THE CONVENIENT LIE: The Slow March, 1833-1850
The second installment of this absolutely awesome series by Mindy Esposito.
The second installment of this absolutely awesome series by Mindy Esposito.
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(Mindy Esposito) - Before we go any further, let me say something directly.
Slavery mattered. Enormously. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being honest with you, and I am not going to tell you otherwise.
But what slavery meant to the men in Washington, what it meant to the political fight that consumed this country for forty years, was not what your textbook told you. It was not primarily a moral contest between good and evil. It was labor. It was revenue. It was the economic engine of a region already being taxed to subsidize another. And it was the denominator in the only math that mattered in the United States Senate.
Slave states and free states. That count determined who held power in Washington. And power in Washington determined whether a state could protect its own economy, set its own terms, resist federal overreach, and govern its own affairs. Lose the count and you lose all of that. You become a subject, not a partner. You get governed by people who do not share your interests and have already proven they will exploit the advantage.
That is what the South was fighting to protect. Not slavery as a moral institution. Not slavery as a permanent condition. The ability to govern itself. Slavery was the unit of measurement in a political formula whose…