Re: What did Lincoln and the Northern states do to the Constitution?
They claimed that “The Union” was irrevocable and perpetual; that slavery could be outlawed; that federal rights preempted states rights; that individual rights could be revoked by Executive Orders; and that the federal government was allowed to use an infinite level of violence and destruction to impose its will on any state that disagreed.
How many Southern states would have agreed to sign that Constitution? How many Northern states, for that matter?
Re: “I would instead ask what rational endpoint the Southern states envisioned for the war.”
Secession, or federal guarantees that slavery would be lawful within those states that chose to endorse it.
Re: “What was the alternative?
The alternative I suggested in my original post - the North could have purchased all slaves in the South and relocated all of them in the North. The cost would have been less than what the North paid for the War, and 700,000 young lives would have been preserved, and the economy of the South would not have been destroyed by war.
Re: “Is there something wrong with wanting to end such an evil institution as slavery?”
Nothing at all.
But there was something grotesquely wrong with waging 4 years of savage warfare against fellow Americans to make that happen.
The option to just let the South secede was another solution.
Or, creating and enforcing an international boycott of all slave produced goods was another option.
Instead, Lincoln chose total war, he chose total economic destruction of the South, and he chose to abandon millions of illiterate, impoverished former slaves to fend for themselves against Southerners who hated and feared them.
I'll grant you number one, but disagree on the rest. Lincoln knew that slavery could be ended only by Constitutional amendment. And when faced with the war that the South forced upon him, Lincoln won. What was he supposed to do?
How many Southern states would have agreed to sign that Constitution? How many Northern states, for that matter?
Yet ratify it they did.
Secession, or federal guarantees that slavery would be lawful within those states that chose to endorse it.
They had that.
The alternative I suggested in my original post - the North could have purchased all slaves in the South and relocated all of them in the North.
What makes you think the South would want to sell? Or are you suggesting, after complaining that Lincoln revoked individual rights, that Lincoln could have just ordered them to sell? Take away the slaves and forcibly remove them then who would work the fields or provide all the manual and domestic labor the South depended on? You scheme would be an economic death blow to the South.
But there was something grotesquely wrong with waging 4 years of savage warfare against fellow Americans to make that happen.
And waging four years of savage warfare to protect that institution? Nothing wrong with that?
You blame Lincoln for the entire war and ignore the fact that it was the South who initiated the war and the South was as eager for the conflict as you claim Lincoln was, if not more so.
The option to just let the South secede was another solution.
Not seceding was yet another option as well.
Or, creating and enforcing an international boycott of all slave produced goods was another option.
No it was not.
Instead, Lincoln chose total war, he chose total economic destruction of the South, and he chose to abandon millions of illiterate, impoverished former slaves to fend for themselves against Southerners who hated and feared them.
The South chose war. Your complaint seems to be that they lost.