back
6 comments
A good idea, except that by today something like 90% of the world's maple syrup/sugar comes from Canada, specifically Quebec.
Maybe this is my ignorance showing, but I am happy to read that slavery was considered unethical, even if only by some, back then. I wasn't well aware of dissenting opinion on the matter.
> slavery was considered unethical, even if only by some, back then

The notion of slavery being unethical had been many centuries old at that time.

As a bush-league history buff, it's been sort of annoying to see the popular conception of the American past do this violent swing from treacly hagiography to a house of horrors.

I guess nuance or detail is too hard.

I believe the dissenting christian religious, quakers and affiliated non-conformists in the methodist tradition underpinned the anti-slavery movement of the UK, and I would assume the USA from their deep shared roots.

By the time of legal reforms of the 18th century I think this was overt, specific focal action. They were using parliament, and outside parliament agitation against capital investment in slavery. In many ways, delaying reform into the mid 19th century was an american story. The supply side from africa dried up long before the southern states were ready for the transition.

Slavery in the british colonies (west indies) had been backfilled by transportation from the UK prison system. When that ended, the hulks (ships moored in the rivers with prisoners) overflowed, and Australia happened, to remove the hulk problem. Ending the australian penal colony system also ended how Britain dealt with trade unionists and irish freedom fighters.

It's sort-of fictionalised in Neal Stephenson's "system of the world" but it has factual underpinning, if this is perhaps anachronistic/ahistorically portrayed in the books.

While some like the NYT and their 1619 project try to paint the US as happily filled with slavers, the reality is that there was already plenty of division around the time of the US revolution. Indeed there were even slave owners like Thomas Jefferson who expressed reservations publicly. He called it “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot." Did he do anything about his own plantation? Well, no. That's the rub. But his writings show that opinions were pretty negative already. Actions, though, took a long time to follow.