Why did the North want to end slavery?

[Bull Snipe]

Yes they did happen in reality. Jefferson sold slaves when he needed money. The records at Monticello confirm that fact.
West Virginia miners left West Virginia for other parts of the country. One of which was a relative of mine.

[combat_boots]

Power and control.

[DoodleDawg]

But that doesn't say though that tariffs rising from 5% at the start of the country to 40% in the 1800's wasn't more beneficial to some regions and financially harmful to others.

The tariff was applied equally throughout the country and consumers in the North were impacted just as much as consumers in the South.

The cotton and tobacco economy of the south gained nothing from the protective tariffs.

Sure they did. They benefitted on the 2 cent per pound tariff on raw cotton, the tariff on tobacco products, the tariff on turpentine and naval stores.

The South had lost the political clout to put in place a funding solution more to their benefit...

A funding solution like what?

...or to put a stop to the spending on transportation projects that primarily supported the west and northeast.

Transportation projects like what?

[Bull Snipe]

All well and good. Davis fell for it and fired the first shot.

[Svartalfiar]

You realize in 1860 Lincoln only won with 40% of the vote, right? But he pulled in the electoral college.

'64 is pretty useless, since the Democrat party was much stripped down since the Confederate States didn't vote. Lincoln moved his 40% popular up to 55% or so. Because the only non-Repub States at that point were MO, DE, and RI. You can't really look at the Confederate elections, because they only had one, and Davis ran unaffiliated, with 97% of the vote. With a six year term, there was no intermediate election.

Here's a bit from the Dem's 1868 platform, railing against centralized FedGov power. Sure doesn't sound like the Dems of today!

And we do declare and resolve, That ever since the people of the United States threw off all subjection to the British crown, the privilege and trust of suffrage have belonged to the several States, and have been granted, regulated, and controlled exclusively by the political power of each State respectively, and that any attempt by Congress, on any pretext whatever, to deprive any State of this right, or interfere with its exercise, is a flagrant usurpation of power, which can find no warrant in the Constitution; and if sanctioned by the people will subvert our form of government, and can only end in a single centralized and consolidated government, in which the separate existence of the States will be entirely absorbed, and an unqualified despotism be established in place of a federal union of co-equal States; and that we regard the reconstruction acts so-called, of Congress, as such an usurpation, and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void. . . .

[Wissa]

Transportation projects like what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_improvements

A funding solution like what?

Since the majority of our federal revenues don't currently come from tariffs, apparently there were other possible solutions.

[DoodleDawg]

Well this certainly was a waste of time.

[Verginius Rufus]

No one was killed during the shelling of Fort Sumter. It was a mostly peaceful protest.

[Wissa]

Well this certainly was a waste of time.

Same thought that was going through my mind.

[stremba]

I already said BOTH sides wanted a fight. The North could have peacefully surrendered the fort. The South could have allowed Federal possession of it. That’s neither here nor there though. The first shots of the war were fired by Confederate forces — that’s not my opinion; it’s indisputable historical fact. I never said the South was responsible for the war; both sides bore plenty of responsibility for that.

Also, it’s disputable that insisting on maintaining possession of the forts is aggression. Neither side at the time disputed that the forts rightfully were Federal property. The South did not claim that the forts were Confederate property; they demanded that the ownership of them change hands. A country defending its own territory or property is not acting aggressively, although I admit that the motive in this case was provocation of the South.

[stremba]

I already said BOTH sides wanted a fight. The North could have peacefully surrendered the fort. The South could have allowed Federal possession of it. That’s neither here nor there though. The first shots of the war were fired by Confederate forces — that’s not my opinion; it’s indisputable historical fact. I never said the South was responsible for the war; both sides bore plenty of responsibility for that.

Also, it’s disputable that insisting on maintaining possession of the forts is aggression. Neither side at the time disputed that the forts rightfully were Federal property. The South did not claim that the forts were Confederate property; they demanded that the ownership of them change hands. A country defending its own territory or property is not acting aggressively, although I admit that the motive in this case was provocation of the South.

[rockrr]

I’m confused by your comment. My maternal G-Grandfather was a coal miner in West Virginia. He left to mine gold (but ended up mining copper in Montana).

[ml/nj]

My maternal G-Grandfather was a coal miner in West Virginia. He left to mine gold (but ended up mining copper in Montana).

He must have left at a ripe old age then. I'm 74. My maternal G-Grandfather died in 1943. He was four year old at emancipation.

ML/NJ

[reasonisfaith]

Are you trying to say slavery didn’t really end?

[reasonisfaith]

The most manipulated to now are those who believe the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, and that the democrats weren’t responsible for slavery.

The most manipulated include those who think the party of racism is not the democratic party.

[Jonty30]

Those on the low end of society might view the reason for the Civil War because of slavery, but those more globally minded, like the Koches or Soros of their day, look upon things differently.

To them, we are nothing but chess pieces to be moved about as they see fit. By flooding the Southern market with 4 million ex-slaves, and later cheap Asian labour, the industrialists get to keep their industries stocked with cheap labour forever. This means extra profits for them, regardless of what extra costs a free people might temporarily entail.

[reasonisfaith]

But their forever is now coming to an end.

[Crucial]

I think many Northerners were afraid to free the slaves for the same reason the Southerners feared it, a large, culturally alien group with few skills and some unknown percentage racially resentful moving into their communities. There were definitely powerful people who were abolitionists in the North however.

As far as Lincoln is concerned, which is a separate question, is whether he, himself wanted to free the slaves in the first place. I don’t believe so. But in the process of doing so after the death of over 600,000 Americans, he did the very moral act of emancipated the slaves while at the same time committed the immoral act of betraying the Constitution. In fact, he routinely trampled on the Constitution by undermining States Rights, before and during the Civil War. As a result of this I believe we have ourselves slowly become slaves in part.