The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

series of lectures given in 1850 by Louis Agassiz, a Harvard zoologist who claimed that scientific observation proved that Blacks were inferior to whites and thus merited enslavement.

Harvard hasn't changed much.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” they wrote in their official declaration. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

This sounds like the argument to allow illegals to pick crops in the US.

“It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and the schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.”

The media keeps doing this.

“some 290 indifferent artillerymen” and “318 helpless infantry recruits, almost without arms, without clothing, and totally and entirely unfit to meet the enemy.”

This is probably the best line in the book.