Speaking of the South's "traditions," Jefferson Davis boasted, "It [slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts. Let the gentleman go to Revelation...Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find in the old and new testaments - in the prophecies, psalms and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized, sanctioned everywhere." [ Jefferson Davis, Vol 1, by Dunbar Rowland, pp. 286 & 316 - 317 ]

Davis' defenses of slavery are legion, as in his speech to Congress in 1848, "If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Devine decree.

After 1856 Jefferson Davis reiterated in most of his public speeches that he was "tired" of apologies for "our institution" "African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing." [ Dodd, pp. 107, 154, 168 ] Or, as Davis reiterated after being elected President of the Confederacy, "My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuse....We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...you cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."
[ Kenneth C. Davis, Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know About America's Greatest Conflict But Never Learned ( New York, Avon Books, 1996) p. 156 ]                       

Slaves were regarded as property. They were, as we have seen, called a "possession" and an "inheritance." [Lev. xxv. 44, 45, 46.] They were even called the "money" of the master. Thus, it is said, "if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money." [Exod. xxi. 20, 21.] In one of the ten commandments this right of property is recognised: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's."

The Bible even depicts the “Lord” making his own ministers slaveholders.
Numbers, chapter 31, says that the Hebrews slew all the Midianites with the exception of Midianite female virgins whom the Hebrews “kept for themselves...Now the booty that remained from the spoil, which the [Hebrew] men of war had plundered included...16,000 human beings [i.e., the female virgins] from whom the Lord’s tribute was 32 persons. And Moses gave the tribute which was the Lord’s offering to Eleazar the priest, just as the Lord had commanded Moses...And from the sons of Israel’s half, Moses took one out of every fifty, both of man [i.e., the female virgins] and animals, and gave them to the Levites [the priestly tribe]...just as the Lord had commanded Moses.”