Well, lots of people do. I will agree that the war, like pretty much all wars, was about many issues. Can we at least agree that slavery was the "insoluble issue" without which it is unlikely that war would have broken out? All other factors in dispute could have been compromised. Slavery, by its very nature and the emotions it stirred up, was not amenable to compromise.
I think slavery was an issue, and that the North did not have clean hands in the matter.
Agreed.
I think slavery is wrong, so is killing off entire Native American populations, abusing children, or exploiting various minority groups.
Of course, these are activities that Americans engaged in as a country. The South participated just as much as the North.
To compare the North to Mother Teresa and the South to Hitler is obscene.
I agree. That was not my intent. I was trying to point out the common moral fallacy that says a man who once, twenty years ago, got drunk and cheated on his wife, then repented and thereafter walked the straight and narrow, is the moral equivalent of Bill Clinton. After all, both were adulterers.
That all institutions and people are imperfect is just a fact. That some are much more imperfect than others is also a fact. That difference is significant.
So that's your position then? That the South was completely corrupt and evil? Then you wonder why we can find no common ground?
I see I didn't word myself as well as I could have. I was trying to use hyperbole to make a point, that differences of degree are important.
I've never claimed that the South was completely evil. I have always thought that there is a fascinating book or movie in the story of a 1950's KKK guy in the South who was basically a good person, but had a serious blind spot that led him into doing evil things. Perhaps it could be called, "How Good People Can Do Really Bad Things."
You won't see such a publication, of course, because our media enforces the view that only completely evil and irredeemable people have ever been racist or bigoted.
I do believe that the Union side was the moral side. Not because all Union men were good people, but because the triumph of the cause for which they fought led to an increase in human freedom.
Similarly, the Confederate side shows the enormous tragedy of incredible heroism and nobility expended for a cause that was not only ignoble to begin with, but was obviously on its way out, anyway.
I don't know, would you also agree the other "insoluble issue" was state's rights? If every Southern slave had been freed, and then the South had seceded, would war have happened anyway?