You are quoting almost exclusively from the extremists, and assigning their motivations to the whole South. Rereading Alexander Stephens on the subject of secession would be more informative. Keep in mind that a lot of the big planters adhered to the Constitutional Union Party and John Bell's candidacy. Rhett and Toombs don't speak for "the planters" as a group, nor for "the slavocracy" (another name for the same group) as a whole.
Stop torquing up the picture. We don't care about your prejudices and defending Lincoln. Nor defending Toombs, for that matter. I'm more interested in following and understanding the interests at play. You, OTOH, are more interesting in vindicating Lincoln, the Rushmore school, and the National Greatness vision of corporatism rampant -- the "age of combinations", as John D. Rockefeller put it. The age of trusts, and cartels, and rings, and holding companies, and of "malefactors of great wealth".
Returning to Robert Rhett, your mentioning (correctly, I think) that Rhett received the mantle of Calhoun points out something that does not get fair treatment in your posts. You admit posting like a lawyer (to the ruin of your name), ex parte, and so perhaps it's expectable that you would refrain from pointing out that Calhoun was an exponent of Union, and that he undertook in 1850 to compromise the interests of his own class -- as did Webster -- for the cause of internal peace and an end to the agitation. But Calhoun's absorbing interest was the damage done by successful factionalism. He probably had the example of the Roman Republic before his eyes, but he succeeded to the mantle of Madison precisely because of his interest in the problem of faction.
Rhett received the mantle at a late date, when things were already in extremis because of Kansas-Nebraska and the very recent deaths of Clay, Calhoun and Webster. So perhaps it's difficult to recognize Madison in him; but Madison feared faction, too, and Rhett's position was that of a leader of a region threatened by the rising Northern business faction and Lincoln's success in concentrating the North's energies against the South using the wedge issue of slavery, to enact a program of National Greatness, or if you will, American System II, and (in my opinion) the eventual abolition of slavery against the South's best efforts.
I've said before, and I'll repeat it now, that I think Lincoln's platform planks about "containing the expansion of slavery" (which, pointedly and tendentiously harping on this theme precisely to corroborate and vindicate Lincoln, you pound endlessly and disingenuously in your posts) were just so much campaign rhetoric disguising a settled and deadly intention of universal abolition by force if necessary, which I have suggested he first articulated at the Republican convention of 1856 in his famously undocumented address. Just my opinion -- laying a marker for later, so I can say "I told you so" when the truth finally outs about Lincoln and the Civil War.
That is true. But they also represent the leadership of the secessionist movement. The godfather of unilateral secession, John Calhoun, I include in that group. Inasmuch as the post-war confederate apologists base their political theories on those developed by Calhoun, it should not come as a surprise that the leading voices for secession, pre-war, as used Calhoun's misguided theories as rationale.
"You, OTOH, are more interesting in vindicating Lincoln, the Rushmore school, and the National Greatness vision of corporatism rampant -- the 'age of combinations', as John D. Rockefeller put it. The age of trusts, and cartels, and rings, and holding companies, and of 'malefactors of great wealth'."
Actually, I see little need to vindicate Lincoln, as history has already adequately done so. Only fringists are interested in slandering Lincoln's legacy (Gay? Syphilitic? Illegitimate? Tyrannical? Megalomaniac? ad nauseum). I am more concerning with exposing the anti-american perfidy of the "neo-confederates."
"I've said before, and I'll repeat it now, that I think Lincoln's platform planks about "containing the expansion of slavery" ... were just so much campaign rhetoric disguising a settled and deadly intention of universal abolition by force if necessary, which I have suggested he first articulated at the Republican convention of 1856 in his famously undocumented address.
I believe you refer to the address Lincoln gave at the Illinois State Republican Party Convention at Bloomington. One website summarizes the main points of his speech, which evidently was not recorded in detail:
"1. That there were pressing reasons for the formation of the Republican Party.
2. That the Republican movement was very important to the future of the nation.
3. All free soil people needed to rally against slavery and the existing political evils.
4. The nation must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts, and the Republicans were the ones to do it."
Wow!
Another Southern myth!
So Lincoln was going to invade the South and end slavery?
With what?
Gee, if you guys had been smart, you should have waited for that anti-slavery army to be formed and then you could have claimed self-defense.
Had the South stayed in the Union they still had dominance in the Senate and the House.
Taney was leading the Supreme Court.
Lincoln probably would have been a lameduck President.