ndrosen

To continue with Dan Sullivan's talk on "Southern Slavery, Northern Complicity," Mr. Sullivan said that there were Northerners who were OK with secession; they disapproved of slavery, but were willing to let the South go in peace. Lincoln was losing support. A delegation of Virginians came to see him, and he was willing to negotiate; he would not reinforce Southern forts.

In his first Inaugural Address, he repudiated what he had said to the Virginians, and denied that there was any right to secede. He sent an expedition to Fort Sumter, and promised the Confederates that it carried only food, not trips or gunpowder, but did not let them inspect it. And so the South Carolinians fired upon Fort Sumter, and the Civil War had begun.

Then there was a Q&A session. In reply to something, Dan Sullivan said that at least some Southerners wanted an end to the external slave trade to keep up the value of their property. Connecticut slave traders wanted a guarantee of twenty years before any interference in the slave trade.

Someone, presumably Dan, cited the economist and historian Jeffrey Rodgers Hummel, to the effect that secession meant slaves running away.

Ed Dodson said that someone -- was it Charles Beard? -- pointed out that a substantial amount of immigration made Northerners American, while Southerners remained Virginian, Georgian, etc.

BTW, Dan Sullivan himself is a Northerner, a Pennsylvanian.