No, it merely shows that there is the potential to reform even the most vile social systems so that the individual's God-given rights are respected by the state. Slavery in the United States was an outlandish crime against civilization, humanity, and the "inalienable rights" supposedly valued by Jefferson.
Prior to the reign of George III--the one the Founding Fathers repudiated--both coal miners and salt miners in the North of England were deemed the property of the mines in which they labored. Their daughters, on the other hand, could gain a monetary stipend by bearing future coal miners. While it may not have been called slavery, it was the same thing.
And it was equally as vile, and equally worthy of elimination by all means at the disposal of those fighting against that injustice.
The fact is, that virtually every race and sub-race on the planet, has at some time used some form of forced labor, or bondage system. It is one of the most frequently recurring social patterns in the human experience.
This, again, does not mitigate against the evil inherent in slavery, whether it occurred in pre-Columbian Patagonia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Antebellum South. Simply because everyone commits murder does not make murder moral. It merely means there are many immoral people.
You and I may feel it is a mistaken system; but neither you, nor I, have been anointed by God to define its morality.
I disagree. By virtue of the fact that we were endowed by God with intellect, reason and a sense of morality, I believe that we are not only permitted or anointed by God to define the morality of evil systems such as the slave system in the Old South, but are commanded by God to recognize and denounce the immorality inherent in them.
That does not, of course, mean that we cannot rationally argue against its reimposition in other, perfectly valid terms.
If anyone considers himself a conservative and believes in the rights of individuals and if the subject of reimposition of slavery is raised, I would expect him to do more than simply argue against it rationally.
That sounds a bit like the rant of the Abolitionist sociopath John Brown--the one whose bones are "a moldering in his grave." However, it is not in accordance with traditional Western Theology. Both the Old and New Testaments, as I mentioned earlier, accepted slavery.
Your rants would pillory the fountainheads of Western Culture. Ancient Attica had more slaves than freemen. Ancient Rome had a slave culture. And, as I have already mentioned, such was also prevalent in Biblical times, in the Holy Land.
You seem to feel that you have the right and duty to meddle in other people's affairs, to enforce your moral judgments; that the ends justify the means. Such was the doctrine of Lenin and Trotsky; such that of Adolph Hitler and Chairman Mao.
I find that doctrine very offensive.
For an anti-slavery view, that anyone can respect, on the other hand; you might check out Daniel Webster's immortal speech, on behalf of the Compromise of 1850: Daniel Webster. As Webster points out, the Abolitionist fanatics, who sounded like you, actually set back the cause of ending slavery.
William Flax