The Societal Scars of Slavery-Searching for Common Ground an Ongoing Dialogue


Cicatrices_de_flagellation

The Scars of Slavery, A man named Peter, Louisiana 1863 - source Wikimedia

I had a very kind comment from The Chiefio, regarding my previous post, A Comment on the Downfall of the Slavery Driven Expansion of the Antebellum United States, which was itself derived from a comment I made on a post over at his blog entitled Slavery Shrunk America.

As an aside – you can see immediately that The Chiefio and the Meme Merchants Consortium are operating on very different theories about titling posts.  Chiefio seems to be operating on the Norman Mclean [Scottish] model, and we MMC on the James Joyce [or Irish] model – oddly the MMC tends towards Scottish ancestry, and Chiefio Irish – go figure.

Naturally, my interests were somewhat tangential to Chiefio’s original post, which had more to do with how North South pre-Civil War political wrangling over the slave issue affected US expansionism southwards into Mexico, but we seem to be having some kind of a civil conversation on the subject – I’m loving it.  You can decide if its interesting to you.

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The Peregrinations of Chiefio-A Comment on the Downfall of the Slavery Driven Expansion of the Antebellum United States


William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman, 1865 by Mathew Bradey - The face of Experience.

I’m not sure what inspired the Chiefio on this particular foray into the history of the Gadsden Purchase, How Slavery Shrunk America, and how it played into the politics of antebellum US westward expansion, but where he leads I will follow… and register a comment.

The basic outline of the history of the Gadsden Purchase that he lays out jibes pretty well with what I learned as far back as high school, but the larger context is something I’ve missed till now, very interesting.  I think he did a good job pulling the various strands together, but I also think the point of how strongly the Antebellum South was driven to expand its slave holding was not put strongly enough.

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