Please tell me that is not a serious question. By your definition there can be no non-slave states because you seem to think Article IV forbids it, and history showed you that notion was completely wrong.
How does history show this? From what i've seen from History, the "free" states simply refused to enforce that clause, and did everything they could to aid in the breaking of it.
My point is that if *that* clause is enforced, it becomes impossible to create a "free" state. History has not shown otherwise. It has simply shown that people will ignore parts of the constitution they don't like.
Congress makes all rules and regulations for the territories. Congress could, under the Constitution, forbid slavery in the territories once the flawed Dred Scott decision had been overturned.
How? By forbidding slaveowners from going there? Can they do that? I don't think they can do that.
So how are they gonna do that?
Any slave running away from its owner in a slave state who then ran to one of the territories could be apprehended and returned to its owner under the provisions of the fugitive slave laws. No different than a slave who ran off to a free state and was apprehended.
The constitution does not say the owner must be in a slave state. Presumably the owner can live anywhere he likes, so long as the slave is bound to him by the laws of the state from which he came.
Paranoia aside, the Republicans had made it clear in the years prior to the 1860 election that they would be challenging the Scott decision, and the South knew it. And they also knew that their legal position was shaky at best. Hence their rush to rebellion.
How does a party "challenge" a decision by the supreme court? Let me know, because our party would probably like to "challenge" roe v wade and other stupid and illegal decisions.
As a question of law, Dred Scott is mostly accurate. You have to make up imaginary law to counter the valid legal claims in that case. It's an ugly decision, but it is clearly correct within the scope of law that existed at that time.
And that is what I am talking about, the position of the aggressor. The Southern secession was motivated by slavery and their war was to further that goal.
You can keep repeating that piece of propaganda, but it isn't working anymore, at least not on me. The south already *had* slavery, so they didn't need to secede in order to keep it. Lincoln was falling all over himself to reassure the south that
"if you like your slavery, you can keep your slavery" to paraphrase another race-obsessed Liberal Lawyer from Illinois who became President.
The South seceded to get more of the revenue from the products their slaves produced, instead of allowing it to filter through New England hands where large cuts were taken out of it by the New England Robber barons and the Government.
So let's keep the history accurate.
Which means the North consumed the vast majority of the imports and therefore provided the lion's share of the tariff revenue? Can we at least agree on that?
Not at all. In order to "consume" something, you have to pay for it, and the evidence has clearly shown that the North wasn't paying for most of that trade, the South was. The North was simply taking a big cut of it. Call it "vigorish" and you will have a more accurate picture.
Then. Why. Weren't. They? Why did the south consume the majority of imports?
Here is that going around in circles again. Because the North (having a numerically superior representation in congress) passed laws making it cheaper for the south to purchase Northern products instead of European products.
The South *DID* consume the majority of imports, after they had been converted to money and used to purchase Northern made products because of the preference jiggered laws created by the Northern Majority representation in Congress.
That seems to be the case. A lot going out. Not much coming in.
And that illusion is a factual impossibility. Nobody gives away money for free, but that is exactly what you are trying to claim was happening. You are not that stupid, and nor should you attempt to be that deceptive. All that income was coming back to the South in a different form after having been filtered through the hands of the New England financial interests, and after they took their and the government's cut.
Sold the cotton they had purchased from Southern plantations. How do you think?
And the Southerners didn't do the same because they just don't like the thought of having extra money. It couldn't be for some *OTHER* reason, such as the larger representation in Congress gave the Northern wolves the legal means to shear the Southern sheep. It couldn't be that preferential laws made it economically feasible for people living in New York to handle trade at a greater profit than the people actually producing the product.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Southerners just don't like having extra money from their products. They wanted to make sure their Northern brothers were well taken care of, so they voluntarily let them do all the paperwork and shipping necessary to get that 35% or more profit on what the Southerners produced.
And people think the milk of human kindness is dead!
Their export trade was 1/4th of the South's, yet they somehow ended up with enough foreign currency to pay for 3/4ths of the imports? How does that work?
Pure freakin' magic apparently. According to your scenario.
You say "magic", I say "skimming and graft." Potato, Potahto.
No, the "magic" is the belief that anyone would consent indefinitely to allowing people to skim a huge chunk of their profits because they used their numerical advantage to create laws that favored the continuation of their skimming of other people's profits.
Well with the value of Northern exports being 1/4 of the total, how was the North getting it's hands on sufficient foreign currency to cover the costs of those imports, the tariffs of which funded the US government?
How do you think?
By manipulating US Law until it was favoring them in all financial transactions dealing with the European trade, as I have said numerous times, and in numerous different ways.
They created an artificial monopoly through the use of their numerical advantage in the congress. The same sort of thing that people since Adam Smith have been warning about.
It is the natural tendency of businessmen to "rent seek" and usually they turn to government to create or enforce their artificially created revenue streams.
It was a manifestation of the old adage:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what they will have for dinner." They sold the cotton they bought from the South. Why is that so hard to believe?
Because such a thing makes no economic sense without laws creating artificial conditions to make such a methodology profitable. And that is what actually happened.
