Although their cause was lost it was a good cause and still has a lot to teach the world today.
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The cause of Big Cotton and Slavery.
If it weren’t for the Dred Scott decision, the Fugitive Slave Act, and all the other concessions being offered to the South to avoid war, I could have some sympathy for them. But I don’t.
Can you imagine how galling it must have been for northerners to have hostile and belligerent bands of mercenaries tramping through their communities, seizing what they generally regarded as citizens off the street, and effectively kidnapping them? That was the “fugitive slave act” in action.
By 1800 every northern state had either outlawed slavery or had defined a path to eventual emancipation. They increasingly regarded the practice as barbaric and wanted nothing to do with it. Lincoln came on the scene proclaiming that it was not his intention to interfere with the south’s Particular Institution except to prevent its westward expansion. In that he was little different than any of the previous northern presidents.
The southern democrats, being democrats, overreacted and overreached as is typical of their nature. And they paid a terrible price for their poor choices.