[cyborg]

Self evident to many anti-slavery white christians at the time who were sometimes thrown in jail for teaching slaves to read and write, not to mention build the underground railroad.

I know what you MAY be trying to say. That we ought not to look at the 1800s with a year 2000 mindset. Slavery was widely practiced, but that does not make it right. American slavery, especially as practiced in the South, had many features not found in slavery practiced elsewhere. Actually there is so much written from that time period, one can actually know the mindset... from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Tocqueville.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

But was it wrong to them? What are we practicing today that might be considered sin a century and a half in the future? Who among us has the answer?