[central_va]

If you could become less emotional about this subject we could talk. But you are of the mind set that the differences in treatment and lives of slaves in the antebellum USA doesn’t matter. It is cut and dry to you. So be it. Live in ignorance.

[Regal]

Live in self-serving rationalization.

[cripplecreek]

My reason for posting this was simply as a means of comparing slavery of then with the slavery of today.

Those who desperately seek to avoid honest discussion of the facts are acting like the overseers of old trying to keep the slaves on the plantation of today.

[Ohioan]

Practically every nation on the face of the earth, at one time or another had slavery or its equivalent. Those who feel a need to bash America over the subject, are simply using it as an excuse to bash America.

The anecdotal narratives of former slaves & former masters, are a vital source for historic reference, of course. And those interested in an objective understanding will certainly look at such sources. Probably the best of these would be the recollections of the foremost ex-slave of the latter Nineteenth Century, the great Negro educator Booker T. Washington. Consider how he handled the subject of relations between the parties in his classic appeal in the 1890s: Booker T. Washington Address.