The great fallacy is that slavery didn’t begin in America; absence of slavery is unusual worldwide and throughout history. Absence of slavery is restricted basically to places and times influenced by such as William Wilberforce - Christians, especially Protestants, and especially English-speaking Protestants after about 1700I didn’t say all Christians; Epistle of Paul to Philemon, part of the New Testament, makes clear that Christianity did not begin with a condemnation of slavery as an institution.
And indeed the southern slaveowners were Christians - Christians who were situated to be "the last to get the word” that Christianity no longer condoned the institution. They argued biblically for it - they were the only ones to do so, because prior to that era the institution was not under attack and needed no defense. And yes, they fought to preserve it. If you can’t see how they could do so, I ask you to consider what your reaction would be if someone told you that electricity, natural gas, running water, oil, gasoline, automobiles, airliners, things made of plastic, and modern health care “weren’t Christian.” Because if all modern conveniences were taken away from you today, you would think yourself ill-used indeed.
And all that would be happening to you would be that you would be placed in exactly the same condition that a person without “servants” was in in 1860. You, Dear Reader, almost certainly have a higher standard of living than Queen Victoria did. Let alone a southern slaveowner. You grew up enjoying the fruits of electrical appliances and so forth, and they grew up having “servants.”
“Forty acres and a mule” doesn’t begin to compare with what Americans, black or white, inherit (if they survive “the right to choose” and are born) without anyone giving a thought to it. “Forty acres and a mule” is the opportunity to thrive through hard work, not an easy chair. And everyone born in America has that - or would, if the schools were well disciplined and fatherless boys weren’t shooting up neighborhoods.
And the fact that is never addressed is that it was largely though the efforts of White Christian men that slavery was ended in The West.