Of course such property had been legal since before the Revolution, with George Washington being one of the larger practitioners in Colonial days.
You say that like anyone on any of these pages ever claimed otherwise. And it is curious that you would sully the great name of Washington by associating him with the riffraff who would upend our nation for their own personal profit.
As we know in hindsight Southerners were correct in their suspicion that the North had decided to abrogate the idea of human property by force- any Constitutional remedy was moving too slowly.
No, we don't know that. We know that some northerners had impatience with the recalcitrance of southern slavers, but to broad-brush all northerners is an exaggeration.
There was no longer any doubt that Northerners were waging a guerrilla war against the South, with John Brown being widely praised as something akin to a Messiah.
Well, there you go again. You overstate both Brown's influence, his support, and his impact. If he was "widely praised as something akin to a Messiah" some of that praise should have survived to the present.
European shippers would choose lower tariff southern ports when possible. Previously tariffs were equal so there was no reason to make a choice based on price. European goods would also be less expensive for the South when tariffs were lower. Northern made goods would be less competitive. The lower tariff would have an impact, just as tax havens do today.
This would carry more credibility had the confederates refrained from imposing their own tariffs.
“You detract from your already flimsy case when you attempt to demagogue.”
What I posted is a statement of fact- George Washington was one of the largest slaveowners of his day. You can call it demagoguery if you want, most would regard it as simple historical fact.
“Well, there you go again. You overstate both Brown’s influence, his support, and his impact. If he was “widely praised as something akin to a Messiah” some of that praise should have survived to the present.”
It’s not hard to find:
“Just days after the raid, Brown’s trial began. It would take a week. On November 2, the jury deliberated for forty-five minutes and reached their verdict: guilty of murder, treason, and inciting slave insurrection. The South rejoiced in Brown’s execution. But hanging was not the end of John Brown; it was the beginning. Throughout the North, church bells tolled for him. In Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau proclaimed, “Some 1800 years ago, Christ was crucified. This morning, Captain Brown was hung. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.” “
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/description.html
http://antislavery.eserver.org/poetry/john-brown-poetry
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html
John Brown’s backers:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/description.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/peopleevents/pande06.html
http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2009/09/the-last-days-of-john-brown-the-secret-six.html
“John Brown has often come down to us as a lone nut, bent on an suicidal mission, but this is far from the truth. Brown was part of a larger movement to free slaves that grew with passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which required the return of escaped slaves to their masters with all its potential for torture and death at their hands) and the large Underground Railroad movement. It’s little understood that Brown was intimate with northern politicians, industrialists, ministers, and folks from all walks of life, including the leading intellectuals of the era – the Transcendentalists.”