The year is 1815, and I’m a centrist trying to end slavery.I want to clarify, right from the start, that I consider slavery to be “an atrocious debasement of human nature,” “a great moral, social and political evil,” “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.” But as much as I’d like to indulge the abolitionists’ emotion-driven calls to “free” the slaves, the real world isn’t so simple.