Doug Deal wrote, "As abolitionist attacks on slavery grew more insistent,
proslavery apologists tended to shrink the meaning of the term "slave" from
ownership of or property in the whole person to ownership of just that
person's capacity to labor and the expectation of general obedience in that
context."
This remains the view of a great many people in the U.S., both North and
South.
Historians need to relate just how degrading slavery as real estate or
property was, while still reminding readers as Brent Tarter said, "the
people being written about were not slaves by choice or by nature."
Paul
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