What I’m trying to identify are those acts of tyranny that you claim provoked the Southern secession. I know all the excuses that the South gave for their actions. I’m trying to understand the oppressive or unjustly severe conditions that the South was laboring under. The arbitrary acts of a cruel government which they had no say in. All the actions which define a tyranny, and I’m afraid I can’t find them.
ARTICLE IV, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3
“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
This provision of the U.S. Constitution was widely unenforced in the North, as were the various Federal Fugitive Slave Acts and numerous affirming Federal court decisions. Many Southerners viewed this as a form of tyranny, as indicated by the language in several of the declarations of secession, and an abrogation of the famous Compromise of 1850. Of course, the long-standing animus between the North and the South also involved other issues unrelated directly to slavery, such as the protective tariffs and non-tariff restrictions on imported machinery and the “free soil” movement.