Thus the institution of slavery was not only defended by every argument of self-interest, but many a Southern pulpit championed it as a system ordained by the Creator and sanctified by the Gospel of Christ. It had not always been so. During the Revolution against King George III many Southerners had expressed the hope that slavery would eventually be abolished. But as time passed “the peculiar institution” became, in the words of Morison and Commager, “so necessary that it ceased to appear evil.”

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Thus the institution of slavery was not only defended by every argument of self-interest, but many a Southern pulpit championed it as a system ordained by the Creator and sanctified by the Gospel of Christ. It had not always been so. During the Revolution against King George III many Southerners had expressed the hope that slavery would eventually be abolished. But as time passed “the peculiar institution” became, in the words of Morison and Commager, “so necessary that it ceased to appear evil.”" in the context of "Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Volume IV: The Great Democracies (1958)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.