The history of the united states is typically told backwards, as a means of explaining to members of the current generation how their country grew to be the way it is. in such an account, slavery is a single chapter, a background event limited to one region of the country and overwhelmed by the more recent events of pioneers moving west, railroads spanning the continent, and great cities growing up around stockyards and steel mills. a history told frontwards, however, pushes slavery into the foreground, inserting it into nearly every chapter. the truth is that slavery was a national phenomenon. the north shared in the wealth it created, and in the oppression it required. . by and large, the region’s relationship with slavery, though extraordinarily profitable, was a distant one. that distance allowed the north to minimize and even deny its links with the institution that fueled its prosperity. . connecticut’s harriet beecher stowe, author of the iconic abolitionist novel uncle tom’s cabin, said this was slavery the way northerners liked it: all of the benefits and none of the screams.