...slave owners slept lightly, with weapons close at hand...

I've been thinking about slavery.

Slavery didn't start in America. Slavery is as old as civilization, and I doubt there’s been a day of human civilization without it. Slavery still goes on today. Social opposition to slavery (not counting opposition from the slaves themselves) is a recent development, only a few hundred years old.

The Jews, according to the Old Testament, were everyones' slaves at one point or other. They were slaves of the Egyptians, but they weren't the Egyptians' first slaves. We're talking about thousands of years ago, now, and on into pre-history. Being slaves of the Egyptians didn't prevent the Jews from enslaving others, either. That was the way things were, back then. You conquered someone and enslaved them for a couple of generations, then you got conquered, and it was your turn.

In the age of exploration leading into the colonial era slavery became big business, and dark-skinned people were exported to the colonies. This nation was built on the backs of slaves, abused immigrants, and children. It wasn't until the industrial revolution and the invention of free time that Joe Nineteenth-Century-American, little more than a slave himself, was able to look at slavery and say "That's messed up." Not everyone in the South was happy with the practice, either. Of the white population at the time, only five percent held slaves - the wealthy land-owners. In defense of crackers everywhere(always down for my crackers): The term "cracker" does not mean "One who cracks, as in a whip.” Crackers typically didn't own slaves. They were dirt-farmers, and had to work their own land with their own hands. Slavery's biggest fans have always been the large commercial interests, maximizing profits with conscript labor.

By the time of the American Civil War, slavery was internationally frowned upon, and America was under pressure to do away with it. And so the brave and selfless Yankees took up arms and fought to free the slaves from the evil clutches of the South, but they wouldn't stand next to a black man on the battlefield, and made them fight in segregated units. The evil South was vanquished, and slavery was ended everywhere, forever, and Matt Hanson went and bought a Yankees cap. The End. Houghton Mifflin, New York.

Slavery didn’t end, though. It's everywhere, in varying degrees. It still happens all the time.