Yeah, I knew you'd duck in behind this "relative" thing.
I don't own a ranch the size of Ted Turner's. I don't even have the concession on buffalo excrement from his ranch that probably brings somebody a hefty nickel. But as Andy's post suggested, I can sleep through the night and pretty much know me and mine are not going to be sold two or three states away.
When you put the argument on that level --"Argh! Can't you see we're ALL slaves!", you pretty much disallow any meaningful discussion of the history.
In short, you ain't doing any of us any good.
I feel this is what drives a lot of the neo-rebs. Maybe a run-in with the IRS, or a zoning thing, or an easement or title conflict -- something soured them on the government. But just to make stuff up, that is over the top, or to deny the rational actions of say, resuppplying Fort Sumter -- that is just cracked.
Walt
Well, that explains a lot of where you are coming from and why you post the way you do.
It would be a good thing to remind some folks around here that when the ink on the Constitution was still damp, this nation had things such a debtors prisons! One of the signers of the DoI and the money man who financed the Revolution, Robert Morris, ended up in one of those stinking holes. There was no grace period for delinquent taxes --- pay now or the sheriff puts you off the land and a speculator picks it up. Property speculation was rampant and totally unscrupulous. Even Daniel Boone was swindled out of his property in Kentucky in the years after the Revolution. Many poor farmers in the old Southwest were ruined by swindlers when the big cotton plantation owners decided to expand. Laws and the rule of law were still a hit or miss thing in those days. Freedom was broad for both the honest and the dishonest, but security, property rights, and the predictability that makes lasting prosperity possible were scarce. Enter the law, which like speed limits, so many seem to despise. They need to consider what their life would be like without those protections.