To southern slave-owners, the permissibility of slavery was intuitive. But this was only as a result of bias and a profound failure of empathy. They only considered things from their own perspectives, never thinking about what it would be like to be a tormented and subjugated slave. Had they done so, they’d have correctly judged slavery to be the abomination it was.
Are these claims that you’re making about the psychology of slave-owners the result of any reading of primary sources? Or have you done some other sort of historical research into the pre-Civil-War period of American history that informed this portrayal? Could you comment a bit on your sources for this?
Yeah, I suspect that owning slaves was about as intuitive as taking a vacation on Epstein’s island. The rich people did it because they could—not because they studied moral philosophy and concluded from the first principle that slavery is good, but because they knew they could get away with it.
Are these claims that you’re making about the psychology of slave-owners the result of any reading of primary sources? Or have you done some other sort of historical research into the pre-Civil-War period of American history that informed this portrayal? Could you comment a bit on your sources for this?
Yeah, I suspect that owning slaves was about as intuitive as taking a vacation on Epstein’s island. The rich people did it because they could—not because they studied moral philosophy and concluded from the first principle that slavery is good, but because they knew they could get away with it.