Nashville, Tennessee
December 5, 1860
J.D.B. DeBow had run into a friend on the street and talked with him about how, in the South, even non-slaveholders benefitted from the region’s slave labor system. Then, promising to expand on what he said, he wrote this friend a letter, setting out in detail—in ten points—those benefits. As is common in political discourse, people use fallacious arguments to support their positions. DeBow was one such person.
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Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the Election of 1860 was disconcerting news for the South. It was the most recent event in a string of events that seemingly endangered the southern way of life and the future of the country. At a time when many northerners suspected southern threats of secession were but a bluff, there was evidence that the country had already split and the formalities were soon to follow. (more…)
The American Colonization Society, the premier organization advocating for the exportation of slavery to Africa, had a major supporter in Secretary of State Henry Clay in the late 1820s.
Last Best Hope of Earth 