The Founding Fathers and Slavery

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…if millions of Africans had been imported to strengthen slavery in the Deep South, to consolidate it in New York and Illinois, to spread it to Kansas, and to keep it in the border South; if no free black population had developed in Delaware and Maryland: if no apology for slavery had left Southerners on shaky moral grounds: if, in short, Jefferson and his contemporaries had lifted nary a finger--everything would have been different.'