You were thinking that 8 states or so were suddenly going to switch sides on the "abolish slavery" issue? How likely was that?
Slavery had to grow, or die.
People keep claiming that, but the question I would put to you is "Where was it going to grow?" It couldn't "grow" in the territories, because they were unsuitable to growing cotton, and there wasn't enough money in anything else to "grow" slavery in the territories. So again, "Where was it going to grow?"
Maybe that claim is a lie? Or at least a misdirection. I think slavery was going to go away anyway, and it was only a matter of time before it happened naturally.
“You were thinking that 8 states or so were suddenly going to switch sides on the “abolish slavery” issue? How likely was that?”
No, I wasn’t. The first call for abolition in the colonies that would become the United States happened in 1688. Nearly two hundred years before the election of Abraham Lincoln. The fire eaters and their stooges were thinking long term. They were trying to protect the institution of slavery because it was the cornerstone of a way of life they wanted to hand down to future generations.
“Slavery, the very source of our existence, the greatest blessing both for Master & Slave that could have been bestowed upon us.”
-Stephan Dodson Ramseur, future Confederate general, writing from West Point in the wake of the 1856 election
“There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery.”
-Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia
“Slavery is said to be an evil… But is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region…”
-Congressman James Henry Hammond, February 1, 1836
“People keep claiming that, but the question I would put to you is “Where was it going to grow?”
“I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason — for the planting and spreading of slavery.”
-Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America
“The area of slavery must be extended correlative with its antagonism, or it will be put speedily in the ‘course of ultimate extinction.’....The extension of slavery is the vital point of the whole controversy between the North and the South...Amendments to the federal constitution are urged by some as a panacea for all the ills that beset us. That instrument is amply sufficient as it now stands, for the protection of Southern rights, if it was only enforced. The South wants practical evidence of good faith from the North, not mere paper agreements and compromises. They believe slavery a sin, we do not, and there lies the trouble.”
-Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas, March 2, 1861