War of Northern Aggression.
War of Northern Aggression.
Actually, it was the north that was the aggrieved party.
"Had the south used her power prudently and acted wisely, she would have controlled the destinies of this Government for generations yet to come...But, flushed with victories so constant and thorough and maddened by every expression of opposition to their peculiar institution, they commenced a work of proscription and aggression upon the rights of the people of the North, which has finally forced them to rise in their might and drive them from power.
They commenced their aggressions upon the North in some of the southern states by the enactment of unconstitutional laws, imprisoning colored seamen, and refusing to allow those laws to be tested before the proper tribunals. They trampled upon the sacred right of petition; they rifled and burnt our mails, if they suspected they contained anything of condemnation of slavery. They proscribed every northern man from office who would not smother and deny his honest convictions upon slavery and barter his manhood for place. They annexed foreign territory avowedly to extend and strengthen their particular institution, and made war in defense and support of that policy. They refused admission into the Union of States with free constitutions, unless they could have, as an equivalent, new guarantees for slavery. They passed a fugitive slave bill, some of the provisions of which were so merciless, and unneccessary as they were inhuman, that they would have disgraced the worst despotisms of Europe. They repealed their 'Missouri compromise act,' which they had themselves forced upon the North, against their wishes and their votes; and after having attained all their share of the benefit, they struck it down, against the indignant and almost unanimous protest of the whole North, for the purpose of forcing slavery upon an unwilling people.
They undertook to prevent, by violent means, the settlement of Kansas by free-state men. They invaded that territory and plundered and murdered its citizens by armed force...Every new triumph of the South and every concession by the North has only whetted their appetite for still more, and encouraged them in making greater claims and more unreasaonable demands, until today they are threatening the overthrow of the Government if we do not give them additional guarantees for protection to their slave property in territory in which we do not now own." --Speech of Representative John B. Alley of Massachusetts, January 26, 1861 (quoted from "The Causes of the Civil War", Kennneth Stampp, ed.)
Walt