DiogenesLamp:
"Well they certainly *PAID* for it, but so far as 'running' it is concerned, you will have to explain to me how the 11 Southern states managed to outvote the 23 Other states, in Congress." Thanks for that question, since it opens up a key insight as to what was *really* going on.
Let's begin here:
- From the time of Jefferson, most slave-holders were Jeffersonian anti-Federalist / Democratic-Republican / Jacksonian Democrats.
Through their political alliance with Northern Democrats they maintained a strangle-hold on Washington DC until the election of November 1860.
- Before Lincoln, no US president was openly anti-slavery.
So regardless of political party, slave-holders were welcome in Washington, DC.
- From Washington in 1788 through Lincoln in 1860 there were 19 presidential elections.
Of those, only one -- John Adams in 1796 -- produced a President who was neither a Democrat nor slave-holder.
So the alliance of slave-holders with Democrats kept the Presidency continuouisly in slavery-friendly hands.
The 1796 election of Adams vs. Jefferson was also the last time the nation saw a purely Northern Federalist (Whig/Republican) vs. Southern Jeffersonian (anti-Federalist/Democrat).
- With one exception (1841-43), from 1800 through 1861 Democrats ruled at least one and far more often both houses of Congress, quite often by overwhelming majorities.
- Southern Democrat dominance of the US Supreme Court can be easily seen in its 7-2 Dred Scott decision, drastically expanding the scope and reach of slavery.
- As to how thoroughly Southerners dominated the national Democrat party, they were given a huge boost in Congress, despite their minority status, by the Constitution's 3/5 rule, which gave Southerners representation based on their populations of slaves.
In the Deep South, that doubled their white-only representation, and in the Upper South increased it by 50%.
- Before "Little Giant" Stephen Douglas separated himself from the views of Deep South Democrats (circa 1858), no Northern Democrat had so openly opposed Southern Democrats on a subject related to slavery.
Bottom line: minority Southerners controlled the majority Democrat party, and through them Washington, DC.
That control only ended when Deep South Fire Eater secessionists walked out of the 1860 Democrat convention, forming their own party and nominating Kentucky born Vice President John Breckenridge, that year's fourth candidate for President.
The result was victory in November for minority Republicans.