All apologies for the format. i have to get this one out before it's really dated, and i could fix the rotation issue if i weren't so lazy about exporting data onto new SD cards. The editing software won't allow this simple fix because i need to clear some (lots) internal storage. Expanding the screen removes the problem, given you're okay with full-screen viewing.

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As for the material, a couple qualifiers:

SLAVERY IS EVIL, need i actually say this? Yes, of course i do! After all, this is the Internet, the land of emotional zealots and uninformed opinions!

Ahem, having said THAT, any analysis of slavery in the US needs proper context, and a big aspect of this is TIME, or at what point in history you're talking about when referring to a region or particular state.

For example, Maryland GREW more antislavery as 1861 drew closer, but again, mostly for the given reasons, as well as its border state status, i.e., being close to Washington, Pennsylvania, and the rest of the north. It was also a DIVIDED STATE within a divided nation: most of Maryland's slave labor was concentrated on either side of the Chesapeake, used for aquaculture and agriculture. Recall, too, the Baltimore Riots. Maryland was also, unbeknownst to many, a top tobacco growing state, behind its neighbor Virginia to the south. In my very neighborhood we have a street named Rolling Road, named after those (slaves, unmentioned in the signage) who rolled hogsheads of tobacco up dirt roads from the fields, to the road and trolleys where they could be brought to nearby Baltimore for shipping. In other areas, again, those near Washington and Philadelphia, grew more antislavery as time marched on and as the war grew closer - but they sure weren't staunch abolitionists. Another point worth mentioning (missed it in the vid) is that keeping fugitive slave laws were a requisite component of the Compromise of 1850.

HERE, some may think that's exactly why this prison was built WHEN it was built. And perhaps this was the case. HOWEVER, other states, such as say, Massachusetts, were much less compliant with this part of the odious bargain; Maryland did not hesitate to comply with it and enforce measures.

To be sure, the vast majority of the people of just about EVERY state, north or south, were inherently racist, did not see black Americans as equals, were not in favor of suffrage, and at best, were really only in favor of a politically-based, incremental emancipation from bondage. There of course WERE the staunch abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison - but their percentage, even in the north, only amounted to about five percent of (their) population.

INDUSTRY had largely removed the need for slavery. TECHNOLOGY removed the need. Except in areas still dominated by intensive, single-crop farming and harvesting, and this practice, too, had only recently been giving way to crop rotation, multi-crop farming, better irrigation, and mechanized farm equipment.

There, of course, were always exceptions. By around 1850, for example, Alexandria, Virginia [where Robert E. Lee hailed from and even managed (but did not own) a number of slaves], had freed most of its enslaved population.

Conversely, William Lloyd Garrison, in his circuit of speechmaking in northern cities, was often heckled, pelted with fruit and other objects, and in at least one case, actually dragged through the streets.

Let's not forget that a New England state, Rhode Island, lofty and righteous by the time of the Civil War, was in the previous century not only a slave state, but a top one at that, and the chief point of entry where thousands upon thousands of slaves entered the nation.

Let us not forget that New York, around this time, was the second biggest slave state in the nation, only eclipsed by South Carolina.

Slavery - as evil as it was (and still is today) - has always been a matter of evolving technology, sectional division, and economics in general.

The North was EVERY BIT as detestable in this regard.

They simply utilized the Second Industrial Revolution before the agrarian South, and took measures to ensure Southern dependency.

Bottom line: don't EVER fall for historical oversimplifications. History is messy and complex, and the US Civil War, by ten times. REAL history isn't a place for thinking with your emotions. It's exactly the place where they need to be checked at the door.

That is, if you want to arrive at accurate and logical conclusions.

-KL

Addendum:

A reiteration regarding the matter of "Pragmatic Abe" and freeing the slaves to boost troop levels: most blacks who enlisted with the Union after the Emancipation Proclamation were assigned the most undesirable duties: guard duty in Northern prisons for Confederate soldiers, and acting as human shields on the front lines - again, as did the Massachusetts 54th, in the movie Glory.

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#CivilWar

#Slavery

#IndustrialRevolution

#Labor

#Economics

#Maryland

#BorderState

#EffYoTextbook