There were plenty of 19th Century men who could see how wrong slavery was. Take Alexis de Tocqueville, for instance, who in the 1830's, despite being born a privileged French aristocrat, fully comprehended the damage that slavery was doing to both the enslaved negroes and the slaveholders and other white Southerners who had become so dependent on them.
Millions of Northerners opposed slavery in 1860 even though by doing so they subjected themselves to being called "niggerlovers" by Northern Democrats merely for suggesting that slavery should be abolished. Even many Southerners like Robert E. Lee clearly saw the evils of slavery -- yet they did very little to oppose it. At best, they treated it like Ross Perot's crazy aunt in the basement. It seems very apparent that the Confederates who opposed slavery simply succumbed to peer pressure and ended up walking off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings. They had the courage to join (and lead) the crowd in battle but not to stand up to them on the issue of slavery. That was a deep and fatal flaw that cannot easily be whitewashed -- try as they might -- by the Confederate glorifiers.
And, while you are at it, don't forget to tell us what you think of Mrs. U.S. Grant bringing her slave "Black Julia" to Grant's Headquarters to look after little Jesse Grant whenever she visited her husband.
Neither Mrs. Grant nor U.S. Grant, for all of their flaws, ever fought for a country that was founded upon and dedicated to preserving slavery.
And don't forget to tell us what you think about that guy on the One Dollar Bills in your wallet and the Quarters in your pocket.
It is just as wrong to idolize the founding fathers as it is to condemn their entire lives for being slaveholders. I have a great deal of respect for the achievements of Washington and Jefferson, but I would have a great deal more respect for them had they more actively opposed slavery. Washingon's descendants certainly paid for his failures in that regard.
One was Robert E. Lee:
"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy.....Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856:
One individual who claimed that he did not much care about the issue except for the fact that it affected the Union was U.S. Grant:
"I never was an abolitionist, not even what could be called anti-slavery, but I try to judge fairly and honestly and it became patent in my mind early in the rebellion that the North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace established, I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until the question is forever settled." - August 30, 1863, in a letter to Elihu Washburne
Robert E. Lee was not fighting to perpetuate slavery. He was fighting to protect his native Virginia from invasion.
What was so evil about Lee's vision?
Would America not have been far better off if slavery had died it's inevitable end, in Lee's words, "from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy" which cost a nation of 32 million people the deaths of 600,000 of it's citizens and poisoned racial relations for the next 140 years?
One must also remember that Lincoln signed the first version of the 13th Amendment which called for the perpetual establishment of slavery in order to appease the Southern fire-eaters.
"ARTICLE THIRTEEN, No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
So, how are Christian men such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson supposed to acquire your 20/20, year 2003 moral and historical hindsight regarding the future of slavery in 1861?
The same Lincoln that singed the proposed Constitutional Amendment that would have perpetually enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution in the form of the first proposed 13th Amendment is raising an army to invade their native State of Virginia. How are Lee and Jackson expected to equate abandoning the defense of their native State in 1861 to the abolition of slavery?
The reasons men fought between 1861 and 1865 were very complex. Some were honorable and some were not. To judge all men on either side with 20/20 moral and historical hindsight from a vantage point of 142 years into the future is a cheap shot.