No, that's just another coincidence i'm sure. :)
The fact that it did so doesn't mean it was astroturf with an agenda. That was just a coincidence. :)
"Reactions" usually go both ways. The deal -- the Federal Compact -- included the Northwest Ordinance, which was contemporaneous with the Constitution and reflected the views of the founders.
Did it require ratification from the Southern states as did Article IV, section 2 required ratification from the Northern states?
Pro-slavery forces were trying to overturn the Ordinance (Dred Scott decision) and the Compromise of 1820.
Which was the constitutionally correct position. If you want to repeal Article IV, section 2, amend the constitution. Don't try to legislate it or court decide it away. That is dishonest.
They were even trying to make state laws against slavery null and void.
They effectively were, so long as a slave was held by the laws of another state. States could make laws forbidding the creation of new slaves within their states, but they could do absolutely nothing about the laws of other states holding people as slaves. They also could do nothing to restrict the legal movements of people into their states from slave states. They had to accept reciprocity of rights, even if they didn't like it.
Instead they chose to do what liberals always do. Pretend the law doesn't mean what it does, and look for friendly courts to interpret it to mean something other than what it means.
Free Soil was a response or a reaction to that aggression.
Maintaining the status quo accepted by the states in ratifying the US Constitution was not "aggression." What was aggression is the attempt to undermine the agreed upon terms by hook and crook.
Yeah, first they came for the slaves.
Don't be asinine. The Slaves were already "came for" before the nation was even formed. It is ugly, but that is the truth of it.
The United States can be responsible for what it agreed to when it formed, and how it behaved afterwards, but the rest is pre-existing condition.
Then you started bitching about the rights of slave owners. Shameless!
By God you are absolutely right! We should have just shot them down in the F***ing street because they had no right to live, so long as we don't like the agreement to which we agreed!
And while we're at it, we should have shot ourselves down in the F***ing streets for agreeing to a LAW that makes us just as culpable!
How could we have made such an immoral bargain? and why should we have to keep an immoral bargain that we made? Why our changing moral compass means we can simply ignore laws that we have come to dislike!
It boils down to that "rule of law" thing I mentioned earlier. Either you have rigid laws, or you have whims masquerading as law.
"How it behaved afterwards" included continuing slavery, and thus it is something Americans were responsible for, not a fact of nature or a "pre-existing condition."
By God you are absolutely right! We should have just shot them down in the F***ing street because they had no right to live, so long as we don't like the agreement to which we agreed!
And while we're at it, we should have shot ourselves down in the F***ing streets for agreeing to a LAW that makes us just as culpable!
It's good when you show just how close to hysteria you really are. No masks, no pretenses, no deceptions.
And the way for them to avoid those reproofs is what? To join in supporting the expansion of slavery? That would make them not hypocrites or racists or self-seeking materialists or conspirators? That's nuts (and I don't say that very often).
But you don't apply the same analysis to those who wanted to expand the area of slavery. You just ignore and excuse their racism and greed. You think slave owners weren't hypocrites? That's a modern misconception. Of course those who supported slavery while claiming to value freedom or democracy or civilization or humanity or Christianity were hypocrites. That's obvious now, but it was denied by the slave owners themselves. If you want to know why "Northern hypocrisy" wasn't such a big issue back then, one reason was that the hypocrisy of slavery's defenders was so much greater.
And you dare to accuse the Free Soilers of advocating some "living Constitution" and wanting to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution. No, that is what slavery supporters were trying to do. Can you say "Dred Scott Decision"? It was those who wanted slavery expansion who wanted to use the courts to rewrite the Constitution.
A constitutional guarantee of the return of slaves to their masters did not include the right of slave owners to take their slaves to any state or territory, work them as slaves for some time, and then return to the slave states with the slaves still in bondage. It was recognized for decades that slavery could be abolished by states and that state laws outlawing slavery would not be overturned by the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. But the Taney Court and the slave owners tried to change all that. That is precisely what Handy's Henry Adams quote about states rights and slavery is about. What some called the "Slave Power" was always willing to overturn state laws and precedents to advance slave owning interests.
By contrast, anti-slavery activists relied on time and the spread of information. If voters come to reject slavery and support laws or amendments that weaken or roll back slavery, that's not judicial activism or the "living constitution." It's just the natural course of things. The Constitution didn't mandate that all Americans had to love slavery and seek to perpetuate it. Voters and representatives were allowed to change their minds over time.
I would have agreed with you at one point, but then I took as critical a look at slaveowners and secessionists as I did of the abolitionists and Lincoln. If you learn more about the history and apply the same standard to both sides, it's harder to see slaveowners as innocent victims of somebody else's intrigues. The rest of us recognize the blindspot you have when it comes to the faults and failings of slaveowners and secesionists. Some day, you might, too.