Good point, LS. It's hard to think of a bigger Big Government program than slavery.
Mark Thornton (no conservative) makes clear in his study of Southern slavery that it ONLY survived because of government subsidies and support: slave-catching "possees" could dragoon any non-slave-holding southerner into action; courts were "stacked" so as to discount slave testimony (couldn't be offered) or rule against free men of color. Postmasters used state power to censor mails from the north, especially anything deemed "abolitionist." So slavery was deeply intertwined with government power.