Article 1, Section 2. Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Article 1, Section. 9, Clause 1. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3. No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Article 5. ... Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
That is about as wacko a picture of Southern Society as it would be possible to construct. In fact is sounds--in the first part--like something out of one of the ranting pamphlets of the Abolitionists. The facts are quite different, however. If a Southern Plantation owner were to have treated one of his servants in the manner of a Nazi, Stalinist or Maoist regime, he could have been criminally prosecuted.
As for your suggestion that it was O.K. to randomly grab someone, and chain them up? Please share with the rest of us, that law. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
How freakish you are to keep insisting the the Federal government is "the people" but the state governments are "government." Both are "government," get over it.
The state gov'ts of the South did not institute slavery, Grand Old "Historian"