Recent opinions expressed by some of our liberal transplants might warrant merit if not distorted by personal bias, lack of knowledge and selective half-truths.

Symbolic secession petitions parallel issues in original secession, states' rights. Liberals always ignore the New England slave trade, 16th to 18th century, which made the north wealthy by capturing and selling slaves to the agricultural South. Also ignored is the fact that slaves freed in the Civil War were not taken north but abandoned to starve with whites in the South, ignored until Democrats took renewed interest in blacks as a voting bloc in the 1960s.

Civil War prisons were inhumane on both sides. At Andersonville, a Confederate prison in Georgia, 45,000 Union prisoners were held and 12,913 died. Camp Douglas, Ill., held 18,000 Confederate prisoners with a death toll conservatively estimated at 6,129 and perhaps twice that as hundreds of bodies were thrown into Lake Michigan. At Andersonville, food was scarce for everyone; at Camp Douglas, prisoners were starved while abundant food was available. Efforts to erase all shameful records of Camp Douglas stand in stark contrast to records carefully preserved at Andersonville National Historic Site.

Yes, liberals may have won this election but it remains to be seen what's been "won" with an incompetent president who cannot lead, is too arrogant to follow and MIA in every crisis. America needs leadership, transparency and solutions, not more campaign propaganda. Liberal transplants eager to disparage the conservative South should remember Interstate 95 runs both ways.

Mary Duvall

Hilton Head Island