The letters (Aug. 26),concerning slavery focus only on the ills of African-American slavery. All disregard the fact that the British and British-America conducted a full scale slavery operation for almost 200 years involving Irish slaves, mostly women and children. These Irish peasants were looked upon by the British as free labor to support the British-owned tobacco plantations in Virginia and the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and, were viewed as a source of income for British merchants and ship owners. By the mid-1600s about 500,000 Irish had been sold as slaves, and, about 70 percent of the population of Montserrat was Irish slaves.

Upon the conclusion of the war between two competing British royalty on Irish soil, "The Battle of the Boyne," and the ensuing Treaty of Limerick in 1691, more than 10,000 Irishmen were exiled to the continent. The abandoned wives and children in Ireland, lacking visible means of support were forcibly collected as slaves, involuntarily transported across the Atlantic Ocean and were sold in southern New England ports of call as well as in the plantation sites.

Slavery was not solely an African or African-American issue. Britain and, apparently, British colonists in North America were color blind when it came to the slavery business. 

James Gallagher

East Lyme