re: Slavery was not the only issue the South was fighting for

John Winthrop would have agreed with you, for the record. He and his Puritans genuinely believed in building that city in a hill.

The ancient Greeks would have considered the proposition absurd. Humans are what they are, there is no progress.

If anything, the past is more glorious than the future.

As a southerner, and a high church Episcopalian, I side with the Greeks.