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ZC: Yours is a good summary of "classical Republicanism" and its sources. I would add only that there were also the maniacal blood thirsty abolitionist crazies who were willing to wage Civil War with hundreds of thousands of dead American soldiers on both sides and unwilling to accept Andrew Jackson's sage advice (as a substantial slaveholder himself when the War Between the States was NOT imminent) to Sam Houston that slavery was economically doomed, that it should be allowed to die a natural death, and that Civil War should be avoided at all costs lest the wounds never heal. Secretary of State Seward gave Lincoln the same advice (to declare war on all of Europe if necessary to avoid a Civil War) and it was rejected. John Tyler, the retired Virginia Whig POTUS, spent much of his personal fortune financing a last ditch "peace convention" in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the Civil War. The War Between the States is outstanding proof that we are a lot better off fighting foreign wars against our nation's enemies rather than waging war against our own citizens.

In #110, Gondring makes the common error of imagining Robert Taft the Elder as somehow a precursor of more modern conservatism without limit. Actually, Taft was a "good government" type (a "goo-goo" in the parlance of the day) as well as being somewhat conservative. As a US Senator, he sponsored federal housing programs in the late 1940s and, as an Ohio state legislator, he sponsored a bill authorizing a municipal personal income tax for Cincinnati during the Depression. Taft was an impressive man for numerous reasons but NOT consistently conservative on a number of important issues and not just his pre-Pearl Harbor Midwestern isolationist disease.

A little known event of approximately 1915 deserves mention. In that year, the Civil War veterans organizations: Grand Army of the Republic and Confederate War Veterans held a joint "encampment" at Gettysburg and re-enacted the critical and disastrous (for CSA) "Pickett's Charge" (without weapons, of course). When the two groups of old men came into contact on that tragic long hill, they spontaneously wept and embraced each other in a spectacular outburst of genuine emotion. The USA has fought many foreign nations in its history without any similar scene playing out among the veterans of the respective forces.

Anyone who admires Taft's memory as to his conservative issues, should be embarrassed to tout the sorry and unworthy likes of paleoPaulie as the reigning heir of a far greater, though flawed, man like Taft. Such notions are also disrespectful to Taft who was certainly a man of personal integrity unlike Galveston's phony treasonweasel and addicted fiscal porkmeister and earmarker.

Re the abolitionist crazies: while most abolitionists were Unitarians and radicals (proto-leftists in some senses), the most radical and craziest abolitionist was a Fundamentalist Calvinist: John Brown. If he could see the political behavior of his beloved Blacks today he'd probably have regretted Harper's Ferry.

While the Torah certainly does not prohibit slavery (though I don't think American slavery was Halakhic), I would point out that most people on both sides of the debate manifest one very serious inconsistency: liberals who denounce slavery maintain that the Union was justified in keeping the slave states by force while apologists for the Confederacy defend (or at least defended) slavery. I'm no individualist libertarian, but at least Lysander Spooner got it right: if you're going to denounce slavery, you can't hold force states to remain in the Union, and if you're going denounce the North for holding the South in bondage you shouldn't be defending slavery.

PS: I must disagree that slavery was on its way to extinction. While this was true originally, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin put an end to this trail to extinction.

Also recall that with the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the Dred Scott decision slavery was on its way to covering the entire country (sort of like "gay marriage" today), and its progress seemed inexorable and unstoppable.