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Your slanders against the Old South are offensive--both to Southerners and those of us, born and raised in the North, who understand how America came to be, and the major role that those Southerners' forebears had in that process.

Yet even more offensive than the slanders, is the concept of America, which you must have, which impels you to slander. America was not established as a totalitarian State. We were from the start a Federation of distinct States, with distinct societies and distinct cultures, distinct priorities. No one signed on for something analogous to the Third Reich.

So you would have murdered the Southern people, because they decided to leave, after being slandered in some Northern circles for a generation! You would not have tried to persuade them not to leave, or to return, you would have murdered them. You have a lot of gall even calling yourself an American. You do not have the faintest idea of what that term, American, meant to to those who won our independence. And do you imagine that it would have been possible without Southerners who had much the same social values in 1776 as they had in 1861?

Don't worry. I don't slander, because this is a written format. I don't think that it is libel either, because the corruption of the antebellum state governments, which you seem so nostalgic for, is well established. The rape of black women, slave and free, is well established. The torture of black men and women, slave and free, is well established.

The north tried for years to bribe the wealthy slave owning southern rapists, pedophiles, sadists, and murderers for many years, by building fortifications in the south, and paying the wealthy slave owners for work done on those fortifications.

The founding fathers passed the Northwest Ordinance, which banned slavery in the territories of the Northwest Ordinance. The Republicans wanted to pass an amendment to correct Justice Taney's racist decision in "Dred Scott". That would have left the institutions of the southern states intact, but forbid slavery in the territories. Lincoln was scrupulous in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, not because he thought it was just, but because it was the Law.

That was not enough for the radical slave owners. They didn't want to accept any limitations on Slavery, so didn't support Douglas, because his theory of Popular Sovereignity would have had local law enforcement refusing to subsidise slave owner's wealth by enforcing their pretended property claims against free blacks.

Federalism? The southern murderers went to Kansas to shoot settlers who didn't have slaves was the other side of the Ossowatomie Murders by John Brown. John Brown murdered slave owners to promote freedom. For what principle did southerners murder free men?

Below is the testimony of a man, tortured at the direction of Mr. Lee.

"My name is Wesley Norris; I was born a slave on the plantation of George Parke Custis; after the death of Mr. Custis, Gen. Lee, who had been made executor of the estate, assumed control of the slaves, in number about seventy; it was the general impression among the slaves of Mr. Custis that on his death they should be forever free; in fact this statement had been made to them by Mr. C. years before; at his death we were informed by Gen. Lee that by the conditions of the will we must remain slaves for five years; I remained with Gen. Lee for about seventeen months, when my sister Mary, a cousin of ours, and I determined to run away, which we did in the year 1859; we had already reached Westminster, in Maryland, on our way to the North, when we were apprehended and thrown into prison, and Gen. Lee notified of our arrest; we remained in prison fifteen days, when we were sent back to Arlington; we were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done. After this my cousin and myself were sent to Hanover Court-House jail, my sister being sent to Richmond to an agent to be hired; we remained in jail about a week, when we were sent to Nelson county, where we were hired out by Gen. Lee’s agent to work on the Orange and Alexander railroad; we remained thus employed for about seven months, and were then sent to Alabama, and put to work on what is known as the Northeastern railroad; in January, 1863, we were sent to Richmond, from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom; I have nothing further to say; what I have stated is true in every particular, and I can at any time bring at least a dozen witnesses, both white and black, to substantiate my statements: I am at present employed by the Government; and am at work in the National Cemetary on Arlington Heights, where I can be found by those who desire further particulars; my sister referred to is at present employed by the French Minister at Washington, and will confirm my statement."

http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/03/robert_e

Lee cheerleaders recognize that Lee did own slaves, but give him props for manumitting them. What they leave out of the record is that Custis’s will legally required Lee to emancipate the slaves that passed into his control within five years of Custis’s death. Custis died October 10, 1857 and his will was probated December 7, 1857 (about a year after Lee wrote his letter on slavery); Lee kept the slaves as long as he could, and finally filed the deed of manumission with Court of the City of Richmond on December 29, 1862—five years, two months, and nineteen days after Custis’s death.

Custis actually gave freedom to his slaves without qualification in his will; the matter of the five years was supposed to be time for Custis’s executors to do the legal paperwork for emancipation in such manner as may to [them] seem most expedient and proper. There’s good reason to read the clause as intending for the five years to serve as an upper bound on settling the legal details, not as five more years for driving the slaves for whatever last bits of forced labor could be gotten. Lee, however, did not see it that way, and set the slaves to for his own profit for as long as he could. We have already seen that some of the slaves disagreed with Lee on this point of legal interpretation, and how he treated those who acted on their legal theory by seceding from his plantation.

I await your apology.