Slavery Compromise Quotes
The problem was that Congress was gridlocked on the slavery issue. The Southern states had more than their proportional share of Congressional power with slave populations being counted as 3/5 of a person for seats in the House of Representatives and parity with the other states in the Senate. The South could not stop all the attempts to debate slavery and the abolitionists attempts to end it, but they could block all legislation that might curtain slavery. As the United States was getting more sophisticated and educated hostility toward slavery was steadily increasing. The economies of the non Southern states was growing faster and more assuredly than the slave economies of the South. Abolition was all but inevitable but it would still take more time. Note that the President totally deferred to Congress on the leadership of what the policy should be. Presidents at that time were far less influential in making national policy and national legislating than they have become. Many think that the balance has shifted too far towards the Executive Branch.
While this assessment was true up until the 1980s. By the 21st century there were almost no serious historians who thought that the motivation of the Confederate States for the Civil War was anything but slavery and the economic impact that abolition might bring. However, one of your advantages having this collection of historical quotations is that you can see for yourself why the Southern states say they were seceding. This following are four of the official secession resolution documents. Read these and you will see that all the claims that there were other major reasons for secession are just attempts to make the Confederacy a little less brutal and greedy. See {621371}, {619793}, {621372}, {621375}
