Faith Ended Slavery? Really?

Oh how I am going to love the political campaign season!  This is going to be fun!


So the other day I caught part of an interview with Rick Santorum.  The interviewer asked him about his deep faith and why he thought it was so important that it be part of his campaign.  He then went on a tirade about how important religion was in many of the greatest changes in United States history, even stating that our faith brought an end to slavery (note this is the gist of what he stated, not the exact  quote).  Really?  Silly me!




Perhaps I should clue Mr. Santorum in on what really ended slavery.  So there was a lot of in-fighting in congress between free states and slave states about what stance the new states would be (free or slave) to the point where fist fights actually occurred.  Then a majority of the slave holding states believed they had the right to leave the union while the remaining states did not believe this.  The result was what turned out to be the Civil War.  Now the Civil War was not a war to end slavery, it was a war to save the union (the view of the remaining states) or a war to save their rights (the view of the seceding states).  So how, you may ask, did it become a war that ended slavery?  It was a carefully timed speech with two purposes: first, it was to garner more support from the war weary states of the Union to get more people to volunteer; second, it was to put the European empires in a tough position as most of them had ended slavery and could not support it's existence.  This speech was the Gettysburg Address.  This was where the war became about ending slavery.


This speech had nothing to do with faith.  It had everything to do with gaining national and international support to put pressure on the Confederate states to end the war.  Ending slavery was a tool to assist in ending the war, not a religious statement.


Having stated how I disagree with Mr. Santorum, I do have to agree with him on one point, there is no real separation of church and state!  But that's another rant for a different day...