Contemporary antebellum view of slavery, real or fake ?

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C. Kelp

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i have been told many times that i can not look back in history and apply my present day view of slavery. why ? it was being judged by contemporaries throughout the world.
one of the main arguments is that , as christians, it was sanctioned, was beneficial to the slaves, and converted them to christianity.

[Paul taught a modification of the relationship between master and slave, based on Christian love and a sense that we are all slaves for Christ. He admonished Philemon to greet his slave no longer as a slave, but as a brother . Following Paul’s teaching, the early Church recognized no status difference between slave and master. All persons were to be seated together. The word slave, although extremely common among the grave of non-Christians is never used in inscriptions in the Christian burials in the catacombs. Slaves were permitted to hold office, even that of bishop and pope.

According to Ignatius, a second-century bishop, church funds were used to buy freedom for a number of slave (Apostolic Constitutions 4.9). Some Christians even surrendered their freedom to ransom others from slavery (1 Clement 55). Marriage among slaves was protected, and non-Christians were urged to free their slaves or allow them to purchase their own freedom.

Clement wrote, “Slaves are men like ourselves,” and Lactantius added, “Slaves are not slaves to us; we deem them brothers after the spirit, in religion, fellow-servants.” Ambrose argued that a slave might be superior to his master in character and Augustine believed that God does not approve of slavery (as opposed to Aristotle’s view that slavery is natural).
John T. Bristow ]

the first christians were NOT slave owners but lived in a gentile world. they had to accept slavery but not participate in it and many traded places with slaves to free them.
by the time of the ACW most of the advanced societies in the world had realized their mistake. the yankees in the north were no better than the south except that they realized the mistake sooner, and did not end almost 700,000 lives to hang on to a mistake. they found a way, as the south found their own way after the war, to farm at a profit.
so my question is did southerners really believe that slavery was good, for themselves and the slaves ? or did they use the argument to support their quest for cotton ?
 
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