Your Friday posts to me were saner and more sensible than most of what you post here. I don't know if you are actually learning things or just aren't feeling well. A few comments, though:
I suspect a lot of cherry picked evidence was provided in this effort to influence them.
"Cherry-picked" implies something unfair was going on. It's true that abolitionists did choose the facts that put slavery in the worst light, but the most even-handed presentation of information might still make people without a personal interest one way or the other find slavery abhorrent.
My understanding is that Julia Ward Howe presented "good" and "bad" slaveowners in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but the result was to put slavery in a very bad light, because the "good" didn't outweigh the "bad" in many Northerners' minds.
>> If you did hate Black people, you might well thank slaveowners for keeping them far way and in chains.
> I think that if anyone thought that, they were very few indeed.
Enough people thought that way to give Democrats wins. Look at the slogan they used after the war:
The dominant reason for keeping slavery out of the territories was to keep more congressional representatives away from allying with the Southern states.
And the drive to allow slavery in the territories was what? Noble and disinterested? No, it was to ensure support for slavery in Congress.
You have a habit of making everything Northerners did self-interested and ignoring the self-interest of Southern slaveowners.
I consider myself to be a free person. I want to live in a society of free people. Therefore, I would not want to live in a society with slavery.
I don't see how that is more self-interested or ignoble than wanting to live in a society where I could buy and sell and work slaves.
And the drive to allow slavery in the territories was what? To get representation in Congress, which would give them the power to change laws that were hurting them.
The existing status quo benefited the New York coalition. It had the effect of causing all Southern trade to be controlled by people in New York, with Washington getting it's cut at the docks.
The result was that the Southern states were paying the vast majority of the taxes, even though they had 1/4th of the population of the country.
Now you may say that both sides are equally motivated by greed, but I think it is a very different thing for people to want to keep more of their lawfully earned money than it is for someone to use their numerical majority to take lawfully earned money from other people through the use of the law.
The North East has always favored tax and spend policies, and the 1860s were no different. They most benefited from government spending, and they used the money redirected from the South to build their industries and infrastructure.
You have a habit of making everything Northerners did self-interested and ignoring the self-interest of Southern slaveowners.
I am not ignoring the self interest of the Southern slave owners. I am simply pointing out that while their production system was immoral, it was legal under the laws of the United States, and they were legally entitled to the money for the goods their system produced.
In terms of using the force of law to confiscate the wealth of others, the North Easterners were the aggressors. They liked the system that had evolved to their advantage and which had Southern production flowing through their own pockets. They liked it very much.
I consider myself to be a free person. I want to live in a society of free people. Therefore, I would not want to live in a society with slavery.
In 1860, your choices were to leave, convince enough people, many of which were making money off of slavery, to get rid of it, or you had to tolerate it. The rules to amend the constitution to abolish slaver required 3/4ths of the states to agree, and this was simply impossible to obtain at that time.
It was only accomplished in 1868 by a kabuki theater pretense, with everyone accepting the pretense as real.
I don't see how that is more self-interested or ignoble than wanting to live in a society where I could buy and sell and work slaves.
The New York coalition may have claimed to be motivated by opposition to slavery, but considering the Corwin Amendment was passed by five Northern states, and Seward assured everyone that he could deliver New York's vote on the matter, it becomes clear that the powers that be in the North did not have a problem with actual slavery, but merely used it as an excuse to gain and hold power.
Slavery was astro turf for both sides. The Northerners used it to rouse their voters, and so did the Southerners, but there really was no danger of any significant degree of slavery in any of the territories. As I said, Pennsylvania and Delaware probably had more slaves than the territories ever would.