[lentulusgracchus]

From the debates on the three-fifths clause in 1787, to the compromise of 1850, they all revolved around the South's "peculiar institution."

No, they didn't. The severe crisis of 1833 revolved around the Tariff of Abominations and South Carolina's attempts somehow to repeal it. Slavery wasn't involved.

Brush up sometime. The whole Civil War was about political power, money, and destiny. The Republicans put together a faction capable, through its combinations of interest and propaganda, of dominating the entire country (look up "Gilded Age" sometime), and the South walked.

The Constitution was not, and is not, a suicide pact, as has been said repeatedly.

[Lancelot Jones]

The whole Civil War was about political power, money, and destiny.

Political power...something that the South was losing rapidly, and the abolitionist North gaining by leaps and bounds.

Money...what the South stood to lose without their "peculiar institution".

Destiny...one people, one nation. The United States are vs. The United States is.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; In memoria æterna erit justus, ab auditione mala non timebit.

Beauseant!