$5 billion in reparations for "property" (including enslaved human beings) taken or destroyed by Union forces during the Civil War. The group's legal counsel Jack Kershaw said their proposal included paying reparations to African-Americans due to the supposed negative effect the end of slavery had on their ancestors: "Blacks were better off in antebellum times in the South than they were anywhere else. [...] They lost a lot too when that lifestyle was destroyed." Culture The League defines Southern culture as profoundly Christian and anti-abortion. The League describes Southern Culture as being inherently Anglo-Celtic in nature (originating in the British Isles), and they believe the South's core Anglo-Celtic culture should be preserved. According to the League, the South has had a Marxist and egalitarian society "impressed upon it". The League's Core Beliefs Statement advocates the stigmatization of "perversity and all that seeks to undermine marriage and the family." Politics The League believes that what it calls "the Southern people" have the right to secede from the United States, and that they "must throw off the yoke of imperial [federal, or central government] oppression". The League promotes a Southern Confederation of sovereign, independent States. The League favors strictly limited immigration, opposes standing armies and any regulation whatsoever of firearms. This proposed independent nation is described by League publications as part of a process to convince "the Southern people" that they have a unique identity. The League focuses on recruiting and encouraging "cultural secession". In November 2006 its representatives attended the First North American Secessionist Convention of secessionists from different parts of the country. In October 2007 it co-hosted the Second North American Secessionist Convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 2015, the group announced it would be holding an event celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, while honoring John Wilkes Booth as a hero. On April 11, 2015, it was organized by the vice chairman of the Maryland-Virginia chapter of the League, Shane Long. The LOS's main Facebook page put it bluntly: "Join us in April to celebrate the great accomplishment of John Wilkes Booth. He knew a man who needed killing when he saw him!" The League has attempted to form paramilitary groups on more than one occasion. The League of the South is opposed to fiat currency, personal income taxation, central banking, property taxes and most state regulation of business. The League supports sales taxes and user fees. Designation as hate