history - Was the word "nigger" an expletive in Mark Twain's day?


Was the word "nigger" a deliberately derogatory and offensive word in Mark Twain's time, or was it just a normal word to describe an ethnicity in those days?


Background: I'm curious as to whether Twain could have anticipated the use of the word being so controversial nowadays (though discussing the Bowderlization of Huckleberry Finn is off-topic for this web site).




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