Replies

Oh, but they certainly did, in the beginning.
In 1790 Virginia was the most populous state (including slaves) and roughly half of Americans lived in the South.
In 1810 New York’s population surpassed Virginia’s and in 1820 so did Pennsylvania’s, such that by 1830 the South’s population had fallen to about 44% of the total.

In the beginning the population was more balanced though of course blacks did not have the vote be they free or slave so the South had less votes than the North from the start and that got steadily worse over time as the North’s population grew faster due to immigration.

Regardless, before 1861 Southern Democrats always dominated their Doughfaced Northern Democrat brethren and together Democrats Dominated in Washington, DC, from about 1800 until secession in 1861 — almost continuously, with very few exceptions.
The strength of Democrat dominance can be seen in the steady decline of tariffs after what was effectively the Calhoun/Jackson Tariff of Abominations.
Note my graph in post #290 above.

Again, if you’ll note the two maps in post #290 of 1852 & 1856 elections, you’ll see that in 1852 Democrats totally dominated the North and in 1856 still took some very important Norther states (i.e., Pennsylvania).
But in 1860 Preston Brooks’ Fire Eater buddies succeeded in splitting the Democrat party, demoralizing Northern Democrats and paving the way for minority Republican victory.

So Southerners didn’t lose power in Washington, DC, so much as they threw it away.

Democrats were the dominant party. Your claim however that Southerners always ran things and could just snap their fingers and Northern Democrats would do their bidding is absurd. Things like the grossly unequal federal expenditures and the tariff of Abominations never would have passed at all had Southerners been that influential in Washington DC. Even after it was agreed to lower tariffs as part of the compromise that ended the Nullification Crisis, the rates were still considerably higher than would have been ideal for Southern economic interests. Then as the North steadily grew bigger and bigger it sought to impose sky high tariffs once again and this time the Southern states saw they weren’t going to be able to stop it so they seceded. Seeing their cash cows departing was intolerable to Lincoln and his corporate fatcat supporters.

Speaking of “patently absurd”, those numbers certainly are, since there is no possible way to collect them.
Federal import tariffs were collected at ports on entry and afterwards was no way to tell the ultimate customers, or even if Northern or Southern.
So what such numbers typically do refer to is US exports which were not taxed but were claimed to somehow “pay for” imports.

Thus, for example, if Deep South cotton represented, say, 50% of total exports (which it did), then it was claimed the Deep South “paid for” 50% of US imports and thus Federal revenue tariffs.
Likewise with tobacco or rice, etc.

But one problem is: cotton is the only product where that equation really works — everything else could be and was produced in many places, only counted as “Southern products” because they were exported from Southern ports, i.e., New Orleans.
This was proved big-time in 1861 when Confederate South products were 100% deleted from US exports, and yet a “Southern product” like tobacco’s exports fell only 14%.
Clearly tobacco was not only produced by Confederates.

Of course, if you wish to argue that Muscoe Russell Garnett’s numbers are what many Southerners came to believe, then it might be true some believed it, but the numbers themselves are, ahem, “patently absurd”.

More rubbish, nonsense and economic illiteracy. Where a cargo lands and thus where the tariff is paid is irrelevant. WHO owns the goods and thus pays the tariff is what is relevant. Likewise who buys those manufactured goods is irrelevant. Who owned those goods? Southerners.

They were the ones who contracted with the shipping companies to ship their cash crops across the Atlantic. They were the ones who had to find something to fill the cargo holds of those ships with to help pay for the cost on the return journey. Obviously the thing that made sense to fill the cargo holds with was manufactured goods since France and especially Britain had industrialized first and thus had economies of scale and could sell more and better manufactured goods at lower prices.

Your claim that because Northern shipping companies were still able to export decent quantities of rice, indigo, sugar and tobacco that means that the North somehow produced these goods is laughable. Firstly things do get stored in warehouses. You realize that right? Secondly even during the war there was trade going on between both sides. Gee....what’s the South going to be offering in trade?

I can cite any of a number of Northern newspapers at the time which also openly admitted the South was providing the vast majority of exports for the whole country and when we look at what was exported its not difficult to see that cash crops comprise most of it.

I don’t dispute that some believed what you say, I only say that it was not true.
My opinions are based not only on that 1928 book, which shows that Federal spending was roughly equal North vs. South, but also on some of the same documents used to show that “Southern products” exceeded all other by far.

I simply note that when Confederate products were deleted, cotton exports did indeed fall 80% as you would expect.
But no other “Southern product” fell anywhere near than much and tobacco, for example fell only 14%.
Clearly not all “Southern products” were produced in the Confederate South.

No not all of the cash crops were produced in the states which seceded. Missouri and Kentucky did and still do grow some cotton and tobacco as well. Some things will inevitably get stored in warehouses as well. There was some trading between both sides during the war as well. The vast majority of the exports were provided by the Southern states though (including border states).

As for federal expenditures, those were totally unbalanced in favor of Northern states and had been since the beginning. For example: From 1789 to 1845, the North received five times the amount of money that was spent on southern projects. More than twice as many lighthouses were built in the North as in the South, and northern states received twice the southern appropriations for coastal defense.

Some Northerners, just like today some Americans sympathize and financially back Muslim terrorists.
History does not tell us the percentages, but I’d suggest that 150 close neighbors defending Franklin Sanborn against arresting Federal officers did not necessarily speak for all of several million Northern voters.
Indeed, in 1860 those Northern voters may still have returned more Democrats to office, had the party remained united.

The fact that NONE of the 6 who openly supported and financed a terrorist who launched an attack with the express aim of killing Southern civilians were arrested says it all.

But slavery was the reason given by secessionists themselves, so slavery is what Congress addressed.
Now you say it wasn’t really about slavery, since Confederates rejected all such compromises.
But the truth is that once they declared secession, then no compromise offered by Congress would have been adequate to entice their return.
So slavery was the stated reason for secession, but slavery would not get Confederates to return.
As it turned out, nothing would, short of Union victory and Confederates’ Unconditional Surrender.

Firstly you don’t know that no compromise offered after secession would have been sufficient to entice the original 7 seceding states to come back. What we know is that the slavery with massively high tariffs carrot was offered and they refused it.

That both the North was willing to offer it and that the Southern states rejected it says a lot. Slavery was simply not what was motivating most people on either side.

Wrong again.
All four focused on slavery, none mentioned tariffs or taxes.
Yes, Georgia complained about “bounties” for “fishing smacks” but did not claim they went exclusively to Northerners, nor can anybody seriously suggest Georgia was willing to secede and risk Civil War over “fishing smacks”!
The real reason was clearly slavery.

Wrong. Georgia talked extensively about both the tariffs and the unequal federal expenditures. Texas talked about that as well as the failure to provide border security as well as the Northern states refusing to act against terrorists based there who had attacked the South. South Carolina attached Rhett’s address which talked extensively about tariffs and unequal federal expenditures. Had the “real reason” been slavery then the Corwin Amendment would certainly have satisfied that....yet it did not.

Nothing either “desperate” or “patently false” about it because the fact remains that Rhett devoted twice as many words to slavery as to all other issues combined.
So I’m not claiming Rhett had no other red herrings to throw out, I’m only saying the real reason is the one he spent the most words talking about — slavery.

and I’m saying that’s laughable BS and that Rhett had said he would support secession on economic grounds alone.

But that claim is false, beginning with the fact that Southerners were far from “impoverished”.
Rather, on average, white Southerners were wealthier than any other people on Earth.
And Rhett’s claim of “diversion” of proceeds is also false, though it appears some people then & now believed it.
In reality, such numbers were fake, as I’ve explained.

His claim is clearly true. By 1860, the South’s wealth was only on par with that of the North even though it was the South which produced the vast majority of the valuable exports. Clearly a lot of money had been drained out of Southerners’ pockets over the years for that to happen.

Such numbers were true as I have demonstrated from multiple sources from all sides.

Lincoln commented noncommittally on it in his first inaugural.
Other than that, I’ve seen no evidence of his “orchestration”.
So I’m starting to think it’s on a par with Trump’s “Russia collusion” — something devoutly wished for by his political enemies but sadly, for them, nothing but fantasy.

Lincoln....brace yourself.....I hope you are sitting down for this......Lied! I know it will come as a great shock to you to learn that politicians lie but yes, it indeed does happen and did happen in the past too. That the de facto head of the party would have only “heard about” and “not seen” a bill that was going to be so central to his presidency is side splittingly funny.

Wrong on both counts.
But I did find your mysterious “orchestrator”, it was President Buchanan, who took the trouble to sign the amendment, even though not required.
And Lincoln did forward it to the states, noting Buchanan’s signature.
But only five states ratified it — two Southern Border, two Northern Border, plus Rhode Island.
Most later rescinded their ratifications.
I think some allowances should be made for the local politics of those border states.

As for Confederates refusing to reconsider rejoining based only on the Corwin amendment, I would say rather that by that time secessionists were unwilling to consider anything the Union proposed, slavery related or not.

Nope! I’m right on both counts. The Northern dominated Congress passed it, The Northern president signed it and multiple states ratified it. It was a bona fide offer. Had the original 7 seceding states indicated this would be sufficient and would address their concerns, I have no doubt the votes would have been there to pass it in enough states for it to be ratified.

You just claim the original 7 seceding states were not going to come back no matter what. You don’t know that. What we do know is that a constitutional amendment protecting slavery effectively forever and very high tariffs was not acceptable to them.

But that itself is a lie because the Compromise of 1850 removed responsibility for enforcing fugitive slave laws from states to Federal government.
Claims that somehow states were still responsible is rather a breech of faith by secessionists, not Northerners.

But its not because multiple Northern states passed state laws forbidding cooperation with the feds over return of escaped slaves. In several cases mobs had prevented federal agents from capturing escaped slaves and state courts had excused all of it. The breech of faith was by the Northern states as they have long bragged about.

Most in the Deep South certainly did, where nearly 50% of families owned slaves.
Outside the Deep South things were quite different, with slave ownership falling to 15% or less in Border States.
That’s the reason those states didn’t join the Confederacy, even after Fort Sumter.

Most certainly did not. As I’ve already shown, your 50% claims are pure BS. What we know is that slave ownership was in the single digit percentages among the white population. Oh and your claim about the border states is dubious at best. Missouri did eventually secede and Maryland was occupied and its legislature jailed by Lincoln without charge or trial before they could vote on the matter.

Anyone could write up a list of reasons and order them by priority.
Then ask Confederates which of those reasons was more important.
I promise you, “economic exploitation” would not be near the top of any but a very few Confederates’ lists.

I promise you that you’re wrong. Again.

“Why did this war come? There was a widely shared feeling among many in the Confederacy that their liberty and way of life were being overpowered by northern political, industrial, and banking powers.” (Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, p. 152)

Here is what was in the Confederate Constitution:

“. . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .

“The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . .

“. . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders’ reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)

“The most remarkable features of the new instrument sprang from the purifying and reforming zeal of the delegates, who hoped to create a more guarded and virtuous government than that of Washington. The President was to hold office six years, and be ineligible for reelection. Expenditures were to be limited by a variety of careful provisions, and the President was given budgetary control over appropriations which Congress could break only by a two-thirds vote. Subordinate employees were protected against the forays of the spoils system. No bounties were ever to be paid out of the Treasury, no protective tariff was to be passed, and no post office deficit was to be permitted. The electoral college system was retained, but as a far-reaching innovation, Cabinet members were given seats in Congress for the discussion of departmental affairs. Some of these changes were unmistakable improvements, and the spirit behind all of them was an earnest desire to make government more honest and efficient.” (Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 435)

“In its general pattern the [Confederate] constitution closely resembled that of the United States; indeed at most points its wording was precisely the same. . . .

“The framers of the Confederate constitution improved upon the Constitution of the United States in a number of minor ways, designed to produce ‘the elimination of political waste, the promotion of economical government, and the keeping of each echelon of complex government within its appointed orbit.’ So effective were these changes that William M. Robinson, Jr., has termed the document ‘the peak contribution of America to political science.’ The process of amendment was altered. With certain exceptions Congress was not to appropriate money except by two-thirds vote of both houses. The amount and purpose of each appropriation were to be precisely specified; and after the fulfillment of a public contract Congress was not to grant any extra compensation to the contractor. ‘Riders’ on money bills were discouraged by the provision that the President might veto a given item of an appropriation bill without vetoing the entire bill. Each law was to deal with ‘but one subject,’ to be expressed in the title.” (Randall and Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 157, 159)

and you want to just scream “slavery slavery slavery!!!” like a wind up doll whose string has been pulled. Don’t tell me these people did not care about the overcentralization of power, wasteful expenditures under a broad interpretation of the “general welfare” clause exactly as Patrick Henry had warned about when he urged rejection of the Constitution, government being in bed with corporate special interests, etc. They would never have gone to the trouble of drafting a constitution so elaborately designed to stop exactly the kind of abuses wrt expenditures they had long complained about if they didn’t care about it. They would not have set the maximum tariff rate at 10% had this not been important to them.....and as for the provision allowing non slave states to join.........

I only WISH we had many of the provisions that were in the Confederate Constitution. It would have spared us much of the difficulty we have today with our massive debts and uncontrollable spending on social programs as well as our constant military adventures overseas.

Total nonsense, but of course there’ve always been rabid anti-Americans eager to denigrate our ideals and mock our motives.
Many then as now are Democrat Americans, or foreigners devoted to a larger world-government cause.
It was true then, it’s true now.

All true - just inconvenient for you to admit. The motives of the federal government and the special interests who backed them was the same as it is everywhere......money and power. Its always about money and power. Ideals like government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed get chucked aside the second they get in the way of the acquisition of more money and power. Ask Southerners or the Plains Indians or indeed many foreigners about that. They’ll all tell you the US Federal govt has often shown itself to be quite aggressive and imperialist.

FLT-bird: "In the beginning the population was more balanced though of course blacks did not have the vote be they free or slave so the South had less votes than the North from the start and that got steadily worse over time as the North’s population grew faster due to immigration."

Sure, but from the beginning it was never a question of just North vs. South.
As early as 1800 there were two distinct parties, the old Federalists and Jefferson's new Democratic-Republicans.
Both parties had voters North & South, but Democrats were by far the stronger, their constant victories first driving Federalists out of business and later Whigs, though in both cases internal factors also broke them apart.

Pick almost any presidential election you wish and you'll see the nearly solid Democrat South in alliance with some Northern states carried their party to victory.
The only exceptions were the very confused 1824 election and the elections of popular Whig generals in 1842 and 1848.
And in those cases the opposition put together a winning alliance of Southern & Northern states.
Indeed, both Harrison & Tyler were Southerners and slave-holders, so they were in no way threatening to the South.

So, if you study the Presidents, Congresses and Supreme Court from, say 1800 until secession in 1861, what you'll see is that Democrats were almost never totally out of power, very frequently controlled all branches of Federal government, and were always themselves controlled by their majority faction: Southern Democrats.

FLT-bird: "Democrats were the dominant party.
Your claim however that Southerners always ran things and could just snap their fingers and Northern Democrats would do their bidding is absurd."

You're right, they couldn't just "snap their fingers", sometimes they had to crack their whips, sometimes (i.e., Brooks) they raised cain, and who knows, sometimes they might have to schmooze their Doughfaced Northern allies.
So what do you think, was that too much to ask?

FLT-bird: "Things like the grossly unequal federal expenditures and the tariff of Abominations never would have passed at all had Southerners been that influential in Washington DC."

Wrong again.
The so-called Tariff of Abominations only passed in 1828 because of the strong initial backing from Vice President Calhoun (South Carolina) and future President Jackson (Tennessee).
And it was opposed by the vast majority of New Englanders.
So it was not a simple issue of North vs. South, rather there were many complex issues at play, and the most important to President Jackson was his intention to abolish the National Bank and pay off the national debt (Jackson was the only president ever to do that), and for that he needed very high tariffs.
Jackson also wanted to "make America great", the first time, and so favored protecting US manufacturing, North, South, East & West.

After 1830 Southerners were the driving force behind a steady reduction in overall tariffs which by 1860 brought them near their lowest levels ever.

As for alleged "unequal Federal spending", here again is the data I have on that and it shows: long term, there was no such thing.
Sure, if you carefully pick & chose your data points, you can "prove" most anything, but in the big picture the South received its "fair share" and then some.

FLT-bird: "Even after it was agreed to lower tariffs as part of the compromise that ended the Nullification Crisis, the rates were still considerably higher than would have been ideal for Southern economic interests."

Yes, but Southerners steadily and drastically reduced those tariffs over the following 30 years.

FLT-bird: "Then as the North steadily grew bigger and bigger it sought to impose sky high tariffs once again and this time the Southern states saw they weren’t going to be able to stop it so they seceded."

But the initial Morrill proposal, the one Southerners defeated in 1860, was far from "sky high", it merely returned average rates to roughly their levels of 1850.
And Morrill only passed Congress in 1861 after Southern Democrats walked out.

Further, both Morrill's passage and secession were results of Democrat party self destruction engineered by Fire Eaters in their 1860 presidential conventions.
So Southern Democrats had only themselves to blame for both the passage and higher rates in the 1861 Morrill tariff.

FLT-bird: "Seeing their cash cows departing was intolerable to Lincoln and his corporate fatcat supporters."

So our Lost Cause mythologizers keep posting, but Lincoln himself was focused on other issues, specifically what to do about Confederate demands for the surrender of Fort Sumter, and other Federal properties.

FLT-bird: "More rubbish, nonsense and economic illiteracy.
Where a cargo lands and thus where the tariff is paid is irrelevant.
WHO owns the goods and thus pays the tariff is what is relevant.
Likewise who buys those manufactured goods is irrelevant.
Who owned those goods?
Southerners."

And you have data somewhere to support your claim that "Southerners" owned all (or nearly all) US imports?

FLT-bird: "They were the ones who contracted with the shipping companies to ship their cash crops across the Atlantic.
They were the ones who had to find something to fill the cargo holds of those ships with to help pay for the cost on the return journey.
Obviously the thing that made sense to fill the cargo holds with was manufactured goods..."

Now you've stumbled into DiogenesLamp's self-proclaimed "expertise" and I doubt if he agrees with you.
In DiogenesLamp's world-view, Southerners themselves owned nothing, it was all those evil, nasty, greedy "New York power brokers" who owned everything, extracted their pound of flesh from every transaction and oppressed the pooooor, poooor Southern planters.
That's why they had to secede, says DiogenesLamp, to get out from under the thumbs of evil New Yorkers.

So here we see FLT-bird claiming, no, it wasn't New Yorkers in charge, it was actually the Southern planters themselves.
Hmmmmm...

FLT-bird: "Your claim that because Northern shipping companies were still able to export decent quantities of rice, indigo, sugar and tobacco that means that the North somehow produced these goods is laughable.
Firstly things do get stored in warehouses.
You realize that right?
Secondly even during the war there was trade going on between both sides.
Gee....what’s the South going to be offering in trade?"

Sure, warehousing does explain the fact that cotton exports fell only 80%, not 100%, I get that.
But warehousing cannot possibly explain:

rice fell only 46%
turpentine fell only 40%
manufactured cotton products fell only 25%
tobacco fell only 14%
clover seed increased 85%
brown sugar increased 178%
hops multiplied 60 times!

So clearly, it's all about factors other than warehousing.

As for your alleged "trade between both sides", no, I don't think so.
For one thing, the vast Mississippi River watershed (over a million square miles!) was cut off from trade from New Orleans north to almost St. Louis.
So exporters were forced to extra expense & trouble of using railroads to transport products to Eastern seaboard cities.
That does not sound to me conducive to "trade between both sides".

So what I think happened was products like, say, tobacco were grown in Confederate Virginia, but also in Union regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana & Ohio.
In 1861 those regions planted enough extra tobacco to almost entirely offset the loss of Virginia tobacco.
So my point here is that all this talk about "Southern products" accounting for, what, 80% or 90% of US exports is just bogus nonsense.
Yes cotton did amount to 50% (including specie), but everything else could be and was produced in regions outside the Confederate South.

FLT-bird: "I can cite any of a number of Northern newspapers at the time which also openly admitted the South was providing the vast majority of exports for the whole country and when we look at what was exported its not difficult to see that cash crops comprise most of it."

Sure, I "get" that, but am thinking those people could not see the forest for the trees.
Once again, this site breaks down the actual products of each region.
It does show "Southern products" predominate, but it also shows just what I posted above.
When Confederate exports were deleted in 1861, "Southern exports" excluding cotton net-net fell only $3 million.
So even if those were "Southern products" they weren't Confederate products.

FLT-bird: "There was some trading between both sides during the war as well.
The vast majority of the exports were provided by the Southern states though (including border states)."

But certainly not by Confederate states, which is my point here.
Plus, at the same time that "Southern products" (excluding cotton) net-net fell only $3 million in 1861, Western and Northern exports increased $61 million or almost 60%.
So the whole claim that the 1860 US economy was somehow dependent on "Southern products" is just bogus to the max.
When push came to shove, the US economy got along perfectly well without Confederate exports.

FLT-bird: "As for federal expenditures, those were totally unbalanced in favor of Northern states and had been since the beginning.
For example: From 1789 to 1845, the North received five times the amount of money that was spent on southern projects.
More than twice as many lighthouses were built in the North as in the South, and northern states received twice the southern appropriations for coastal defense."

Sure, if you cherry pick your data, you can "prove" pretty much anything.
But when you look at the whole picture here, it turns out Federal spending balanced out, over time.
For examples, over time the South got nearly 40% more in fortifications, 20% less in lighthouses and 30% less in internal improvements.
But for any particular time period, i.e., 1834 - 1847 the South got more in internal improvements.
Overall, by my calculations, the South got 52% and the North 48% of Federal spending, not including pensions.

FLT-bird: "The fact that NONE of the 6 who openly supported and financed a terrorist who launched an attack with the express aim of killing Southern civilians were arrested says it all."

No, it says nothing except Democrats playing politics, as usual.
Federal marshals were only sent to arrest one of the six, Sanborn, and they were so clumsy about it, a crowd of 150 friends & neighbors gathered to protect him, so they gave up.
No attempts were even made to arrest the others, and whose fault is that?
The Feds of course, and who controlled the Feds?
Washington, DC, Democrat administration under substantial control of Southern Democrats.
For examples, President Buchanan's cabinet Southerners included V.P., Secretaries of Treasury, War, Interior & Postmaster General.
Buchanan's Attorney General was his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Jeremiah Black.
So it seems to me that had serious demands been made to arrest all six Brown backers, it would happen, but they weren't.

FLT-bird: "Firstly you don’t know that no compromise offered after secession would have been sufficient to entice the original 7 seceding states to come back.
What we know is that the slavery with massively high tariffs carrot was offered and they refused it."

We know for certain that Confederates in 1861 never asked for terms & conditions of return.
And we know they never seriously considered anything the Union did as enticement to return.
Indeed it has been argued that one reason Jefferson Davis needed war in April, 1861, was to cement the loyalties of any Southerners who might be somehow tempted to reunite with their Northern brethren.
Once the Confederacy declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then any such talk would be treasonous.

FLT-bird: "That both the North was willing to offer it and that the Southern states rejected it says a lot.
Slavery was simply not what was motivating most people on either side."

Sure, once secession was declared, then other matters became primary in the Confederacy.
But the fact remains that protecting slavery was the number one reason given by all secessionists, and for many the only reason.

FLT-bird: "Wrong.
Georgia talked extensively about both the tariffs and the unequal federal expenditures. "

OK, one more time: the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" document has 14 paragraphs, with 3,300 words.
Only the second paragraph with 111 words is devoted to tariffs, and even it ends with the following words:

"...the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.
The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy.
There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all."

Sure, "duties" are mentioned, briefly, and "protection", but neither "tariff" nor "Morrill" are.
By contrast slavery is mentioned in every paragraph except the second.

As for alleged "unequal expenditures", those are not mentioned at all by Georgia.

So any claims that Georgia's "Reasons for Secession" document is not "all about slavery" is simply bogus to the max.

FLT-bird: "Texas talked about that as well as the failure to provide border security as well as the Northern states refusing to act against terrorists based there who had attacked the South."

OK, Texas: In 22 shorter reasons paragraphs, 1,644 words, two of those paragraphs (#6 & 19) refer to RE Lee's failure to protect Texans against "Indian savages" and "banditti".
One (#18) does briefly mention "unequal legislation".
None mention tariffs, taxes, duties, bounties, or protections for Northern industries.

All the rest which give reasons talk about slavery.
So there's no way you can seriously claim that Texans were not, first & foremost, concerned to protect slavery.

FLT-bird: "South Carolina attached Rhett’s address which talked extensively about tariffs and unequal federal expenditures."

OK, once again, on Rhett's address to the slave-holding states, 14 long paragraphs with 4,200 words, the first eight paragraphs do indeed discuss taxes and compare 1861 to 1776, making out the North to be the new Great Britain.
It's all nonsense, of course, because there was zero actual similarities, none.
Rhett does complain briefly of "duties on imports", but Morrill is not mentioned, nor is even a threat of higher duties.

But where Rhett spends only 1,400 words comparing the North & taxes to 1776 Britain, when he starts in paragraph 9 to discuss slavery, then his natural verbosity comes out and it takes him twice the number, 2,800 words, to tell us his concerns to protect slavery.
So, even where, exceptionally, Rhett makes slavery play second fiddle to taxes, slavery still plays twice as long & loud as all other issues combined.

FLT-bird: "I’m saying that’s laughable BS and that Rhett had said he would support secession on economic grounds alone."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but if he did, it wasn't in this document.
It's a simple fact: economic issues were not extensively used to sell secession, but slavery certainly was.

FLT-bird: "His claim is clearly true.
By 1860, the South’s wealth was only on par with that of the North even though it was the South which produced the vast majority of the valuable exports.
Clearly a lot of money had been drained out of Southerners’ pockets over the years for that to happen.
Such numbers were true as I have demonstrated from multiple sources from all sides."

Certainly not just "on a par" among Deep South planters.
Statistically they were on average far and away the wealthiest people ever, to that time.
Of course, if you average them in with, for example, Appalachian mountain people, then overall the South was indeed "on a par".
But it was the Deep South planters who called all the political shots and they were far better off than, for examples, average farmers up North.

Yes, some Northern industrialists might be compared to Southern planters, but there were a lot more planters and they were, along with their neighbors, on average better off.

So all claims that Southern wealth was somehow being "drained" are simply hokum.
As for your alleged "multiple sources", none of them -- not one -- provides actual verifiable data.
But scholars who have studied 1850s era economics tell us the Deep South especially was doing very well, thank you.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln....brace yourself.....I hope you are sitting down for this......Lied!
I know it will come as a great shock to you to learn that... "

No "shock" here because you've offered no evidence, merely an unsupported assertion.

FLT-bird on Corwin: "Nope!
I’m right on both counts.
The Northern dominated Congress passed it, The Northern president signed it and multiple states ratified it.
It was a bona fide offer."

Sorry, but you're wrong on both counts.
There was no "offer" to Confederate states, they weren't even recognized.
Rather, the Corwin Amendment was intended to hold the loyalties of Union slave states, like Kentucky & Maryland.
And it helped do just that.

FLT-bird: "You just claim the original 7 seceding states were not going to come back no matter what.
You don’t know that. "

But of course we do know it, because no seceding state ever suggested a willingness to rejoin the Union short of Unconditional Surrender.

FLT-bird: "But its not because multiple Northern states passed state laws forbidding cooperation with the feds over return of escaped slaves.
In several cases mobs had prevented federal agents from capturing escaped slaves and state courts had excused all of it.
The breech of faith was by the Northern states as they have long bragged about."

Maybe, but consider our situation today with so-called sanctuary cities or state.
Despite the Constitution's clear language giving primacy to Federal law, they defy it, so what do we do?
If you answer, "well, we must declare secession", that's absurd, insane.
What we must do is enforce Federal laws and that's what should also have happened during the 1850s.

FLT-bird: "Most certainly did not.
As I’ve already shown, your 50% claims are pure BS.
What we know is that slave ownership was in the single digit percentages among the white population."

No, you've "shown" nothing, zero, nada.
You've only claimed what you don't know and is certainly false: that no slave holders were heads of large families and therefore slave ownership was single digits. Nonsense.
The far more realistic model is that one person per family owned all the slaves and the family sizes averaged four people, totally reasonable assumptions.
It means that in Deep South states like South Carolina and Mississippi nearly 50% of families owned slaves.

In Upper South states like Virginia & Tennessee about 25% of families owned slaves and in Border states like Kentucky & Maryland, fewer than 15%.
And that explains why those states did not secede with the others.

FLT-bird: "Missouri did eventually secede and Maryland was occupied and its legislature jailed by Lincoln without charge or trial before they could vote on the matter."

No Border State ever voted for secession.
Yes, the Confederacy did claim Kentucky and Missouri, but it was totally bogus, nothing more than a few slaveholders who got together and said, "we're Confederates".
But neither the voters nor legislatures of either state ever voted for secession, just the opposite.
And all the Border States, including Maryland & Delaware, provided more Union troops than confederates by a factor of at least two to one.
So Border states not only said they wanted to be Union, they were willing to fight & die for it.

And like Kentucky & Missouri, Maryland's legislature also voted decisively against secession, while it was still lawful to do so.
But once Confederates formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then it became, by definition, an act of treason for Marylanders to "provide aid & comfort" or vote for secession.

FLT-bird quoting: "Why did this war come?
There was a widely shared feeling among many in the Confederacy that their liberty and way of life were being overpowered by northern political, industrial, and banking powers." (Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, p. 152)"

Sure, but "Liberty and way of life" is code-talk for slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine..."

Which is what DiogenesLamp most curiously claims would have happened, had not that evil Lincoln started war to prevent it.
But it's all total BS, cockamamie nonsense because the new Confederate constitution was dedicated first & foremost to protecting slavery, and no state or territory would ever be allowed to join without recognizing full "rights" in African slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "...no protective tariff was to be passed..."

Which implies that unless Confederates intended to industrialize with slave labor, there would be no industrialization period.
Of course, slaves did serve very well in Southern factories which means there was no reason not to use them, and no possibility that slavery would ever become obsolete in the Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "and you want to just scream 'slavery slavery slavery!!!' like a wind up doll whose string has been pulled.
Don’t tell me these people did not care about the overcentralization of power, wasteful expenditures under a broad interpretation of the 'general welfare' clause exactly as Patrick Henry had warned about when he urged rejection of the Constitution..."

But of course it was all about "slavery, slavery, slavery".
Explicit protections for slavery were first & foremost in the Confederate constitution.
Then they got down to saying, "how can we improve on our forefathers' constitution," and yes, they did devise some minor changes, which may have improved something, or not.
My own opinion is that such specific forms of government are, in the end, far less important than the good will, honesty and honorable intentions of its members.

FLT-bird: "All true - just inconvenient for you to admit.
The motives of the federal government and the special interests who backed them was the same as it is everywhere......money and power."

Only to the most cynical, and I'm not one.
Consider our current President.
He earned all the money, power & prestige anyone could want, but he won election at least in part for saying he wouldn't accept his government salary and would devote 100% of his efforts to make America great again by putting Americans first.

That has been the Federalist, Whig and Republican message from Day One of the Republic.
The Democrat message was always different and went, in one expression or another of it: vote for us, we'll make those other people pay for your free stuff.

Confederates were all, to a man, Democrats.
That's my case in a nutshell.