Oh well, we were committed now. It was up to God to deliver us if I had made a mistake, as I even now feared that I had.
Matt looked along the dock and those gathered upon it in shock, "I can't believe what I'm seeing! Eli I didn't expect this!"
"Me neither." I said grimly, as I felt my own shock at what the gathered crowd of spectators along the docks was revealing.
Irony couldn't come close to describing the current of events that must've occurred in this colony at some point in the past.
"Maybe you should stay on board Matt." I said, as I continued to look at the perplexing makeup of the crowd.
Matt shook his head stubbornly, "No, I'm going. You were willing to risk slavery coming on this quest and now it would seem that I must as well attempt a similar fate."
I started to speak again, but Matt patted my shoulder and I remained silent.
I watched as the white slaves parted away from the dock to give way to their black masters dressed in the finery of plantation owners. It was an odd sight to behold and not a good one.
Slavery had been wrong the first time it had been implemented and to see things reversed wasn't empowering to me, but rather it was one of the saddest sights I had ever seen. Instead of abolishing the yoke that people of my ethnic background had been burdened with they had continued it on in a spirit of petty vengeance against their former Masters, who they had made their slaves.
Perhaps vengeance could have initially been understandable, even excusable, but not now. Not a hundred and fifty years later.
The slaves I saw, which bore evident signs of abuse had nothing in common with the sins of their plantation owner ancestors of the old South. These white slaves were hopelessly caught up in a cycle of abuse and belittlement even as my ancestors had been.
There was nothing deserved or justified by the enslavement of these people for something their ancestors had done worthy of such a judgment. If anything, the reversal of roles in the sunken world was one of the strongest arguments ever to attest to the equality of all mankind regardless of skin color and ethnicity, because the same atrocities could be perpetrated equally measured by all colors of people against each other.
I fought against the overwhelming urge to just turn the ship around and leave this island that bore evidence of man's fallen nature and petty hatreds of the past, but I couldn't. What if the sixteenth president of the United States had decided not to push forward, not only with a costly Civil War, but also with an Emancipation Proclamation for a group of people that weren't of his own skin color?