How refreshing. After dozens of threads where people argue that the North was freeing the slaves, rather than maintaining an economic stranglehold on the South through the preservation of the Union, we approach the truth.
Considering Calhoun was decrying the tarrif structure imposed to the disadvantage of the South in the 1820s, I think it is really safe to say the threat of forced manumission was seen as an economic sanction. Nothing will cause a people to cling to any institution so much as the threat of destroying it by force, when they themselves might have abolished it in good time. You claim there would have been no willing abolition in the south, but, what of the North? Industrialization and the relative economy of cheap immigrant labor over slave ownership, as well as the incessant cultural change brought by the drum of abolition were indeed taking their toll on the institution. That the South would not have followed the same course is a stretch. The South was industrializing, albeit at a slower rate than the North which had a head start. That the South was burned back into a largely agrarian economy was no accident, the wealthy and powerful of the North remained so, and had the upper hand in the post war development of the rail and steel industries.
The whole moral high ground seeps into the morass of deceit and subsequent villification of entire peoples while stealing their birthright in the name of Manifest Destiny."
Don't know what you are talking about, sounds like a bad dream to me.
For millions, including my most of my wife's ancestors, it was. It was the generally the period just after the War Between the States, unless of course, you were from one of the Eastern Tribes, where it came earlier, marked by treaties which were subsequently violated, and the theft of millions of acres of land by deceit or force, with the resources on and under them. This included the forcible relocation of vast numbers of people in forced marches to areas which amounted to camps, the sequestering of children into State-run schools with limited or no family contact, forbidden even to speak their own language.
Facts are facts, and history is what it is, regardless of what we might wish it would have been, had we been writing the script.
And the history here is very clear:
Southern extremists wanted to secede.
What their many reasons were, we might discuss at length, but the core of it was always, indeed only, slavery.
Absent slavery, issues such as tariffs were entirely negotiable within context of the Union -- no need to secede for lower tariffs.
Nor did the South secede when that was the only issue.
But slavery was a Southern core value, a nonnegotiable condition for the South, and any serious threat against slavery evoked the most violent reactions.
Any threat -- such as the election of abolitionist Republicans to Congress and Abraham Lincoln as President.
Lincoln, of course, in 1860 had no intention of abolishing slavery, nor did any Republican at the time.
What they expected and wanted was that slavery would slowly wither away and eventually die out.
Indeed, in the campaign of 1860, Lincoln said not one word about slavery (or anything else for that matter).
So to attack Lincoln, secessionists had to go back to his earlier speeches, such as "A House Divided" from June 16, 1858:
""A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."
And his Cooper Union speech of February 27, 1860, where Lincoln "addressed the single-mindedness of the Southerners, saying":
“ Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events."
And the South did NOT want just "to be left alone."
What they wanted was to make slavery legal everywhere -- not just in the South, but in the Western Territories and even the North.
So at this point, in 1860, it was strictly a matter of Southern Aggression against the Union.
There was no "Northern Aggression" involved -- unless you want to consider the matter of fugitive slaves "Northern Aggression."
Smokin' Joe: "Nothing will cause a people to cling to any institution so much as the threat of destroying it by force, when they themselves might have abolished it in good time. You claim there would have been no willing abolition in the south, but, what of the North? "
Slavery's popularity and eventual legality was almost entirely a function of the size of a state's slave population.
In Northern states, where slaves never exceeded 1% of the population, slavery was relatively quickly and easily abolished.
In Border States (Delaware, Maryland, western Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri), where slaves constituted 10% to 20%, slavery was not strong enough to cause those states to vote for secession.
Even in the Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas), where slaves were 25% to 30% of the population, secession was not a "sure thing."
Those states at first voted against secession, until the Battle of Fort Sumter convinced enough to join the Confederacy.
Even then, large populations in Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina resisted secession and remained sympathetic to the Union.
But in the Deep South (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana & Texas), where slave populations approached 50% and more of the total, slavery was simply not a matter that could even be discussed, much less debated.
So it was the perceived threat against slavery represented by the election of abolitionist Republicans which drove the Deep South to secede.
And the truth of it didn't matter to them.
The fact that Lincoln had no intention -- much less constitutional ability -- to abolish slavery didn't matter.
Southern Secessionists just didn't like Lincoln's looks, and that's all that really mattered to them.