The civil war sits like the giant sleeping dragon of American history ever ready to rise up when we do not expect it and strike us with unbearable fire. It has happened here – existential civil war, fought with unspeakable death and suffering for fundamentally different visions of the future. The slave power especially demanded control over future expansion of the United States in order for its system to survive. No one made this case about the slave power better than the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The rhetoric about the slave power and about black Republicans has a familiar ring today.

Source: The Guardian August 20, 2017 09:56 UTC