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What finally ended it in 1860 was fears by Deep South Fire Eaters, that Northern abolitionists would attack and destroy the "peculiar institution" on which their lives depended.

They were absolutely correct. I'm convinced Lincoln and his inner circle of Illinois and Massachusetts pols, and certain New York businessmen like J.M. Forbes and Lewis Tappan (whose names, still famous today, prove their establishmentarian impulses and dynastic ambitions), came to office with a secret war policy, which was presented back-to-front as opposition to the extension of slavery, but was instead a determination to destroy the moneyed classes of the South economically and politically .... and, as it turned out, physically as well. Which worked for the Lincoln party. (Nothing wrong with being flexible! -- </s>)

That is the point. The Republican Party's real platform was to attack and totally destroy the South, take the Government into receivership, and seize control, total control, of the country's fortunes, turning the federal republic of enumerated powers into an autocratic, centralized and illimitable one: Hamilton's old ideal of "Empire without the King".

Or do you think it all happened by accident, as a series of extemporaneous responses to unforeseen events: that the Republic "lurched uncontrollably" </off John McLaughlin> into a centralized nation-state run by a delimited "Who's Who" of elite politicians and businessmen, into whose phalanx-like Gilded-Age ranks nobody managed to break until Grover Cleveland won the White House?

But abolitionism did not begin with Congregationalists ministers in the mid-1600s.

It wasn't about abolition. It was about what Yankees thought about Southerners, which they demonstrated beyond recall -- "there are certain things that, once they are said, nothing else need be said" (said my old boss in 1973) -- when John Brown was executed in 1859, and Massachusetts Gov. Nathaniel Banks responded by standing up six regiments, fully armed and equipped for the field, ready to go to Virginia to put down the South.

Abolitionism began centuries earlier..... So, abolitionism arrived in America before the first slaves did.

Not really. It was never a political issue before Northern apologists for the Tariff of Abominations (1828) started reaching around for clubs with which to beat the South and divide the West from the South, the better to isolate the South and subdue it, and chain its economy to Henry Clay's American System and its Yankeephile taxes, tariffs, and capital-infrastructure subsidies.

I'm convinced Lincoln and his inner circle of Illinois and Massachusetts pols, and certain New York businessmen like J.M. Forbes and Lewis Tappan (whose names, still famous today, prove their establishmentarian impulses and dynastic ambitions), came to office with a secret war policy, which was presented back-to-front as opposition to the extension of slavery, but was instead a determination to destroy the moneyed classes of the South economically and politically .... and, as it turned out, physically as well. Which worked for the Lincoln party.

Something like the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society bent on secession and the expansion of slave territory that actually existed? Or the Order of the Lone Star, another pro-slavery expansionist group that actually existed?

There were all sorts of underground groups at the time. I suppose just about everybody was conspiring with somebody about something, but your imaginary conspiracy doesn't really work. The concern at the time was standing up to the "slave power" not crushing the South. That would have been more than anyone could have conceived of at the time.

Forbes and Tappan were businessmen and supporters of abolition, but crushing the moneyed classes of the South would have been biting off too much for them to chew (The Forbeses had their hands full investing in the West). Illinois politicians of the day, most of whom weren't passionately anti-slavery or anti-South, still had a feeling of being Western outsiders or outliers, poor cousins of the Easterners. They weren't ready to remake the country even if they wanted to. Massachusetts politicians weren't enthusiastic about Lincoln or their Illinois peers. In general, Eastern politicians looked down on the Westerners. It would have taken a lot to bring the two groups together in some secret plot.

I guess the idea is "if something happened somebody somewhere had to have planned for it to happen and made it happen." The problem is that the trajectory that looks obvious, natural, or unavoidable now was anything but at the time. There were too many steps involved in getting where we eventually went, and too many things that had to happen in a certain way and could otherwise have happened very differently. The result that looks "inevitable" now often is one that was unthinkable before hand.

Also, it's a very victim-based thing. One side is always the passive object of somebody else's evil scheming. Always making one's own group out to be weak and victimized is actually quite demeaning to one's group. "Stab in the back" thinking is something you really ought to examine carefully before accepting. It means ignoring the historical strengths and weaknesses of one's own group and avoiding one's group's own responsibility for what eventually happened.

I thought the Compromise of 1820 happened before that. And the earlier compromises in the Constitution. Pretty clearly it was an issue before 1828. But look at your date. By 1828 it was clear that slavery was an institution that was on its way out in the North, and growing in the South so it was inevitable that abolition would become a sectional issue after 1830 in a way that it may not have been before.

Clay was himself a Southerner and Westerner. He had plenty of supporters in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana. There were also manufacturers elsewhere in the South who supported his program. And what was slavery anyway but the very greatest of subsidies?

Most of the opposition for the Tariff of Abominations came from the South, but most of the support came from the Middle Atlantic and Western states (New England wasn't a main supporter of that tariff). It's clear, though, that the West wasn't always opposed to protective tariffs -- or infrastructure subsidies (that didn't involve unpaid slave labor).

lentulusgracchus: "I'm convinced Lincoln and his inner circle... came to office with a secret war policy, which was presented back-to-front as opposition to the extension of slavery, but was instead a determination to destroy the moneyed classes of the South economically and politically... "

Nothing in the 1860 Republican platform or other documentary evidence remotely supports your opinion.
In actual history, Deep South secessionists -- aka "Fire Eaters" -- pushed and lead every step of the way from peace in 1860 to formally declaring war on May 6, 1861.

Both outgoing "Dough-Faced" Democrat President Buchanan and incoming "Black Republican" President Lincoln did nothing more than respond to the Confederacy's increasingly aggressive acts of rebellion or war against the United States.

Indeed, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address directly spoke to secessionists, telling them they could not have a war, unless they themselves started it.
So they very soon did.

lentulusgracchus: "The Republican Party's real platform was to attack and totally destroy the South, take the Government into receivership, and seize control, total control, of the country's fortunes, turning the federal republic of enumerated powers into an autocratic, centralized and illimitable one: Hamilton's old ideal of "Empire without the King"."

Actually, the real 1860 Republican platform can be found here.
If you study it carefully, you'll find it calls for nothing you've claimed, but does support the right of territories to restrict slavery from areas where it wasn't wanted.

For examples, items 7 & 8 say:

"SEVENTH. That the new dogma that the constitution of its own force carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with cotemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent, is revolutionary in its tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

EIGHTH. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; that as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no "person should be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States."

lentulusgracchus: "Or do you think it all happened by accident, as a series of extemporaneous responses to unforeseen events: that the Republic "lurched uncontrollably"... into a centralized nation-state run by a delimited "Who's Who" of elite politicians and businessmen, into whose phalanx-like Gilded-Age ranks nobody managed to break until Grover Cleveland won the White House?"

First of all, Southern Democrat President Andrew Johnson served from 1865 to 1869, and while his record is mixed, it was generally favorable to the South.
Eight years later -- 1876 -- the election between Hayes and Tilden was so close, political deals were made which further reduced restrictions on the South -- eliminating "Black Republican" elected officials.
In 1880 another very close vote went to Republican Garfield, because he carried New York.
Finally in 1884, Democrats nominated the Governor of New York, which gave them enough electors to win the election.

In Congress, Democrats first won the House of Representatives in 1874 and by 1878 controlled both House and Senate.
And just as before the Civil War, the majority of Democrats were Southerners.
After 1874 there were very few years when Democrats did not control one or both Houses of Congress.

So all your language about "Republic "lurched uncontrollably"... into a centralized nation-state run by a delimited "Who's Who" of elite politicians," is more hyperbole than any serious analysis.

lentulusgracchus: "It wasn't about abolition.
It was about what Yankees thought about Southerners, which they demonstrated beyond recall... when John Brown was executed in 1859, and Massachusetts Gov. Nathaniel Banks responded..."

Of course, John Brown was all about abolition, nothing else.
And before the Civil War, many Northern states often voted for Southern Dominated Democrats, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and New Jersey, so Northerners were far from hostile towards the South.
What Northerners feared and didn't want was Southern slavery imposed by Federal laws on Northern territories or states.
But that is exactly what the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scot decision implied.

lentulusgracchus: "It was never a political issue before Northern apologists for the Tariff of Abominations (1828) started reaching around for clubs with which to beat the South and divide the West from the South..."

No, slavery was an issue in both the Continental Congress' Declaration of Independence (see Jefferson's deleted words on that) and in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
In the earliest Congresses slavery was seldom mentioned, because the South imposed a "gag rule" to forbid that.
But the interests of Slave and Free States clashed most importantly in admitting new states -- one slave for every free state.

lentulusgracchus: "...reaching around for clubs with which to beat the South and divide the West from the South, the better to isolate the South and subdue it..."

In real history, as opposed to Neo-Confederate myth-making, Democrats dominated all three branches of the Federal government from the Founding of the Republic in 1788 until Secession in 1861.
And Democrats were always dominated by Southerners.