[mstar]

Rust Bucket; "Those historians may have simply generalized that major slaveholders were virtually unanimous in supporting secession and the war. It is easy to see how some historians might have come to that conclusion. Certainly, the majority of secession convention members were often slaveholders. I think all of those in the South Carolina convention were. I haven't researched whether all convention members in other states were or were not. However, many convention members were also politicians, and they may have simply reflected popular sentiment."

Coven; "I've often seen the southern secession likened to a fever (and by southern writers, don't get on some high horse accusing me of calling secession a sickness). It may be that the opinion of this writer and those he cites was entirely different a few weeks later as the fever spread."

From letters, speeches, and the oral traditions passed down by my family (a source the coven does not respect but I consider valid), it was not a wild out of control "fever" stirred up by greedy planters and politicians motivated by some sick desire to keep a human being in bondage. It was a last resort effort to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government.

Kinda like today.

If people prefer to believe the descendants of Patriots had become, within a few generations, a region ruled by Simon Legrees, then go for it.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

If people prefer to believe the descendants of Patriots had become, within a few generations, a region ruled by Simon Legrees, then go for it.

Why not? You have no trouble believing that, within a few generations, the region that started the Revolution at Lexington, Concord and Bunker HIll was ruled by greedy, grasping slave-trading abolitionists and immigrant labor-exploiting mill owners bent on tyrannically ruling the south and using tariff policy to oppress them.

[Non-Sequitur]

From letters, speeches, and the oral traditions passed down by my family (a source the coven does not respect but I consider valid), it was not a wild out of control "fever" stirred up by greedy planters and politicians motivated by some sick desire to keep a human being in bondage. It was a last resort effort to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government.

Actually if you look at the writings and the speeches of the leaders of the rebellion in its early days, it most certainly was about slavery. It was always the most important reason, and usually the only reason, given. As for your family's oral traditions, well I'm sure they're quite...imaginative.