This is a useful concept. Of course, you are describing precisely what lawyers, ideologues, and presumably control freaks of other varieties so frequently do to innocent people who deserve better.
The intellectual conceit being the plaything of its creators, the result is that the People become the plaything of the manipulators. Quod erat desideratum.
You did not lament the existance of slavers, you lamented the existance of anyone who doesn't toe the federal line, flat-out said that you desired their extinction, and said that anything that was done to bring it about was justified. [Emphasis added.]
This is a useful distinction and a salient point worth repeating.
The morally caustic advocacy of epic violence simply underlines the original outrage.
Very true, and very sick. As far as I'm concerned he has wholly forfeited his write to turn to a moral argument against slavery as his trump card. Even the most avid confederate will concede the sinfulness of slavery and make no effort to try and defend it. But he excuses away and even CELEBRATES a much greater sin than slavery, a sin against human liberty. He celebrates and defends murder in the most brutal and despotic forms, and that is a sin against human life itself making it necessarily more severe in effect than a sin against human liberty. He has no claim upon any moral argument anymore and I will happily point that out to him whenever he tries to use one out of convenience to his idol.
All lost on our friend, I'm afraid.