Anne, 

There is no doubt by anyone today that slavery is morally wrong and in most 
countries illegal.    Slavery in North America developed over time and was 
legitimized by all the British Colonies and then by all the individual states of the 
United States.  There was little doubt, in the antebellum south, even after the 
mid 1800s that God had established the master-slave relationship between 
whites and black so slavery was legitimized by religion as well.  It was an 
approved economic and social institution. 

It would, in my opinion, produce a better understanding if students were 
taught that the governments, federal and state, were complicit in the 
activities of slavery.  “They” paid and provided the troops to quell rebellions 
and uprisings.  “They” paid the compensation for slaves killed or whipped as 
punishments for crimes committed.  “They” passed and enforced and codified 
laws like the Fugitive Slave Acts.   “They” being not just the good people of 
Virginia but of Pennsylvania, New York and Maine as well.  

To show the lack of complacency on the part of the slave perhaps better 
choices exist.  Tell the real story of Harriet Tubman.  Describe the method of 
escape for Henry “Box” Brown and how he worked for the Abolition movement 
after his flight.  Define the activities of Anthony Burns and how the black and 
white populations of Boston fought to harbor and then purchase this mans 
freedom.  

I can not in anyway, shape or fashion see Mr. Turner as a patriot.  He did not 
as a send a grievance to his Master, whom he called a kind man, defining what 
he felt as in proper treatment.  He took a hatchet and beat him and his entire 
family to death as they slept.  Whether he personally killed one or fifty is not 
the issue he was depraved and indifferent in his leading of a mob and will 
always be a mass murderer.  

I agree that our children need to learn the consequences of suppression and 
what it does to people and to the nation.   Those lessons should be taugh 
without honoring Nat Turner or General Custer.  Those lessons should be 
honest and without a political bent, without the poetry and prose of the left or 
the religious rhetoric of the right.  

v/r

Tony

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