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I acknowledge the constitutional rights of the States — not grudgingly, but fairly and fully, and I WILL GIVE THEM ANY LEGISLATION FOR RECLAIMING THEIR FUGITIVE SLAVES.” Abraham Lincoln

That is the Peoria Speech of 1854. It was only what your side says the Constitution requires. You made it sound like it was something Lincoln was offering in 1860-1 to keep the slave states in the Union. Deceptive.

Weak argument and not what Lincoln himself said....slavery was much safer IN the Union than outside of it.

Some in the South thought that way as well. But the rabid secessionists thought and said otherwise. They saw a direct threat from Northern abolitionists and believed that slavery would only be secure if they had their own country.

No their interests would not have been different. Their economy was geared toward producing cash crops for export in exchange for manufactured goods. Low tariffs suited them.

That was because slaveowning and cotton growing were regarded as the way to wealth in the Deep South. Without slavery, ambitious Southerners would have sought other ways to wealth. That is sort of what Diogenes Lamp is always saying, though he thinks it would have happened even with slavery. Manufacturers in Virginia and Tennessee sought to industrialize and welcomed tariffs. Without slavery, many further South would have done the same.

No country is going to tolerate another country holding a fortress in the middle of one of its principle harbors.

Enclaves and exclaves are an established part of international law - Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Macao, Goa, West Berlin. How countries deal with them will vary depending on how much they care about peace. A new nation would do well to proceed cautiously.

Oh, FYI, the Brits did not evacuate those forts until after the war of 1812. That was part of the peace treaty so no, it was not resolved peacefully. It took another war before it was resolved.

Oh, FYI, Jay's Treaty. Look it up.

Only a few ratified because....get this.....the Southern states TURNED IT DOWN. It was a moot point after that. There’s no doubt it would have passed had the Southern states agreed to it.

Maybe, maybe not. The Corwin Amendment was a last ditch effort to rally unionists in the South to turn back secession. Whether it would really have gone through is hard to say. I can't see the Northern tier of states ratifying. The ratification process could well have torn the country and the Republican party apart.

Any amendment could be changed by a future amendment. There’s no such thing as an unamendable amendment.

That is what I meant by saying that it was problematic.

I say that most people at the time understood that slavery was going to die out eventually just as it had in the Northern states and just as it had in other parts of the Western world throughout the 19th century.

Wishful thinking. If there was widespread acceptance that slavery was dying out there would have been no secession and no war. Some slaveowners may have had a feeling that in God's Own good time, slavery would do its work and be replaced with something else, but there was little serious contemplation of what would come next.

South Carolina Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett had estimated that of the $927,000,000 collected in duties between 1791 and 1845, the South had paid $711,200,000, and the North $216,000,000.

More B.S.

Look at our favorite graph:

The North had a larger population and could import more. Therefore the taxes were collected in New York and other Northern ports. Some of that reflects goods eventually destined to Southern buyers, but most of it doesn't.

In a letter to the Carolina Times in 1857, Representative Laurence Keitt wrote, “I believe that the safety of the South is only in herself.”

Good example of what I was saying above. Keitt refers to the "abolitionist flood" at the beginning of the quote. He believed that his state and the basis of its economy and society - slavery - would be safer outside the Union than inside. That he was wrong, doesn't mean that he didn't think that way.

That is the Peoria Speech of 1854. It was only what your side says the Constitution requires. You made it sound like it was something Lincoln was offering in 1860-1 to keep the slave states in the Union. Deceptive.

No not deceptive. Those are HIS WORDS. He made it quite clear he was willing to not only support express protections of slavery via a constitutional amendment, but he was also willing to strengthen fugitive slave laws. He never recanted or changed his position on the fugitive slave laws.

Some in the South thought that way as well. But the rabid secessionists thought and said otherwise. They saw a direct threat from Northern abolitionists and believed that slavery would only be secure if they had their own country.

That’s debatable based on who is or is not considered a “rabid secessionist”. There were some who supported secession based on the economics alone. There were some who did think as you suggest. There were some who thought both. The Southern states were not a monolith.

That was because slaveowning and cotton growing were regarded as the way to wealth in the Deep South. Without slavery, ambitious Southerners would have sought other ways to wealth. That is sort of what Diogenes Lamp is always saying, though he thinks it would have happened even with slavery. Manufacturers in Virginia and Tennessee sought to industrialize and welcomed tariffs. Without slavery, many further South would have done the same.

They were. The point I’ve made though is that cotton could be produced without slavery - as evidenced by the fact that cotton production did not stop when slavery ended. Take that factor out and the economic interests of the Southern states would have been the same. Eventually, yes industrialization would have come even to the Deep South and yes it was already happening in the Upper South. For that time though, the economic interests of the Southern states lay in low tariffs. Being Jeffersonian Democrats they always believed in limited government and balanced budgets. It is no coincidence that that is still the dominant political philosophy in the Southern states today. Southerners have never liked big government.

Enclaves and exclaves are an established part of international law - Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Macao, Goa, West Berlin. How countries deal with them will vary depending on how much they care about peace. A new nation would do well to proceed cautiously.

Nobody would have tolerated another country holding a fortress in the middle of one of their biggest harbors.

Oh, FYI, Jay’s Treaty. Look it up.

Oh I’ve read about it. You realizing the Brits did not relinquish all the forts on US territory they held until after the war of 1812 right? This is a sidetrack anyway.

Maybe, maybe not. The Corwin Amendment was a last ditch effort to rally unionists in the South to turn back secession. Whether it would really have gone through is hard to say. I can’t see the Northern tier of states ratifying. The ratification process could well have torn the country and the Republican party apart.

No it wouldn’t have torn the Republican Party apart and it would have easily passed in enough Northern states. There was pitifully little support for abolition at that time. The politicians who campaigned on it lost with very very little support and most of the major papers were not in favor of abolition at all.

Wishful thinking. If there was widespread acceptance that slavery was dying out there would have been no secession and no war. Some slaveowners may have had a feeling that in God’s Own good time, slavery would do its work and be replaced with something else, but there was little serious contemplation of what would come next.

No. Accurate thinking. What is inaccurate is to claim that but for slavery there would have been no secession and no war. They Southern states could have had slavery effectively forever and turned it down. Neither they nor the Northern states were fighting over slavery. Both made that quite clear. Revisionists came along after the fact and tried to claim that it was “all about slavery” despite both sides saying it was not. The end of slavery was not some pure theoretical idea. That had been happening in the Northern states and happened in the British Empire already by the time of secession. Southerners had seen it gradually going extinct in other European colonial empires and in some independent countries in Latin and South America. They well understood what was happening in the world.

The North had a larger population and could import more. Therefore the taxes were collected in New York and other Northern ports. Some of that reflects goods eventually destined to Southern buyers, but most of it doesn’t.

Now this is truly laughable BS. Where the goods land is IRRELEVANT. The owner of the goods pays the tariff, not the port. Who eventually buys the goods be they in the North or the South is likewise IRRELEVANT. The owner of the goods is going to have to raise prices due to the tariff and that is going to eat into his sales. The importers of the time were the exporters. Cash crops were paid for with manufactured goods. The owners of both the crops and thus the manufactured goods were overwhelmingly, Southerners. If they couldn’t sell as many foreign manufactured goods, then their customers over in Europe would have to either pay cash which they usually didn’t have or they were going to have to buy less cotton. High tariffs are extremely damaging to those engaged in import-export which the South was.

Good example of what I was saying above. Keitt refers to the “abolitionist flood” at the beginning of the quote. He believed that his state and the basis of its economy and society - slavery - would be safer outside the Union than inside. That he was wrong, doesn’t mean that he didn’t think that way.

Keitt said he would support secession on the economic basis alone. He was far from alone in the South in thinking that.

The North had a larger population and could import more.

Here I see that cognitive dissonance again. The people with money could import. The people without money, no matter how numerous they were, could not import.

The money to import was created by the South. The South could import 75% of all the merchandise from Europe. The North could import 25% of the merchandise from Europe. The North's population is irrelevant to who owned the money. The South owned the bulk of the money, the North did not.

Now the North was controlling the South's money, and they were taking their vigorish from it, but if things were allowed to seek their natural level instead of the North being propped up by government favor, the South would have ended up with 75% of all the European imports and trade.

This is what the war was about. The war was about the South's money and the European trade. Slavery was just a "SQUIRREL!" issue.