April 12, 1861 – This Day in History

I thought I might post this from nearby Fordham University::

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara is Professor of History and Associate Chair at the Lincoln Center campus... He has recently completed a book entitled "Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World" to be published in the Diálogos Series by the University of New Mexico Press in 2011. With Professor Josep M. Fradera of the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), he is editing a collection of articles that explore the slave trade and slavery in Spain’s overseas empire from the sixteenth until the late nineteenth centuries.

As recall he was also researching early Spanish abolitionists who seem to predate American ones and may have had an influence not necessarily in the record. Some slavery exchanges, described by economist Karl Polanyi, show "fake" equivalents in silver in the French lists for slaves but no metal ever actually exchanged.

One remarkable statement about firing on Ft. Sumter was that a former student was firing the first shot with others upon a former artillery teacher at the West Point Military Academy, where Robert E. Lee was once Commandant, and its recorded they had had heated exchanges in class. A monument to students killed inadvertently by their lessons is also there, where the football field is named "Buffalo Soldier Field" after many African Americans who served in the expanding West. –histarch