quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Geoschmo,
Abraham Lincoln, and his platform included the abolition of slavery. As you have noted already, this is the one issue that would have defused the whole situation if it was removed. Most Northerners were determined to end it, and the most Southerners were determined not to let it be ended.
I was going to post something earlier but the darn thing crashed and I lost everything I had typed after being close to completion but I feel a need to correct you here.
Lincoln did NOT run on an Abolition platform. He and many others felt that Abolition, the belief that all slavery everywhere should be abolited by law in all states and territories in the US, was unconstitutional... as it was due to the fact that it was protected in the Constitution in several locations. This meant that nothing short of an amendment could end slavery and of course the Southern states while lower in population in the house still had equal numbers in the Senate.
This brings us to Lincolns party platform. His was the Free Soil Platform. Under this slavery would be Banned from the Territories and not the States. In this way they hoped to lead slavery to a "natural death" as eventually the territories became free states and eventually would go to the Senate and gain a majority capable of passing an amendment. In point of fact the idea that such a law as Free Soil would be passed was rather slim and remote based on the fact that the South DID have a strong holding in the Senate. The Civil War was largely due to paranoia.
And just to be complete here the spark that set it all off was the Mexican American War and the new territories it brought into the US, which rendered all the old half measures and bargains on how to divide the US between slave and free mute and obsolete as they didn't deal with that area.
[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 15 September 2001).]
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