And many others saw it was not about slavery given the Corwin Amendment, given the North still had slaves, given how badly federal troops treated slaves in the South, given the massive racism in the North and given the fact that the EP only freed slaves in areas the federal government did not control.
"For the contest on the part of the North is now undisguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse provided only that the seceding states re-enter the Union.....Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!" London Quarterly Review 1862
“The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.” London Times, November 7, 1861
" If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived … The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union. So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862
“Any reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro and until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the war, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up and down dale. As to secession being rebellion, it is distinctly possible by state papers that Washington considered it no such thing. Massachusetts now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede again and again.” Charles Dickens.
“If the Northerners on ascertaining the resolution of the South, had peaceably allowed the seceders to depart, the result might fairly have been quoted as illustrating the advantages of Democracy; but when Republicans put empire above liberty, and resorted to political oppression and war rather than suffer any abatement of national power, it was clear that nature at Washington was precisely the same as nature at St. Petersburg. There was not, in fact, a single argument advanced in defense of the war against the South which might not have been advanced with exactly the same force for the subjugation of Hungary or Poland. Democracy broke down, not when the Union ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent States, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms.” Times of London September 1862
"With what pretence of fairness, it is said, can you Americans object to the secession of the Southern States when your nation was founded on secession from the British Empire?" Cornhill Magazine, England 1861
"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states." --Charles Dickens, 1862
"The Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States." --London Spectator, 1862
"Fate has indeed taken a malignant pleasure in flouting the admirers of the United States. It is not merely that their hopes of its universal empire have been disappointed; the mortification has been much deeper than this. Every theory to which they paid special homage has been successively repudiated by their favorite statesmen. They were Apostles of Free Trade: America has established a tariff, compared to which our heaviest protection-tariff has been flimsy. She has become a land of passports, of conscriptions, of press censorship and post-office espionage; of bastilles and lettres de cachet [this was a letter that bore an official seal which authorized the imprisonment, without trial of any person named in the letter] There was little difference between the government of Mr. Lincoln and the government of Napoleon III. There was the form of a legislative assembly, where scarcely any dared to oppose for fear of the charge of treason." the Quarterly Review in Britain
"The Southerners are English gentlemen whereas the North is a mere dumping ground for the refuse of Europe" Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister 1860-65
In 1862, one English publication issued the following commentary regarding the Emancipation Proclamation: “…But as time went on, and the issues of the war came out more clearly, this spring of Northern sympathies began to fail. It soon became apparent that the grievance of the South went very far beyond the mere refusal to allow slaves to be held in the territories of the United States, and it became still more clear that whatever the North was fighting for, it was not for the emancipation of the Negro. It was impossible to believe that the North was crusading for abolition, in the face of the President’s reiterated denials, and of the inhuman treatment which Negroes were constantly receiving at Northern hands. If anything was wanting to confirm their skepticism, it has been supplied. Emancipation to be a military resource of his extreme necessity, shows how little he cared for it as a philanthropist. He values it not for the freedom it may confer, but for the carnage that it may cause.”
“The Southerners have shown every characteristic that can mark an independent people. They have made the costliest sacrifices that men can make to assure their freedom from foreign rule, and they have fought for it with a gallantry that has not been surpassed in all the wars of liberation the world has seen….” (“The Quarterly Review,” “The Confederate Struggle,” London, July – October, 1862, vol. 112, pp. 535 – 564)
Which was never ratified, and which as you admitted would NEVER, as in NEVER, have been repealed because the slave holding states would have never voted to repeal it.
given the North still had slaves
And how many slaves in the North did the South rescue?
given how badly federal troops treated slaves in the South
What does that say about how the South treated them, that they saw the North as an improvement?
given the massive racism in the North
From Georgia: "They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races".
From Mississippi: "It advocates negro equality, socially and politically".
From Texas: "She (Texas) was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits"
Also from Texas: "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
Another from Texas: "that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable."
and given the fact that the EP only freed slaves in areas the federal government did not control.
Of course, it was already illegal in the areas they did control. After the war of abolition, it was illegal everywhere.
Yes I know there were still slaves held illegally in the North. We have human trafficking now, and thanks to the free traitors we're back to using slave labor to get our products cheap. The only difference is that instead of importing the slave labor, we're exporting the plantations.
Quotes from the British press.
Funny how you believe the quotes made from a nation that saw us as "competition" and wanted to knock us down a few pegs, but you disregard all of the quotes to the contrary, including those made by the confederates themselves.
Quotes from Charles Dickens.
Seriously? Maybe we should ask Steven King what he thinks.