So what did this invasion have to do with slavery?
I’ve answered your question, now please answer mine. My question is: Why did the South secede.
If a man has "Freedom of Speech", what opinions are so bad that he can be denied the right to speak them?
Tell me what are the boundaries on a right and who is the Judge that get to decide what rights have restrictions and what those restrictions are?
I will remind you that slavery was legal in the British Empire until 1833.
Someone pointed out to me awhile back that it was outlawed in England in the 1770s. Slavery was illegal in England.
The British also did not fight the Revolutionary War because of slavery.
Neither did the Union, as you just admitted up above.
Slavery was not an issue in the Revolutionary War on either side.
Same thing in the Civil war for the first 18 months of the war. It later became a big political propaganda campaign trying to make the invaders look like the good guys, but as you admitted, they didn't invade with any intentions of doing anything about slavery. They just wanted to control the South.
3)You asked if I said that those Southern states had a right to freedom even though they had slaves. My answer is, yes of course. However, they already had freedom except for the right to own slaves. Please tell me what freedoms they did not have. Again, back to my original question, why did the South secede?
Well since they already had slavery in the Union, it can't be to keep that, so it must be because they were fed up with Washington DC taking so much of their money and telling them what to do. I quite empathize with that problem.
4)I still believe that calling states like Massachusetts and New Hampshire slave states when the number of slaved in those states in 1776 was minuscule is ridiculous, but you are technically correct.
I am reminded of the question about how much sewage water can be mixed with drinking water to render it undrinkable? I believe the answer is "any amount of sewage water renders drinking water undrinkable. " Thus is it with slavery. So long as it exists at all, the State in which it exists, is a slave state.
5)You are right that they already had slavery as a member of the Union, and this was not a reason for seceding. I misspoke, and should have said “maintaining” slavery.
All they had to do to "maintain" slavery was to remain in the Union. Lincoln was even offering them a constitutional amendment to make it possible to "maintain" slavery forever, so long as any state wanted it.
It sure seems to me that expansion of slavery into the territories was an issue with at least some of the southern states, but I’m sure that you will explain to me how this is a “lie”.
Slavery could not expand into the territories in any meaningful degree. When people referred to "expansion", they were actually referring to the expansion of congressional representation that would ally with slave states. New Mexico could be a "slave state" in theory, even though it could not be an actual slave state in practice. The same was true of other territories.
The whole "expansion of slavery" issue as about congressional power, and not actually about moving slaves into any of the territories. I've read articles that say both sides admitted the territories wouldn't actually support an expanded slave presence, but the fight was about congressional representatives because that is where the real power was.
7)You are correct in saying that the northern states were in violation of the compact in not returning escaped slaves to the South. What you are missing is the moral impact, however. The reason the populace in the Northern states opposed the Fugitive Slave Act was that a majority of the populations of those states considered it immoral. Are you suggesting that morality not be considered in administering the law?
The law should be based on an acknowledged morality, such as Christianity. (With which the concept of slavery is incompatible.) The law, however, often isn't. When the law says something immoral, i'm not going to pretend it doesn't. Here is an example of immoral laws.
The Northern states were breaking the law. If they couldn't comply with this immoral law, they should have split apart. They misled the Southern states, because when the constitution was approved, the vast majority of the states were still slave states. From the perspective of the Slave holding states, the Northern states had pulled a "bait and switch."
Why did the South secede? Please note that I’m not asking why YOU think they seceded, I’m asking what reason did they give (what did they state in the articles of secession hint: don’t ignore Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas)
I don't see why I should pay attention to those four states instead of paying attention to the other 7 states. Since when do four states represent a majority in a coalition of 11?
I know why people who want to justify what the North did like to seize on those four states and ignore the other 7. They do so because they want to claim the moral high ground for an after the fact decision to destroy slavery. They have no problem ignoring the fact that nobody was trying to destroy slavery when they invaded, and if they had won quickly, they would have simply restored everything back to what it was before the war, but modern sensibilities prefer o believe the "good guys" beat the "bad guys" because the "bad guys" embraced an evil institution.
This is a cartoon version of what happened, and it is quite inaccurate. Yes, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and maybe Georgia (I don't remember about Georgia) claimed in their secession statements that slavery was the reason they were leaving, but i've seen it argued that even that was just a bunch of propaganda and not the real reason. The real reason appears to be the 230 million in 1860 dollars that the South was making in export value. That money was funneling though New York and Washington DC as a consequence of the rigged system of laws created by the Northern control of congress.
Independence would allow them to steer all that money back through their own cities, and enrich them quite a lot. They were going to make a fortune being independent, and the Newspapers at the time detailed the massive building boom occurring in Charleston when South Carolina seceded.
They were expecting to become the new New York of the South, and Independence was how they could do it.
Unless, of course, the reason you’re avoiding answering the question is because you don’t have an answer to it?
I know what answer you want to hear, but as I said, this is a cartoon understanding of what was going on.
I long ago learned to not pay so much attention to what people claim, but instead learn to watch what they do, and most especially to follow the money.
The money story tells a very different tell than all the pronouncements of all the parties involved. As Charles Dickens said:
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
I believe there were rants and lies all around from both parties, just as Dickens said.