the common theory of providential progress, of the inevitable reconciliation between the sin of slavery and the democratic ideal, was myth. Marking the moment of awakening is like marking the moment one fell in love. If forced I would say I took my tumble with the dark vision of historian Edmund Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom. Certainly slavery was contrary to America’s stated democratic precepts, conceded Morgan, but in fact, it was slavery that allowed American democracy to exist in the first place.
