> I couldn’t have imagined the pro-slavery position was so outspoken and blatant, it’s a bit of a culture shock. Yeah, it is stomach-churning to us folks with

> I couldn’t have imagined the pro-slavery position was so outspoken and blatant, it’s a bit of a culture shock. Yeah, it is stomach-churning to us folks with a modern colour-blind sensitivity. It is hard to believe that folks believed that sort of thing. > Economic incentives are perverse Not just that, cultural and partisan factors. We see an echo of that sort of thing with the current lunatic rage against facemasks: it makes absolutely no sense to argue against them, yet … people do. The crazier they are the louder they are. Prior to secession, pro- and anti-slavery advocates eventually lost all respect for one another and lost the ability to compromise. Slaveholders thought that abolitionists literally wanted to see them murdered in their beds (cf. the Haitian Rebellion, Nat Turner's Rebellion, the Pottawatomie massacre, Harper's Ferry), and abolitionists had an equally low opinion. Opinions polarised and ossified. The extremists got more and more vocal, and eventually there was no middle ground. And then everything dissolved into a cataclysm of violence.