Lol this thread. My family owned slaves, a lot of slaves. Descendants of those slaves are still alive today and they took on my family's name. Why the fuck is everyone discussing how many slaves a certain group owned or which area had the most free blacks. Slavery was apart of the South, just as it had been apart of the US, Brasil, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Britain, etc. It was considered normal. Slavery wasnt some uncommon thing that was pushed into the farthest corners of society by the non-slave owning populations. Rather it was paraded around, it was common, and it was rather unsurprising for a wealthy Southern/Northern family to own slaves or have owned slaves. If you want to go on and on about what is right and what is wrong, then think about this. Slavery at one point in time was considered just, deal with it. Slavery is wrong, we know that. But back then, many saw it as the norm. Fighting over who owned the most slaves or who freed their slaves first makes you look like an idiot. I don't see anyone going after the fact that the US was founded by men who believed that a race war would erupt between whites and blacks. Jefferson was an ardent racist and so was Washington and many other Founding Fathers. Many Founding Fathers supported pushing west into Indian territory and the forced removal and destruction of the native peoples. It was the thought process of the time. Does it make it right? No, of course not. But condeming one nation and yet supporting another nation that has done the exact same thing is hypocritical. Hundreds of countries have owned slaves, conquered nations, colonised, and spawned men that considered this all a-ok. We might as well ban every Western European country's flag because at some point in time they oppressed another people.
