Someday I may write more on this, but here's a placeholder: Throughout our history white America has had a schizoid attitude towards slavery, possibly an attitude also found in England and elsewhere.
- on the one hand slavery is bad, the worst thing possible. It's what Americans feared, or at least said they feared from British rule. You can see it in the pamphlets leading up to the Revolution, and you can see it in our national anthem. (Britain's "Rule Britannia" also claims "Britons will never be slaves" in its second line.)
- on the other hand, of course, slavery is legal in some places until 1865.
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