[x]

Those are the same five or so quotes from earlier in the thread. The Chicago Times was a very pro-South, Doughface, Copperhead publication, and the North American Review article is more critical of secession than the excerpt might make one think. The idea is that a small group bent on power organized the secession and used slavery to win support. The secessionist elite knew that the people were worried about emancipation and slave uprisings and race mixing and they cynically appealed to those fears.

That doesn't really make things look any better for the Confederacy. Rather than saying that the leaders wanted a slaveholder's republic where their plantations would be secure, and the ordinary Southerners just followed them because they wanted to support their region, it's saying that the leaders were purely bent on power for themselves and the people followed them because the people wanted slavery and fell for demagogic arguments. Not very flattering to the ancestors of some people posting here. And if slavery was what it took to make secession palatable to the masses, then wasn't slavery responsible for secession after all? Isn't it still "no slavery, no secession" in the end?

[BroJoeK]

x on FLT-bird's post #507: "Those are the same five or so quotes from earlier in the thread.
The Chicago Times was a very pro-South, Doughface, Copperhead publication, and the North American Review article is more critical of secession than the excerpt might make one think..."

Thanks for a great post, I recommend it to all following this thread.