Sublime
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If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
Henry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
There’s a historical event that haunts and shames the region. And shows the machine of power. The story is about a boy named George. George was owned by Lilburn Lewis, the nephew of Thomas Jefferson, in the Kentucky mountains. In 1812, a cherished water pitcher slipped from the fifteen-year-old George’s hands, and it shattered. In a drunken rage, L
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Some proslavery advocates, worried that the booming white settler population might crowd out slavery, sought room for their way of life farther south. They staged a series of “filibusters,” private invasions of Latin American republics that, they hoped, would lead to annexations. The most dramatic was William Walker’s invasion of Nicaragua in 1855,
... See moreDaniel Immerwahr • How to Hide an Empire
In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.
Yuval Noah Harari • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
By the end of summer, most Texans were certain that if slavery was abolished, the whole of the South would Africanize, no proper woman would be safe, amalgamation would be the order of the day. Though in the next breath they would tell you that the war had nothing to do with slavery. It was about human dignity, self-governance, freedom itself, the
... See morePhilipp Meyer • The Son
They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
They’ve learned the other side will show them no mercy and will use the flag of truce to get closer and inflict deeper injury. Suddenly, after ten years of fighting, one side climbs out of the trench with a flag of truce and runs screaming at the other side with reckless abandon.
Adam Smith • Exhausted Wives, Bewildered Husbands: Why your marriage is hurting, and how to blossom as a couple
‘The Amboina Massacre’.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Xinjiang (1864-1877) led by Ya`qub Beg,