That vote in committee by the way was 28-28. After that vote, a Commission was formed to further study the situation and recommended statehood for the Dominican, but public opinion was against it and Grant gave up.
That's wasn't the point I was making.
The point I was making is that while Confederate apologists often claim that the South simply wanted to be left alone, that is not the case.
In reality, the Confederacy was not motivated by a passive desire to peacefully follow its own way of life within its borders: the Confederacy was a dynamic enterprise bent on conquest, inclusing the conquest of US federal territory.
War between the Union and the Confederacy was inevitable, since the Union owned land that the Confederacy believed that it needed to have. If the Confederacy had not started the war at Sumter, they would have started it in the territories - at the time of Sumter, John Baylor was already outfitting forces in Texas to seize the New Mexico territory.
That vote in committee by the way was 28-28.
In a committee that was something like 70-80% Republican.
A huge embarrassment for Grant.