[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Armistead

If we're not able to put ourselves into the culture and mindset of the time, we'll never understand it. Today historians and people debate, calling the other side false and claim facts as myths. Most important we must know slavery was economic wealth and we can understand the southern mind set better if we replace the word slavery with "economic wealth"

Which is why I directly quoted what they said, not someone's interpretation of it.

Many southern politicains made strong statements regarding tariffs, you'll find more facts simply searching "tariffs of the 1800's." Compare the number, you'll see the south paid the majority of tariffs and this money was used mostly to support northern industry, fishing, RR's, etc...

That's nice, but they said it was because of slavery. What that may or may not have entailed, it does not excuse Southern Apologists for saying it had nothing to do with slavery, or that slavery was a secondary issue.

As John Adams said during the Boston Massacre trial, "Facts are stubborn things." What one side or the other thinks or says, what they said is the bottom line, and you can read exactly what they said.

The big issue for the South was the loss of equal representation, they were already far behind in the electoral vote, with new states being free, they felt they would soon face economic ruin. Lincoln won, even though he wasn't even on the ballot in most southern states.

I don't know whether he was really excluded from Southern ballots or not, but if he wasn't, why not? The only logical explanation would be that the Southern legislatures had already decided that would be the case, which means that they were against Lincoln from the start. Why?

Four years earlier, in 1856, Republican candidate John C. Fremont recieved no votes at all in the South. Why? Because the Republican Party was created to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska act, which would repeal the Popular Sovereignty issue of the Missouri Compromise. Yes, the Southern States felt they were being cheated. They wanted a new Slave State to be created for every new Free State. They hated the fact that pretty much all the potential new States wanted nothing to do with slavery. Oh, there's that word again. So they solidly opposed any Republican as being an Abolitionist. They opposed Fremont in 1856, because of his party's attitude toward slavery. They opposed Lincoln in 1860 because of his party's attitued toward slavery. For them it was all about slavery. Yes, slavery was an economic issue, which made it also about economics, but it was also the major economic issue, if not the sole one.

When Lincoln won, his call for troops to invade the south nailed the coffin shut. Most felt only congress could do such. The remaining southern states refused to send troops called upon, calling this action illegal, then one by one they left the union and the rest is history.

What? Lincoln didn't call for any troops when he won. He had no authority at all. He didn't call for troops to put down the rebellion (of course Southerners called it "invading the South") until they opened fire on Fort Sumter. But the Southern States started seceding long before Lincoln took office; in fact shortly after his election. They refused to be in the same country with him, long before his call for troops and long before the beginning of what they called "Lincoln's War". They seceded as soon as he was elected. Why? Because he was a Republican, and the Republican Party was the Abolition Party. It was, as they said when they did it, because of Slavery.

Slavery wasn't a southern institution, it was a US one that existed since our conception, there was a wrong and right way to deal with it.

Yes it was, and when the Framers of the Constitution tried to limit it, the Southern States said that any limiting of Slavery would lead to them refusing to sign. They wanted to have slaves be counted toward their representation in Congress, even though they refused to count said slaves as anything other than property. They forced the Northern States to bow to their will, since everyone was sure that, as Ben Franklin had said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, "If we don't all hang together we will most assuredly all hang separately." The Southern States forced the rest to bow to their will on that point, and we ended up with the highly controversial '3/5 Rule'. All the struggle from that point on was directly concerned with slavery.

Yes there was a wrong way and a right way to deal with it. Secession just because a guy you didn't like got elected was definitely the wrong way.