As I pointed out, not even the north - with the exception of a few abolitionists - advocated for an end to slavery - there was too much money to be made, and a Lincoln himself noted, such a platform would not have won him the election.
But not so important that the states made more than passing mention of them in their secession declarations, while slavery and the associated issues are mentioned over and over again.
Southern states had protested high tariff rates for DECADES. Newspapers across the republic, and around the world spoke of the monetary concerns:
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils.Additionally, Lincoln made it perfectly clear that his sole object was collect the revenues from tariff houses - it was refusal to allow this that incensed Lincoln.
If you're arguing that only the federal government had the ability and, indeed, the responsibility to end slavery throughout the United States, your position would seem much closer to that of the Radical Republicans than Lincoln, much less the Confederate leadership.
Nope. I'm saying to not portray Lincoln as an abolitionist when he was not, or that the war was waged to end slavery - it was to restore the union as it WAS. W could attempt to have the courts set aside Roe v Wade, returning the issue to the states - in essence the Lincolnian position. The Reagan position was to support an amendment ENDING abortion - which is the only way (in a union absent judicial activism or legislative coup [radical republican position]) that a people of several states may Constitutionally override the people of a another state.
There was a strong determination in the Republicans to find a way to overturn Dred Scott, since the logical extension of its legal reasoning was that slavery couldn't be outlawed anywhere in the north.
Nonsense, it was a state decision. No state could force slavery on another absent a constitutional amendment. The courts had already held that the territories were property in common for ALL the states of the union. Any territory could abolish slavery once it was a state, the federal government had no delegated authority to do so. All states agreed to those terms upon ratification, and as no constitutional amendment had been passed, it was illegal for a state, the federal Congress, or the President to do so.
Nor did they want to compete with slaves in their own states.
I'll agree - most small landowners, including my ancestor, saw the use of slaves as economically unfair.
So why was it that the Republicans won the election so handily? Why did Lincoln carry the agricultural western states by as large of margins as the industrialized New England states? Minnesota was carried by the same margin as Massachusetts.
Democrats split their vote between two candidates. Maybe Lincoln knew he had it in the bag, he didn't even campaign IIRC. Maybe northern voters wanted to continue their socialist wealth redistribution schemes, or supported a massive land grant to railroads and the route west, or simply favoured protection from black competition? Maybe it was because Lincoln promised continue the the Whig platform of high tariffs and internal improvements (PORK)? Much as todays Dims promise job security, higher wages, more social income redistribution, protection of shipping interests etc. Most politicians campaign on the platform to giving you someone else's monies (including that of your children).
That's absurd. The Republican party was founded on abolitionist principles, out of the Free Soil party. It's true that immediate emancipation was on the agendas of relatively few. The first step was to contain it, then move on to a gradual emancipation scheme. To conflate that gradualism with a desire to make slavery somehow permanent is without merit.
Southern states had protested high tariff rates for DECADES.
But none thought enough of it to mention it in their secession declarations?
Additionally, Lincoln made it perfectly clear that his sole object was collect the revenues from tariff houses - it was refusal to allow this that incensed Lincoln.
Oh, give me a break. What Lincoln was saying in the first inaugural was that he was going to ignore secession and carry on as if it was meaningless. He was also going to keep delivering the mail.
I'm saying to not portray Lincoln as an abolitionist when he was not, or that the war was waged to end slavery - it was to restore the union as it WAS.
No argument on the latter, at least in for the first year and half of the war, but you cannot deny that the war did, in fact, end slavery even if that wasn't its aim at the beginning. The aim in fighting WW2 wasn't to stop the holocaust, either, but it had that happy effect. But as to whether Lincoln was an abolitionist, it's a fuzzier picture. Again to cite Douglass, Lincoln may not have been as hardcore as he'd have liked, but he was way ahead of most, and he did lead the way to abolition.
Nonsense, it was a state decision. No state could force slavery on another absent a constitutional amendment.
The entire reasoning in the relevant part of Dred Scott is that the constitution protects slave property in the territories. And since it guarantees that right throughout the territories, why is is any kind of stretch to imagine that a subsequent decision would have found that slaves brought from one state to another would stay slaves? Certainly many at the time thought so. Lincoln mentions it in the House Divided speech, "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri. are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State, " and I've found one passing reference to a slave-stater crowing that Dred Scott meant slave auctions on Boston Common before long.
I missed this part, and simply point out that the 13th amendment was actively supported by Lincoln in the 1864 campaign.
It's really quite simple: Pre-Lincoln, slavery. Post-Lincoln, no slavery.
"Additionally, Lincoln made it perfectly clear that his sole object was collect the revenues from tariff houses - it was refusal to allow this that incensed Lincoln."
Tariffs collected at southern ports were nil, because southern imports were nil.