I find it impossible to visit The South without constantly noting that all of that gentility and nice architecture was developed as a veneer over the realities a brutal slaveholding society. The flags and music make me feel almost physically ill every time I encounter them. While one might argue that the collective punishment inflicted by the Union may have been excessive in some places, the images of public lynchings for decades after Reconstruction suggest that evils associated with human bondage barely changed for years after the war.

I also find it useful to remember that most African-Canadian locals with long histories in my Zone had ancestors who arrived here as slaves, and that they were forbidden to settle in the largest regional town in the province for several decades after its founding.