> OK -- I always enjoy reading Harold Forsythe's posts because they are so
> thoughtful and enlightening.  I'll grant Harold the point on the
> Underground Railroad, but I'm still not convinced on the matter of the
> United States becoming a refuge for escapees from the successfully-seceded
> southern Confederacy -- why would the mores of the north in regards to
> race (and its not just about race, but free labor and competition for
> jobs, and control of the growing immigrant populations, etc. etc.)change
> to make them more in line with the activists of the Underground RR?  Would
> the US grant asylum? (that's a nifty question -- anybody know about such
> matters?)or naturalize them?  Wouldn't former-fugitives concentrate in
> border regions exacerbating social tensions there?
>
> The question though also raises the point of successful secession --
> could a Republican administration really let them go?  I know there were
> radical abolitionists who hoped to save the American experiment by
> severing itself from the corrupting influences of slave power, but surely
> that view did not dominate.  So letting the south go would have undermined
> the administration in that quarter -- what then?  I hesitate to entertain
> counterfactuals, but I can imagine some...
>
> Good cheer.
>
> David
>
>
>

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