Conservative Christians sure turn into a bunch of moral relativists when it comes to American slavery.
It is, of course, completely ludicrous to say that people didn’t understand how evil it was. Of course they did. Why do you think Uncle Tom’s Cabin resonated so much? Can you read Huckleberry Finn and say that Mark Twain didn’t get it?
Why do you think there were abolitionists? Why do you think people risked their lives on an underground railroad? Are you kidding me with this bullshit that people didn’t appreciate how evil it was? If Harrier Beecher Stowe and mark Twain could get it, then why couldn’t Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee?
Fuck those assholes. They knew what they were doing. I reject the conceit that there was anything honorable or “heroic” about them. They were racist, terrorist insurgents fighting to presve an appalling institution that they full well knew was appalling. They don’t deserve to be honored and if they “sacrificed,” then so did the Nazis.
These guys were nothing but Timothy McVeigh in Colonel Sanders drag.