Concurring bump.
Toombs makes it quite clear later in the same speech that there were vital Southern interests involved with territorial expansion...at least for slave owners...and they wanted their slice of pie.
"In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri have received this tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize territory without the African slave trade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. "
Interesting that, in the rush of vitriol over verisimilitude this morning, none of the LCL’s have chosen to respond to that inconvenient truth.
Oh wait - there was one oblique reference here: “If that’s the case, how can you support the unconstitutional federal intrusion into legal Southern labor practices?”
Simple-minded to the point of imbecility, but it does demonstrate the cognitive dissonance necessary to defend their Lost Cause nirvana. They must prefer pretzel logic because it reminds them of food ;-)