[megatherium]

I understand that Uncle Tom's Cabin is an outstanding, historical example of propaganda, but it was directed at the evil of slavery. I guess it was "Leftist" to want to improve society, but let us not imply that abolition was not the exact moral position for every conscientious person (leftist or conservative) of the day. (I know you didn't mean to do that.)

[Iris7]

Slavery as practiced here in 1830-60, say, left the slave with no legal rights whatsoever. As I read history this practice has destructive results.

Rome at the time of the First Punic War had slaves, but these slaves had a legal right to own property and protection from extreme treatment without cause. By the Late Western Empire such protections no longer existed. By 450AD the gap between the rich and poor was vast. The middle class (the bulwark of early Rome) had long since been destroyed.

Thucydides talks about comparable things in his history of the Peloponnesian War. When the Greeks of the Persian Wars days talked about Thermopylae they talked about free men fighting against a huge army of slaves.

Even without using any moral argument chattel slavery as known in this country has had disastrous consequences. The historic loss of the Constitutional Republic is only one of them.

"A good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit." Slavery has born bad fruit. Slavery is bad.

This is the actual reality, the truth. Opinion has nothing to do with it. Truth is not a matter of opinion.

Slavery is without any redeeming quality. It is bad through and through.