This is why Westboro Baptist Church is a joke

[Jester]

The tide was changing to abolish slavery, and rapidly. Why couldn't the US have its own William Wilberforce?

That's WHY the South separated. That's the whole point. The US did have its own William Wilberforces. Frederick Douglass ring any bells? Articulate, moral intellectuals made a persuasive case against slavery, and the North, an ascending power who did not benefit much from slaves, believed them. The South, a diminishing power dominated by a wealthy slaveowning class that saw their source of riches and privilege directly endangered, separated from the Union to preserve their substantial, but dwindling, status.

This was practically inevitable. Compromise was tried, and failed. Unless, of course, we live in rosy counterfactual land, like so:

Had the northern abolitionists and the slave owning south had stronger leadership from Lincoln in providing reason and good will towards each other, and had the north been willing to compensate the slave owners for their loses, then the US could have followed Britain's lead with their own peacefully acquired Emancipation Act.

I'm sure everyone would have lived happily ever after.

See my response to FIT and the case against the National Day of Prayer...

You do get the difference between individuals and non-state groups praying, and the *Federal Government* endorsing prayer? Like, maybe, that the Constitution binds one, and not the other? Exactly that same distinction that I told you you're ignoring?

-Jester