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Saying that Southerners of 1860 had property rights in slaves and a theory with which they justified those rights, is not to say that it is desirable that people be invested with property rights in, and high dominion over, other people today.

It's not just that they thought had the legal right to own slaves. It's that they constructed moral defenses of slavery and sought to expand the area where slavery was legal, making much of slavery's superiority to free contract labor. And you largely go along with their moves in practical politics, though you may have different opinions on theoretical questions.

Maybe people could consider you "post-pro-slavery" in the same way that some Europeans today are "post-communist" or "post-fascist." That is to say they are greatly attached to a form of society that they recognize can't or shouldn't be realized in the present day world.

[You, quoting me] "Saying that Southerners of 1860 had property rights in slaves and a theory with which they justified those rights, is not to say that it is desirable that people be invested with property rights in, and high dominion over, other people today."

[You, replying] It's not just that they thought had the legal right to own slaves. It's that they constructed moral defenses of slavery and sought to expand the area where slavery was legal, making much of slavery's superiority to free contract labor. And you largely go along with their moves in practical politics, though you may have different opinions on theoretical questions.

No, I don't -- we discussed the unsuitability of large areas of the Middle West, outside the Missouri bottomlands and a few other "peach bottoms", for Black Belt plantation agriculture, or even just about any cash crops. Corn plantations? Maybe, I suppose! But ..... that wouldn't have been what the planters, economically sensitive to the price differences, would have wanted to put in the ground.

So, no, as a practical matter, a move into the High Plains wouldn't have made sense at all, and I'm still a little at a loss why this was a big issue to the planters, who hadn't even filled up Texas yet -- but settlers were rapidly approaching the dry line already, just as they were up in Kansas and Nebraska. I tend to think that it was more a political marker or bellwether issue, a benchmark of "fairness" in future settlement policy.

Still at it, are you? Get the message, I've discussed this enough, my position is clear by now -- knock it off. This drive-by stuff is just ad hominem smearing on your part.

It really rankles you, doesn't it, that I won't agree with you and stand up to you. So you resort to a smear, trying to hang a swastika or some other invidious symbol on someone for not going along.