To The Gentlemen Who Signed Himself Deo Vindice:
     I try not to label people and I hope that you will not.  Somehow I
get the impression that you think I'm a northerner.  Although I do have
family in northern Maine most of my ancestral family is southern in
origin.  In creating your picture of the South both before and after the
Civil War, you have created a North that is a stereotype as well.  You
assume a solidarity for certain positions, north and south, which did
not exist.
    I agree with you that copies of the Constitution were being burned
in the streets of some northern cities, primarily because the arsonists
saw it as a document which supported the slavery they condemned.  Those
very same people were in a minority there.  One, David Lloyd Garrison,
was actually attacked by a Boston mob.  The federal government passed
and attempted to enforce a Fugitive Slave Law in the 1850s to help
southerners who were losing their property.  Ironically, many northern
states attempted to nullify this act by refusing to enforce it.  It
depends upon whether you agree with what the federal government is
doing.  They got the idea from John C. Calhoun of South Carolina who
proposed it over atrtempts at federal tariffs in the 1830s.
     As for Robert E. Lee, he opposed secession and he did free his
slaves.  He is a man I very much admire--more so than Grant; but that
doesn't mean what he did was right and that it wasn't treason.  Giving
aid and comfort to the enemy and fighting against the United States is
defined as treason.  If you study the various plans of Reconstruction
carefully, you will find that the South suffered a great loss when
Lincoln died.  His was the most lenient plan and he knew how to handle
Congress which Andrew Johnson did not.
     I agree with you that slavery was changing because of the
Industrial Revolution but whether that meant an end to slavery or not is
a open question.  The practice of slavery was undergoing a process of
modification  in which slaves were often rented out for use in towns and
elsewhere.
     Do you imagine that there was such a thing as the Solid South, that
every person in the south at the time of the Civil War supported se
cession.  The vote for secession was close in many of the southern
states.  My southern ancestors fought on both sides during the war and
died for their beliefs.  Not all southerners at the time believed in the
right to secede.  The south, then and now, is a mxture of peoples and
beliefs.
     John Brown was a psychopath who led the horrible slaughter of men
and boys with broadswords in the presence of their mothers and sisters
because they owned slaves or supported slavery.  He was executed for
"treason" against the state of Virginia.  As for the Emancipation
Proclamation, it freed very few slaves, if any.  It was essentially a
propaganda document aimed at keeping France and Great Britain from
intervening.  Therefore, if no slaves were freed, they were still
unarmed and under the control of southern forces.  However, Jefferson
Davis did propose arming the slaves toward the end of the war and using
them.  
     It is a shameful episode that most of the slaves imported into this
country came on board northern vessels.  The constitition provided that
within 20 years of its adoption, the elimination of this procedure could
be voted on.  Congress outlawed the importation  of slaves in 1808,
making the act one of piracy subject to death.  Lincoln, himself.
refused mercy to such a person.

Sylvia Gant

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