Let's refresh our memory of the earlier conversation.  Mr. South has suggested that it is important, in passing moral judgment about slavery in Virginia, to take into account the fact that those persons who wound up as slaves in Virgina were first enslaved in Africa, by other Africans.

I have suggested that this fact, while quite correct in and of itself, is irrelevant.  If you believe that slavery contradicts the essential premises of our political and constitutional order, then the behaviour of people in Africa is irrelevant.  Put another way, two wrongs do not make a right.

Anita Henderson usefully cautions us against making universal claims.  But I doubt she has any substantive objection to the argument I am advancing.  The caveat she suggests is fair enough, but should not distract from the larger argument.

Slavery was a viable and thriving institution for much of American history.  It thrived largely because the people who purchased slaves did so with intent to profit from their ownership.  The overwhelming majority did so despite the fact that in order to do so, they had to perform some real violence to the underlying ethical commitments on which our nation is constituted.

Put this another way.  I am not a moral relativist.  I believe it is possible to say that some things are morally wrong, and that one of those things that is morally wrong is slavery.  I think it is possible to examine the arguments of people who were for slavery, on the one hand, and against it, on the other, and to say with some ethical certitude "this is the superior argument."  I believe it is possible to say with some authority that people like Frederick Douglass or James Forten understood American political principles better than did people like Richard Furman, Thornton Stringfellow, or George Fitzhugh.

If you would like to read the philosophical arguments against relativism and for the notion that it is possible to apprehend ethical truth, I can suggest two books:  Simon Blackburn, TRUTH:  A GUIDE; and Russ Shafer-Landau, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GOOD AND EVIL?  Both are technically sound and well respected works by academic philosophers--Shafer-Landau's is the easier read, and to my mind, also the superior analysis.
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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