Would anyone have fired so much as a wad of chewing gum if the heart of the issue had not been slavery? You ought to read the kind of fiction being published in South Carolina as early as 1837, in which bloody dreams of civil war and the brutal humiliation of the North were openly propagated. Sorry, but States' Rights were a case of what Marxists call false consciousness.
Slavery was not only an American issue either. The French and British empires fought wars or near-wars about it. Brazil, Spain and Spanish Cuba were closely involved. The Dutch were not only maintaining expanding the slave trade in their East Indian colonies as late as the mid-nineteenth century, and the Afrikaaners broke away from the British Empire, with the Great Trek of 1836, essentially over slavery. Do not think that everything is about the United States, the issue of slavery certainly is not.
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Re: Slightly OT note
Date: 2005-09-26 09:06 pm (UTC)Slavery was not only an American issue either. The French and British empires fought wars or near-wars about it. Brazil, Spain and Spanish Cuba were closely involved. The Dutch were not only maintaining expanding the slave trade in their East Indian colonies as late as the mid-nineteenth century, and the Afrikaaners broke away from the British Empire, with the Great Trek of 1836, essentially over slavery. Do not think that everything is about the United States, the issue of slavery certainly is not.