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Your sympathy is touching. That was the country you're trying to defend. Disagree with Richmond and you found yourself tossed in jail, if not worse. Write something that Richmond didn't like and you wound up in the same place. Except that unlike the North there was no legal recourse because there was no justice system. Enlist for two years in 1861 and find youself stuck in uniform unless you died or the war ended, which ever came first. Don't enlist at all and find yourself drafted. Try and grow food for your family and the government siezes a percentage of it 'for the war effort'. Take the risk and expense of running the blockade and find a percentage of you cargo capacity siezed by the government, also 'for the war effort'. Own a textile mill and the government tells you what to make. Make salt and the government tells you who you sell it to and for how much. Want to travel across the state to visit a son in uniform and you had better have your government travel permits with you or it's off to jail for that, too. And all that was if you were white. If you were a black man then heaven help you. Virtually every southern state had laws that severely limited the activities a black man could earn a trade in. Virtually every state forbade gun ownership by black men, free or slave. Virtually every southern state had clauses in their constitution prevent laws for manumission of slaves. Alabama's constitution forbade anyone from freeing a slave altogether. The Virginia constitution allowed a slave to be manumitted but gave it 12 months to leave the state, otherwise he would be sold back into slavery. That was the government of Jefferson Davis, the government you defend. What makes you so all-fired certain that things would be any better today had you won?