Talk:Slave Power/Archive 1

Archive 1

3/5 rule?

Sorry I can't cite, but didn't the three-fifths compromise also come into the rhetoric around the "Slave power"? Northerners essentially argued that because Southern states' apportionment of Representatives and Electors were boosted by adding 3/5 of the slave population into the mix, the white Southern electorates were overrepresented and thus disproportionately powerful in the House and in Presidential elections. --Jfruh (talk) 16:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The 3/5ths rule was made in 1789, to prevent disproportionate representation of slave-holding states in the House of Representatives, but at that time there was no strong antagonism between North and South on the basis of slaveholding (slavery was still legal in many northern states), and many southerners still agreed that slavery was morally reprehensible, and should be abolished eventually.

It was only in the 1840s and 1850s (especially with the war of 1848, as it says in the article), when most Southern politicians and public spokesmen came around to the position that slavery was a "positive good", and southerners or southern-sympathetic northerners, seemed to have disproportionate influence in all three branches of the U.S. federal government, that the "Slave Power" became an important political slogan. AnonMoos 03:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, the 3/5ths compromise was still part of the constitution 1848, and certainly could have formed part of the discourse during that period as well.

I think you might be somewhat overstating the harmony in the early republic as well. Gary Wills has a book called "Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power". I haven't read it but much of what I put above comes from reading reviews of it. Basically, Jefferson was called a "Negro president" by his contemporary opponents because he was elected on the strength of southern votes, which were exaggerated by the 3/5ths compromise. Not sure if the phrase "slave power" was used then though. Guess I gotta read the book. :) --Jfruh (talk) 13:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

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There were some implicit tensions in 1789, but in 1789 slavery still existed in a number of northern states, many prominent southerners were among the loudest in theoretically deploring the existence of slavery, and at that time (before slavery gained in economic function after the invention of the cotton gin) it was possible to view slavery as an antiquated relic which was bound to wither away eventually. As late as 1807-1808, Congress voted by a large majority to abolish the slave trade (importation of new slaves from abroad) at the earliest date this was possible under the constitution. The first "sectional" political crisis over slavery didn't occur until 1819-1820 (see Missouri compromise). AnonMoos 09:21, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The 3/5ths rule was made in 1789, to prevent disportionate representation of slave-holding states in the House of Representatives Unless I am mis-reading your meaning I would have thought the truth was exactly the opposite; the 3/5th rule enabled disproportionate representation of slaveholding states in the period it was in effect. South Carolina, to take the most extreme example, had many extra representatives and additional power in the electoral college because the representation was based on 60% of the slave population who obviously could not vote. Thus the system rewarded the slaveowning regions with political power. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DMorpheus (talk • contribs) 19:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

Each state's number of representatives in the House is/was based on the overall TOTAL population of that state (as revealed by decennial censuses), regardless of citizenship, voting ability, or whatever. It included slaves in the 19th century, and includes illegal immigrants and homeless people today. (The only exemption was "Indians not taxed", which effectively meant enclaves free from most direct state government control.) In that context, 3/5 was a selective discount on the criterion of the indiscriminate TOTAL population of each state (which was otherwise used). AnonMoos 20:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The 3/5 rule was a compromise, but obviously it didn't totally prevent disproportionate representation, because the South received apportionment based on slaves who couldn't vote.--Parkwells 18:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Wikipedia has an article on Three-fifths compromise... AnonMoos 20:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The Three-Fifths Clause was fundamental to the "Slave-Power" myth. Much of the emotion aroused by the myth was grounded on the notion that the clause gave the South an "unfair advantage" over the North. The "unfairness" of the clause towards the North depends, of course, on the presumption that States should not be apportioned representatives based on the number of slaves included in their respective populations, but that they should get representatives based on the numbers of women, children, felons, jail and prison inmates, transients, non-naturalized aliens, and other non-voting inhabitants (excluding "Indians not taxed") who happened to be found within their territories when the census-takers came to call. Since there is no logical basis for that presumption, the Three-Fifths Clause should properly be regarded as a handicap on the South, especially considering the tremendous advantage New England held in the Senate (in 1787, based on 1790 census figures), with (roughly) one senator per 102,000 inhabitants, compared to the South's ratio of one Senator per 152,000. (The ratio for the North as a whole, counting Delaware as a Southern State, was roughly one to 126,000—an advantage, coincidentally, of just under three-fifths.)

Jdcrutch (talk) 20:15, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

In 1789, voting qualifications differed from state to state. However, beginning in the 1820s, there came to be a nationwide ideology of "universal white manhood suffrage", which called attention to states that had significantly more representation than could be justified by the ratio of the number of adult white males in the state with respect to all adult white males in the United States. As for the perceived unfairness of states having representatives and presidential electors allocated based on an overall population which includes a large number of people without political rights, see section 2 of the 14th amendment... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Name of article

A minor point, perhaps, but it really seems to me that this article should be titled Slave Power, not Slave power. I have never seen the term in print without both words being capitalized. And yet, for some reason, when it was changed from its original (correct) name last May 14, nobody objected. The edit summary says, "Wikipedia capitalization conventions". That strikes me as a spurious and flatly wrongheaded interpretation, since the guideline is only to dissuade people from using caps for everything under the sun without a proper rationale. So unless somebody has a persuasive argument to the contrary, I am going to change the name back to Slave Power (or perhaps even The Slave Power) in a few days. Cgingold 12:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

One last call for comment, and if there are no objections, I will make the change. Cgingold 01:17, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Henry Adams' views

I don't know what the policy is, and much more importantly, am unqualified to challenge Mr. Adam's views. His quote piqued my interest in the legal procedures surrounding the US engaging in war. In particular, "the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk," which seems to be incorrect according to Mexican-American_War#Declaration_of_war. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, or maybe he was speaking figuratively, just figured I would mention it. 24.98.230.48 (talk) 00:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Polk moved U.S. troops into an area (between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers) which had only very dubiously been a part of the Republic of Texas, and then when the somewhat inevitable clash came, he succeeded in getting a declaration of war through congress on the grounds that Mexican troops had attacked U.S. troops on U.S. soil. A number of U.S. politicians at the time were loud in denouncing Polk for committing a provocation in order to contrive a pretext for war -- and Abraham Lincoln was among the loudest. AnonMoos (talk) 01:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Meaning?

I came here from a link from the civil war. I'm european and I don't know much about US history, so without better context within the article I don't understand what the expression means. How could slavery give slave owners political power? (economic power, yes, but political power?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.211.212 (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Economic influence within the slave states led to political influence within the slave states, which led to a significant number of representatives in Washington. During the 1852-1860 period, strongly slavery-supporting southerners and their sympathetic northern allies occupied the presidency (Pierce, Buchanan), were a majority on the Supreme Court, and were a majority in the Senate, leaving the House of Representatives as the only branch of the federal government which was sometimes not under pro-slavery control... AnonMoos (talk) 14:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, from 1854 on there were a succession of pro-Southern changes to the terms of the Compromise of 1850, stirring up what had previously been considered settled issues, while the North received absolutely nothing in return. Such unilateral revisions included the Kansas-Nebraska Act (repeal of the 36°30' Missouri Compromise line), the Dred Scott decision (the so-called "obiter dicta" ruling against congressional power to ban slavery in the territories), etc. By 1860, even many northerners who were by no means abolitionists or greatly concerned about black welfare were rather tired and fed up with effective southern political domination, and had concluded that if the preservation of slavery demanded suspending the ordinary rules of democracy ("bleeding Kansas", the caning of Sumner, interference with the southern mails to prevent any form of anti-slavery literature from being received, etc. etc.), then it probably wasn't worth preserving (and certainly wasn't worth going to extraordinary efforts to preserve). AnonMoos (talk) 16:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

2010

I would like to see the following sentence rewritten as I don't think it is entirely true. The problem posed by slavery, according to many Northern politicians, was not so much the mistreatment of slaves (a theme that abolitionists emphasized), but rather the political threat to American republicanism, especially as embraced in Northern free states. The part in bold ( I hope it shows up in bold) that states 'a theme that abolitionists emphasized', is not what abolitionists believed. It was SOME abolitionists and it didn't last very long - not according to the article on Wikipedia about abolition of slavery.Mylittlezach (talk) 23:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you're trying to say -- humanitarianism was certainly one consistent long-term motivation for abolitionism... AnonMoos (talk) 03:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. To further clarify, in the 1850s there were a large number of northern whites who vaguely considered slavery to be abstractly wrong on humanitarian grounds, but who did not become abolitionists because of this belief, and who were in fact distinctly suspicious of abolitionist advocacy that was too loud or aggressive or "pushy". These people read or were aware of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", but they were not moved to any concrete or direct political action by it, since the sadness of the plight of slaves did not incline them to support any immediate radical measures which would cause drastic disruption to the U.S. economy, much less any outlandish idea of full black political or social equality with whites.

These people were politically motivated much more by what they considered to be aggressive expansionist maneuvers by Southern interests which could ultimately be a threat to democracy among whites (Kansas-Nebraska Act, "Bleeding Kansas", Dred Scott, etc.). This was encapsulated in the "Slave Power" slogan... AnonMoos (talk) 13:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

What you say above is very plausible, and seems to me to be probably true. However, how do we KNOW this, and can it be verified? Are there particular names of politicians that you can tell us? What do you mean by a large number? Are there references for what you claim? I'm concerned that you may be sincerely not realizing that you don't know why or if you know what you "know", because of the plausibility. Best wishes,richardPeterson76.218.104.120 (talk) 23:58, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

How do historians know all this? A very good book to read is The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 by David M. Potter (1976, Pulitzer prize), excerpt are online. Rjensen (talk) 03:03, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

76.218.104.120 -- Read a few books on the politics of the 1850s, and you're likely to be confronted by evidence of such attitudes. Here's a quote from one book that I just now pulled off the shelf (knowing it discussed the subject in general, but without remembering anything specific from it): "But the issue of slavery in the territories struck millions of northerners in a way in which abstract discussions of the condition of the slave could not." -- Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men by Eric Foner, p. 57... -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:34, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

thanks AnonM & Rjensen76.218.104.210 (talk) 11:59, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Slavery was wrong.. Mistreatment not a driving issue — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.6.153.59 (talk) 09:03, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Prose style

I really don't think it's suitable to include a heavy sprinkling of emotionally-loaded terms like "hatred" and "fear" in the general summary in the opening paragraphs of the article. The place to include them is when they're directly backed up by a supporting quote, or after the context has been fully developed... AnonMoos (talk) 02:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I think readers in 2012 can handle words like "hatred" and "fear" regarding the 1850s without overloading their emotions. It's not exactly news -- Nevins for example decades ago noted "the steady substitution of emotion for reason in prewar years: 'Fear fed hatred, and hatred fed fear.'" Rjensen (talk) 23:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Category:Conspiracy theories

Forms of the "slave power" thesis which postulated scheming malevolent cabals could be considered conspiracy theories, but it was plain simple fact (not a "conspiracy theory" at all) that pro-slavery southern politicians and their northern sympathizers had greatly disproportionate influence over the federal government during the 1852-1860 period, and took advantage of this to push through revisions to the supposedly "final" Compromise of 1850 which favored slaveholding interests (Kansas-Nebraska act, Dred Scott decision, etc.), and that vocal Southern spokesmen were making ever escalating and more extreme demands (Congressional slave code etc.). AnonMoos (talk) 10:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

No reply or explanation after two weeks, therefore removed category. AnonMoos (talk) 14:24, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I have restored the category. See Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (1969). There was undeniably a paranoid conspiracy theory at the heart of the "Slave Power" myth, even if nobody entirely believed in it (but millions did--and apparently some still do), and even if it was founded in demonstrable fact (which is debatable). That paranoid conspiracy theory was a potent propaganda weapon for the political and commercial interests that saw the South's political class (virtually, though not actually, coterminous with the slaveholding class) as an obstacle to their nationalistic economic program, and therefore as an enemy that must be destroyed. See also Grant, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000).

Whether or not Southern influence over the federal government was "greatly disproportionate", as AnonMoos asserts, has been a matter of vigorous debate since at least the presidential election of 1800, and no definite resolution of that debate has ever been reached, other than through the plain, simple fact of military force. Conquest rendered all debate on the issue superfluous, except for historical debate. The latter has continued to the present day, and Wikipedia should not declare for either side, as this article comes perilously close to doing.

But be that as it may, the "Slave Power" myth lay at the heart of a paranoid conspiracy theory that was widespread and politically salient in the 19th C., and that fact is well documented in the writing of highly-respected historians, so it's appropriate to associate the topic with the category "Conspiracy Theories".

Jdcrutch (talk) 20:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I very strongly disagree. The "Slave power" idea had various conspiratorial ramifications and elaborations, but at its heart there was some political analysis which had a great deal of validity during most of the 1852-1860 period (i.e. the Pierce and Buchanan presidencies, entering into the final and rather unfortunate phase of the Taney chief justiceship, a solid Southern-and-administration-loyalist majority in the U.S. Senate, etc.). For these reasons, the basic Slave Power thesis really does not belong with the Elders of Zion, Lizard people, 9/11 Truthery, etc. etc. ad nauseam... AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Also, many of these theories of elites manipulating major political developments behind the scenes out of "economic motivations" to advance their class collectively would seem to have a bit of a conspiratorial tinge themselves. Charles A. Beard's "Economic Interpretation of the Constitution" has really not held up over the long term, and I'm inherently at least a little suspicious of any neo-Beardist type theories. Whatever the interests of economic elites, the Slave Power idea would have never gained significant political traction if there hadn't been a lot of ordinary people increasingly disgusted with the course of events as the 1850s unfolded (see my remarks of "4 January 2012" above)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:19, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

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P.S. As for conspiracies, people could point to Buchanan and Taney consulting about the Dred Scott decision (though the exact nature of this discussion was not understood until much later), the members of Buchanan's cabinet conspiring with each other to make sure that he supported Southern positions, regardless of past personal promises or the best interests of the Democratic Party as a whole (the Lecompton constitution, etc.). And when it comes to scheming intrigues, Slidell's whole life was one long series of scheming intrigues. Etc. AnonMoos (talk) 09:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

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This is not the place for a debate on the merits or demerits of the "Slave-Power" theory, and I'm not going to get into a battle of revision & reversion with @AnonMoos:; but I do suggest that she or he read the article on Conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory may be a complex of absurd delusions, such as the "Elders of Zion, Lizard people, 9/11 Truthery, etc.," he or she alludes to; but it may also be a serious, if mistaken, attempt to find system and purpose in a set of actual facts. It may even be correct, though I believe the "Slave-Power" theory was not. More often, conspiracy theories tend to posit a unified system and purpose behind facts—real or imagined—most or all of which, if real, are coincidental and unrelated.

Compare Hillary Clinton's "vast Right-wing conspiracy" of the 1990s: certainly there were some small Right-wing conspiracies at work, but there were even more coincidental convergences of interest among the Clintons' adversaries that produced what appeared to be concert and co-ordination where none existed. There was never a single, vast, centrally organized conspiracy against the Clintons, but to many reasonable people it appeared certain that there was. That was a quintessential paranoid conspiracy theory.

We should bear in mind, furthermore, that any agreement between two or more persons to perform some act is technically a conspiracy, even if that act is lawful and harmless.

What pre-eminently qualifies the "Slave-Power" theory as a paranoid conspiracy theory is not the absence of pro-slavery or pro-slaveholder conspiracies in the ante-bellum era, for such conspiracies—more neutrally to be referred to as agreements or concerted activities—manifestly did take place; but the non-existence (at least arguably) of any unified, overarching "Slave Power", as defined by the theorists, co-ordinating and controlling events to serve an agreed-on set of goals.

Jdcrutch (talk) 23:24, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The mark of most real conspiracy theories is that they're largely based on nonsensical fruitcakery (i.e. Lizard people), or they're so indeterminate that it's hard to tell what would be real confirming or disconfirming evidence, or they hypothesize centralized cabals and hidden puppetmasters to explain things which could as easily be explained as the result of the (non-centrally-controlled) efforts of various somewhat like-minded people.

However, it's objectively indisputable that Southerners and southern-sympathetic Northerners dominated the Presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court during the 1852-1860 period (leaving the House of Representatives as the only branch of government which was sometimes not under overall southern control during that period), and that this period was marked by unilateral pro-Southern modifications to the supposedly "final" compromise of 1850 (Kansas-Nebraska, Dred Scott, etc.), accompanied by ever escalating and more extreme demands on the part of Southern politicians and prominent Southern spokesmen (Congressional slave code for the territories, demands for restrictions on free speech in the North, etc.).

Some versions of the Slave Power thesis which posited secretive centralized cabals and so on were certainly conspiratorial, but the basic political analysis at the heart of the Slave Power thesis had a large element of factual truth during at least 1852-1860. I really would not consider the Slave Power thesis to be "conspiratorial" overall unless there were very little substance left to it once you removed the conspiratorial elements -- which is not the case... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Anachronistic Reference to "Solid South" Removed

Under "Background", the article formerly read,

The Republicans also argued that slavery was economically inefficient, compared to free labor, and was a deterrent to the long-term modernization of America. Worse, said the Republicans, the Slave Power, deeply entrenched in the "Solid South", was systematically seizing control of the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.

I have replaced "'Solid South'" with "South". The term "Solid South" seems to have been coined by Schuyler Colfax in 1858, but the concept did not become a fixture in American political discourse until after Reconstruction, when the Southern States came to be regarded (not 100% accurately, but nearly so) as a monolithic bastion of the Democratic party.

As the myth of the "Slave Power" relates entirely to the period before 1865, the reference to the "Solid South" in the present context is anachronistic. Further, the use of quotation marks around "Solid South", in a sentence purporting to quote "the Republicans", is doubly misleading, since the Republicans of the ante-bellum period did not commonly use the term. (Conceivably, whoever originally wrote the sentence was thinking of Republican Schuyler Colfax's use of the term, noted above; but a single instance of use by a single Republican, in an entirely different context, doesn't justify the quotation marks or the attribution to "the Republicans".)

It's also rather anachronistic to attribute the "Slave Power" conspiracy theory to "the Republicans", since the theory predates the Republican party, but I don't have time or energy to deal with that aspect of the article.

Jdcrutch (talk) 20:10, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

There were a number of southern states which tended Whig until at least 1848. If there was any "solidity", it would have pretty much only applied to 1856, among pre-war presidential elections... AnonMoos (talk) 22:56, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

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Revisions to Lede, 10 February 2014

Until 9 February 2014, the first sentence of the lede ran as follows:

The Slave Power (often called the "Slaveocracy") was a term used to refer to the purported political power of the Southern slaveholding class in the United States from ca. 1840 until the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

Gob Lofa deleted the word "purported", presumably because there is no real question as to whether or not the Southern slaveholding class held some degree of political power. The assertion underlying the "Slave-Power" conspiracy theory was that that class held excessive, disproportionate, and unfair power, vis-á-vis non-slaveholders, and the non-slaveholding States in particular.

I have accordingly revised the sentence to refer to

the supposedly disproportionate and unfair political power of the Southern slaveholding class in the United States . . . .

I also replaced the unnecessarily wordy phrase, "was a term used to refer," with "refers", using the present tense, rather than the past, since the term is still in use. See, e.g., Garry Wills, Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005). The time-span in the original sentence seemed to refer to the term's use in political discourse. Because I have revised the sentence to include the term's use in current historical discourse, I have also made the time-span refer not to the period of the term's currency but to the period of the allegedly-unfair power, and so removed the terminus ante quem of "ca. 1840". (The latter was problematic in any case, as the idea that the South enjoyed disproportionate power in the federal government, if not the term, "Slave Power", dates practically to the adoption of the Constitution, not merely to ca. 1840.) J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 18:09, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Generalized vague resentment over the Virginia dynasty, the 3/5ths clause (see comment of "02:36, 12 November 2013" above), the accelerated geographic expansion of plantation slavery into the "southwest" (as it was then called) etc. certainly go back before the 1840s, but slavery didn't become a significant national political issue until 1818, and the slave power idea didn't start to have major political influence until the Mexican-American War, while the peak of its political influence was almost certainly in the 1850s... AnonMoos (talk) 10:49, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Were my revisions inconsistent with any of that? My intention in revising the lede was to avoid espousing any controversial opinion, while nevertheless explicitly recognizing that controversy exists--which I though Gob Lofa's revision tended to obscure. At any rate, @Rjensen  has made the question moot with further revisions. My only substantive objection to his revisions is that they eliminate any reference to the sectional character of the theory : not merely slaveholders but the Southern States were accused of excessive power in the federal government, so the "Slave-Power" theory was not merely an anti-slavery argument but an anti-Southern one. (Granted, many adherents to the theory believed that the mass of Southerners disagreed with the "Slave Power", but lacked the power to resist it; nevertheless, Northern opinion generally equated the Southern States, as political entities, with the slaveholding class, and, in general, when Northerners spoke of "the South" in federal affairs they meant "the slaveholders".) J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 23:11, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

sectionalism was not the central issue. The Republicans said the slave owners controlled all the southern states and now wanted more--wanted Mexico (a big issue in 1848), wanted Cuba (in Ostend manifesto), wanted Kansas, etc. The key was the slave owners (and NOT the average southerner) had $$$$ and could purchase the best land in Kansas and farm it with slaves, leaving zip for the white pioneers. Rjensen (talk) 01:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't the same argument be used to say that there really never was a sectional conflict at all, and it was really all about the rich slaveholders? I think that flies in the face of the political reality and the Republican rhetoric of the day, which disparaged "the South" and "the Slave States" as much as, or more than, "the Slave Power". The Southerners John Brown & Co. murdered at Pottawatomie weren't slaveholders: their crime was being Southern and holding "Southern" views. Although I've acknowledged that many Republicans imagined that the average Southerner opposed the "Slave Power", I don't think the average Northerner--or even those same Republicans--drew much of a distinction in the context of federal politics and power. The Republican party was self-consciously a sectional party, not just a "free labor" party or an anti-slavery party. Its enemy was the South, not just the slaveholding elite; it was the South that Northern propaganda portrayed as alien and anti-American (see Grant, North Over South); and it was upon the South that the Republican party-state ultimately made war. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Is this kind of what you had in mind? AnonMoos (talk) 17:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Jdcrutch -- Prominent Republican party politicians and spokesmen certainly vaunted the cultural and economic superiority of the north's free labor system over the south's slave labor system, and many Republicans thought that the caning of Sumner had a lot more in common with back-alley thuggery than Ivanhoe chivalry, and probably also that if non-slaveholding non-upper-class Southern whites couldn't see or act on the fact that their interests were not the same as those of slaveholders, then they were either intimidated, brainwashed, or cowardly. But many Republicans would have been happy to try to attract support from the South if they could (a delegation from Texas was seated at the 1860 Republican convention), and some of them pointed out that interference with the mails in the South, and the likelihood of anyone who raised inconvenient questions being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail in many parts of the South, meant that there was no opportunity for a fair test of how much appeal Republican ideas might have had in the southern states. Whether or not individual Republicans hated the South as whole, the majority of them would have been content to leave the southern system alone as long as it stayed put where it was -- it was southern expansionist tendencies which generated most of the northern bitterness in the 1850s. The Crittenden compromise failed on the question of slavery in territories that would be acquired by the United States in future. Both sides recognized that by that point the question of slavery in the existing territories had become somewhat pointless in practical terms -- it was expansionism in future territories which was the critical stumbling-block... AnonMoos (talk) 16:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This discussion brings up the interesting question of nationalism in the North. The true abolitionists were quite willing to split the United States and see the sinful Southerners leave. A few Republicans agreed with that line of thought, including Horace Greeley. But the Republican Party as a whole rejected that line of thought because they were nationalists and by that they included the entire South. They saw the South as inherently "American," except to the extent that a small minority of fanatical slave owners had seized power. This was Lincoln's view in April 1861, when he thought that 75,000 soldiers in 90 days could suppress what he saw as a rebellion by a small number of Confederate fanatics. The Republicans misjudged southern public opinion, which after Lincoln's call overwhelmingly supported the Confederacy in most of the South (with a lot of Union support in western Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri). In other words, the Republicans did not realize until the war started that the Slave Power was in fact much more popular than a small group of fanatics would suggest. In the event, the Republicans and the great majority of Democrats in the North as well, refused to divide the United States, and that is why they rallied and enlisted and fought and died to defend the Union. Rjensen (talk) 16:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)