The fact is, the South leaving creates an immediate boost in wealth for all Southern citizens because they get out of the protective tariffs and they could have tossed out the navigation act of 1817 which created the northern shipping monopoly and economic control of their trade with Europe.
People can posture, but what I believe in is where the money goes. The North loses millions of dollars per year of revenue, and the South gains millions of dollars of revenue.
Do you think the Wealthy Northern fat cats were going to say "We have to stop the South because us rich folk will lose huge sums of money!" No, they wouldn't. They would try to make it look like some other thing the public would be outraged about.
And do you think the Wealthy Southern fat cats were going to say "We have to leave the Union because this will make enormous profits for us rich folk if we do!" No, they wouldn't. They would try to make it look like some other thing the public would be outraged about.
But money tells the truth while everyone else is lying, and the truth the money tells is that the North would have lost in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year in income, while the South would have gained that hundreds of millions of dollars per year in income.
Charles Dickens, who was very much himself a staunch abolitionist saw the political reality of the day quite clearly.
Charles Dickens letter to the WW Cerjet 16 March 1862:"I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
"As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly provable by State papers that Washington, considered it no such thing – that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again – and that years ago, when the two Carolinas began to train their militia expressly for Secession, commissioners sent to treat with them and to represent the disastrous policy of such secession, never hinted it would be rebellion."
And this.
Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.
So Charles Dickens is the authority. Not the leadership of the South at the time. Praise God that this enlightened Englishman could correct millions of Confederate fools who were so badly misled by their ruling class!
“I’m well aware that you can find quotes from all sorts of people in the past that can be made to support the propaganda you are trying to propagate.”
I’ve been thinking about what you wrote here. Why would it be that there should be so many quotes from “all sorts of people” contradicting your stance on the cause of the war, if what you say was so patently obvious back then? These are quotes from Southerners who were actually leading the charge to dissolve the union, not foreigners weighing in from abroad.
Were they stupid? Duped? Ignorant? What explains this odd dichotomy.