[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That all must be a peculiarly southern thing. I never heard of anyone getting chucked onto a chain gang by a “white trash courthouse crowd loungers and ne’er-do-wells” anywhere else. Nor sheriffs simply murdering children walking along the road. And this is Lincoln’s fault how? By abolishing slavery?

[lentulusgracchus]

I didn't say Southern sheriffs murdered children. Perhaps I should have said more perspicuously, that as boys in particular aged a bit and became a little huskier, they might get their turn in the labor mill that has been written about authoritatively by an LSU man. It was a way of recapturing free black labor and putting it to work under unfavorable (to the laborer) and non-negotiable conditions.

But don't believe me, look it up.

I didn't know about this racket, which was practiced in three or four of the original seven seceding States, until about 12 years ago, when the book came out.

Caution about the source: Notice here,

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery.html

that the author of the article refers to "historians and activists", which means that he recognizes that an active political campaign is at work aimed at recovering voting rights for convicted (black) felons, presumably so they can vote down white America and turn it into a Gulag of a new kind -- "bottom rail on top now" as the emancipated slave taunted his former master, then a prisoner of war.

So some of the information is correct, but we should regard the source as tainted and motivated, not to mention mortally hostile.