Morality then, morality now

I am reading David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass -- with current arguments about monuments and Black Lives Matter very much in mind -- and I am freshly struck by how many slave-owners were rapists who treated their own children, their own flesh and blood, as property to be bought and sold. It was a terrible thing.

Not a new observation, of course. It's just hitting me anew again tonight. I don't think it's presentism to judge that behavior. Frederick Douglass, certainly, knew it was wrong at the time.


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