[sheltonmac]

Like you I am compelled to defend my Southern heritage and the concept of states' rights, but sometimes it's impossible to reason with the anti-South bigots. They refuse to acknowledge that slavery was a social reality of the time and would have died of natural causes in the South as it had in every other civilized part of the world.

There is no place for slavery in a nation founded on liberty, but does that mean that the South should be written off as an evil slaveocracy? The vast majority of slaveowners were not cruel. In fact, many slaves were considered part of the family, so much so that many were entrusted with helping to raise the slaveowners' children. This is neither an endorsement nor an excuse; it's just a statement of historical fact. Yes, one could argue that the act of one person owning the labor of another is cruel in and of itself, but the same could be said of indentured servitude and other similar arrangements so prominent in our nation's history.

If you really want to spark a controversy, ask someone where in the Bible slavery is condemned as inherently evil. The fact is scripture dealt with slavery as part of the social construct of the time. That isn't to say it was encouraged or even condoned, but the Apostle Paul had the perfect opportunity to condemn the institution in his letter to the slaveowner Philemon. Instead, when Philemon's slave Onesimus ran away, Paul did something that many would say ranks up there with the Dred Scott decision:

I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, whom I wished to keep with me, that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel. But without your consent I wanted to do nothing, that your good deed might not be by compulsion, as it were, but voluntary.

For perhaps he departed for a while for this purpose, that you might receive him forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave--a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. (Philemon, v. 12-16)

Yes, slavery was a contributing factor in the war, but only because the federal government sought to intervene on an issue that clearly fell under the jurisdiction of the states. Trying to turn what Lincoln did into a moral crusade that justified the deaths of over 600,000 Americans is no better than the institution of slavery itself.

That being said, I do think that the South should have freed the slaves before seceding. Had they done that, we wouldn't find ourselves debating whether or not the war was fought over states' rights.

[Tax-chick]

Interesting post, sheltonmac. At the most basic human level, practical details notwithstanding, slavery is bad for those who are owned, and bad for those who own.

However, if the outrage expended on dead American slaveowners were instead directed at living Asian, Arab, and African slaveowners, I'd be much more impressed.

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[TexConfederate1861]

Lookout Brother....according to "Petronski the Terrible, the Liberator of Oppressed Slaves" you are SICK...:)

(SARCASM)

[archy]

Like you I am compelled to defend my Southern heritage and the concept of states' rights, but sometimes it's impossible to reason with the anti-South bigots.

It has been said that one of the most certain condemnations of Lincoln is the character of many of those who so absolutely defend him. I suspect you'll find that to also be the case with many or most of the Dixie-haters and other antiSouth bigots you encounter.