[stainlessbanner]

Postmasters used state power to censor mails from the north, especially anything deemed "abolitionist." So slavery was deeply intertwined with government power.

The Southern post office was one of the more successful pieces of the CSA. Don't be too quick to judge limits on free speech in the South - the North was not a glowing example of constitutional freedom during the War.

To your second point, of course slavery was intertwined with government power. Where there is money, there is power. No different than northern industrialists

[LS]

You are certainly right about the North in the CW. However, there is a fascinating side-by-side study by Richard Bensel called "Yankee Leviathan," where he compares 150 separate elements of government power between the Union government and the CSA. He looks at everything from abuses of habeas corpus (more in the South), judicial review (none in the South), confiscation (far more in the South), taxation (worse in the South), and so on. He finds that overwhelmingly---not even including slavery, which is a fairly big exclusion---the CSA was far more oppressive, repressive, and less "free" than the North.