Posted on 08/11/2016 1:08:04 PM PDT by NotchJohnson
Broadstroke much? The south contained numerous religious groups who frowned upon slavery or opposed it outright. The entire Appalachian south had little use for it.
bfl
I am prioritizing the important facts. Southern Independence was a huge financial loss for the Union. Not only was New England/New York going to lose a massive amount of trade to Southern ports, the newly acquired capital which would be the result of independence, was going to finance competing industries in shipping and manufacturing.
The financial cost to the North of allowing the South to become independence was simply a cost the North was not willing to bear. For them, war was easier. Also more satisfying.
Slavery was phased out in the North for both Moral and Monetary reasons.
But predominantly monetary reasons. The Moral Objectors were mostly a small group. Most of the Northern population objected to the "free labor" aspect of it which competed directly with their efforts to trade labor for wages. As far as they were concerned, slaves were far worse than "Scabs". They also resented the idea that other people would get rich from free labor. These exact attitudes are still very prevalent in these very same heavily Unionized states. (As in Labor Unions.)
The Northern states *HATED* black people, and simply wanted them out of their states. Illinois and other states passed laws to bar blacks from permanently settling in their states. Lincoln himself was part of the leadership of an Illinois group intent on deporting blacks to other countries. The population of the Northern states Mostly didn't care that blacks were forced to labor, they cared that people employing slave labor weren't *paying* for labor, and thereby undermining the cost of labor.
My point was the people in the South had ZERO moral reservations about what they were doing.
That's not true at all. The abolition movement was growing in the South, and eventually it would have abolished slavery, but the financial dynamics were very different for the Southerners. The financial assets represented by slaves were the dominant aspect of their net financial worth. (Something like 5 billion dollars was tied up in Slave assets.)
Additionally, their primary industry (agriculture) absolutely depended on the existing system, and could not easily be changed to something else.
In the North, they had plenty of labor, and labor intensive agriculture was less practical. Factory workers didn't want slaves working for free in competition with them, so over the years, Northern slave owners had simply taken their slaves and sold them in the South so as to not lose any of their investments.
Getting rid of slavery was far less costly to them. They not only no longer needed them, but had the opportunity to recover all the costs they had invested in them.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was the immediate cause of southern resolutions of secession.
With both Congress and the Executive firmly in the hands of the Northern power blocks, they saw no further point in participating in a system which could not possibly further their interests, and which wouldn't even faithfully follow past agreements. (Such as Article IV, section 2.)
" He was the nominee of the Republican party with an anti-slavery expansion platform, he refused to acknowledge the right to secession, ..."
Well, in his refusal to acknowledge the very right upon which his own government was founded, he was unequivocally wrong. The right to break away from a larger Union is articulated in our own Declaration of Independence, which clearly indicates it is a natural right given by God, and which man made law cannot forbid.
Lincoln had no more right to stop states from breaking away from the United States than did George III have to keep them from breaking away from the United Kingdom. Less so in fact, because our nation articulates this right as our very own founding principle.
...and he would not yield federal property within Southern states.
If you accept the premise of our own Declaration of Independence, the federal property located within the acknowledged borders of a state, ceased to be federal property upon a state's declaration of independence.
Numerous historians have explored the reasons so many white Southerners adopted secessionism in 1860.[32] Bertram Wyatt-Brown argues that secessionists desired independence as necessary for their honor.
Money is a more reasonable explanation. New England was siphoning off about 40% of all their revenues from exports to Europe, and independence would create an instant 40% increase in the money returned on their exported products.
Also their own ship building industries, warehousing and banking industries stood to make more money once they weren't kept suppressed by the jiggered laws favoring the New England shipping/banking/warehousing industries.
They could no longer tolerate northern attitudes that regarded slave ownership as a great sin and Northern politicians who insisted on stopping the spread of slavery.
From what I have read and understand regarding the constitutional safeguard for slavery, the Southerners were correct. US Constitutional law does not allow the creation of "free states" or "free territories." Article IV, section 2, pretty much makes it impossible to make either a state or territory "free."
Something a lot of which a lot of modern Americans are unaware is that the constitution had that clause in it which was specifically designed to protect slavery.
The problem was, most Northern states refused to enforce this provision of constitutional law, and so did the Federal government.
But the NORTH have more than made up for that “lack of moral reservations” by becoming just as racist and nefarious in modern times as that evil ole’ South was long ago.
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