Lemme ax you this, buddy:
If you were a 20 year old, why would you think you had no prospects of ever owning a slave? Why wouldn't they think they could become prosperous and own slaves some day?
Were all those Confederate solders just resigned to being poor and underclass the rest of their lives or did they have their own dreams and ambitions?
“If you were a 20 year old, why would you think you had no prospects of ever owning a slave? Why wouldn’t they think they could become prosperous and own slaves some day?”
That’s a fair question. I would reply that, given the conditions that then existed, it would be unreasonable for a poor 20-year-old to think that he would become that prosperous.