Finally, an honest Abe

I saw and he based his calculation for families on what they said. It came to 19.9% of families. That’s possible. 5.63% and you extrapolate that out. You come to just under 20% of families.

Obviously in some areas it would have been very prevalent and in other areas not at all.

Permit me to direct our exchange back to the importance of slavery to the South. Based on the US statistical abstract, here are the state by state percentages of the population that was slaves:

1860
Slaves as per cent
of population

Alabama 45.12
Arkansas 25.52
Delaware 1.60
Florida 43.97
Georgia 43.72
Kentucky 19.51
Louisiana 46.85
Maryland 12.69
Mississippi 55.18
Missouri 9.72
North Carolina 33.35
South Carolina 57.18
Tennessee 24.84
Texas 30.22
Virginia 30.75

Overall 32.27

So which do you think would be a stronger influence on public opinion in the South before the Civil War? The speculative promise of marginally cheaper manufactured goods due to lower tariffs under a Confederate government?

Or that with the liberation of the slaves, a third of the South’s population, would become hungry, homeless, without work, and free to roam and settle where they liked and do as they liked? And, as in Haiti, many of the freed slaves could be expected to be angry and vengeful toward their former owners and whites in general.

Under emancipation, the former slaves would also get the right to vote and their numbers would determine the officials, laws, and policies in a great many Southern states and communities. That would be the end of white rule in those areas.

For many Southerners, the continuation of slavery was essential to a safe and civilized public order. Even for non-slaveholders, emancipation carried the certainty of not just major social and economic upheaval but also a risk of violence and chaos at the hands of newly free former slaves.

As it was, the South after the Civil War experienced many such ills. The result was the formation of the Klan and the creation of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement to keep blacks separate and under control.

Due to such calculations, most Southern whites who did not own slaves nevertheless wanted slavery to continue. That accounts for their support for secession, not tariffs.

Permit me to direct our exchange back to the importance of slavery to the South. Based on the US statistical abstract, here are the state by state percentages of the population that was slaves: So which do you think would be a stronger influence on public opinion in the South before the Civil War? The speculative promise of marginally cheaper manufactured goods due to lower tariffs under a Confederate government?

Let's unpack these one at a time. Yes, a significant percentage of the total population were slaves. Yet only a small percentage of the White Southern population owned them. Of those who did, half of them owned fewer than 5. So we are really talking about maybe 10% of families who were the really large plantation owners. For the VAST majority of White Southerners, slavery was not "integral". They didn't own any. Their livelihood hardly depended on something they didn't have.

Next, manufactured goods wouldn't be "marginally" more expensive. They would be massively more expensive. The Morrill Tariff TRIPLED tariff rates. Northern manufacturers would of course take the opportunity to jack their prices way up too. I notice you did not even address the fact that the Tariff of Abomination cut cotton sales in half when it was implemented AND lowered the price of cotton. So Southerners who had seen this all before, could expect not just higher prices for the things they needed to buy but also significantly less money for what they produced. They would be hurt in both ways, not just one. This was not speculative to them. They had lived it a generation earlier.

Or that with the liberation of the slaves, a third of the South’s population, would become hungry, homeless, without work, and free to roam and settle where they liked and do as they liked? And, as in Haiti, many of the freed slaves could be expected to be angry and vengeful toward their former owners and whites in general.

What liberation? There was no prospect of anybody imposing abolition. It was not constitutional and moreover, there was hardly any political support for it anywhere. *IF* it ever came, it would have had to have been on the same terms slavery was ended in the Northern states, the British Empire and various European colonial empires which is via a compensated emancipation scheme.....and that is for the relatively small minority of White Southerners who actually owned slaves.

Under emancipation, the former slaves would also get the right to vote and their numbers would determine the officials, laws, and policies in a great many Southern states and communities. That would be the end of white rule in those areas.

Where are you getting this from? Emancipation does not equal full civil equality much less the right to vote. The Northern states at the time had "Black Codes" under which there was strict segregation, Blacks could not sign contracts, serve as jurors, vote, etc. Even in states where it was technically legal for them to vote, few of them were foolish enough to actually try to do so. They would be violently attacked by White mobs if they tried - and they knew it. The Jim Crow laws enacted in the Southern States after the Occupation were based on the Northern Black Codes.

For many Southerners, the continuation of slavery was essential to a safe and civilized public order.

But for the vast majority who did not own any slaves, it was not.

Even for non-slaveholders, emancipation carried the certainty of not just major social and economic upheaval but also a risk of violence and chaos at the hands of newly free former slaves.

Again, you ASSUME emancipation automatically equaled full civil equality. It most certainly did not. Blacks in the North did not enjoy civil equality and were barred in many cases from owning guns for example.

As it was, the South after the Civil War experienced many such ills. The result was the formation of the Klan and the creation of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement to keep blacks separate and under control.

The South after the Occupation is a different thing. After the corrupt carpetbagger governments robbed the Southern states blind - invariably put and kept in office by Blacks after the vast majority of White Southerners had been disenfranchised - the White population was then deeply embittered. At that point they enacted Jim Crow laws modeled after the Northern Black Codes. At that point, they adopted segregation which had previously been a Northern rather than a Southern practice. The Klan arose due to the corruption and violence initiated by the "Loyal Leagues" and other such organizations as well as the massive corruption of the carpetbagger governments which often dispossessed people of their land.

Due to such calculations, most Southern whites who did not own slaves nevertheless wanted slavery to continue. That accounts for their support for secession, not tariffs.

There was no such calculation because there was simply no support for emancipation prior to secession nor was there a means to accomplish it except voluntarily via some form of compensated emancipation scheme AND emancipation did not mean civil equality. What accounted for support for secession in the original seceding states was the desire for Independence so as to set their own economic policies and stop being treated as cash cows by the Northern states. What accounted for secession in the Upper South was Lincoln starting a war and ordering them to provide troops to impose a government upon other states that did not consent to it.

Further, to support what I said above...

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Abraham Lincoln

"Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” Abraham Lincoln

"I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal. . . We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.” -Abraham Lincoln

“anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position." (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas" ... Abraham Lincoln Segregation was a Northern thing prior to the war, not a Southern thing.

"the Prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the states where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers and white painters will not work side by side with blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern state." Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America

"So the Negro [in the North] is free, but he cannot share the rights, pleasures, labors, griefs, or even the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared; there is nowhere where he can meet him, neither in life nor in death. In the South, where slavery still exists, less trouble is taken to keep the Negro apart: they sometimes share the labors and the pleasures of the white men; people are prepared to mix with them to some extent; legislation is more harsh against them, but customs are more tolerant and gentle. -Alexis De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America", Harper & Row, 1966, p.343.

1862 editorial in an English journal commented, “They (the Northern white men) do not love the Negro as a fellow-man; they pity him as a victim of wrong. They will plead his cause; they will not tolerate his company.”

"The Indiana constitutional convention of 1851 adopted a provision forbidding black migration into the state. This supplemented the state's laws barring blacks already there from voting, serving on juries or in the militia, testifying against whites in court, marrying whites, or going to school with whites. Iowa and Illinois had similar laws on the books and banned black immigration by statute in 1851 and 1853 respectively. These measures reflected the racist sentiments of most whites in those states." (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, p. 80)

"There can be no doubt that many blacks were sorely mistreated in the North and West. Observers like Fanny Kemble and Frederick L. Olmsted mentioned incidents in their writings. Kemble said of Northern blacks, 'They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own despised race. . . . All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues . . . have learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach.' Olmsted seems to have believed the Louisiana black who told him that they could associate with whites more freely in the South than in the North and that he preferred to live in the South because he was less likely to be insulted there." (John Franklin and Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. 185

"For all the good intentions of many early white abolitionists, blacks were not especially welcome in the free states of America. Several territories and states, such as Ohio, not only refused to allow slavery but also had passed laws specifically limiting or excluding any blacks from entering its territory or owning property." (Davis, Don't Know Much About the Civil War, p. 54)

"Our people hate the Negro with a perfect if not a supreme hatred," said Congressman George Julian of Indiana. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois conceded that "there is a very great aversion in the West--I know it to be so in my State--against having free negroes come among us. Our people want nothing to do with the negro. The same could be said of many soldiers. . . ." (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, p. 275) ". . .

In the fall of 1865. The legislatures of Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Minnesota placed on the ballot constitutional amendments to enfranchise the few black men in those states. Everyone recognized that, in some measure, the popular vote on these amendments would serve as a barometer of Northern opinion on black suffrage. . . . Republican leaders worked for passage of the amendments but fell short of success in all three states. . . . the defeat of the amendments could be seen as a mandate against black suffrage by a majority of Northern voters." (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, p. 501)

"In the first half of the nineteenth century, state legislatures in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut took away Negroes' right to vote; and voters in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Maine, Iowa, and Wisconsin approved new constitutions that limited suffrage to whites. In Ohio, Negro males were permitted to vote only if they had "a greater visible admixture of white than colored blood." (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, p. 54)

Ohio Republican Senator John Sherman, (brother of William T. Sherman): “We do not like the Negroes. We do not disguise our dislike…..The whole people of the Northwestern states are opposed to having many Negroes among them and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation for nearly all of the Northwestern states.”

William Seward, inveterate moralizer and creator of the phrase “irrepressible conflict,” who, at a political rally in 1860, described the American black man as a “foreign and feeble element like the Indians, incapable of assimilation…a pitiful exotic unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard.”

On July 12, 1848, during a Senate debate over slavery in the territories, it was a New York Senator, John Dix, who got up and said that “free blacks would continue to be an inferior cast and simply die out.” It was a Senator from Mississippi named Jefferson Davis who replied that he was “horrified” to hear “their extinction treated as a matter of public policy.”

There's much more to be found here: https://slavenorth.com/

We can dispense with the Myth of the virtuous North. There was almost no support for abolition prior to 1863 and Blacks were anything but equal in the North. In fact, many Northern states adopted harsh laws to prevent Blacks from ever moving there and earning a living if they were already there (so as to drive them out). Segregation and Jim Crow-type laws were a Northern construct only later adopted by the Southern states.

(1) The Morrill Tariff did not pass until the South seceded. To blame it for secession is contrary to facts. In addition, the Morrill Tariff raised effective rates by 70%, which was less than a doubling, not a tripling.

(2) Reflecting growing abolitionist sentiment in the North and Midwest, The Republican Party was dedicated to putting slavery on the path to extinction by preventing its expansion to additional states and cordoning off slave states with free states. This platform alarmed the South even as it helped lead to Lincoln’s election in 1860, which then triggered secession.

Amen. The North welshed on the deal they had with the South. South wanted to part company on good terms. The North had other plans.

Here we are.

Permit me to direct our exchange back to the importance of slavery to the South.

Permit me to ask how that has anything to do with why the North invaded them?

You want to deflect to slavery, because you do not want to take a closer look at what happened.

FLT-bird: "Here we go.
Where did you get that % of households owning slaves?
You definitely did not get that from the 1860 US Census."

FLT-bird: "Nowhere in that Census will you find the # or percentage of households owning slaves in each state.
That percentage is something you're just making up without evidence."

Ditto #435: "Seems to me with the name of the slave holder and the number of slaves he owned, it would be easy to calculate the percent of slave owning families."

FLT-bird #439: "By this guy's calculation 20% of families in the slaveholding states owned slaves."

So, the first key point to understand is that the 1860 census was taken by household, meaning not just the nuclear family, but everyone who lived there including borders and hired hands, but not slaves.
Slave schedules were kept separately and identified by owner.

This makes identifying slaveholding households relatively simple & straightforward.
Several studies have digitized and analyzed the original 1860 data to account for both:

Multiple slaveholders per household and
One slaveholder owning slaves in multiple households

These studies include:

University of Virginia: Historical Census Browser (UVA HCB)
IPUMS (University of Minnesota): Full‑Count Census Microdata
IPUMS USA — Full Count 1850 & 1860 Slave and Slaveholder Datasets
Ancestry–IPUMS Collaboration (Underlying Data Layer)
Peer‑reviewed journal version (same claim, formally published)
Secondary Scholarly Syntheses (Using These Projects):
- Otto H. Olsen: Historians and the Extent of Slave Ownership (1972)
- J. David Hacker (multiple works, 2010s–2020s): Household‑level analysis using IPUMS

In every case the data was analyzed and classified to combine multiple owners in each household and to derive the overall percentages of households owning slaves.

FLT-bird: "I'm sure some cases of slave owners not owning any slaves in the household they lived in but still owning slaves in other households existed, but I would suspect it far more rare than cases in which there was more than a single slaveowner in one household."

Both conditions are recognized and adjusted for in the historical scholarship to insure that each slaveholding household is counted only once, not once for each slaveholder.

FLT-bird: "The overwhelming majority of White Southerners did not own any slaves.
Laughable to claim somebody was "embedded in" slavery when that person did not own any slaves."

1862 Nueces Massacre, Texas Hill Country:

Sure, laugh all you want, ~97% of Delaware households did not own slaves, ~50% of Mississippi households did not own slaves.
So a typical young man from the Deep South in the Confederate army owned no slaves, however:

his parents owned slaves
his uncles owned slaves
his older brothers owned slaves
his sweetheart's family owned slaves
his neighbors' families owned slaves

So, yes, that young Confederate soldier who owned no slaves was still deeply embedded in the "Southern way of life" and its "peculiar institution".

By contrast, Southerners who seriously did not own slaves opposed secession and Confederacy, refused to serve in the CSA army and were often mistreated or massacred, including the 1862 Nueces Massacre, Texas Hill Country:

~1/3 of Confederate voters voted against secession
~10% of Confederates actively resisted Confederate service in places like western VA, eastern TN, western NC, northern AL, Ozarks of AR, Texas Hill Country.
~5% of Confederate white men served in the Union Army -- 100,000 overall.

Those were the non-slaveholding, anti-slavery Confederates.

"the Prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the states where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers and white painters will not work side by side with blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern state." Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America

This is a point I often try to get through to the "it was all about slavery" crowd.

They want to believe the hatred for slavery stems from the moral outrage of forcing people to work without pay.

The truth is that the hatred for slavery comes from a hatred for black people, and a hatred of "scabs" who would undercut the wages of white people.

For the VAST MAJORITY of the people in the North at that time, it wasn't "forced servitude" which was hated, it was black people and labor competition.

It wasn't about morality, it was about their own prejudices and selfish interests.

Only a handful of liberal nuts, mostly in Massachusetts, hated slavery because they saw it as immoral. The rest of the nation hated it because it brought black people into their lives, and they feared labor competition.

Oh no! Some liberal faculty members created data to reinforce what they already wanted to believe!

What shall we do?

(1) The Morrill Tariff did not pass until the South seceded. To blame it for secession is contrary to facts.

Nullification crises. Look it up.

Then figure out a way to blame it on slavery instead of a greedy northern controlled congress.

Oh no! Some liberal faculty members created data to reinforce what they already wanted to believe! What shall we do?~

Nothing I can imagine will ever change your mind. I'm waiting for you to claim that no Saintly Southerners really owned slaves and that it was really those evil, blood thirsty Northerners who owned all of them.

(1) The Morrill Tariff did not pass until the South seceded. To blame it for secession is contrary to facts.

Hardly. Everyone knew the Morrill Tariff was going to pass.

In addition, the Morrill Tariff raised effective rates by 70%, which was less than a doubling, not a tripling.

You think they were going to stop at one bite of the apple? No way. The Morrill Tariff was hiked again and again until it was triple the rate of the 1857 tariff and right back to where the Tariff of Abomination was. Everyone knew that's where it was headed - and said as much.

(2) Reflecting growing abolitionist sentiment in the North and Midwest, The Republican Party was dedicated to putting slavery on the path to extinction by preventing its expansion to additional states and cordoning off slave states with free states. This platform alarmed the South even as it helped lead to Lincoln’s election in 1860, which then triggered secession.

The Republican Party and the North in general only wanted to prevent the spread of slavery to the Western territories so as to gain effective control over the US Senate which they would then use to pass very high tariffs and ever more subsidies for Northern companies and infrastructure projects. There was hardly any support for abolition.

You want to deflect to slavery, because you do not want to take a closer look at what happened.

Notice how they also always want to just say "the South" and never mention that 5 states in the Upper South seceded only after Lincoln chose to start a war and ordered them to provide troops to attack other states.

Nothing I can imagine will ever change your mind. I'm waiting for you to claim that no Saintly Southerners really owned slaves and that it was really those evil, blood thirsty Northerners who owned all of them.

You may have missed the fact that I don't give a sh*t that Southerners (and all the Northerners before them) owned slaves.

The issue of the Civil War is whether states have a right to be free and independent of the Federal government, not whether or not liberal/progressives agree with their morality.

The slavery issue is nothing but a distraction from the actually VALID issue of the Civil War.

So, the first key point to understand is that the 1860 census was taken by household, meaning not just the nuclear family, but everyone who lived there including borders and hired hands, but not slaves. Slave schedules were kept separately and identified by owner.

Actually the 1860 US Census recorded BOTH families AND households.

This makes identifying slaveholding households relatively simple & straightforward. Several studies have digitized and analyzed the original 1860 data to account for both:

And families.

1862 Nueces Massacre, Texas Hill Country:

relevance?

Sure, laugh all you want, ~97% of Delaware households did not own slaves, ~50% of Mississippi households did not own slaves. So a typical young man from the Deep South in the Confederate army owned no slaves, however: his parents owned slaves his uncles owned slaves his older brothers owned slaves his sweetheart's family owned slaves his neighbors' families owned slaves So, yes, that young Confederate soldier who owned no slaves was still deeply embedded in the "Southern way of life" and its "peculiar institution".

In one of the densest Cotton producing areas HALF of White Southern families owned slaves - not all as you have portrayed it. And of course, that was only a small portion of the CSA. You frequently accuse me of "cherrypicking". This is the biggest example of cherrypicking there could be.

By contrast, Southerners who seriously did not own slaves opposed secession and Confederacy, refused to serve in the CSA army and were often mistreated or massacred, including the 1862 Nueces Massacre, Texas Hill Country:

No they didn't. The large majority of White Southern families did not own slaves....ie more than 80% according to the studies you yourself cited. They made up the large majority of the Confederate army. The 3 families of my ancestors who lived in Tennessee at the time provided 10 Confederate soldiers. The 3 families between them owned a grand total of 0 slaves. This was not unusual.

~1/3 of Confederate voters voted against secession

That depends on when and where you're talking about. Tennessee for example voted 54% against secession UNTIL Lincoln chose to start a war. Then it voted 88% for secession. Texas voted 76% for secession in the first instance. Virginia voted 78% in favor after Lincoln chose to start a war.

~10% of Confederates actively resisted Confederate service in places like western VA, eastern TN, western NC, northern AL, Ozarks of AR, Texas Hill Country. ~5% of Confederate white men served in the Union Army -- 100,000 overall. Those were the non-slaveholding, anti-slavery Confederates.

Both sides experienced draft dodging and desertion became a major problem on both sides. To say that those Southerners who served in the Union army or refused to serve in the Confederate army were non slave owning is wrong. To say they were therefore anti slavery is likewise wrong. People had plenty of different motivations for the choices they made. There are plenty of examples though of slaveholding unionists and there was precious little support for abolition anywhere in the country prior to 1863.

This is a point I often try to get through to the "it was all about slavery" crowd. They want to believe the hatred for slavery stems from the moral outrage of forcing people to work without pay. The truth is that the hatred for slavery comes from a hatred for black people, and a hatred of "scabs" who would undercut the wages of white people. For the VAST MAJORITY of the people in the North at that time, it wasn't "forced servitude" which was hated, it was black people and labor competition. It wasn't about morality, it was about their own prejudices and selfish interests. Only a handful of liberal nuts, mostly in Massachusetts, hated slavery because they saw it as immoral. The rest of the nation hated it because it brought black people into their lives, and they feared labor competition.

Bingo. The PC Revisionists are desperate to prop up this image of the North as being champions of equality and civil liberty. They were anything but. Massive racism was the NORM everywhere around the world in the mid 19th century. Read those statements by Lincoln. He got elected. That alone should tell you how widespread those sentiments were.

Abolitionist newspaper baron Horace Greeley put it succinctly: "the Republican Party's stance is "all the unoccupied territory shall be preserved for the benefit of the white caucasian race -a thing which cannot be but by the exclusion of slavery."

They certainly did not love Black people. If anything, they hated Blacks far more than Southerners did. The corporate lobbyists wanted to keep slavery out of the territories because they wanted more votes in the Senate to pass their tariff/government pork legislation. The ordinary White working class wanted to keep slavery out of the territories (and the Northern states) because they wanted it for themselves.....certainly not out of any sympathy for Blacks. Kansas and Oregon's first constitutions didn't just ban slavery. They banned BLACKS!

Nothing I can imagine will ever change your mind. I'm waiting for you to claim that no Saintly Southerners really owned slaves and that it was really those evil, blood thirsty Northerners who owned all of them.

Northerners didn't own slaves directly....not by the mid 19th century. They sold slaves then profiteered off of the goods their labor produced. As the 3 New England Journalists who wrote Complicity put it, it was slavery the way the North liked it: "most of the profits and none of the screams."

DiogenesLamp quoting de Tocqueville: "the Prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the states where slavery still exists.
White carpenters, white bricklayers and white painters will not work side by side with blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern state."
Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy in America" c. 1831"

First Point: De Tocqueville's visit to the USA came in 1831, decades before slavery became the existential political issue it was in 1860.
So, his comments then do not necessarily reflect realities of 1860.

Second Great Awakening c. 1850:

Second Point: The vast majority of Northerners in small towns and rural communities never saw African Americans, so they didn't hate blacks, they didn't fear blacks, they didn't know any blacks.
The issue of slavery for them was strictly theoretical -- did slavery comport with the Declaration of Independence claims that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"?
The answer was: No!

Third Point: The religious Second and Third Great Awakenings (1790-1860) progressively added to Northern awareness of slavery's sinfulness.
So Northern moral anti-slavery sentiments -- which had barely touched the South in de Tocqueville's time (1831) -- by 1860 had grown louder and more insistent.

Fourth Point: After de Tocqueville's time (1831), the Southern Slave Power became steadily more blatant and aggressive, as illustrated in the US Congress's Gag Rule from 1836-1844, under which Congress was forbidden from debating slavery at all.
For another example, the 1850 Compromise required the Federal government to enforce Fugitive Slave Laws, regardless of states rights claimed by abolitionist states.

Fifth Point: Slave Power challenges to the authority of Congress -- to make slavery illegal in US territories -- combined with the 1857 Dred Scott SCOTUS ruling, together overturned the Founders' basic understandings about the Federal government's role in setting slavery laws.

Finally, in de Tocqueville's time, where Southern whites & blacks worked together, it was always as dominant slaveholders over their submissive slaves.
In the North, whites could not legally dominate, but they could force freed blacks to work for lower wages, and therefore at jobs whites didn't do.

Bottom line: during the antebellum period, there were no Northern freed blacks who migrated South to live in slavery, regardless of how difficult Northern life might be.
Throughout this period there were rapidly growing freed-black populations in Northern states, notably in the very states subject to so-called "black code" type laws.

First Point: De Tocqueville's visit to the USA came in 1831, decades before slavery became the existential political issue it was in 1860.

First response: pathetic excuse making. Numerous other quotes as well as laws as well as votes show this was reflective of Northern attitudes about Blacks...1830, 1860. It hadn't changed.

Second Great Awakening c. 1850: Second Point: The vast majority of Northerners in small towns and rural communities never saw African Americans, so they didn't hate blacks, they didn't fear blacks, they didn't know any blacks. The issue of slavery for them was strictly theoretical -- did slavery comport with the Declaration of Independence claims that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"? The answer was: No!

Second Response: This is simply false. Their own political leaders talked openly about how much their people disliked Blacks. For example, here is Ohio Senator John Sherman ""In the State where I live," said John Sherman, on April 2, 1862 "we do not like negroes. We do not disguise our dislike. As my friend from Indiana (Mr. Wright) said yesterday, 'The whole people of the Northwestern States, are, for reasons, whether correct or not, opposed to having many negroes among them, and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation of nearly all the Northwestern States." I already provided many more such contemporary quotes from Northern political leaders.

Then there is the matter of the various laws enacted with popular support to force blacks to pay a hefty bond to enter a state (Illinois) or the original constitutions of Kansas and Oregon forbidding Blacks from settling there, etc etc. The evidence is overwhelming.

Third Point: The religious Second and Third Great Awakenings (1790-1860) progressively added to Northern awareness of slavery's sinfulness. So Northern moral anti-slavery sentiments -- which had barely touched the South in de Tocqueville's time (1831) -- by 1860 had grown louder and more insistent.

Third response: Northern anti slavery sentiments had grown so strong that abolitionists could not get more than single digit percentages of the vote anywhere in the North.

Fourth Point: After de Tocqueville's time (1831), the Southern Slave Power became steadily more blatant and aggressive, as illustrated in the US Congress's Gag Rule from 1836-1844, under which Congress was forbidden from debating slavery at all.

Fourth response: Some rule. The expansion of slavery was certainly debated non stop at that time. The Southern states went from a position of equality to falling into the clear minority of states in the union over this time. So much for any supposed "slave power".

For another example, the 1850 Compromise required the Federal government to enforce Fugitive Slave Laws, regardless of states rights claimed by abolitionist states.

Relevance? That was part of the deal made in the Compromise of 1850. Northern politicians readily agreed to it.

Fifth Point: Slave Power challenges to the authority of Congress -- to make slavery illegal in US territories -- combined with the 1857 Dred Scott SCOTUS ruling, together overturned the Founders' basic understandings about the Federal government's role in setting slavery laws.

Fifth response: No they didn't. The ruling was that the federal government could not exclude American citizens from entering any US territory with their property. Note that we are talking about territories here and not states. They were not sovereign. States could exclude anything but transit to a slaveowner bringing his slaves there because states are sovereign.

Finally, in de Tocqueville's time, where Southern whites & blacks worked together, it was always as dominant slaveholders over their submissive slaves. In the North, whites could not legally dominate, but they could force freed blacks to work for lower wages, and therefore at jobs whites didn't do.

Finally.....Whites could not dominate in the North? What on earth do you think they did? Blacks got lower wages and that's if Whites did not riot to prevent them being hired or simply refuse en masse to work alongside them. Given Blacks were a small minority the boss was then faced with either firing the few Blacks or losing his entire workforce. Naturally they always chose to fire the few Blacks who they had employed. Blacks could not sign legally binding contracts nor serve as witnesses in court. If that's not Whites dominating, what is?

Bottom line: during the antebellum period, there were no Northern freed blacks who migrated South to live in slavery, regardless of how difficult Northern life might be. Throughout this period there were rapidly growing freed-black populations in Northern states, notably in the very states subject to so-called "black code" type laws.

Bottom line: Sure Blacks did not move to the South to live in slavery. Some certainly did to live as freedmen. Black populations did not grow rapidly in Northern states. The underground railroad ran to Canada for a reason and that reason was that Northern states did not want Blacks living there and made it as difficult as possible for them to do so.