[STYWOMBORGOSY]

Any attempt to label the Civil War as Lincoln's war of authoritarian aggression must ignore slavery, the all consuming political and economic issue in the antebellum years.

Slavery in the territories

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

The Three Fifths Compromise: By counting slaves as 3/5, instead of just counting free citizens, southern states were guaranteed control of all three branches of the government. At the time of the Civil War 1% of the northern population was black, while in the south 35% of the population were slaves. In the 1830s, southern states had 98 representatives, instead of 73. Of the 31 Supreme Court justices appointed up to 1850, 18 were from the south, despite the north having twice the voting population. This directly led to the Dred Scott decision.

Ostend Manifesto (1854): An attempt to annex Cuba into the Union as a slave state.

South Carolina seceded from the Union on Dec 24, 1860, before Lincoln was inaugerated. Its Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union argued states' rights, but also hypocritically argued against states' rights, noting that the federal government did not force the northern states to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 - i.e. overriding states' rights in the northern states.

The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear in his Cornerstone Speech on March 21, 1861. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted...


(Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. ... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. The issue of slavery gave the Civil War its moral focus. Remove it, and what you have is economic and political power by both the north and the south.

If Lincoln's administration was authoritative, one must wonder what sort of government the Confederacy would have been. Maybe we only need to look at various postbellum southern states. How would we describe the state government of Mississippi?