I think that our Southern friends--and I certainly consider you one--make a major mistake, when they accept the implied premise of the South haters, that they need to be defensive about an institution, which was accepted throughout most of human history, in one form or another.
It is not that slavery is a good system. I would agree that in most cases, it has deleterious effects on both Master and Servant, the extent of those effects depending upon the particular individuals involved. But the phoney moral outrage that the Left feign on the subject should be understood for what it is. The Left has certainly been as cavalier in ordering the futures and present activities of those under its control as even the worst slave master. On the other hand, there were many compassionate slave masters, whose histories show genuine empathy for those for whom they were responsible. There was more of a sense of "Noblesse Oblige" in the South than in the North.
On your main point, I believe that the practice was common in Ohio counties bordering the Ohio river, for the farmers to rent farm hands from Kentucky slave owners at harvest time. The center of Abolitionist sentiment in the State was in the Western Reserve--the Northern 11 Counties, which had once been claimed by Connecticut--although they had some support in other parts of the State as well.
As for the moral question of whom--if anyone--was breaking the compact between the States? Clearly, the Abolitionists bore a greater blame than the Southern Firebrands, who were simply reacting to a fanatic attack. The agreement to keep slavery off the table as a Federal issue after 1808, was an essential part of the Constitutional compact, and should have been respected. It is a strange morality, which claims a right to break a solemn undertaking, because you want to mind the morals of the people to whom you gave that undertaking. If slavery was indeed an evil (and if so, some of the fundaments of Western Religion would also be evil), the excesses of the Abolitionist movement were a greater evil.
He may have been seen as a foe by the South for a long time, but read anew what Daniel Webster, a lifetime critic of slavery, but one of the Senatorial immortals, actually had to say about the Abolitionist movement: Daniel Webster Address
The idea that you can break solemn compacts for a "greater good," is the stuff of Communist and Nazi revolutions. It should not be just accepted without challenge when applied to American History. It would be a real tragedy if rooted Southerners became cowed by the contrived "hue and cry" over Slavery, and lost sight of the real issue. Slavery ended 139 years ago in America, but the issue of the sacredness of the Constitutional compact remains as current today as it was in 1787, 1850, 1861, or in any of the years in between.
William Flax
We get defensive because the onslaught is relentless....even on this forum....so you know it's bad culture wide. The race baitors really found an appetite for sanctimony and self righteousness when they tapped this one. Folks can't resist the impulse to swell with moral superiority...it's an addiction for many. Anytime around here when someone doesn't like simply a plain observation...qualified as always is the custom thse days, than the racist!, bigot!, or anti-Semite! (a misnomer) longknives come out pronto. Candid discourse is futile.
I try to just assume a "so what?" attitude and don't let being slammed as a racist bug me. Defiant.....like that Reb prisoner in Winslow Homer's sketch...I love that drawing...I'll look for it.