El Duderino said:
That just wouldn´t have worked... had he sayed goodbye then new states founded in the west could have also become slave states... Lincoln offered the south that they could keep slavery (at least for a while) but no new states where alowed to have it... the south didn´t want that though... it was a fight over principles, eather all men are created equal or not... if that principle is not worht fighting for I don´t know what is... |
Not quite. Lincoln was far from a believer in equality of the races.
And Lincoln said he was willing to sign an amendment being worked on by Congress that would enshrine slavery in the constitution of the US (ironically the 13th amendment). Slavery would've been made PERMANENT in the US via this amendment, yet the deep Southern states still seceded.
The deep south states seceded more so over issues of economics than slavery, the primary issue being tarrifs (and they way that the funds collected via these tariffs were used). Fighting almost erupted over the Tariff of Abominations in 1828, and it was obvious that conflict would arise over the Morrill Tariff of 1860, a tariff with rates even higher than those in 1828.
Despite this tariff, the states of the upper south still did not feel compelled to secede like the lower southern states. It wasn't until Lincoln refused to abandon Fort Sumter and began organizing military forces to take back the deep south that states like Virginia had had enough. Infringing upon a state's right to secede was the last straw, and they thus joined their brethren via secession.
The war was a matter of economics (particularly tariffs) and states rights (the right to secede from the federal government, and the right to nullify any law a state deemed unconstitutional, much like the issues surrounding the tariff controversies of 1832).
Slavery was well on it's way out by the 18th century. Virginia had been holding abolitionist talks in the State congress as early as 1853, and the US was one of the last major regions that still allowed slavery (England, France, and Spain had banned slavery years before hand). To say that slavery would have survived in the CSA for very long is untrue.
