>The biggest problem I have with this is that the banishment of
>further slave states from the Union wouldn't necessarily lead
>to the abolition of slavery. My thing is that even people in
>the North had slaves, so slavery wouldn't be much of an issue
>there.
>As for the free states vs. slave states, that was more
>political than anything else. You're absolutely right, the
>South would be at a political disadvantage. But not because of
>that (or not only). It was moreso that the Northern population
>was also growing, and the South wanted balance in the House of
>Representatives. And with more people up North, there wasn't
>much the South could do to balance out the House.

Well if only free states were allowed into the Union, along with the growing population in the North, the south was afraid that eventually they would be at such a disadvantage wrt representation that the free states could pass abolition laws in Congress and there would be nothing politically the south could do about it. So when Lincoln stood firm on not allowing slave states into the union they saw that as a threat to slavery in the south, so that's why they decided to secede.

>Don't get me wrong, there were people in the North that though
>slavery was an abomination and should be abolished and
>rightfully so. But they weren't the majority of people in the
>North, and wasn't enough to convince the government that it
>was worth alienating half the country over. It wasn't that
>much of an issue to the North.

The majority of people in the north were still racists, but they didn't like slavery either, but yeah they were willing to let slavery in the south continue as long as the Union was maintained. So yeah most northerners weren't righteous crusaders on a mission to end the evil of slavery; they didn't particularly care *why* the south seceded, but once they did northerners saw them as traitors regardless.

>And don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-slavery and I know the
>evils of it. I don't think that it was the cause of the
>Southern secession (which was more politically driven than
>anything else) and slavery wasn't as big of an issue.

I know you're not pro-slavery, but I just don't see how people can still argue that it wasn't about slavery, that it was "politically driven", when the political issue that drove it was slavery.

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"If your music was any good it would've
been stolen by the white man by now."

- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog