Salon: The “original sin” of the Southern political class is cheap, powerless labor

[HiPointDem]

13. lol. you don't know your history. 'revisionist' is people who pretend slavery = only the south.

"The effects of the New England slave trade were momentous. It was one of the foundations of New England's economic structure; it created a wealthy class of slave-trading merchants, while the profits derived from this commerce stimulated cultural development and philanthropy."

--Lorenzo Johnston Greene, “The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776,” p.319.

Whether it was officially encouraged, as in New York and New Jersey, or not, as in Pennsylvania, the slave trade flourished in colonial Northern ports. But New England was by far the leading slave merchant of the American colonies.

The first systematic venture from New England to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders...

Boston and Newport were the chief slave ports, but nearly all the New England towns -- Salem, Providence, Middletown, New London – had a hand in it. In 1740, slaving interests in Newport owned or managed 150 vessels engaged in all manner of trading. In Rhode Island colony, as much as two-thirds of the merchant fleet and a similar fraction of sailors were engaged in slave traffic. The colonial governments of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all, at various times, derived money from the slave trade by levying duties on black imports. Tariffs on slave import in Rhode Island in 1717 and 1729 were used to repair roads and bridges.

http://www.slavenorth.com/profits.htm

Emily Dickinson's family lived on slave profits. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ditto.

Scratch a Northen culture-hero, you're likely to find slavery lurking off-stage.