The South was right- the "Civil War" war not over slavery !

[Tooting Carmen]

Curiously, I'd argue that Colombia took a more sensible approach when it came to abolishing slavery. Years before it was axed altogether, a law called the "Ley del Ventre" was introduced, which meant that any baby thenceforth was freeborn, regardless of the slaveowner's wishes. For all of the country's violence and dysfunctionality, its approach to race has been, in many ways, simultaneously both more progressive and more gradualist/reformist than the US or even Brazil.

[Tooting Carmen]

The Palestinians would be the North, the South more like Israel. Israel gets bossed around and blamed for all the world's problems.

That's an oversimplification too. An extraordinary amount of your country's military aid budget goes to them, for starters.

[Richmondbread]

Most slaves were happy workers. I think people are often surprised at what slavery was and how it wasn't what they thought. It was not a moral issue in the United States, even though the revisionists paint it as that.

[Tooting Carmen]

Most slaves were happy workers. I think people are often surprised at what slavery was and how it wasn't what they thought. It was not a moral issue in the United States, even though the revisionists paint it as that.

Bondage with a smile is still bondage. And the question remains: why was it so racialised? Was there even the legal possibility for a Black person to own White slaves?

[~Elizabeth~]

The Palestinians would be the North, the South more like Israel. Israel gets bossed around and blamed for all the world's problems.

You've got that backwards. Israel is the cause for most of the world's problems.

[Tooting Carmen]

Israel is the cause for most of the world's problems.

Just sticking to the Middle East alone: if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the region would still be riddled with despotism and religious extremism. Never mind the world's myriad other countries, tyrannies and wars that have nothing (or very little) to do with Israel.

[Italicus]

The Palestinians would be the North, the South more like Israel. Israel gets bossed around and blamed for all the world's problems.

[Smitty]

Most slaves were happy workers. I think people are often surprised at what slavery was and how it wasn't what they thought. It was not a moral issue in the United States, even though the revisionists paint it as that.

I agree there was a lot more benign slavery than is assumed today. But there was definitely a lot of abuse too. And that was a big factor in Northern abolitionism. I think most free state residents would never have cared much about slavery if there hadn't been abuses to stir their consciences.

[Italicus]

Most slaves were happy workers. I think people are often surprised at what slavery was and how it wasn't what they thought. It was not a moral issue in the United States, even though the revisionists paint it as that.

God, you're a fucking idiot. How would you like to be a slave on a plantation, moron? Whipped, abused, called a nigger? You could be torn away from your family at a moments notice because you or they were sold, you were never paid, lived in horrid conditions and if you were a woman you'd probably be raped. You're something special.

[Smitty]

Curiously, I'd argue that Colombia took a more sensible approach when it came to abolishing slavery. Years before it was axed altogether, a law called the "Ley del Ventre" was introduced, which meant that any baby thenceforth was freeborn, regardless of the slaveowner's wishes. For all of the country's violence and dysfunctionality, its approach to race has been, in many ways, simultaneously both more progressive and more gradualist/reformist than the US or even Brazil.

That was basically how New York and New Jersey implemented it, actually. "The 1804 statute and subsequent laws freed children born after the law was passed. African Americans born to slave mothers after July 4, 1804, had to serve lengthy apprenticeships to the owners of their mothers. Women were freed at 21, but men were not emancipated until the age of 25. Slaves who had been born before these laws were passed were considered, after 1846, as indentured servants who were 'apprenticed for life'." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor..._in_New_Jersey)