Every slave state had been part of the United States and legally owned slaves from 1776-1861. Four of them were prevented from seceeding, that's all. The war was fought between the seceeding slave states and the free states. The border states, while not a part of the Confederacy, were slave states, not free states and not culturally part of the "north."
The real issue was sectionalism. The south felt alienated from the federal system by the north. They felt like colonies and that the north was able to manipulate the law through Congress due to their larger population. This sentiment is rampant throughout the secession papers of South Carolina. Northern lawmakers agitated the southerners by enacting protectionist legislation that drove down the profitability of cotton to the benefit of northern manufactured goods. With all this in mind the southern states sought to reclaim the powers they delegated to the federal government upon entering the Union.
Secession http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm Hon. Horace Greeley: Dear Sir. I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Yours, A. Lincoln. The South dissolved its relation with the Union and military force was brought against her. The garrison at Fort Sumter was an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation and an act of war. http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/secessioncrisis/601220.html Meeting in Charleston on December 20, that convention passed unanimously the first ordinance of secession, which stated, "We, the people of the State of South Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain... that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'the United States of America,' is hereby dissolved," making South Carolina a free and independent country. The people of Charleston went wild with joy amid fireworks, booming cannon, and ringing bells. Within six weeks, six other states in the Deep South followed South Carolina out of the Union. Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote, "We are divorced, North and South, because we have hated each other so." http://sciway3.net/clark/civilwar/sumpter.html The shot first fired was not when you think! The first action considered as an Act of War by the Southern states occurred when Federal authorities sent supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter during the Buchanan administration, before Lincoln was even inaugurated! On 9 January 1861, the steamer Star of the West was fired upon by order of South Carolina state officials and forced to withdraw! This was three months before the generally accepted date that Sumter was attacked (Andrews page 271). Bombardment of Fort Sumter, 12 April 1861. It may surprise you to learn that Fort Sumter was unoccupied until shortly before this act. As war vessels, supplies, and men were on the way from New York, President Davis accepted this proceeding as an act of war. Accordingly, Major Robert Anderson, in command of Fort Sumter, was called upon to surrender the fort he had so recently occupied. He refused, and on the 12th of April, 1861, the date of the arrival off Charleston of the Federal fleet, Sumter was bombarded by General P. G. T. Beauregard, in command of the Confederate forces at that point. On the following day, Anderson, after a gallant but hopeless defense, surrendered, and his small command of less than 100 men was permitted to march out with the honors of war. The Federal fleet outside Charleston harbor took no part in the combat.
Are you seriously trying to say that slavery was not an issue at all? What distinguished the "secional" nature of the south? An agricultural economy based upon slave labor, that's what.
I already stated that secession was the reason that the Union went to war in 1861. The question you asked was, "Are you saying the Republicans of that era didn't use slavery as an emotional device to obfuscate the real issue". I'm saying no. Slavery was the primary issue between the northern and southern states for decades before any state seceeded.
No I said that it was not the only or the main issue as BB has contended. Taxes and tariffs played an equally large role.
Although slavery was not the singular cause of the Civil War, it was at the heart of the sectional impasse between North and South in 1860. It was the multitude of differences arising from the slavery issue that impelled the Southern states to secede. Taxes, tarriffs, and new western states are among them.
