Yeah, the poverty pimps that now rule us are really special, aren't they?
...but in actuality, the power of the Christian faith and the idea that one person might own another person were moving like a Bradley fighting vehicle though nineteenth century thought. Slavery was wrong. It would have disappeared from the South under far friendlier terms had the Confederacy survived.
I'm going to go with the author's thesis on this one, but I know that Illbay didn't even bother reading or thinking about this argument. The bell went 'ding', and Illbay salivated. ;-)
And when would that have been? There was no motivation by the aristocracy to do it, and for white tradesmen, the thought of freed slaves competing against them would have been anathema. Hell, it took concerted Federal action 100 years after the war in order to compel the extension of full voting and civil rights to blacks in the states that comprised the old Confederacy - and they didn't have any plans whatsoever for doing that Christian thing voluntarily.
Quit pining for a society that never was - praise their forces for volor on the battlefield, praise the political leaders for gambling and taking a chance in the face of pretty formidable odds. Never, ever, however, praise the enterprise as a noble one - because it was not.
Just as Patton could admire Rommel, and ID White could later befriend Manteuffel, we can admire skill and courage. That doesn't mean that the cause the latter served was any less reprehensible.
"All slavery was ended by the Emancipation Proclamation...No federal income tax could have been perpetrated on a confederacy...Over two hundred and fifty thousand Americans died on U.S. soil in the war between the North and the South..."
You gonna go with the author's thesis on these, too?