African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant’s Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. William Henry Seward, Lincoln’s anti-slavery Secretary of State during the Civil War, born in 1801, grew up in Orange County, New York, in a slave-owning family and amid neighbors who owned slaves if they could afford them. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.
Source: http://slavenorth.com/
And who sold them the slaves?
Yes, there is history of slavery throughout the U.S. A history everyone needs to know and understand. That is different from the Confederacy, the confederate flag and statues. While the nation has moved on, those flying the Confederate flag, often alongside the Nazi flag, promote hate, bigotry, racism, White supremacy, and violence that is simply wrong. It is inseparable from those that lamely say it is a matter of culture. Sorry, that’s a poor excuse and ignorant. Defending it all on claim that next will be our founding fathers, our national flag, our national identity is ludicrous and won’t happen.