[cuban leaf]

I think the seeds of the destruction of this nation were sown before the nation became a nation. It is in our acceptance of slavery and even protecting it with the creation of the nation.

We will never recover. Slavery was fatal to us. It has just taken a long time for the infection to kill us, even though the original projectile was removed by the Civil War.

[Sherman Logan]

While violently anti-slavery, I must admit that those who foresaw its abolition as creating huge problems for future generations have turned out to largely be correct.

Their diagnosis was correct, even though I differ greatly as to the appropriate treatment.

[GeronL]

Slavery existed throughtout history in every country of the world, long before there was a United States.

—
Something most school kids are never taught

[Hemingway's Ghost]

It is in our acceptance of slavery and even protecting it with the creation of the nation.

Indeed.

Locke's defense of slavery is the one gaping "WTF?" moment in the Second Treatise. Likewise, Founders really screwed over subsequent generations of Americans by failing to resolve this issue when the nation was founded. Granted, I understand the realpolitik of why this happened, but the end result was not good.

I call myself a libertarian, and I fully subscribe to the notion that states had (and have) a "right" to secede from the Union. But I also cannot square in my own mind the righteousness of states seceding from the Union in order to perpetuate the power of allowing humans to own other human beings.

[MachIV]

I could not have said it better myself.

[ml/nj]

It is in our acceptance of slavery

Aristotle accepted slavery.

ML/NJ

[Road Glide]

“I think the seeds of the destruction of this nation were sown before the nation became a nation. It is in our acceptance of slavery and even protecting it with the creation of the nation.
We will never recover. Slavery was fatal to us. It has just taken a long time for the infection to kill us, even though the original projectile was removed by the Civil War.”

Some harvests of wrath take centuries to grow.

You’re right, of course. The finest observation I ever read on the peculiar institution:
“We should have picked our own cotton.”

Somebody else wrote that, but I wrote this:
“We should have mowed our own lawns....”