We are having a small historical controversy right here in Arkansas. On July 6, columnist Mike Masterson published a column in the ADG that was based on a speech he had attended. What he learned in his history classes was all wrong, he reports. Oh my. It seems like the Democrat party supported slavery in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and so on.

But today Elliott West of the Fayetteville history department takes issue with this version of events. As West says, the Missouri Compromise banned slavery north of Arkansas except for Missouri. The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850, which was put together by the Whig Henry Clay. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas was the leading force behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The GOP did not opposed slavery, West notes, only the expansion of slavery into new territories.

These events involved complex issues and compromises. There is enough blame to go around over slavery.

What we learn here is more about current politics of these writers than about American history. That is what this little tempest is all about.