I wasn't describing faith. I was describing simple reading comprehension. You have to be either stupid or willfully blind to miss the clear meaning of the secession documents.
Again, your citation of the Declaration as intending to abolish slavery is utterly dishonest.
Actually, it's you who is being dishonest, setting up straw men and knocking them down as you do.
The simple timeless words of the Declaration and slavery could not possibly long co-exist. One or the other had to eventually go.
Folks like me sided with "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Folks like you must, of necessity, do away with all that, to defend your beloved enslavement of other human beings, made in God's image and likeness.
You have to be either stupid or willfully blind to miss the clear fact that the vast bulk of the fighting was done by men who cared more about protecting their homeland from invasion than those who gave a crap about the secessionist documents.
You also have to be either stupid or willfully blind to focus on someone's reasons for wanting independence, and place it above that of their God given and Natural right to have it.
Their reasons are none of your concern. The side you champion didn't object to them before the South sought independence, so therefor they have no moral authority to object to them after they sought independence.
What is actually being objected to is the Independence, and their reasons for seeking it are just used as an ex post facto excuse to rationalize the brutal suppression of their Independence effort.
Actually, it's you who is being dishonest, setting up straw men and knocking them down as you do.
Pointing out that the Declaration of Independence didn't free any slaves, and that it was never intended by it's authors and signatories to do such a thing, is a straw man?
What is a straw man is the argument that a document who's primary purpose was to justify a God given right to Independence for 13 slave holding colonies must somehow be interpreted to abolish slavery, four score and seven years after the fact!
Stop lying to yourself! Quit making up crap that is as strong as intellectual tissue paper.
The Declaration didn't manumit any slaves. It was not created to abolish slavery. It was created to declare the natural right to separation for any people dissatisfied with their governance, and for whatever reason, including reasons that don't fit your own personal morality.
The simple timeless words of the Declaration and slavery could not possibly long co-exist. One or the other had to eventually go.
Now this, I will agree with you, is true. Those flowery words eventually triggered all the abolitionist movements in the United States. The Declaration of Independence did in fact trigger a moral awakening, and that is a tribute to the cleverness of Jefferson for putting those words in there. He sneaked them past others who would have objected to them had they realized the eventual effect they would have.
Folks like me sided with "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Folks like you must, of necessity, do away with all that, to defend your beloved enslavement of other human beings, made in God's image and likeness.
And this is an actual strawman argument. You keep misattributing my arguments as supporting slavery when they do not. I merely point out that Abolishing slavery was not the reason the Union invaded.
It was the after the fact rationalization for getting so many people killed in what was actually a war of subjugation of people seeking independence.
I personally think the same moral forces that abolished it in the Northern states, would eventually work to abolish it in all the remaining states, it would have just taken longer. In the South, it was a far more integral component of their financial assets and economy.
It would have taken a lot longer to shed it's necessity for them, but I think the social forces would have eventually destroyed it anyways.