The South has had its share of detractors, arguably even more than that. Brother Dave Gardner once remarked, "I love everything about the South. I even love hate."

William Faulkner's was a slightly different angle with his, "In the South, the past is not dead. It isn't even past."

Most native Southerners take pride in referring to north, east and west as merely directions. South is a place.

I've lived my life comfortably among folks like that, reveling in a lopsided appreciation for things and customs Southern. It's remarkably easy to hoist the battle flag while looking away from the horrors of people owning people.

Guides on our once-plantations, now-state parks, mention that only 5 percent of Southern landowners kept slaves, and the average number was less than two per owner. Fine. That's comfortable so long as my family and yours aren't counted among those owned.

But while searching for the writings of a lady named Elizabeth Hunter, I discovered a horribly long list of slaves owned by a woman by that name who lived in Dallas County, Ala., in 1853.

"Old George, a Negro man" was worth just $150.

"Well," we can say, "he was old." He wasn't born old.

Jacob was worth a mere $100. Was he older?

Katy, "a woman" was worth $200. Perhaps she knew Old George and Jacob. What value would they have assigned to themselves?

Amanda, the most expensive woman at $1,150 must have had unique qualifications, but I'd rather not know what they were.

A man named Lemuel was identified only as "John's child" and worth $195. He, Phillip, Sally, Luv, Tom, Ellen, Merk, Anderson, Jurden and Lines have values ending in five. Eighty-nine others end in zero. Could one person be worth just five dollars more than another, even then?

I wonder if Susanna and Rose Anna were sisters or something. A second Lemuel, Sarah's child worth $300, heads a list that includes Rhoden, Romnelia, Mattie, Magdalina and Syeus, Philby, Broman, Palumer, Polly, Isaac, Ishmael, Ryal and Dilsa, Epix and Manih, Panolia and Camsada. Dallas County's list of people is just two pages long, but there are three more pages on the same website. Elizabeth Hunter owned 218 slaves in three counties.

Merk, Ishan, Kepi, Bitha, Maholas and Sephia fill slots in a seemingly endless list of people long dead. But what of their lives? Did they live dying or die living? These cash values of human beings range from $100 to $3,500, the highest being Reuben, "of Leah's family." Only four other men reached as much as $1,150. Why was Reuben worth more than three times the others' cost? How many of these people were his children, I wonder? Were he and Amanda……?

While traveling on business near Savannah, Ga., I had an opportunity to spend the night in a plantation's guest cottage.

The area's 200-year history was recounted in a large coffee table scrapbook. Obviously, the "cottage" was a remodeled slave cabin. In the book, acreage, crops, equipment, livestock, and, yes, people, were sacked together as real property. Bought, sold, traded, disciplined, degraded, worn out, used up and thrown away.

The South is wonderful, what precious little of it remains. I could live nowhere else. But with the blessings come the burdens of white ancestors like mine. People who owned people. I stayed in a motel instead.