Discussion Post: The Difference Slavery Made.
One of the objectives of this first week of class is to think about the role of slavery in the antebellum nation in a more complex and nuanced way. A key misunderstanding many Americans alive today have is that the conversation before the Civil War about slavery, in particular the opposition to it, was one about its abolition, and this upon moral grounds, when in reality that was quite limited and even many of those abolitionists morally opposed to slavery expressed their opposition in a fundamentally white supremacist paradigm. So in your discussion, we want to get beyond this facile understanding and fully articulate the many ways slavery was a "presence" or "key factor" in antebellum life, broadly considered. How did its potential expansion, economics (in its multitudinal ways), labor dynamics, ideological weight, political meaning, and very presence define the relationship that both northerners and southerners had with their world and with each other?
The response should include a reference list. Using double-space, Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.