If someone was making a deal with me for whatever reason, be it a transfer of money, a trading of shifts or maybe a simple exchange of words, and tossed in some underhanded comment to undermine the deal or sneak a quick jab for insult, i'd be pissed. Now the Wilmot Proviso, would have banned slavery in any state acquired and was added as an amendment to a funding bill. This proviso is important because this was one of the many straws that broke the camel's back in terms of tensions between the North and South in terms of slavery. Granted, it never passed and was never accepted in any bill it was tied to, it was considered as a strike against the south, forewarning the beginning of an escalating tension which would result in the Civil War. The proviso merely slighted the south.
The great loafer would have supported the proviso, but most importantly he would have feared the consequences that would follow if it failed. Whitman was a smart man he must have realized that the North and South were not only struggling over a serious national issue, but that communities and families were being torn between sides, that supported one side over the other. Fratricide. Fathers clawing at the throat of their children. Siblings aiming muskets amongst themselves. Whitman's world and atmosphere of acceptance and love and civility was shaken and tossed out the window once the Civil War started. Whitman was a man that according to Songs of Myself, tended to the a runaway slave, feeding him, clothing him and providing shelter from a world that fought amongst a political issue. Whitman understood that slavery wasn't about the profit and agriculture and politics and whose right and wrong, it was about people. People being free, for themselves to do what they please. The perfumes of politics and all that was artificial and fake merely masked that only the truth that mattered to Whitman, which was experience the world, and knowing one's self through the experience. How could a man or woman reach such a spiritual plateau if there is a human dominance, a master of their universe, looming above them, striking them and removing all which personal?
Slavery stripped more than rights, it stripped cultures and identities.
Excellent!
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