RE: What your argument comes down to, in the final analysis, is that “states’ rights” are more important than the rights of individual human beings.
But here’s the more important question -— Did the states that secede do so while IGNORING the desires of the majority of their inhabitants?
Secondly, were the seceding states TOTALLY IN AGREEMENT that slavery should exist in perpetuity? Or were most of them aware that the institution was going to die eventually?
I argue that they were not unaware that slavery would die a slow death. Their intent was in fact to let it slowly fade away but NOT IMMEDIATELY so as not to cause a huge disruption in the economy and livelihood of the South.
Here is a snippet of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America:
Section 9 - Limits on Congress, Bill of Rights
1. The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
We would like human rights to be achieved IMMEDIATELY but in real life, what we want and what can be achieved practically are two different things.
We want to protect the lives of innocent babies, which we consider to be murder and a violation of the constitution, yet we cannot achieve this in one big bang. We can only achieve this goal gradually.
So, the states that seceded and many of their inhabitants (most of who do not own slaves ), DO RECOGNIZE that slavery is immoral, yet, want to achieve its destruction through a gradual process.
Now, regarding the right for a state to secede (as opposed to whether it should have seceded during the time of Lincoln ) is a related but different question. Let’s set aside the issue of slavery — Does the constitution prohibit secession?
In other words, if and when your people sign on to a constitutional compact, are you FOREVER bound by it? Or is there an “out” intent?
There had to be a specific constitutional prohibition on secession for it to be illegal. Conversely, there did not have to be a specific constitutional affirmation of the right of secession for it to be legal. Why? Because the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
There was no constitution prohibition on secession, nor was there a constitutional sanctioning of any kind of federal coercion to force a state to obey a federal law because to do so was to perpetrate an act of war on the offending state by the other states, for whom the federal government was their agent.
The Constitution made no mention of “perpetual union,” and it did not contain any prohibition against the secession of states from the union.
The point was raised in the convention: Should there be a “perpetual union” clause in the Constitution? The delegates voted it down, and the states were left free to secede under the Constitution, which remains the U. S. government charter today.
After the election of Thomas Jefferson, the Federalist Party in New England was so upset that for more than ten years they plotted to secede. The party actually held a secession convention in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814.
Although they ultimately decided not to leave the Union, nobody really questioned the fundamental right of secession. In fact, the leader of the whole movement, Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering, said that secession was the principle of the American Revolution.
Even John Quincy Adams, who was a staunch unionist, said in an 1839 speech about secession that in “dissolving that which can no longer bind, we would have to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.”
Likewise, Alexander Hamilton said, “to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.” These men, and many others, understood that there was a right of secession, and that the federal government would have no right to force anybody to remain in the Union.
Some people see the Confederates as traitors to their nation because many Confederate leaders swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States when joining the United States Army.
However, at that time people were citizens of individual states that were members of the United States, so that when a state seceded, the citizens of that state were no longer affiliated with the national government. Remember, the Constitution did not create an all-powerful national democracy, but rather a confederation of sovereign states. The existence of the Electoral College, the Bill of Rights, and the United States Senate clearly shows this, and although it is frequently ignored, the 10th Amendment specifically states that the rights not given to the federal government are the rights of the states and of the people. But if states do not have the right to secede, they have no rights at all. Lincoln’s war destroyed the government of our founding fathers by the “might makes right” method, a method the Republicans used to quash Confederates and loyal Democrats alike.
SC pretty clearly did. There was a significant majority of blacks in the state, and their voice was utterly ignored.
I argue that they were not unaware that slavery would die a slow death. Their intent was in fact to let it slowly fade away but NOT IMMEDIATELY so as not to cause a huge disruption in the economy and livelihood of the South.
You can argue that if you like, but it is utterly contradicted by the history of the time. The root of the conflict between sections was the insistence of the South that slavery be allowed to spread, precisely because they believed it would slowly suffocate if kept in its present bounds. In fact, a very common idea in the South was that they would conquer Mexico, the Caribbean and perhaps South America and build a great, permanent slave empire, complete with renewed importation of slaves from Africa. This was called the Purple Dream. William Walker was one of those who tried to put it into effect.
Your take on souther attitudes towards slavery is accurate but anachronistic. This was the attitude of most at the time of the Founding, certainly of Washington, Jefferson, etc. At the time slavery was becoming less and less profitable.
As the 19th century came in and the Cotton Empire began to expand, slavery reversed its economic decline and became wildly profitable. In fact, the price of slaves, the best single indicator of the health of the institution and its perceived future, reached a peak in 1860.
By this time most southerners viewed slavery as a positive good and something that should be perpetuated and expanded in both time and space. The famous Cornerstone Speech is one of the best examples of this.
Lincoln would have been quite happy to work towards future gradual emancipation. The slaveowners rejected the very notion. In fact, slave owners even in the Union states were so idiotic they rejected Lincoln's offers of compensated emancipation in the last year of the war!
Anybody but a moron or an obsessive could see clearly that slavery was going down by this time, and in the very near future. Yet the slaveowners rejected the very idea of emancipation so fervently they gave up all chance of compensation just to maintain the illusion for a few more months.
Had the South truly wanted independence, all it had to do was announce a program of emancipation, even compensated and very gradual. Britain would have promptly recognized the CSA and broken the Union blockade.
But for the CSA slavery was more important than independence, as maintaining and expanding the institution was the main reason they wanted their independence.
I'm afraid you're suffering from a severe case of rose-colored historical review. Well-meaning, and I appreciate the politeness, but still mistaken.