re: #154 6pat6

Trade between the States was a huge issue, as the South had seen the North as being given preferential treatment by the Federal Government. Slavery was NEVER a primary issue.

The entire coalition of state governments that formed the Confederacy were slave states, and advocates of pushing the practice of slavery into the new territories.

The use of slaves was necessary for the economies of these states. To ensure the continuation of the practice they needed control of the Federal government, especially the Supreme Court. The new territories not being slave states gave those newly formed states no reason to enter into a coalition with slave holding states.

That the political bloc formed by these states had other political agendas isn’t deniable. That they used slavery as their wedge issue isn’t either. With no slavery, there was no southern Democratic Party capable of pursuing their agenda in the White House and Supreme Court. With the North’s reaction to Kansas-Nebraska and the nations subsequent election of Lincoln, they knew they were relegated to a permanent minority in the government. That was what caused them to raise their army. For them, democracy was no longer an option in pushing their political goals forward.

Many Americans agreed with them on tariff issues, and some of their views on the role government, but in the end it didn’t matter. Slavery was both too divisive and immoral for too many to ever accept, and too useful a geopolitical tool for forcing their cooperation between slave states by the southern Democrats to ever consider giving it up.

Ultimately, if there were no slavery, there never would have been a Civil War as it happened. Slavery stopped southern ideology from spreading to non-slave states, and that ideology could not be divested from slavery because it was necessary to the power of the Democratic parties establishment in slave states.