Worth pointing out that from the perspective of the slave South, the issue with abolitionists wasn’t merely (merely!) that they were a political movement seeking to tear down the foundation on which Dixie society was built and legitimated, it was that in engaging in “underground railroad” direct action, in refusing to return escaped slaves or even resisting federal agents returning them under the Fugitive Slave Act, this faction indulged by northern Yankees were understood as fancy-talking cattle thieves