"the South has always been an easy target since the end of the Civil War. The South and its culture is blamed for many historical and cultural negitives that in reality are found throughout all fifty states."

True, but the North did not invade the South to protect Slavery. The South split from the rest of the country to preserve the right to have slavery, and to keep Negro equality with Whites from occurring. That was exactly what the Southern leaders & speechifiers were reasoning in 1860-61...

"There were three candidates presented to the North by Southern men, all of whom represented the last degree of conservatism and concession, which their respective parties were willing to yield, to appease the fanaticism of the North. Some of them were scarcely deemed sound, in the South, on the slavery question, and none of them suited our ultra men. And yet the North rejected them all; and their united voice, both before and since the overwhelming triumph in this election, has been more defiant and more intolerant than ever before. They have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in the right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony. The cry has been, and now is, "that slavery must cease, or American liberty must perish," that "the success of Black Republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery," "a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out...
She had rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile [pyre], than see them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social equality with the negro race.
Address of William Harris, Commissioner from the State of Mississippi, to the Georgia General assembly, Dec. 17. 1860

"Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions-- nothing less than an open declaration of war-- for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one"
Letter from Stephen F. Hale, Commissioner from Alabama, to the Governor Beriah Magoffin of Kentucky, Dec. 27, 1860

The South will always be a readily available "target" for anyone who studies history. I can accept (not agree with) some of the reasons they split from the Union. I also know that those same Southern leaders who talked frankly of rights to slavery, suddenly changed their tune after the war. I know what they were saying at the start of it, no sense trying to hide it, or explain it away!

No matter how much, or leagal slavery was in the North, they didn't go to war to preserve it.

Kevin Dally