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In the book Inhuman Bondage, Davis in chapter 14 talks a good deal about Anglophobia and Britain’s effect on domestic policy surrounding slavery. Davis explains how the majority Americans saw the british empire as a “natural enemy… ruled by selfish interest, lusting for domination of the world, and filled with a deep rooted hatred for everything America represented,”(Davis 272). Through this worldview, Americans started to recognize every part of the British entity as “evil,” including slavery. As Davis explains, slavery in the early to mid 1800’s, was a fairly heated political topic that shaped a large part of the identity of American policy in this time period. Because of Britain’s anti-slavery policy and influence in the United States, many Americans began to lose support for the abolitionist cause because Britain’s ways must be evil. This in turn not only gave the South a great political strength nationally, but also gave them a boost in confidence. Meanwhile, British American tensions grew throughout the 1830’s and 40’s through territorial boundaries, the slave ship Caroline, and the Annexation of Texas (Davis 284). Britain’s attack on slavery in particularly worsened the Anglophobia which subsequently divided America even further. Davis seems to put much focus on the impact of Britain’s actions during this time to such an extent that he almost insinuates that British presence in political issues that deepened the divide that sparked the Civil War. I feel that Davis’s analysis here may be correct, yet I feel that this was not the only issue that sparked serious debate leading up to the civil war. David eludes here that this political debate started to become a serious issue only after the strong Anglophobia was influencing politics. I disagree to an extent, I feel that policies such as the gag rule, or the Missouri Crisis of 1819 are examples of where slavery was a very serious issue; however these issues were merely covered up instead of dealt with directly. Overall Davis has a strong argument on why it the slavery issue erupted later in the season, but in my opinion slavery was always a serious issue that politicians simple chose to act indecisively about.
As a side note I found that MASPEED made a good point about how Lincoln is alway portrayed as this great idol, often times we don’t see the over all picture of Lincoln’s life—the good and the bad. I also agree with MASPEED in that Lincoln was an overall admirable morally sound figure, even though he wasn’t the perfect idol that our middle school history teachers portrayed him as. Although Lincoln should not be the epitome of an honest person, his life is one of admiration and good example.