campaignPete R-CT:
"Suddenly in the 50’s, the tide turned almost overnite and the slave power went from total rule, all branches of the FED govt ... to losing their power ... thus when out of power, the plea is for state’s rights." That's not the truth, it's just neo-Confederate propaganda.
The great Southern Slave Power did not, repeat not lose power in the 1850s.
Indeed, it's power over the Republic was never greater.
This is demonstrated in any number of events, including:
- The Compromise of 1850, by which California became a free state, but also the Federal government took direct responsibility for enforcing Federal Fugitive Slave Laws.
This Compromise makes a total lie of secessionist claims that Northern states had nullified the Constitution's Fugitive Slave provisions.
- The 1856 election, with solid Slave-Power support, of Dough-faced Northern Democrat James Buchanan as President.
Buchanan's most important cabinet posts went to Southerners.
Buchanan immediately supported and lobbied the Supreme Court for its 1857 Dred-Scott decision.
- The Slave Power dominated Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scott decision which, in effect, made slavery legal in every state, regardless of what a state itself might decide.
This more than anything else outraged Northerners who did not want the Federal Government trampling their state's rights.
- As late as 1859 Southern Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and in 1860 still controlled the US Senate.
- In 1859, the immediate Federal response to, arrest, trial and hanging of anti-slavery insurrectionist John Brown demonstrated that whatever some Northerners might feel about it, the government was in firm Slave-Power control.
Yes, from the beginning the whole thrust of Confederate and neo-Confederate propaganda has been to turn the actual situation upside down -- making it look as if the Slave Power was a victim of Federal over-reaching "usurpations" and "oppression".
The truth is just the opposite -- the Slave Power ran the Federal Government, from the Founding of the Republic all the way until its secession beginning in December 1860.