To understand the depth of slavery's depravity, it is necessary to learn about its roots.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. When I finally got around to reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

I was completely blown away. To begin with, knowing when it was written, I feared it would be a slog of a read. The first fifty pages are somewhat slower than modern novels, but after that it picked up and I simply could not put it down. When a woman is asked to give some clothes for the children of escaped slaves, she thinks back on a child of hers who'd died, and whose clothes she still kept. I was almost undone by this:

And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so.

It struck home how common the loss of children was back then, something almost expected, although every child lost was mourned deeply.