On the Fact that (According to Historian John Garraty's Volume, "Historical Viewpoints") the South's Hesitation to Abolish Slavery Was NEVER About Whether it Should Be Done or Not but Rather About How and When

While I understand that the typical person's belief is that the South was this profoundly racist region who's goal it was to never relinquish slavery, the fact of the matter (and echoed brilliantly by Southern scholars such as Donald Livingston, Clyde Wilson, Brion McClanahan, and Lochlainn Seabrook) is that the enlightened viewpoint ON BOTH SIDES OF THE MASON DIXON LINE was that slavery was a bad institution but that they didn't know what to do about it (the consensus view being some sort of manumission combined with colonization - 'cause as we know, the North didn't want any part of black people), and being that it took the North 200 years to get rid of their slaves WHILE MAKING A PROFIT......., something short of 700,000 deaths was a mite preferable, I think.