One need not say anything good about slaveowning to note that no other religious or ethical system but Christianity ever abolished slavery - and even Christianity coexisted with slavery relatively uncontroversially until, at best, the Sixteenth Century. According to Thomas Sowell, slavery existed everywhere, and throughout history until then. Yet you will search the literature in vain for any apologia for slavery from anywhere except in the American South - because the institution was never under serious attack before then. We take The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the verse of O Holy Night which says, "Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother" for granted, but they are very much of their time and place - they wouldn't have been written centuries earlier.
The point is that the Christians of the American South thought themselves no less Christian because they owned slaves as their Christian parents had done before them. Indeed, Stonewall Jackson got into an argument with a fellow Presbyterian over Jackson's participation in a Sunday School for black slaves. Jackson himself owned one slave - but not by preference. The man had pleaded for Jackson to buy him, knowing that the alternative he faced was much worse . . .I have to believe that you or I would, if transported back 150 years, have been pretty uncomfortable with many of the people whom we now admire from a distance.
William Wilberforce
I apologize if I insulted. It is difficult and wrong to place modern morals upon a people so long ago. People of the south I am sure were generally good people. However, there were also many who knew that Negroes were people and yet continued to believe in the institution of slavery. While they understood the importance of individual freedom and agreed that it was a right granted by God they persisted with taking away those rights from others. I cannot explain this evil, but it did exist. It was not a southern trait...it was a trait throughout mankind. There were many in the north who believed slavery was a fine tradition.
I was glad to read what you said about General Jackson as he is a distant relative. I cannot guess how you or I would have thought or been back then. I would like to believe that we would understand that no people are free unless all are free. No nation is just unless we are all treated with equal justness by our government.
An interesting aside (actually on topic of my original post) is how democrats today still strive to make some groups (who support them) more equal. Like their Affirmative Action policies which openly discriminated by race and by their special rights and privileges they grant to unions. The democrat party is corrupt and evil still. This is not a trait of the South, but a trait of an evil philosophy by some.