LOL this showed up in the inbox for my history website. A neo-Confed found a typo and had a freaking meltdown. Enjoy:

From: Stogie [mailto:[redacted]]
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 7:08 PM
To: webmaster@[redacted]
Subject: Please correct errors on your page devoted to Jacob Moses Ezekiel

I ask you to remove certain Northern propaganda and misstatements of fact from Moses Ezekiel’s page. Ezekiel is a personal hero of mine, and my great grandfather also fought for the South.

Your article states:
Ezekiel later explained his reasons for going to VMI and, by implication, fighting for the Confederacy. He asserted that he’d gone there, not to defend slavery—an institution which, in this thinking, had unfortunately been inherited and limited by Virginia. Rather, Ezekiel further asserted, he went there to defend Virginia when she seceded to avoid providing troops to the Union to “subjugate her sister Southern states”. These views were typical of the VMI cadets of that period, ignoring the fact that his state in 1868 had the largest slave population in the South and, over the previous 30 years, had exported 200,000 slaves to the other Southern states.

The last sentence of this paragraph is a non-sequitur, and even if true, does not in any way refute the views of the VMI cadets of that time period. So why did you put it in? The reason, I presume, is to take a gratuitous slap at Virginia and the South. Allow me to correct your erroneous views on the subject.

There was no slave population in Virginia in 1868. The 13th Amendment, freeing all slaves, was passed by Congress on December 18, 1865.

Virginia was one of the five states who did not secede with the first six states who did. Virginia was willing to stay with the Union, and there was no Northern plan of any kind to force Virginia to emancipate its slaves. Slavery was not the issue, in spite of 150 years of propaganda to that effect. Virginia and four other states only seceded when Lincoln asked them to supply troops to force the first six seceding states back into the Union. They refused to fight fellow Southerners, and they did not agree that the Union was indivisible. Indeed, Virginia was one of three states that acceded to the Union with the express proviso that it could later leave the Union if it proved contrary to its interests (the other two states who had the same proviso were the Northern states of New York and Rhode Island). So Ezekiel’s understanding of Virginia’s reasons for secession were better than yours: to avoid supplying troops to coerce other sovereign states.

Virginia had the largest population of any Southern state in 1860, and therefore had the highest number of slaves as a result. Virginia’s percentage of slaves in the population was 30.75%, compared to North Carolina (33.35%) and South Carolina (57.18%). The Northern states had none to speak of in 1860 - Delaware had 3% of its population as slaves, Kentucky, 23%, and Maryland 12%. At what percentage level do you consider slavery acceptable? Should Moses Ezekiel have had access to 1860 census data? Was there some established marker of proper slavery percentage that Ezekiel should have been aware of? I think you can see what I am doing: I am illustrating the impertinence and irrelevance of your observation about slave populations to the story of Jacob Moses Ezekiel. You should delete this gratuitous slap at Virginia as it adds no understanding to the story, and does not in the least undermine Virginia’s right to secede or defend itself against a foreign invasion.

As for exporting slaves, no state in the South exported slaves from their home in Africa, that was all done by Northern slave traders in Northern ships. The Yankee state of Rhode Island was the most notorious slave merchant in the nation, building and operating an impressive fleet of ships that they built for that purpose. Other slave trading states included the Northern states of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Again, your pointing out that Virginia exported slaves to other states is impertinent, irrelevant and, in fact, erroneous. The State of Virginia didn’t sell slaves to other states; individual slave owners moved about the South with their slaves, and individuals probably sold slaves to Southerners in other states. This did not increase the number of slaves, it merely relocated them. If you disagree, support your argument. Otherwise, please delete this biased remark from your article. It is more innuendo than fact.

One more thing: please delete the word “Rebel” from your article and replace it with the word “Confederate.” The Confederates were not rebelling against anything, they were merely exercising their right to self-government as sovereign states, a right understood from the beginning of the Republic. The term “rebel” is a false epithet designed to denigrate the Southerners, as if they were criminally breaking some law or are in some way illegitimate. This is false, please do not continue this self-serving Northern falsehood.

[Mr. Neo-Confed]
Life Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Hollister, California