(A lecture at the Cascadian National University Odeon annex. *Lecture Hall In Use for Powwow*)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izsjRpcgfmk]

Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend Me your... kidding! Sorry, I just can't resist whenever I give a lecture in the Theater. Did you all have a good weekend? Yeah, yeah, I can see the sleepy nods. I get it, I was a student too once. Good thing the topic's interesting, right?

Slavery in the American Empire. This was really a fundamental concept to the American way of life. Since the very start of the Empire, there was slavery. As it slowly began to die out around the world, America doubled down on it, in ways that were far more cruel and inhumane than even the most heinous of their propaganda arms tried to paint their enemies with.

Firstly, they got rid of the name of it. Americans often pointed to a document called the "Emancipation Proclamation" as proof that they had eliminated slavery from their land with the stroke of a pen. Slavery was gone, and no man was slave to any other.

However, what had really happened was a shift in the nature of slavery. Where slavery enforcement once consisted of the idea of physical chains, the Americans shifted it to societal and economic sanctions to keep the slaves docile. The average slave had to fight for the right to work. There were even laws that enshrined this right into many of the local governments. Those slaves that could no longer fight were given the barest minimum of sustenance, but often were forced to sleep on the streets of the cities, while the great homes and cities built for the rich lay empty.

Now, I know what you're wondering, why didn't the poor just move into the unused houses? Because that's where American Soldiers came in. If a slave even so much as slept in a house that a rich person lay claim to, American soldiers would take the slave and put them into a work camp. At the camps, the slaves were tormented, and relegated to the underclass of American Society, known as the "Criminal" class. Even after their eventual payment to the rich person in the camps, the criminal class still had to engage in the work fights, but were often expected to fight with one hand tied behind their back.

Now, Even if a slave found work, a large percentage of what he earned was taken by the Empire. The Empire demanded their taxes at regular intervals, and often demanded far more than the average person could afford. They did this in order to hire more soldiers, and reinforce the local garrisons that were kept in the cities. We still are finding American war relics from that time, and they show a remarkable uniformity of color and design, just like every empire has always had.

Oops, sorry, little off track there. There were occasionally pensions put aside for those that had been deemed worthy of the Empire, but the vast majority of American slaves were quietly shunted off to a death house when they were no longer useful to the empire.

Of course, there were slave rebellions, and they were always put down harshly by the Americans. First the Americans would always declare them to be a cult, and excommunicate them from the society. American soldiers would then kill them, and claim that the cult practiced forbidden worship rites, which were so heinous that they required the deaths of all involved. Often they would offer sanction to some members of the rebellion, and privileged positions in advising if they would properly claim to return to the worship of the Empire.

So, there was a benefit in a slave rebellion, because it kept the rich able to point to the increasing violence and claim that they needed more soldiers. They would ship off their soldiers to far flung colonies to gain experience before putting them to work against the slaves back home. Often they would be put in charge of overseeing a group of slaves to watch and report on to their masters. They would even be expected to enforce the rich's whims by performing what was known at the time as a "Beat". This involved striking the slave with a stick for the rich person. It was a brutal punishment, and many slaves feared the American Soldiers and would thank them for their beatings as a way of trying to avoid one in the future.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2aqvKY6zLc]