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If you ask, "how real was the actual threat to slavery," well, that is a complicated question. Yes, Southern secessionist "Fire Eaters" exaggerated the immediate threat to slavery represented by the election of "Black Republican" Lincoln, in November 1860. But long term there's no doubt that slavery was in for a rough-go, no matter which course of action the Southern slave-holders chose.

100% correct. Lincoln posed absolutely no threat to slavery in the South as it existed at that time. But by promising to block further expansion of slavery to the territories, he did put a knife to the throat of the Slave Power. I don't know if Lincoln, or most anti-slave people in the North at the time fully understood that threat. It was a combination of demographics and finance. To people in the South who really understood the economics of the slave system, Lincoln's humble plan to keep slavery isolated where it existed was like a nuclear weapon pointed at them... both exonomically and socially.

Slavery, by the year 1840 had ceased being a labor system. It was a massive Ponzi scheme. That was it's biggest and only real value. It was so not much the value of the labor which they provided. That labor was considerable, but could have also been provided by free labor. The real value was the slaves themselves on an open market, and not just the current slaves, but their children, grandchildren etc.

This encouraged slave owners to treat them as cattle and the more calves born the more they could sell at some future date if the need may arise. They could and did collateral their slaves, and in the event of some economic downfall, they could sell them off.

It was a very different kind of slavery than existed in the Colonial ear. People literally were property that could be bought, sold or collateralized. The economy of the South then depended just as much on the value of slaves as it did on the price of cotton.

If the market for new slaves became geographically restricted, as Lincoln promised, the slave owners would both lose the value of their existing 'property' because of over supply. In states like South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama, they would have been soon hopelessly outnumbered by slaves and children of slaves within one or two generations.

The Civil War did not start about slavery itself. It was argument over the Expansion of Slaverythat created the war. The North basically said we have had enough of that expansion... do what you want in your own states, but we don't want it anywhere else. They, I think, did that without fully understanding the economics of slavery and why continual expansion was a necessity to keep the slave society going.

For the Southern power structure, expansion of slavery was not just some political abstract... it was a mortal necessity. Without expansion their wealth and society would implode upon them. Expansion of slavery for them was not an option, it was an absolute necessity.

Lincoln posed absolutely no threat to slavery in the South as it existed at that time. But by promising to block further expansion of slavery to the territories, he did put a knife to the throat of the Slave Power.

The situation for the South was a lot like that gunowners face today. Gun-grabbers claim they only want reasonable controls added now, but make no real attempt to hide their ultimate goal of grabbing all guns.

So do us gun nuts fight them now, or slide a little farther down the slippery slope first?

A Republican Congress and President could have quite easily and constitutionally put a major crimp into slavery simply by banning interstate commerce in slaves, even between slave states. Breaking up the market that way would have pretty much destroyed the value of the slaves, especially in the Upper South, where there were more than needed.

They, I think, did that without fully understanding the economics of slavery and why continual expansion was a necessity to keep the slave society going.

I think FDR did much the same with the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. The sanctions he imposed would eventually cripple the Japanese military and economy. Yet to meet the conditions required to lift the sanctions would also mean their (even quicker) crippling.

So he basically gave the Japanese leaders a choice between returning to 3rd-class power status, more or less abandoning their empire, and making a desperate attempt to preserve their empire by war.

I don't think FDR was fully aware of the choice he was forcing on them. America has never faced such a stark choice.

Except that I think the South faced a similar decision point in 1860. They had a choice between long, slow decline and eventual destruction of their way of life, and a chance for its survival by means of war.

I think both the South in 1860 and the Japs in 1941 made the wrong decision. But I believe they saw themselves as having no real choice.