[colorado tanker]

Settlement in the lands west of the Appalachians tended to be on horizontal lines, as were the western land claims of the states before they surrendered them to the national government. A great example was Connecticut's Western Reserve in Ohio. So, a lot of the settlers of Southern Indiana and Illinois came from Virginia and Kentucky. As you say, henkster, Abraham Lincoln is the most famous example although his views on slavery were most definitely not Southern.

The excerpt on Forrest was interesting but no surprising. Homer, I still read with horrer the matter of fact descriptions you post about the antebellum practice of slavery. They just seemed to accept as an ordinary part of life buying and selling human beings like livestock.

[Tax-chick]

A surprising feature of the Forrest excerpt is the prices the slaves were bringing. Surely those are luxury-car prices, in terms of our dollars. Rural land, on the other hand, was comparatively low valued.