Background
European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than others. The Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the Brazilian Empire continued to depend on slavery, as did the American South. In the years prior to the American Civil War, the rise of support for abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South, on large plantations devoted to the commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane, but it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states.
Read more about this topic: Golden Circle (proposed Country)
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)