[Heyworth]

And spare us your Lost Cause blinkered view of history. Is there anything I said that wasn't the truth? The Founding Fathers were largely embarrassed by slavery, but they did leave it for the states to handle, expecting it to be abolished through a program of gradual emancipation as had begun in the north. It's not the fault of the Founding Fathers that the cotton gin changed the economics of slavery.

Simple question: If slavery was a dying institution, why did the south so agitate for it's expansion?

[stainlessbanner]

Simple question: If the states were sovereign, why did the Union invade?

[stainlessbanner]

expecting it to be abolished through a program of gradual emancipation as had begun in the north

The North's gradual emancipation was just moving freedman elsewhere. They didn't want Blacks in their cities and were just as happy to relocate them overseas or to the western territories. The north abandoned the system of chattel slavery for industrial sweatshops. They sold their slaves South to the agrarian class when it was convenient and only after they made profit on the slave trade.