People are obsessed with their cash cow. Philosophers have long noted that people's opposition to or favoring of something depends on who's ox is getting gored.
but we would re-open the African slave trade that every white man might have a chance to make himself owner of one or more negroes, and go with them and his household goods wherever opportunity beckoned enterprise.”
Rhett has seemingly swallowed the whole "slavery is moral" thing hook line and sinker. A lot of people in the South at that time did. They were wrong, but such was the culture in which they emerged.
It doesn't make his economic arguments invalid though.
Which in the South was slavery.
Rhett has seemingly swallowed the whole "slavery is moral" thing hook line and sinker. A lot of people in the South at that time did. They were wrong, but such was the culture in which they emerged.
Wrong by our standards now, and wrong by the standards of some at the time. But it's an indication of just how far Rhett and the vast majority of Southerners of the period would go to protect their institution from political interference from others.
It doesn't make his economic arguments invalid though.
Mildly suspect, given his history. But again, he mentions taxes 23 times and slaves/slavery/slaveholding 31 times, including in the title. His issue with taxation was obviously secondary to his concerns for slavery.