There's a lot of historical truth to this - the founding documents of the Confederacy express as much hostility to the North's public infrastructure projects and "internal improvements" as they did support for slavery They saw it as the same issue, their "way of life" https://twitter.com/theashleyray/status/1302024072725839872 …
-
-
As soon as he died they abandoned all work on this and Washington DC remained an embarrassing muddy cow town with the White House and Capitol awkwardly parked in it until the 20th century The Washington Monument went up 100 feet and then stayed unfinished for decades
Show this thread -
Jefferson Davis met with Confederate state governors repeatedly during the war to talk about building a railroad because they really needed one, it would be a massive boost to their economy and make the war effort so much easier Never got off the ground
Show this thread -
Slavery, it turns out, is a great way for a civilization to be lazy You, personally, don't have any reason to give a shit about improving anything because your life remains comfortable as long as you can throw human labor at the problem The workers this affects don't get a vote
Show this thread -
(Hence the whole thing about ancient civilizations inventing things "early" -- the Inca only using wheels as children's toys, the Greeks inventing Hero's Aelipole, a simple steam engine, as an experiment -- but not using it for anything because why bother when you have slaves)
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.