Answer me one question.
What was “the North” so worried about with the expansion of slavery supposedly into new territories?
Honestly, what concerned them? Besides the fact several Yankee states still had some slaves, what were they worried about having more “slave” than “free” states/territories?
Can understand some in the “South” were worried about their slavery being voted out if territories became free.
But what was “the North” losing if they lost territories, rather than being free? What was the South going to impose on the North if they had more electoral and congress votes?
Or is that kind of like the mask hysteria now? Pro-mask sheep scared they can’t wear masks because there are no mask mandates? What is the fear?
This is a very easy one. I suggest you start with Oakes’s book “Freedom National.”
In short, the legal and political definition of slavery by the 1840s was, in the north, it was a temporary condition of servitude on its way to extinction because . . . wait for it . . . slaves were PERSONS under the Constitution. There is no doubt in any quarter about this.
However, to the South, slaves were PROPERTY. (See Dred Scott)
The CW was in short a battle over which def would survive and triumph. Because if it was property, every Irishman and every immigrant who had come from serfdom-type societies would be exposed to slavery.
THIS IS IN ALL THE LITERATURE. It’s also in all the FOUNDERS arguments about the Revolution where they likened British government to the slavery of plantations.
If the DEFINITION of slavery as property went into the territories, it was only a matter of time before it began to intrude back into the free states. (Think abortion, and how the battle has been for 20 years on the fringes, and how it is a war of DEFINING life over property). There is no question that the overwhelming majority of people in the North who expressed any views of slavery thought that if slavery got into the territories it would soon be in OH, then NY.
Another way to understand this is “comity,” the ruling in Bank of Augusta v Earle, that states had to respect the laws of others, which meant slave PROPERTY would be brought into free states . . . which meant that sooner or later FREE PEOPLE would be responsible for maintaining slavery and capturing slaves. So, look at the Fugitive Slave Law, which was a NATIONAL attempt to force anti-slave people to support slavery as property. Think of abortion again. The ASL was the equivalent of making pro-lifers guard the doors of abortion clinics against opponents.