Slavery and the Long-term Roots of the Civil War

Imagine the thoughts of English colonists who undertook the treacherous journey across the Atlantic to settle in the New World. They had risked their lives to venture to a mysterious land only dimly understood. Maps only vaguely represented the New World, and vast stretches of the North American continent remained terra incognita, shrouded in obscurity. Along the Atlantic Coast of North America hundreds of Native American tribes, vast acres of virgin forests, and innumerable species of native birds and other game filled the landscape. It was a land at once promising and scary.