In response to:
The Historian Who Saw Through America from the December 4, 2008 issue
To the Editors:
Professor Bengt-Arne Vedin has pointed out a careless error for which I am responsible [“The Historian Who Saw Through America,” NYR, December 4, 2008] by lumping South Africa with Brazil and the United States as an importer of non-European slaves. As George Frederickson, but not I, made clear, white South Africans enslaved and otherwise oppressed the indigenous African population.
James M. McPherson
Princeton, New Jersey
