For dreamer_marie and patchworkmind

[fpb]

My post of five days ago, about Kate Moss, has generated more reaction than I imagined, especially from two members of my f-list. I am, however, unhappy at some of the features of their debate; and I think it is time - as the starter of the thread, the man-in-charge of this blog, and a person, since age has been mentioned, older than either of

Comments

Slightly OT note

[izhilzha]

How did slavery, almost unknown on the European continent by 1492, become an accepted and defended reality on the two American continents, within two centuries - a reality for which men were not only willing but eager to fight a major war?

I'll assume you're just going for overarching generalities to make your point--because the US Civil War was not fought over freeing the slaves (though the only good thing we got out of that war was the Emancipation Proclamation), it was fought over states' rights. Slavery was only one of the things being discussed underneath the the umbrella of that issue.

Re: Slightly OT note

[fpb]

Thank you. However, I stand by my view, which was Lincoln's view - stated in his Second Inaugural Address - that slavery was one way or another at the core of the struggle, even though people dragged in other issues. Do not, however, ask me to defend this view immediately - I am in the middle of a move, and at any rate I don't think I can write an essay a day.

Re: Slightly OT note

[fpb]

Would anyone have fired so much as a wad of chewing gum if the heart of the issue had not been slavery? You ought to read the kind of fiction being published in South Carolina as early as 1837, in which bloody dreams of civil war and the brutal humiliation of the North were openly propagated. Sorry, but States' Rights were a case of what Marxists call false consciousness.

Slavery was not only an American issue either. The French and British empires fought wars or near-wars about it. Brazil, Spain and Spanish Cuba were closely involved. The Dutch were not only maintaining expanding the slave trade in their East Indian colonies as late as the mid-nineteenth century, and the Afrikaaners broke away from the British Empire, with the Great Trek of 1836, essentially over slavery. Do not think that everything is about the United States, the issue of slavery certainly is not.