Who, but the federal government of the North, could have nurtured, grown, defended, bankrolled, and built an entire empire on the selling/trading of slaves?
Slavery was introduced to the South by the North. The North had slaves before the South, and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.
Who's downplaying an economic system of slavery here?
(but, that's different though)
They were first introduced by British and Dutch slave traders. The vast majority of slaves brought to America's shores were brought by British slavers not "Northerners". Read Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the DoI.
The North had slaves before the South....
Jamestown Virginia had the first slaves in North America in 1619 --- a year before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock and 20 years before the first slaves in New England and at the same time Virginia enacted the Black Codes that codified slavery as intergenerational based upon race as opposed to a position of indentured servitude.
I.e. my friend, there were slaves in the "south" before there were even any white people in the north, and it was in the south that the legal and racial framework of the institution was created.
and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.
Name one NORTHERN state that had slaves after those in the South were freed. Just one! And exactly what law freed slaves in the south? Did southerners just suddenly become emancipationists?
The guy has a real point about the depth of the historical myth perpetuated by the Neo-Confederates. Take all the pride you want in being a Southerner, (there are many things to be proud of) but don't rewrite history. It makes you look foolish and makes the south look foolish.
Please. Check out how many Presidents, Vice Presidents, Cabinet Members and Speakers of the House before Lincoln came from slaveholding states before you make such claims.
Slavery was introduced to the South by the North. The North had slaves before the South, and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.
The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown on a Dutch ship in 1619 before the Pilgrims landed. There was Negro slavery throughout the New World. The phenomenon goes far beyond our North and South. But Black slavery was certainly taken to heart in the American South in the years from 1830 to 1860 in a way that it never was in the Northern states.
The 1860 census showed a total of sixty-four (64) slaves in all the free states.
All slaves were freed in this country by the 13th amendment. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the insurgent areas, and only had force under the war powers of the president.
It was a clever thing -- certainly the slave power never dreamed it would be invoked against them, the dolts.
Walt