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In January 1854, just a few weeks after Robert Bunch and his new wife arrived in Charleston, he wrote a private letter to a colleague at the Foreign Office that summed up not only the monstrous way blacks were treated but the unrepressed decadence of the white elite around him: "The frightful atrocities of slaveholding must be seen to be described,” wrote Bunch. “My next door neighbor, a lawyer of the first distinction and a member of the Southern Aristocracy, told me himself that he flogged all his own people—men and women—when they misbehaved. I hear also that he makes them strip, and after telling them that they were to consider it as a great condescension on his part to touch them, gives them a certain number of lashes with a cow-hide. The frightful evil of the system is that it debases the whole tone of society—for the people talk calmly of horrors which would not be mentioned in civilized society. It is literally no more to kill a slave than to shoot a dog."So extreme was the pro-slavery avant-garde in Charleston in the 1850s that its leaders pushed to reopen the long-banned importation of captive Africans: a commerce—a holocaust, in fact—in which over the years millions of men, women, and children were packed into ships where, as one U.S. Navy officer put it, there was “scarcely space to die in.”
The role Britain played, or rather, refused to play in the American Civil War was absolutely critical to its outcome. Today people think they know that the British opposed all slavery, or they think they know that Britain supported the South during the war. But the truth lay between those contradictory views.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—VA-Gov: Imitation Is The Sincerest Form of...Something:
Back in March, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) decided to form a separate political action committee called Common Sense Virginia, with the intent of assisting whomever would emerge as the Democratic nominee for Governor from Virginia.At the time, the Republican Governors Association assailed the DGA, accusing the Democrats of creating a "shadow organization" and stated the the RGA would be totally transparent about their involvement in the race.
SIGH...do you even NEED the punchline anymore?
So ... let's just work our way through this. Not only does the RGA copy the DGA's idea to create a Virginia-specific PAC, they all-but-swiped the NAME, too?
The RGA has registered a new PAC in VA to support the association's work for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell. The name of the new group, however, sounds awfully familiar. It's called VA Common Sense PAC. And it reminds, not by accident, of Common Sense VA, the group the DGA used during the party's primary contest to spend some $3M on ads framing McDonnell as out of touch with Virginians.
There's something unseemly about Cruz following Trump around like a lost puppy,hoping to get his leftovers when he finally flames out.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) July 20, 2015Greg Dworkin takes a look at the GOP today, which is Trump, no matter who says different. Other candidates stick it out, because they’d be idiots not to. The Democrats can win the Iran Debate, and many other debates too. A review of Netroots Nation 15. Which has many points of view, but could always use better listeners. And a note from Scott Anderson, because I didn't say anything: Anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention!
