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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.

FLT-bird: "Nobody would have tolerated another country holding a fortress in the middle of one of their biggest harbors."

Just so we're clear on this point: Charleston then as now was far from the South's biggest harbor.
Overall Charleston's 40,000 population ranked 22 among US cities in 1860.

Among Southern cities:

Baltimore was 5 times bigger than Charleston.
New Orleans and St. Louis were both 4 times bigger.
Louisville was almost twice Charleston's size.
Richmond & Mobile were both about the same size as Charleston.
Other Southern cities from Norfolk to Wilmington to Savanah, Mobile & New Orleans were all connected into the Southern railroad grid and could serve just as well as Charleston to handle Southern shipping needs.

So the idea constantly promoted by DiogenesLamp & others that Charleston was somehow unique & special is just fantasy except, of course, in the minds of Charlestonians.
They can certainly be forgiven for promoting their own city, but nobody else need buy it.

FLT-bird, you are a, not to be trusted, scoundrel. When you present the following as the words of Abraham Lincoln (and then double-down on it!)

“When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said the institution exists, and it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know what to do as to trhe existing institution. A system of gradual emancipation might well be adopted, and I will not undertake to judge our Southern friends for tardiness in this matter. 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

What you are butchering is the following excerpt from the Peoria Speech (a speech of 17,000 words that took three hours to deliver):

“Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters.

When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,---to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south.

When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.” A. Lincoln

FTL-bird, can you discern the differences?

I already provided this. We’re not going to play this little game of you demanding sources 10 times and me spending vast amounts of time trying to satisfy your endless demands.....which you will claim are not satisfied no matter how ironclad the sources I provide actually are. You want citations, references and sources? Go back and read.

We've established that Duncan Kenner went to Europe in 1865 authorized by Davis to promise that the CSA would abolish slavery in exchange for recognition from Britain and France. I pointed out that this wasn't Davis's idea, that Davis rejected the plan when it was first suggested to him, that he didn't involve the Confederate Congress, and that he waited until near the end of the war to agree to the plan and put it into effect.

You claim that it was Davis idea and that Davis had supported emancipation for some time. You have to either offer proof for that or stop saying it. And you haven't done so. Can we agree that you should stop saying it? I think you latch onto half-truths, see part is true, and don't bother to find out if the rest is true. But just because there's a fact in there somewhere doesn't mean the whole thing is true.

[Lincoln] never recanted or changed his position on the fugitive slave laws.

Of course he did. That was what the Emancipation Proclamation was about. If that's not enough, Congress repealed the Fugitive Slave Act on June 28, 1864, presumably with Lincoln's approval and signature.

There were some who supported secession based on the economics alone.

You must have seen the National Parks historian on C-Span 3 this weekend. He said secession was about economics. The economics of slavery. Slaves were worth millions, and slaveowners thought that those millions (and their own lives and well-being) were at risk.

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.

Even during the New Deal? Not likely. Jeffersonian Democracy had a lot to do with local elites opposing groups that challenged their power.

But back to the point under discussion. Deep South politicians had already been radicalized enough to think that cotton would provide everything they wanted. Politicians in Virginia and Tennessee tended to be more sensible and recognized that the "balanced economy" your source mentioned earlier was the way to go.

It's surprising that you think that Southern politicians were anticipating the end of slavery and thinking of what system of labor control would replace it, but they weren't so far-sighted as to recognize that providing raw materials for foreigners wouldn't serve as a permanent basis for a modern economy. I'm inclined to think that they weren't very farsighted on either issue, however much one wishes they were.

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.

Few Americans were in favor of abolition in 1860. But Northerners were as fed with what they saw as gutless surrenders to the South as Southern radicals were with what they understood as capitulations to the Yankees. So there was no guarantee that the Corwin Amendment would have gone through.

Look, 7 states had already left. They wouldn't be ratifying the amendment. It's likely that the US government wouldn't accept those secessions. It would still expect 7 ratifications to put the amendment through, and those amendments weren't coming.

I am really lousy at math, but I think that virtually every one of the remaining states would have to ratify for the amendment to go into effect. Maybe one or two could reject it, but not more than that. It would be different if those 7 states had not left the union or if they were to return to it, but barring that the Corwin Amendment was quite unlikely to be ratified.

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.

There is abundant evidence that secession was about slavery. So directly or indirectly, slavery was a factor in causing the war. I haven't seen serious claims that Northerners went to war to free the slaves, though as the war progressed it did free slaves. I wouldn't throw around the term "revisionist" though. That more accurately fits people who try to erase slavery from the history of the war.

The importers of the time were the exporters.

I see that you have been drinking Kool Aid with Diogenes. Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and Bob Iger head companies that bring a lot of dollars from exports to the US. But when you buy a Japanese radio or CD player, you pay the tariff on it yourself.

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

Just because somebody cuts up a quote and puts it on a website designed to make a particular point doesn't mean it corresponds to reality. Laurence Keitt clearly said exactly the opposite of what you claim:

"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." Taken from the Charleston, South Carolina, Courier, dated Dec. 22, 1860.

Or try this on for size:

Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on January 25, 1860: "African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism."

Later in the same speech he said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States."

If you come across a website full of half-truths and unsubstantiated claims, it's worthwhile to question some of the claims and look for evidence which supports (or refutes) those claims.

For the last few weekends, CSpan 3 has been showing a talk by Dwight Pitcaithley of the National Park Service talking about his book The US Constitution and Secession. Pitcaithley collected all of the various constitutional amendments designed to save the union that were proposed in Congress and in state conventions in the years leading up the the Civil War.

He shows that the vast majority of proposed amendments concerned slavery. A few were designed to provide a constitutional route to secession or to restructure the presidency as a multi-person executive. Only two proposed amendments had anything to do with tariffs.

If you want to understand what was on the country's mind a century and a half ago, those proposed amendments might be a good place to start. If you want to understand what Jefferson Davis thought, rather than speculate about his secret abolitionism, you might consider that the amendment that he wanted in order to save the union would have made slavery legal and protected in all the states.