Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: wideawake
That election was essentially a national referendum on the question: should slavery be expanded to the federal territories?

True, and if economic issues really drove the secession as confederate defenders maintain, Douglas was the man the South should have rallied behind.

89 posted on 05/27/2008 1:00:41 PM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies ]


To: Colonel Kangaroo; Michael.SF.
True, and if economic issues really drove the secession as confederate defenders maintain, Douglas was the man the South should have rallied behind.

They should have, but they could not because he opposed the Lecompton farce that was so popular in the South.

And, of course, it had nothing to do with economics.

Between 1850-1860 the price of cotton had run up to previously undreamed-of levels and Southern GDP per capita had increased 75% in the same period. The years before the war were one long economic boom for the South.

If there was any economic cause to the Civil War, it would have been that the South was wading in such a deep pool of cash that they believed they really could take on a section that had three times their white population.

90 posted on 05/27/2008 1:17:33 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that those who call themselves Constitutionalists know the least about the Constitution?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson