[Non-Sequitur]

You haven't defended anything, you have engaged in total hypocracy. You've criticized the North for actions that the south also did. Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee all had laws forbidding blacks from moving into the state. Mississippi and Georgia amended their state constitutions to forbid manumission. Virginia allowed manumission but gave the person freed one year to leave the state or they could be sold back into slavery. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a slave couldn't be granted freedom because they lacked the legal standing to accept it. Yet you criticize the North. You complain about states like Illinois or Oregon which had laws on the books forbidding blacks to live in the state, yet you ignore southern states with laws as bad or worse. And between 1850 and 1860 the census shows that the free black population of Illinois grew, while the free black population of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama shrank. So tell me again how you have defended you side and, perhaps, you can explain again how good they were.