coldhearted scientist وداد

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison closed The Liberator in 1865, on the theory that its work was done. Colonial powers carved up of Africa in the name of suppressing the slave trade. We can read all about this and more in New World Order, Robin Blackburn’s review of some new books on slavery.

It is interesting to note that the more radical abolitionists like Garrison and Wendell Phillips (whose mother, by the way, tried to have him confined to a mental asylum because of his political views) were neither patriotic, nor friends of the Constitution. Garrison favored secession by the North, in part since the Constitution, in his view, so profoundly supported slavery. And in the early to middle nineteenth century, with the appearance of American nationalism in an alarming newness, it is easy to see why people would consider being un- or even anti-patriotic with relative ease.

It is almost pleasant to imagine the smaller, younger, weaker, non-suburban country of that time. Was it easier to think ‘outside of’ then, when it surrounded us neither so broadly nor so heavily?

Axé.