I have been trying to find a source for that quote and cannot. Perhaps you have one? Also the quote seems suspect considering that in the Texas vs White case he said that the acts of secession where illegal.
I also don’t know of any republicans that advocated letting the fire-eaters have their way. Hell, you would be abandoning a lot of US citizens who did not want to join the confederacy.
The only people in the north that supported just letting the southerners go were “copper-head” democrats, but even hey seemed to be a minority.
“If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)
I also don’t know of any republicans that advocated letting the fire-eaters have their way. Hell, you would be abandoning a lot of US citizens who did not want to join the confederacy.
The founders abandoned a lot of British Loyalists. As a percentage of the population, they were likely greater than Southern Unionists.
The only people in the north that supported just letting the southerners go were “copper-head” democrats, but even hey seemed to be a minority.
In truth, most of the North was in favor of letting the South go. It was only after the wealthy and influential started to realize how much money it was going to cost them that there began to be resistance to the idea of letting them go.
"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." - Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860