What Would Have Been the Easiest Way to Avoid the Civil War?

They should have done so before their state declared secession.

South Carolina first declared they where out of the union.. then they said they wanted to talk. This made what they where doing an unilateral action... done outside the legal political system.

If they had told their representatives to write a bill for congress,(without declaring that they where out... just that they wanted out) then it would have been done with in the political system.

The issue here is that they believed a state had the right to secede without asking permission from any other state. But they could still have passed their ordinance of secession and then taken it to present to Congress rather than to the President. It would be a pretty powerful statement that South Carolina wanted out, and had SC done that and kept their tempers in check when Anderson moved to Fort Sumter, things might have gone very differently. I'd be willing to bet that most of the members of Congress would have been more than willing to listen and discuss the issue at that point in time.
 
The issue here is that they believed a state had the right to secede without asking permission from any other state. But they could still have passed their ordinance of secession and then taken it to present to Congress rather than to the President. It would be a pretty powerful statement that South Carolina wanted out, and had SC done that and kept their tempers in check when Anderson moved to Fort Sumter, things might have gone very differently. I'd be willing to bet that most of the members of Congress would have been more than willing to listen and discuss the issue at that point in time.

Valid points and an interesting hypothetical. I agree that would have been not only the better but the proper path to go.

Further, though they did believe they had the right to unilaterally secede, they knew quite well many others didn't. This was a long debated issue (it and the related contexts about the Union). They were politically quite smart, they knew they didn't exist in a vacuum. If you believe you have the right to exit out of a business deal but you know the other partner doesn't you are kind of a jerk for just doing it without trying for some serious consensus first. It's also clearly not the most productive path.

With that said I think going to Congress *before* secession would've been key. Come with statements of the multiple States they could get on board with a petition/statement that they believe they can secede and will secede if not first finding some sort of consensus by Congress, either consensus regarding their fears on the threats to slavery or consensus regarding a mutual secession path.

If I'm in a relationship with someone I can legally just leave them without talking about it and never come back. That doesn't mean that's the right path (and certainly not if I knew they didn't think I could legally do so, though this is where the analogy breaks down lol).
 
When you obviously don't understand the very basics of the american political system...
(like what power the president elect got compared to the president... ) it is a total wast of time debating this any further.

I would have expected this to be something american children learn in 6th grade or something...

It's really something when you, as well as some others on here, just can't respond to the basics and then make it sound like its my/our fault.

Debating it no further would be just fine with me.

Just remember my name and feel free not to respond in the future.
 
When you can't understand something as basic as the fact that the sitting president is the one in charge... and the president elect is not. Then yes, it is your fault.

The issue here is that they believed a state had the right to secede without asking permission from any other state. But they could still have passed their ordinance of secession and then taken it to present to Congress rather than to the President. It would be a pretty powerful statement that South Carolina wanted out, and had SC done that and kept their tempers in check when Anderson moved to Fort Sumter, things might have gone very differently. I'd be willing to bet that most of the members of Congress would have been more than willing to listen and discuss the issue at that point in time.
Yep, I mostly agree. I do believe (but can't prove it in any way) that had a serious debate in congress about allowing SC to leave with a deal Then it might have worked out.
And going to congress would have show respect for the system... since it is congress that can change the makeup of the union. by adding more states (not the president) So it makes sense for it to be congress that can allow a state to leave.

The other slave state's would likely support SC.
When you have states that do their very best to get around the fugitive slave laws They might have said yes, to getting rid of SC. Because that would be one less slave state and that would shift more power to the free states. So it would get easier to break slavery in the US. And this might have resulted in yet more slave states wanting to leave.
Resulting in a split similar to what happened... but without a war.

But yes, a lot of likely and maybe's...
In the end there was too many hothead... on both sides. And they where never going to accept a long drawn out political process that could have taken a year or more. (Brexit takes two years and that is a huge problem for the UK that they don't have more time)
 
Despite this current debate with its unfounded insults, it is true that the South reacted strongly to Lincoln's election and didn't wait around for his inauguration to proceed. It is explained succinctly in this book, Erskine Clarke, By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey, page 326.
I thought we were supposed to be civil to each other on CWT. No pun intended.

https://books.google.com/books?id=GVEPAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA326&dq=after+lincoln+was+elected+south+carolina+seceded&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirq9qipdrWAhVrh1QKHSFxBRw4ChDoAQglMAA#v=onepage&q=after lincoln was elected south carolina seceded&f=false
 
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Despite this current debate with its unfounded insults, it is true that the South reacted strongly to Lincoln's election and didn't wait around for his inauguration to proceed. It is explained succinctly in this book, Erskine Clarke, By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey, page 326.
I thought we were supposed to be civil to each other on CWT. No pun intended.

https://books.google.com/books?id=GVEPAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA326&dq=after+lincoln+was+elected+south+carolina+seceded&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirq9qipdrWAhVrh1QKHSFxBRw4ChDoAQglMAA#v=onepage&q=after lincoln was elected south carolina seceded&f=false

With such influential topics to our National history and the heritage of many it can often get heated.

Like you say the South didn't wait around for his inauguration or any specific actions as President to conclude and proclaim what he was going to do. We can find many contemporary records of htis in the various Secession conventions in the early seceding States.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/timeline-of-slavery-and-secession.137718/

Some examples

Only 6 days after Lincoln being elected

November 12th, 1860

Letter from Alabama Governor Andrew B Moore


http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/smithwr/smith.html

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Who is Mr. Lincoln, whose election is now beyond question? He is the head of a great sectional party calling itself Republican: a party whose leading object is the destruction of the institution of slavery as it exists in the slaveholding States.

...

Then slavery will be abolished by law in the States, and the "irrepressible conflict" will end; for we are notified that it shall never cease, until "the foot of the slave shall cease to tread the soil of the United States." The state of society that must exist in the Southern States, with four millions of free negroes and their increase, turned loose upon them, I will not discuss--it is too horrible to contemplate.


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January 7th, 1861

Alabama Secession Convention


http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/smithwr/smith.html
Resolution offered by Mr. Whatley

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And WHEREAS, a sectional party, known as the Black Republican Party, has, in the recent election, elected Abraham Lincoln to the office of President, and Hannibal Hamlin to the office of Vice-President of these United States, upon the avowed principle that the Constitution of the United States does not recognise properly in slaves and that the Government should prevent its extension into the common Territories of the United States, and that the power of the Government should be so exercised that slavery, in time, should be exterminated:
----
 
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