"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message link.net...
"N2EY" wrote:

When? Check a map of 1860. There were 19 slave states,
of which 4 stayed in the Union. Delaware was a slave state
but it did not secede.


Depends on the definition of a slave state, I guess. There were 18 Union
States and 11 Confederate States. The three border states did not side with
either and four of the slave states stayed in the Union.

You're forgetting at least two states. There were 34 in 1861, but
18+11+3 = 32

Let's look at the states/commonwealths as they were in 1861:

Confederate states (formally declared secession, all slave states): 11
(VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, TN, AL, MS, LA, AR, TX)

Union states that did not allow slavery: 19 (ME, VT, NH, MA, RI, CT,
NY, NJ, PA, OH, IN, IL, MI, WS, IA, MN, KS, OR, CA)

Slave states that did not secede: 4 (KY, MO, DE, MD)

West Virginia was admitted as a Union state in 1863 by breaking away
from the rest of Virginia. "Mountaineers Are Always Free!"

Even if you believe
the three border states, and all of the Union States (including the four
slave states), would have voted to end slavery, the Union did not have
enough numbers to abolish slavery in 1860 had the South not seceded-
remember, it takes 2/3rds of the Congress to pass an amendment.

Check your math, Dwight. 23/34 = 67.64..% - more than the 2/3 needed.
It would have taken 23 states to pass such an amendment. 19 nonslave
Union states plus only 4 others would have been enough - and that's
without West Virginia.

Since
slavery was not threatened had the South remained in the Union, slavery
obviously did not cause them to secede.

But slavery *was* threatened, because the trend was clear to see. As
the West and Midwest developed, more and more free states would be
added. Many of the border states, like Delaware, had a low and
decreasing percentage of slaves and
slaveholders, so soon they would become de facto free states. (1860
census shows Delaware having a total population of 112,216, of which
1,798 were slaves. That's 1.6%.)

In other words, the Civil War was
not about slavery until the Union (then and now) decided to make it so.
Whatever, it is certainly not what the South fought for.

Then what *was* the South fighting for? What rights did the 11 states
cherish so greatly that they would secede and fight a war to keep
them?

The Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1863. It legally
freed most (but not all) of the slaves.

It freed only the slave in states "now in rebellion against the United
States" and listed the specific states. It did not apply to slaves in any
state that was not part of the Confederacy (it did not apply to slaves in
the Union States).

No argument there - but where were most of the slaves? In the
Confederate states!

The 13th amendment, passed after the war, ended slavery
throughout the United States. Read how the 13th amendment was passed by
Congress and later ratified.

Do you have a problem with how it was done?

Consider this: According to the 1860 census, the *MAJORITY* of the
population in South Carolina and Mississippi were slaves. Do you think
the state governments of those states accurately represented their
population's views on the issue?

Which states were they? Slavery was abolished in
the North by 1804. In many northern states it was
abolished before the Constitution was written.

So that makes their accountability less?

YES! Because:

A) they recognized the inherent contradiction of proclaiming "all men
are created equal" and then allowing some men to own others.

B) they did not have to be forced to abolish it from outside - they
did it on their own.

C) they did it *generations* before 1861.

In essence, you're arguing that
the Northern states are somehow better only because slavery ended there
before it ended in the South.

Is that not correct? I'm not saying the northern states were without
any guilt or accountability, or that they never had any slaves. The
northern states, by compromising with evil, enabled the slave states
to flourish. If someone does business with a thief, they become an
accessory to the theft, and share the guilt.

It seems like you are arguing that all states are equally guilty,
regardless of when they abolished slavery or how the abolition
happened. Somehow I find that hard to accept.

Here's what I learned about the War Between the States:

Fine. Since there are other messages to respond to, I'll ignore the
remaining nine paragraphs.

Was anything in those nine paragraphs incorrect?

And I'll repeat the key question:

What rights did the 11 states cherish so greatly that they would
secede and fight a war to keep them?

73 de Jim, N2EY