."

M'Vaughters v. Elder, South Carolina (1809): “The young of slaves...as objects of property...stand on the same footing as other animals...”

Thomas Jefferson: “[in Ancient Rome] the slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us [Americans] a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture."

Pompeo’s incoherent attempt to reject the #1619Project cleaves the history of American slavery from the racist ideology which was used to justify it, thus straight up promoting racial slavery denialism at the highest level of the U.S. government.

It actually sounds like he is reading a Breitbart article.

More pertinently his invocation of “Marxist ideology” echoes the paranoia of his political antecedents in the Antebellum South who frequently drew a direct line between socialism and abolitionism, viewing them as two sides of the same coin.

Michael F. Conlin: "Antebellum conservatives saw socialism in every reform and feared its menace in every place.”

The Charleston Courier claimed that many abolitionists "were disciples of Proudhon, or enemies of property” while the New York Journal of Commerce believed that socialism and abolitionism were based on "the same principles.”

The Southern Literary Messenger, in its eulogy to a certain John C. Calhoun, claimed that he had spent most of his career fighting against socialism, which it defined as "centralised democracy."

In fact the abolition of slavery in the U.S. is by far the most socialist endeavour its government has ever accomplished.

It wiped out property (in people) which was “roughly three times greater than the total amount of all capital [invested] in manufacturing, almost three times the amount invested in railroads, and seven times the amount invested in banks.”

“It was equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population." (Deyle)