agip wrote:
Fat hurts wrote:
It's not counterfactual history. It's historical interpretation. It is how we are able to learn from history.
I'm not asking what would have happened if early abolitionists held their ground. There is no way to know that.
The question is, should we view slavery as ever having been a necessary evil?
My answer is "no". What is yours?
If I were alive in 1776 I hope I would have been against a 13 colony USA with legalized slavery.
But slavery was legal in the north too...and sort of quasi-legal in GB. So what exactly are we saying here? That in an ideal world in 1776 there would have been no slavery in the North, the South and in GB. Ok, I think we can all get behind that.
But these questions are so ridiculous. Better to analyze what actually happened than throw yourself back in history or create counterfactual history.
We can not learn from the facts of history without making moral judgements. Tom Cotton judged that slavery was a necessary evil.
Do you agree with that judgement? I say "no". What do you say?