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I correctly pointed out that the Northern states didn't end the practice for humanitarian reasons.

But they did end it. If the South were such reluctant slave-owners why didn't they end it, too?

You know as well as I do that the Northern states which ended slavery phased it out over a period of years and sold their slaves to the South. Was the South supposed to sell them back to the North after, oh, say, a 10-20 year phase like those Northern states used?

Hyperbole aside, if the South hated the institution of slavery to the extent that you and Philly claim then surely somewhere along the way the learned leaders of the South had come up with proposals for ending that vile institution that the North crammed down their throats and solving the problem of the slaves? So you should be able to point us to some of their ideas? That is, if the South really hated slaver to begin with.

You also know that if the Southern states were so determined to keep their slaves, all they had to do was remain in the Union.

And you also know, or should know, that had the Southern states remained in the U.S. there would have been restrictions on where they could take their slaves. So they left, and adopted a Constitution which guaranteed them the right to own slaves in every corner of the Confederacy, regardless of what a state or locality might have thought of it. So why have half the loaf in the U.S. when you could have the whole loaf on your own? Can you answer that for us?

Did you make those history channel documentaries? You're forgetting your blind spot, again!! Lincoln was concerned about tariffs, not slavery. That is why he 'winked' at the proposed 13th Amendment - protecting slavery - forever!!

As Lincoln said, "What, then, would become of my tariff?"

But they did end it.

When, exactly? They started and continued the trade even past when trade was banned in 1809 (RI and NY were the biggest traders in our history), and moved slaves South because of climate. The U.S. Constitution never outlawed expansion of slavery. The CSA one did. Just repeating an inaccuracy doesn't make it accurate.

So you should be able to point us to some of their ideas

Already have (ie VA protesting since the early 1700s...actually they were the first State in the WORLD to protest the institution when it was at it's peak, but you knew that). But overall, North and South alike didn't believe in integrating the races at the time. When slaves were "freed" in the north, they were conscripted, abandoned, sold south or sold back overseas. Which of those solutions are you saying was morally superior to anything in the south?

As for the "moving around" theory you present for the CSA, the Dred Scott decision sorta nullifies that whole argument, no? Nice try though.

Also, please add "hyperbole" to the list of words you don't understand how to use.

Slavery was an issue but not the cause.

As for the cause? Republican Form of Government

..."The people of North Carolina, more perhaps than those of any of the eleven seceding States, were devoted to the Union. They had always regarded it with sincerest reverence and affection, and they left it slowly and with sorrow. They were actuated by an honest conviction...that their constitutional rights were endangered, not be the mere election of Mr. Lincoln, as others did, but by the course which subsequent events were compelled to take in consequence of the ideas which were behind him. The Union men of the State, of whom I was one, whatever may have been their doubts of the propriety of secession, were unanimous in the opinion that it was neither right nor safe to permit the general government to coerce a State." Zebulon B. Vance