How Laura Keene prolonged the African slave trade

[L Verge]

(08-26-2018 07:01 AM)Rsmyth Wrote:  Gene, not at all. Did Laura Keene have any idea how those ivory keys got in her piano? Probably not. It's just ironic how two terrible tragedies are connected by a piano. Also ironic how Conneticut abolitionists (Pratt and Read) thought that elephants were a renewable resource and had to have known the cost in human lives to transport the ivory to the African coast. Some sources say between 2-5 slaves perished for every tusk. 90% of all ivory imported to the U.S. made its way to Deep River, CT.

Thank you, Rich, for posting that piece of social history that few people would think about. No matter whether an abolitionist or a planter, economics ruled the day (still does). When money is rolling in, it's easy to forget your basic principles. Many Southerners took the blame for the continuance of slavery, but Northerners had a vested interest in it also.

On a personal note, I served as an Episcopal church organist from the time I was twelve until I was 38. However, I learned music on an 1890 fruit wood upright piano that my grandmother received for her sixteenth birthday. My fingers spent a many an hour on those ivory keys without once thinking about where they came from.

I was a nut on the Lincoln assassination story even then, so I really should have made the link between the ivory keys being sourced by enslaved laborers and the murder of Lincoln being a result of the conflict over enslaved laborers.