Beginning in approx. 1830

Beginning around 1830, individuals living in the U. S. A. began developing a sense of slavery as a grave wrong that needed to be rectified and an institution that needed to be abolished. A considerable movement arose led by famous men like William Lloyd Garrison. In this way a movement arose. And, it was a form of activism directed toward the South. For - you see - that is precisely where the slavery was. But what does this entail?

We can see that if we are to proceed in this way in our pursuit of ethical values we are opposed to grave moral wrongs and, simultaneously, always locating those wrongs in somewhere other than ourselves; it is not that it was in the negro race: but in the big bad slavers who are harming them.

Notice that this is a righteous combination. If it is moral outrage you need it is there. Additionally it is combined with a view to somebody else. This is someone both wrong and not of one's own group. And yes, Virginia, to this day, scholars still assume things, but with questionable moral certainty, for they are assuming one side unquestionably right, the other unquestionably wrong. The result is a self-righteous attitude not so different from any other form of bigotry. What happens to this clear demarcation, between right and wrong? It disappears when we realize that the bigotry never left the house at all. Ooooops!!!

Well, the only conclusion possible is that it never existed. The moral certainty, I mean – and blaming the South was above all convenient. One never had to go against anyone in one's own neck of the woods. The slaveholding southerners are the same. They too would pose as morally upright; so did the Southerners in the fifties and sixties: like George Wallace. Everyone did this. These righteous gentlemen – Southerners, this time around – resisted integration. They claimed that these new ideas would destroy the "civilization" and moral values of the West. I do not think I am exaggerating because this is documented in Wm. Manchester's two volume work on the period. It’s good reading.

What the South was doing to the blacks the North then did to the South. Gotchya. But what actual good comes out of this? Is anything really changed? Or does all of this just feed into our own self-righteousness? The root downfall in either of the cases is simple: not understanding others. This is as hard for the Northerners, certainly, as it is for the Southerners. Opposition to slavery was the way we in the
U. S. A. expressed our own ethnic strife. Clever.

Western civilization is an old, established thing. It passes through Greece, Rome, the medieval period and the nation-states period – on to the culture of capitalism and democracy. It changes at its own organic pace. Now we have arrived at what we might call modernity. The term is well-known. But is modernity simply another stage like the others or is there something different?