Slavery is bad! Read almost any American History textbook, and that's the impression you get. The south did a very bad thing when it imported Africans to work on their planations (or as we would say nowdays, big farms).

It's All Political

If you read the south's arguments for slavery at the time, they were quite convincing, and probably have more truth to them, then so many of us want to admit today.

Okay, at this point, your probably saying I'm some kind of Neo-Nazi/Fascist/KKK member. Or a racist bigot. Silly liberals. My point is that history contains a lot of political spin on it, that might not really be the truth.

Slavery was either horrible or not so bad, depending on whose story you get. Obviously slave owners thought slavery not to be that bad of thing, some non-slave owners and some slaves thought differently.

A Need for Freedom?

Black slaves were people. Well sort of. They were technically the same species as the rest of us, but the African culture was far less technically advanced as the European culture. They were primative, few ever learned to read or write, much less think of concepts of freedom (in many cases that was actually prohibited by state laws, for good reason).

If you never grasped the concept of freedom, much less western ideals, how would you feel bad being a slave? You wouldn't feel anything at all, you'd just accept it. Do you really think that farm animals, that have always lived on a farm, would feel uncomfortable (and probably would die), if they escaped?

Just Like Cows?

For all pratical purposes, in the south, slaves were no different then animals, like cows or horses. They had to be fed and cared for the same kind of way. They helped do the work of the farm, like horses do. Hard work, stuff that whites did not want to do, and could not do as effectively as many slaves could at a fraction of the cost.

They say slaves were often abused, and forced to work long hours in the hot sun. Yet no slave owner in their right mind would abuse them too much, that would be as dumb as picking on a bull, or abusing a horse (like it's going to be useful when it gets spooked every time you get around it). A healthy slave could do more work, be of a greater benifit to the planation.

An Historic Attack on Farm Pratices?

I guess you could look at the ending of slavery in the south as being an attack on certain farming pratices, just like those who move next to a farm, and complain about the smell of manure or burning garbage. You know those kind.

Probably it was wrong to teach slaves on what they were missing. But that was history. They learned what freedom was, they worked their way into being Americans. They found themselves displaced by technology, then they had to become educated and eventually free.

Slavery is wrong, when you are inslaving people against their wishes. But, in the pre-civil war-era, slavery was a valuable source of labor, slaves served a similar purpose, and were treated like farm animals, because for a pratical purpose, they were just that.