Today's title is actually a headline over on CNN right now.
I wonder to myself "what bright young dingbat just found this out?"
As anyone over the age of reason, who has seen the movie "1776", knows:
"Molasses to Rum to Slaves" was sung by Edward Rutledge from South Carolina and directly refers to the triangulation of north/south/caribbean economics in the 18th century.
But even non-musical types have a general knowledge that the North and the South were heavily divided on the issue and not always along geographical lines (Mr. Dickinson of Pennsylvania being a prime example), and that it took all the genial diplomatic skills of Benjamin Franklin himself to eventually broker a deal on the matter, primarily between John Adams of Massachusetts and his followers and Rutledge and his followers. The Virginians, by the way, were ambivalent on the matter.
Franklin could probably not have foreseen just how much long-term damage that deal would inflict on the country, but then, he was faced with the more daunting (and immediate) problem of creating a United States of America, and not merely preserving it.
We were a work in progress then, and we remain so now.
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