It has certainly led me astray from the conventional wisdom, which I now realize has just been propaganda. The things I have uncovered have given me a clearer picture of what occurred, and the more I see of it, the more distasteful it becomes.
Money and power. It always boils down to who controls the money and the power. So long as Washington and New York were able to control the money and the power, they would tolerate slavery indefinitely, but when their ability to control the money and the power was threatened, they ruthlessly destroyed their economic competitors.
The "Empire State" maintained their Empire.
DiogenesLamp: "It has certainly led me astray from the conventional wisdom, which I now realize has just been propaganda."
But Lost Causer mythology is the very definition of the word "propaganda".
It's total nonsense, invented after the fact to obscure and revise the historical realities.
DiogenesLamp: "Money and power.
It always boils down to who controls the money and the power.
So long as Washington and New York were able to control the money and the power, they would tolerate slavery indefinitely."
Certainly "money and power" motivated Deep South Slave-Power Fire Eater Democrats to declare their secession and war on the United States.
And it may have motivated Northern big-city Democrats to temporarily switch sides and support the Union.
However, rural & small town Republicans were motivated by something different.
Yes, it's too much to say that most Republicans in 1860 were motivated by abolitionism, but they all understood that slavery was morally wrong and should be limited as much as possible, under the circumstances.
That began in the Western territories.
History is very clear on this.
DiogenesLamp: "The "Empire State" maintained their Empire."
Before 1860, like Pennsylvania, New Yorkers almost always voted with Southerners for Democrats, except when Southerners themselves voted Whig -- as in 1840 Harrison and 1848 Taylor.
Only in 1856 did Upstate New Yorker Republicans come out in enough numbers to outvote Big City Democrats, thus turning New York "red" one cycle before Pennsylvania.
But after the Civil War in 1868 New Yorkers instantly flipped back into supporting their Southern Democrat allies.
In 1876 New York Democrats joined Southern Democrats in getting Union troops withdrawn from former Confederate states (thus clearing the way for Jim Crow) and in 1884 joined the South in electing a Democrat President, Grover Cleveland.
Point is: whatever you claim regarding "Northerners" may or may not be true, but relates only to Northern Democrats, political & economic allies of the Southern Slave-Power Democrats both before the Civil War and soon again after it.