No, Mike. What we have established is that the "collective South" had as its vast majority persons that owned no slaves.
...who accepted and defended a Constitution specifically designed to perpetuate slavery, and all five States where the reasons for secession were formally listed, slavery was front and center.
The other thing is.... every Southerner's nightmare was the prospect of a slave insurrection, especially in those areas (and even whole states) where slaves actually outnumbered free folk.
Nearly as worrisome to everyone, whether they had slaves or not, was the prospect of four million slaves set free by abolition. And they were right, popular revulsion against slavery in the Free States was such that it is possible abolition might have been eventually imposed on the South as the slave-free territories became new states..
....something that ALL the existing states had.
Are you seriously suggesting that slavery was still legal in all 50 States in 1860?
If so, all our politicians back then had sure wasted a lot of time over the previous 70 years or so painstakingly crafting precarious compromises. And the Supremes coulda just punted on that whole Dredd Scott thing.
Birdwatcher
