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You've said over and over again that you think slaveowners had the right to bring and work their slaves wherever they wanted. When Northerners went the distance to assure slaveowners that they were not opposed to slaveowners keeping and working their slaves in their own states, that's not enough for you. Their position, though, was a practical and conciliatory position and one that was consistent with and conducive to an eventual gradual emancipation of the slaves.

You misconstrue what I said. I said that under the US Constitution, with slaves regarded as "property", that states should not have been able to ban their usage within their state boundaries any more than they could ban the usage of any other property. It is a 5th amendment violation right off the bat.

It also occurs to me that when this agreement was entered into, the vast majority of states were slave states, and so the natural assumption was that all the states would respect the rights of slaveholders as part of the agreement.

States coming out later and saying "except for slave property", doesn't make sense. Where is this exception mentioned in the Constitution?

As a legal matter, I don't see where the "free" states had a leg to stand on.

Not that I agree with it, but that is the deal they made in 1789. If they didn't want that deal, they should have made exception to it at the time, or refused to agree to the Constitution.

I'd say that their position was a lot more moral than yours.

Morality has got nothing to do with it. Slavery is entirely immoral, but this is "LAW" we are talking about, and any law that recognizes slavery as legal, is already on the wrong side of morality.

Once you cross that bridge of recognizing the legality of slavery, than all issues related to it should follow the regular rules of law. Slaves were "property." They had a legal status similar to Horses or Cows. Could a state make a law banning someone from having Horses or Cows in their state?

Following the clinical detachment of the law, by what legal argument can you justify excluding people and their property from a state? The privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution pretty much requires all states to recognize the rights of citizens of other states within their own boundaries, and if a law in Georgia creates slave property, by what argument can Massachusetts claim they don't have to respect it?

The law is a hard nose. It makes people live up to the agreements they signed, even if they later decide they don't like it. How does a state get a pass on this point?

Maybe "self-righteous" is a better word than hypocritical, both in this case and in general. Southerners were as convinced as Northerners of the moral purity of their cause, whether they were hypocritical or not. That's something people now have forgotten. If you're self-righteous and hypocritical, that's bad. It's also bad if you're self-righteous and morally in the wrong.

"Self-righteous" I can go along with. It makes more sense than "Hypocritical." Yes, a lot of people making profits from slavery felt it was perfectly acceptable, and indeed moral for them to be kept wealthy by the work of others. A lot didn't. According to Charles Dickens in his "Notes on America", he had encounters with numerous wealthy Southern families that wanted out of the slavery business, but didn't know how to get out of it without major disruptions to their lives.

Maybe these people who regretted their family's involvement in slavery were "hypocritical." That fits, I think. But those who supported and defended slavery? Not "hypocritical", but perhaps "self righteous."

Hypocrisy would be saying slavery was wrong and keeping slaves or profiting from slavery. Some Northerners did that.

Evidence shows about 60% of the value produced by slavery benefited the North. It accounted for 72% of the total federal budget, so the large majority of the Federal budget was funded by slavery, and most of that went to the North as well.

Saying slavery was wrong and not wanting to live among African-Americans as equals, might be self-righteous, but it wasn't hypocritical by the standards of the time.

Not sure you can square that circle. If they are equals, why wouldn't it be hypocritical for people to not treat them as equals?

You are inordinately hung up on this idea that everybody thinks Northerners were moral and Southerners depraved,

I am not hung up on that idea, I simply want to make it clear that we've been fed a load of bullsh*t regarding Northern motivations for going to war with the South. We have been led to believe the war was over the morality of slavery, when the truth is that the war was over secession, and the powers that be in the North were just fine with keeping slavery permanent when they started the war, but only changed to make a goal of the war the abolition of slavery after the war turned out to be a bloody hard slog.

It also appears their motivation to abolish slavery had more to do with punishing the South than it ever did regarding any concern for the slaves.

I'm trying to point out America has been lied to and manipulated to both start the Civil War, and to justify what was done in it.

I'm trying to point out that the very same type of manipulative people are still in control in Washington DC, and they are still deliberately lying to and manipulate us with the ultimate goal of increasing their own power and wealth.

We have a cartel of criminals running our nation, and the rest of us have become slaves to them. Ukraine is but another example of the American public being manipulated to support a war for which the underlying purpose is to support the wealth making apparatus for the elite.

Nancy Pelosi's son, and Joe Biden's son are on the board of directors in Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company. Why? Obvious bribes to those in power in the US.

Northerners are on some moral pedestal and you are knocking them off, but that's because you are imposing the thinking of today's world on the past.

I didn't put them there. I just point out that their real reasons weren't moral, their motivations was the same old greed that motivates people to war in all of human history. The people running the show put themselves on all those "moral pedestals". I'm just trying to show people it was all lies.

In the 1850s slavery was still a live issue; for half the country slavery was a moral institution and they'd attack you if you attacked it.

Half? 1/4th. Of course people will protect their own rice bowl. Someone criticizing the way other people make money is sure to get a powerful response back from the people who benefit from the institution being criticized.

People get angry and violent when they see their livelihood threatened. So yes, the people who benefited from slavery would be hostile to anyone stirring up trouble over it.

For much of the 20th century, abolitionists were condemned and blamed (together with extremists on the other side) for causing the war.

John Brown and his wealthy Massachusetts backers certainly made things worse. They touched upon a fear a lot of Southerners had about slave rebellion, and no doubt it convinced a lot of Southerners that the only way to ally this fear was to prevent this kind of agitation in the future by separating from the people intent on provoking a slave rebellion.

You keep thinking Northerners then are on a moral pedestal and you have to knock them off,

I am thinking they killed hundreds of thousands of people, and then tried to convince everyone it was all for some greater moral good, when the evidence suggest it was all to protect the wealth of those in power.

And they have been manipulating history ever since to sell that greater moral good message to America.