Replies

I am not going to repost the documents issued by GA,SC,MS and TX explaining their reasoning for secession. You have read them. They go to great lengths to point out a perceived threat to slavery.

Four states out of eleven, and in the case of South Carolina, they did indeed put forth a financial argument for secession.

People are always trying to make those few states that did issue secession statements asserting slavery as speaking for all the rest, and this is deliberately misleading.

The way I read those documents, a strong belief, that in the future, Lincoln and the Republican, would act against slavery was the prime motivations for their actions.

Slavery was as important to their economic output as oil is today to ours. From their perspective, it's not much different from the Crazy Californians declaring that all energy will come from renewables and that oil and gas will be prohibited.

The Crazy Liberal Californians do not grasp that such a change cannot be done quickly or easily, and so too was it the same for those who advocated the rapid abolition of that peculiar institution.

I think economic and social forces would have eventually eliminated it as happened in the other slave holding countries, but it would have taken decades for that to happen because too much of their economic output was powered by slavery.

As I said, two did offer up some financial arguments, but they paled in comparison to the slave issue. Include Arkansas statements before the secession vote. They include a substantial argument for the protection of slavery from the black republicans and Lincoln. The primary reason for seceding by four of the first 7 states to do so was slavery. That is what they wrote. I would consider that more apropos to the discussion than a letter written 40 years before or TJs opinion some years before that. But suit your self.

DiogenesLamp: "People are always trying to make those few states that did issue secession statements asserting slavery as speaking for all the rest, and this is deliberately misleading."

Nooooo, what's totally misleading is to deny the importance of the first four "Reasons for secession" documents in deciding what was truly going on in Fire Eaters' minds in late 1860 and early 1861.
Sure, later other things happened which drove Upper South states to secede, but they did not start the ball rolling.
What started it rolling were states like South Carolina, Mississippi & Georgia which took the time to spell out exactly what & why they did what they did.

And indisputably those states were concerned, first & foremost, to protect slavery.
That's what they & many others said at the time, so why would you call them liars?