I will say that the secession began with Lincoln's election, before he ever took office, which does add to the slavery indictment.

But...the shooting started over what most shooting starts over - land. If President Davis and Governor Pickens had said "Okay, you keep that fort out in our harbor. We'll even make money selling them supplies", there wouldn't have been much Lincoln could have done about it. After all, in his inaugural speech he had said flat-out that he wouldn't fire the first shot. Of course he was too canny and they were too gullible and hotheaded for them to think of that possibility, so they fired the first shot and Lincoln got his war. I'm not condemning him for that - he felt that the Union had to be preserved at all costs.

On the other hand, the colonials managed to wait until the British fired the first shot, so they were sure they had the moral high ground. After all the complaints from 1763 to 1774, the taxes and opressions, the first shot of the Revolution was fired over the question of...Gun Control!:arrgh!:

Well Steve - your right. But had the SC hotheads thought for just a minute - the blowing of the powder keg could have been averted. The fear was that with an "abolitionist" president, it was only a matter of time before abolition was law. However, the reality was that abolition would have taken MASSIVE amounts of time and money to make happen - and there was no good way for the North to push for it.

Sure, they had a moral stance - but lets play hypotheticals for a moment here - even if Congress passed (with the South fighting tooth and nail against it) an abolition law, and Lincoln had signed it, what would the slaves have done? The Federal government would have suddenly mandated what would have amounted to a humanitarian crises on a scale never seen before at that time. Every former slave - free - but without any possessions, money, education or ability to secure the necessities of life. Combined with the existant power structure in the Southern states, it isn't hard to see that the suddenly freed slave would have little to no hope of long term survival - meaning the North would create a situation where it would be inundated with all the freed slaves - a refugee crisis. That would have been the last thing the North would have wanted.

Unfortunately, with the 40+ years of "north vs south" interest butting heads, the politico's had made a cardinal mistake. They believed their own rhetoric - that if the "abolitionist" was elected president, it would be the "straw that broke the camel's back. And so, when Lincoln was elected, they jumped without even thinking about the reality of the situation.

Another block to instant abolition would have been Jefferson's Conundrum. Some modern folks like to accuse TJ of being two-faced and hypocritical, but the reality was that he was conflicted. He wanted at various times to free the slaves in Virginia, but even with his own slaves he realized that most of them had no real skills. The law in Virginia was that any freed slave had to leave the state within one year. Jefferson recognized that his "people" could very well starve, as they had no qualifications for jobs in the North and no plantation owner was going to hire someone to the job his own "people" could do for free.

It was the same in 1860. Freeing the slaves was a noble idea, but they all had to be trained to do other jobs, or the owners had to be trained to pay the workers for the effort they were getting for nothing; plus the landholders would have to be recompensed for lost labor, just to stay competetive with their northern counterparts. In short, it was going to take time. Lincoln was willing to spend that time and effort, if for no other reason than to keep the economy stable.

What it really would have taken was for everyone to sit down and discuss things rationally, and that almost never happens - even here.:sunny:

Jefferson believed that with the rebellions in Haiti things had gone to far; there could be no emancipation in America without either repatriation to Africa or a Black vs White civil war.

Agree with the politics or not, I think Tom and Abe would have both cheered the 2008 election, just for what it meant to their own histories.

Very educational post.
I learned quite a-bit here.