That the proslavery position was more of a pan-American phenomenon than a uniquely southern creation overall is certainly correct. Southern defenders like Dabney, for instance, proclaimed the North’s collusion in slavery and the slave trade early and often. Despite his distortions and selective argument in other ways, he was right on this point. This truth, however, does not so much exonerate the South from the curses and reviling that were piled upon her, but broadens the condemnation to its rightful horizons in the further reaches of the nation.
