NO one here is claiming that we desire a return to slavery, or that slavery is a blacks natural state. Some misguided people - northern and southern - might have held that opinion, but that has long since been abandoned and rightfully so.
Regarding our defending 'slaveowning and slavery' I must disagree. Speaking only for myself, I defend the LEGALITY of such at that time in our history, EVERY state admitted to the union prior to the war agreed that it was legal. Either it was a war against a foreign confederacy, or against itself, either way is was NOT a war to end slavery - Lincoln et al are on record as it simply being a war for union, and offered permanent slavery as inducement to re-join.
Yet moral revisionists here would have us to believe that the union - which LEGALLY permitted slavery, had some mystical call from God to end slavery by force of war, leading to the death of 623,000 Americans - more than any other American cause.
Now any person in their right mind would agree that any attempted invasion of the United States by England, France or any other country for the stated purpose of forcibly ending slavery would have been illegal. Any pretensions that we have of invading Cuba to depose Castro, invading Sudan to end slavery, attack the USSR to end communism, or invading England to end a monarchy would be denounced worldwide. Such a mindset would also imply that other countries have the right to invade us to end republican forms of government, which is just as ludicrous.
Then when someone connects the dots, you get all angry about it. You want to have things both ways: to skate as close as you can to defending slavery in the Old South, and to throw fits, claiming that others are misrepresenting you.
Our ancestors (I can account for over 26) fought in the Revolutionary War for our right of self-government. Each of the colonies fought for that same principle, some declaring independence before 4 Jul 1776, some after (NY IIRC). Those colonies banded together for the common purpose of defense from foreign nations, creating a common government for the MUTUAL benefit of all parties (the states), and later created a new government that admittedly would have been applicable to fewer states than previously united - no war was fought to prevent this, nor fought to force the all to re-unite - it was a VOLUNTARY Association.
During convention, all attempts to form a national government failed, the new union was federal, a compact as admitted repeatedly during convention, in the Federalist Papers, as well as state ratifications. During convention ALL attempts to use force against a state were dismissed, as was the attempt to ratify to form one people en masse, and despite Madison's motion for officers of the militia to be appointed by the federal government to help prevent secession [which was dismissed out of hand], no prohibition against secession was inserted into the Constitution. To further emphasize the limits of the delegated powers of the federal government and induce the two remaining holdouts, an amendment was added that reserved ALL powers not DELEGATED nor prohibited to the states - the parties to the compact. Even then, three of the ratifying parties explicitly RESERVED the power to resume SELF-GOVERNMENT at the ratifying states leisure. Misrepresentation? Not on our part.
Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States.During Senate debates, a proposed amendendment to the Resolution [now pending Amendment] stating that 'no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States' was defeated 28-18.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution, viz:
“Article Thirteen.
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
Another, stating that all 'attempts to dissolve the present Union, or overthrow or abandon the present Constitution, with the hope or expectation of constructing a new one, are dangerous, illusory, and destructive' was defeated 24-13.
Imagine that, a federal congress full of yankees, and they refuse to illegalize secession.
That's nonsense. Some states had never had legalized slavery. Others had abolished it years before. In those states slavery was illegal. Did people respect the "right" of states to have slavery? The overwhelming majority did. The corollary of that was the recognition that slavery would be illegal in some states, and that was one thing Northerners felt was under attack in the 1850s.
You take a very armchair view of things that amounts to backing up all the claims of the slave states. If you were alive at the time, you'd have to come to terms with the provocative nature of things like the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, and you might find that your comfortable middle ground of not supporting slavery but defending the legality of slavery crumbling away under your feet.
It's like abortion now. You can be "pro-choice" or "in favor of abortion rights" and claim not to "believe" in abortion, but at some point you'll have to ask yourself whether you're really "pro-abortion." The demands and provocations of your own side get to be so great that you either accept them and swallow their principle whole, or you step back and question what your friends are selling. If someone enthusiastically supports every proposal of NARAL, sooner or later we have to ask if they aren't in fact "pro-abortion" and if someone doesn't choke on any propagandistic claim of the pro-slavery faction in 19th century America, one is certainly justified in asking if they aren't in some sense "pro-slavery."
The South started the war, and in time it was recognized as a war against slavery. Quibbling about the state of opinions or positions at any particular point in time doesn't change that. I can understand people taking different sides at the time, and I don't get on a moral high horse about being on one side or another in the 1860s. I can understand and sympathize with someone who felt their world was falling apart in 1861 and that only one choice was possible. If I'd been living in the South in 1861, I would probably have fought on the same side as my neighbors. I wouldn't know any better. How could I?
But we do know at least a little better or differently today. Ignoring the realities of that day now and propagandizing for the Confederacy looks to me to be highly questionable to say the least. I have to put in a good word for those who opposed slavery and its expansion over those who supported that cause. To say that in their own minds that the secessionists had a case for what they did is one thing, but to argue that that case is morally or legally unassailable or that the rebels' cause is our cause is foolish, perverse, and blind.
You guys argue that those who disagree with you are moralistically condemning the Old South or talking of "mystical calls." I don't see that at all. Most people who disagree with you probably recognize the war as a great tragedy. It's you all who want to put all the good on your side and all the evil on the other.