Questions About John Brown

[L Verge]

If Mr. Lincoln did say that, I am insulted. As we know, there were thousands of honest, hard-working Southern people who never owned a slave and tilled the soil for tobacco, cotton, indigo, and rice, as well as sustenance, etc. in small portions that still required hours of toil each day. They had been root hogging their entire lives to sustain their families. And, surely both Stephens and Lincoln knew this.

I'm sure that Lincoln was referring to the "elite" of the Old South who did own slaves (and often worked along side of them), but such a sweeping generalization that includes all Southern whites was/is unfair. Further unfair was that Reconstruction policies often deprived Southern farmers of the land they depended on to survive.