'What Democrats Can Learn From the Forgotten Impeachment of James Buchanan'

[L Verge]

I am currently reading Empire of Mud: A Secret History of Washington, D.C. and am just getting into the slavery system in the city beginning in 1800. Before the inception of the city, slaves were there as chattel of Maryland and Virginia owners. That soon changed.

We tend to want to put the blame on individual Presidents or Congresses or voters as to what allowed this system to go on for so long, but the chapter in this book has one paragraph that gives much perspective on "what a tangled web we weaved [wove]..." many years ago when we let those African slavemongers from various European cultures bring enslaved people to our shores:

"Once established, slavery inevitably required a fully integrated network to support it. Owners had title to fellow humans; traders trafficked in such 'commodities;' companies created infrastructure to support the economy; local governments regulated the trade with laws and taxes; and the national government tied laws and taxes to foreign trade, principally with Britain. All these aspects of the slave trade united in one place - the American capital itself."

For those who read Wild Bill's article in the current Surratt newsletter, this ties back to it in many ways. So many facets to the slavery issue, what caused it, could it have been settled without war, etc. Our forefathers couldn't solve the issue, and I'm not certain that Civil War and Reconstruction helped that much...