The North's opposition to Slavery In The Territories was based primarily on-

[Baggage Handler #2]

I once had a really interesting history professor.

He stated that "Wars are fought for the aggrandizement of the aggressor."

His resume on the matter was extensive, having fought his way across North Africa (earning a commission) then Sicily and eventually Italy as one of Darby's Rangers.

Postulating that the essentially unarmed north was the aggressor is a monumental exercise in wishful thinking in that it attempts to justify a war that had as its end the goal the perpetuated protection of the peculiar institution.

But people have believed stranger things, tinfoil hats, black helicopters, network news, the list is lengthy.

[Parrott Gun]

Here's another question that might be worth asking: What was the main reason that the Confederation Congress outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory? Was it the same as the reasons northerners had in the 1850's? I think it's pretty clear, since the Northwest Ordinance was largely supported by southerners, that it was not an effort at political control.

Also, you didn't include an option that was independent of politics or morality. While I think morality was a huge part of it, there were many northerners who opposed extending slavery into the territories mainly because they didn't want free whites to have to compete with slave labor or simply because they felt that the institution was undemocratic.

[ole]

... there were many northerners who opposed extending slavery into the territories mainly because they didn't want free whites to have to compete with slave labor or simply because they felt that the institution was undemocratic.

I have to question that statement simply because I haven't seen evidence of many northerners making that claim. The territories, Northwest included, didn't offer much in the way of labor when that ordinance was passed. When the contention over the transmissisippi was opened, there wasn't much in the way of labor in demand either. The settler's moved west to get some land of their own. They didn't go with the intention of becoming a hired hand.

Nor did slaveowners want to bring their skilled slaves to hire out in the new towns springing up in the prairies.

Maybe undemocratic, or immoral, or simply because they didn't want blacks living next to them, I don't think labor competition was a factor.

Just a thought.

ole

[Parrott Gun]

Perhaps not many, but David Wilmot made it pretty clear that his main concern was for free labor.

“The unproductive tillage of human cattle takes that which of right belongs to free labor, and which is necessary for the support and happiness of our own race.”


Although he did also speak of restricting territorial expansion as a path toward eventual extinction.

"Keep it within given limits, let it remain where it now is, and it will wear itself out. Its existence can only be perpetuated by constant expansion."

[ole]

“The unproductive tillage of human cattle takes that which of right belongs to free labor, and which is necessary for the support and happiness of our own race.”

Emphasis, mine. I read the quote to mean that Wilmot wanted the land to be intended for the settler, not grabbed off by the large planter.

Maybe he was thinking of the plight of the southern yeoman farmer: crowed away from the good soil and relegated to areas where large fields of cotton didn't fit.

ole

[Vareb]

It is hard for me to believe there are those here that think slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War!!