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I will say this in defense of them and the other fire eaters of the south. Without their rebellion I believe it is very probable that slavery would have continued to exist in the United States well into the 20th century. So I think it is a good thing that they did rebel when they did. It made the horrible blight of slavery end much sooner than it would have.

I’ve always wondered if the Civil War wasn’t God’s judgement on American for clinging to slavery as the rest of christendom was moving away from it. Perhaps he hardened the hearts of the southern fire eaters allowing them to split the democratic party and allowing Lincoln to be elected knowing it would cause this terrible war.

As Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address;

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Thank you for an intelligent, reasoned and insightful response. I appreciate your taking the time and effort to respond. I can’t stand these ‘’Confederates in the attic’’ who believe in the glory of an evil system of human bondage and economic exploitation romanticized as though it were some kind of Manifest Destiny. I believe without the war slavery would have gone on much longer. Certainly if the South had won it would have continued, after allthat’s what they were fighting for. I’ve a personal stake in this. My great-great-grandfather served as a medical clerk with the Surgeon Generals Office in Washington as part of The Army of The Potomac. And I was born and raised in the northeastern New Jersey town of Kearny. Named after it’s most famous local son Union General Phil Kearny.