[fortheDeclaration]

fact, slaves have to be hunted down by the Federal authorities to bring them home to their benevolent masters. That would be true, Grasshopper, in the cases of slaves who actually ran away. It shouldn't surpass understanding that chasing runaway slaves through hill and dale would apply only to.....runaways.

And that changes something?

The relative small numbers of runaways makes the South hunting them down and putting boundies on them somehow more justifiable?

So your incisive insight is something of a tautology, and fails to discuss or elucidate relative levels of discontent among the slave population coherently, since it doesn't address at all the slaves who stayed home.

No, because the vast numbers of the slaves were in the deep South and unable to escape.

Most slaves escaped from border States.

However fear of slaves escaping is why the South became virtually a police state.

I think the only tautalogy is the words freedom and South going together or is that an oxymoron?

[lentulusgracchus]

However fear of slaves escaping [revolting and killing people] is why the South became virtually a police state.

Just correcting your lack of grasp of the concept, of what it meant to be a Southerner in the 19th century.

To get a feel for what it might have been like, jump in your car, drive to New York City, park it somewhere on 130th Street, and then lie down on the hood with $10 bills hanging out of your pockets and go to sleep.

When the slaves rose in Haiti, they killed every living thing that was white. Capiche?