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I think the Civil War was a complicated affair that I wish could have been avoided and that has blame to bear on both sides.

I think you however are a wolf ticket selling rude jerk of a Yankee who sees the whole tragic affair through the prism of race for personal reasons.

And that in addition to be being a bloviate unable to communicate sans preening hyperbole that you are a perfect example of precisely why my ancestors fought and fought valiently....not so much slavery but because such boorish self righteousness will never be tolerated by decent folks for long
I would take a Christian well mannered slaveowning gentleman over such a arse as one who talks trash with the hypocritical hubris you exhibit here
In other words..you are a well deserved stereotype

I would take a Christian well mannered slaveowning gentleman over such a arse as one who talks trash with the hypocritical hubris you exhibit here

A well mannered Christian wouldn't own slaves. There is a reason why the abolition movement was led by Christian groups and why the fight against slavery and things like the underground railroad were led or supported by very spiritual people.

As I said, I'm not a fundamentalist who thinks we were created in the image of God, but I understand people who do believe that, and I understand why they were so angry at slave owners. More than a few probably felt that Sherman's campaign was an 1860s version of the 10 plagues visited upon Egypt. They probably would have liked Sherman to take his roadshow and continue on around the south hitting the other states.

These discussions are always tricky on FR, because we are all about freedom here, and the Confederate leaders weren't, since you can't be for freedom if you support the enslavement of human beings. It'd be like an abortion doctor being pro-life. The Confederate leaders deliberately added the right to own slaves to the Confederate Constitution and made sure that the Confederate Congress could not remove that right, and several southern states made slavery their #1 or #2 reason to secede, laying out their arguments right there in their declarations of secession.

The typical poor Southerner was not to blame. Should they have been against slavery? Of course, both for economic and moral reasons, and because most were Christians. However, many of them did not understand what was happening and many were manipulated by the wealthy.

If people want to be angry, be angry at the slave owners and be angry at the Confederate leaders who enshrined the right to own slaves in the Confederate Constitution.

Finally, and most importantly, be angry at the Democrats who tried to take away the freedom that was given to the slaves, that was paid for with the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The Democrats and their Jim Crow laws set our nation back a century and tried to undo the freedom that was paid for with American blood. Not only did they take some of the freedoms away from the ex-slaves, along the way they divided our nation even further and then bamboozled minorities into thinking that the Republicans were the racist party.