English 2nd Lang) My Reaction Term Paper

Given the choice between abiding by unjust laws and freedom, any person would have chosen freedom; given the choice between being killed for learning how to read or being killed for escaping to freedom, anyone would have been morally justified in killing another to prevent that. It would have been nothing less than self-defense in a period of time when even the most advanced government and legal system available could not recognize obviously immoral laws.

Prior to watching this documentary, I knew only that the northern states were free and that the southern states relied on slave labor for the cotton trade. I had no idea that the amount of cotton produced by slave labor in America was actually the main source of cotton used by textile mills in Europe. I was also unaware that even in the northern states relied less directly (but just as surely) on the profits reaped by the immoral slave system in the southern states.It was also frightening to see that, for a long time, the American Congress was deaf to the complaints about slavery and I imagine those later arguments over slavery in Congress in the same tone as the current congressional debates about issues such as healthcare, taxes, gay rights, and immigration.

In some ways, the documentary demonstrates how far America has come; however, in other respects, there is something frightening about the fact that the tone of some of today's congressional arguments (such as gay rights) seem to be expressing almost identical positions to those of the northern and southern states over slavery in the 19th century and over civil rights in the….....