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To: Jonty30; BroJoeK; rockrr; PerConPat

No, because in 1860 Northern business interests weren’t united on policy towards the South. Many were closely connected to the South, especially through the cotton trade, and didn’t want anything to change. Some rich people (and many not rich people) were worried about slavery expansion, or opposed to slavery in principle. Others didn’t care one way or the other about slavery or what happened to the South, though once war started they may have wanted the Union to be preserved.

Once war started, the expectation and the wish on both sides was for a short, victorious war. If the the North won a short war slavery and the economic and environmental conditions in the South wouldn’t have changed. Everyone would know that slavery was eventually on the way out, but that would have taken time.

One thing that one or two precient souls predicted before the war was that abolishing slavery meant that wealthy Southerners could put their money into buying land, rather than slaves, resulting in a sharecropper system like the one that eventually did develop after the Civil War, but nobody was predicting that Northerners would sweep in and buy up all the land.

There were some Northerners who moved South after the war with political or economic or moralistic ambitions, the famous “carpetbaggers” in southern eyes. But even before 1860, Northerners moved South, Southerners moved North, and everybody moved West, seeking their fortunes. Though it’s forgotten now, Southerners helped settle the Midwest, and Northerners settled in the Lower Mississippi Valley and helped build up the cotton business.


117 posted on 12/28/2023 8:57:50 AM PST by x
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To: x; Jonty30
I agree...Northern business was not wanting to take over the South's cotton gig. IMO, the North was most threatened by the South's potential for gaining the upper hand in politics etc. by expanding their slave economy into the territories. Slavery, where it existed, was not under attack as can be shown by the article below and legislation after 1808, prior to the war.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight... Article 1 sec.9 cl.1...U.S. Constitution

As I see it, the South left the Union primarily to expand slavery. Whether or not that right and the right to secede were guaranteed by the Constitution was settled by a terrible war.

129 posted on 12/28/2023 10:19:23 AM PST by PerConPat (The politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.- Mencken)
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