To: Catfish who wrote (119757 ) 12/28/2000 8:48:56 AM From: Johannes Pilch Read Replies (1) | Respond to You are trying to overlook the morality of the issue in preference for its economic component, and that you cannot with reason do. Clearly the Confederate position was not due merely to economics, anymore than Hitler’s position was merely economic. Hitler thought Jews innately inferior to whites and on that basis justified his attempted elimination of them. Those who formed and sustained the Confederacy thought similarly, that blacks were innately inferior to whites, and on that basis they sent thousands of men to fight and die for black enslavement.should be enslaved by whites and that slavery is the best condition for both races. That is an utterly reprehensible position in direct contradiction to the very philosophical basis for the existence of our own country. Even Jefferson, as far back as the Revolutionary period claimed that whatever the abilities of blacks, it has no bearing on their rights. He codified this belief in our Declaration of Independence. It was on this belief that we based our struggle against England. The Confederacy rejected all of this and wage war on their erroneous view.In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the [northern] people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States… mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator , as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states. members.aol.com moral basis for their war. Were they right? As a Christian I must argue they were exactly wrong. As an American I must fight their view, and argue that they must not be held in honour through honouring the Confederacy. They directly contradicted the singular reason for my American citizenship.
