Partially true, but in a way which renders the spirit of it untrue. "Designs on territories outside the boundaries of the seceded states." Like Cuba? So what? Wasn't the North's business anywise. "....It would support secession movements within as yet unseceded states". States which, if they made the voluntary choice (and there's nothing to suggest the choice would have been anything but) to join the Confederacy, would then oblige the Confederate government to protect them, as members of the new union.
The Confederacy had already indicated that it would seize US military installations and armaments. The Confederacy's stance was hostile from the beginning - South Carolina and Mississippi were already mobilizing within days of secession.
Mobilising in self-defence because there was already mobilisation going on in the North to stifle the secession movement at its inception. As for seizing installations, what else would you do to hostile, foreign military bases that (like it or not) are suddenly within the territory of a foreign country.
Non sequitur.
Not so. The South attacked Ft. Sumner pre-emptively specifically because it perceived an imminent Northern military threat - the same grounds Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq (correctly, I might add).
The Confederacy was not sitting around twiddling its thumbs while the North mobilized. The Confederacy had already moved first.
Wrong. The North was mobilising from the get go.
No, it was the political question. The Southern states were not willing to allow the admittance of new free states into the Union - the defection of Northern Democrats and the election of Lincoln demosntrated that the South had run out of room to maneuver and that slavery would now be forever geographically limited.
Again, that's only a partial explanation. The Southerners felt that if they were blocked in, then they would inevitably fall before the protectionist Northern interests and would be crippled economically, since their economies depended on agricultural sales to Europe. Slavery was an engine for that agricultural production, but fundamentally, the issue would be the same, whether slavery existed or not. Even if cotton was picked by free labour, the North would want tariffs and the South free trade. With an end of geographic expansion for cotton growing regions (can't grow cotton in Nebraska or Nevada, though some Southerners apparently thought they'd like to try), the South had no place but Cuba and the Caribbean to expand the cotton culture.
Slavery excited emotions across the board - but its geographic expansion was the question that created the political will to move for secession.
Yes, slavery DID excite emotional passions - which is why it figured so prominently in the rhetoric (though less so in the actual policy decisions) of the day. That's why slavery is the ONLY thing 99% of people think about when they think of the Civil War.
Correct. Since the loyal population of the Southern states were unable to sustain the tide of rebellion, they required federal assistance.
You seem to have missed what the Constitution actually says. It protects States, not portions of the population WITHIN States that don't like a choice made by the elected government of that State. Ironically, the only justification the federal government might have had for sending troops into the seceded States was if the non-secessionary parts of the population had revolted, and that to put down the NON-secessionists (ignoring the sovereignty issues involved with now-separate governments). You argument is not based upon a sound knowledge of the Constitution, but upon a rehashing of "popular knowledge" which you probably picked up in school.
By 1860 property qualifications had largely gone by the wayside in lower chamber elections.
Not really true. Some restrictions were relaxed, but many remained in place in States all across the union.
Moreover, the slaves had a weight of 60% of their number in national councils but a weight of 0% of their number in the secession elections.
So do you believe that ANY decision made by an elected State government in the South, prior to 1860, would be illegitimate because blacks had no role in electing the governments? Moreover, it's incorrect to say that "slaves had a weight of 60% of their number in national councils". Their numbers were weighted into federal divisions of representation, but the choices as to who were to fill this expanded number of seats would still have rested on 0% of the actual slave population.
Like Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona.
States which, if they made the voluntary choice (and there's nothing to suggest the choice would have been anything but) to join the Confederacy, would then oblige the Confederate government to protect them, as members of the new union.
No, border states like Kentucky and Missouri where the Confederacy was already recruiting military forces to intimidate Union voters.
As for seizing installations, what else would you do to hostile, foreign military bases that (like it or not) are suddenly within the territory of a foreign country.
Federal land is federal land. You don't get to keep it.
The South attacked Ft. Sumner pre-emptively specifically because it perceived an imminent Northern military threat - the same grounds Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq (correctly, I might add).
It was known to both parties that Fort Sumter would have been starved out without firing a shot. There was no incentive for the defenders of the fort to initiate hostilities and Confederate officials at the time and in retrospect admitted that the decision to fire on the fort was hotheaded and an unwarranted strategic blunder that gained the Confederacy nothing and handed the Union a moral victory.
Southern politicians and papers had threatened war if Lincoln was elected. I am not aware of any Northern movement to go to war if Breckenridge had won the Presidency.
One of the things that shocked foreign visitors to DC in the last days of the Buchanan administration was that the President had taken no steps at all to erect defenses or summon troops to the capital. The first significant flow of federal troops did not even enter DC for defensive (let alone offensive) purposes until after Lincoln was inaugurated - the Confederate forces at First Bull Run were almost numerically identical to the Union forces - had the Union been on as serious a war footing as the Confederacy, they could easily have had three times as many.
In other words, better to maintain a slave economy and go to war than to attempt to diversify one's economic activity.
That's why slavery is the ONLY thing 99% of people think about when they think of the Civil War.
The abolition of slavery was one of the most radical social and political developments in American history.
You argument is not based upon a sound knowledge of the Constitution, but upon a rehashing of "popular knowledge" which you probably picked up in school.
You be quite red-faced if you understood how deeply flawed your assumption is.
I repeat: the state governments which disobeyed the supreme law of the land and engaged in an illegal secession were illegitimate non-governments - rebellious entities which it was the federal government's responsibility to suppress so that the constitutional government of the state could be reasserted.
So do you believe that ANY decision made by an elected State government in the South, prior to 1860, would be illegitimate because blacks had no role in electing the governments?
No, because that was the law under the Cosntitution. When you throw the Constitution out the window, however, all bets are off.
Ah, the old "have your cake and secede from it, too" position. If, by your argument, southern states did, in fact, secede and were no longer part of the USA, those state governments and their citizens enjoyed no more constitutional protection than the citizens of Mexico do. In that case, they were a hostile nation on the border of the United States, building a large army and opening fire on US forces occupying land to which the United States held title.
You can't declare yourself a foreign country, start shooting, then complain when you get treated like one.