certainly is, and until the 13th amendment was passed, Delaware was still a slave state.
The south largely seceded over trade policy. Slavery was a factor in that it kept cost down on raw materials which the southern growers sought to capitalize on by selling their products in Europe, but they couldn’t, because of trade policies enacted to protect and enrich northern industrialists. The North entered the war because of the secession. Slavery was not a factor for them except as it could be used strategically to cause problems in southern states. The winners write the histories, thus the civil war became the “war to end slavery”, which of course, it was not. It did, but that’s not why it was fought.
The trade policies which led to secession would still have been enacted without slavery. The same arguments that led to secession would still have taken place.
Some states even directly told us, in their articles of secession, that they were leaving the union in order to establish a nation that maintained slavery.
The Fugitive slave act of 1850 had more to do with driving a Political wedge Between the states than any trade deal ever did.
The Pinckney Gag rule had more to do with getting the Northern dough face Democrats out of office to be replaced by Radical Republicans than any trade deal.
The South had outsized political power from basically the beginning of the Republic until the Mid 1850’s. The second that there power became a true minority they took their ball and went home.
They did that to preserve the institution of slavery, because that was the basis for their entire economy.
Whoever told you that the major issue was trade with England was lying to you.
If anyone wants to learn the fascinating history of Congress leading up to the war I would suggest the very good but seriously dry book “The Field of Blood”
This is the book where I learned that the only Congressman killed by another Congressman in a duel is buried a couple of towns over
Libs here claimed the statues their tearing down was honoring those racist…but a man that is responsible for deaths of tens of millions of people is thought provocative.
So which is it? Thought provocative or moralizing em?
