Bubba Ho-Tep wrote:
“Gee, if only they’d actually mentioned the Morrill Tariff in their Declarations of Causes instead of constantly going on about slavery and the threat to it presented by the election of Lincoln, you might have a point.”
____________________________________________________________
Seven states had seceeded from the union before Lincoln was ever President: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
Lincoln did not favor immediate abolition of slavery, equal rights for blacks or even co-existance with them. He held the same predjudices and false ideas about them as others of his day. His “Emancipation Proclamation” was simply a ploy to silence his critics and gain favor for his agenda. It only freed slaves in the Confederate States, leaving the slave-holding border states to continue to freely practice it.
The delicate balance of power between the “slave-holding states” and the “non-slave holding states” was the basis of the contention, not the right of either to exist.
Like I've said before, you guys bitch about Lincoln being a dictator, then you complain that he wasn't more dictatorial. No, Lincoln couldn't sign a paper and free all the slaves in the border states because those states weren't in rebellion and he didn't have the constitutional authority as commander in chief over them that he had over the confederate states. It would require a constitutional amendment to end slavery in non-rebelling states, and Lincoln repeatedly pressed for one, but Democrats in the House of Representatives consistently blocked him from getting the supermajority needed for passage and submission to the states. It was only after the November, 1864 election, which increased Republican numbers, that a few lame duck Democrats, suddenly worried about their legacy, switched their votes and allowed the 13th to pass.