>This is where I disagree. I really don't think the
>South cared if the North wanted slaves. They didn't
>want the North to tell them that they CAN'T have any
>slaves. It was more for protection of what they deemed
>a crucial part of their way of life, rather than
>spreading it.
>Then again, I doubt if the North cared if the South
>had slaves, because if they did, there would be a lot
>more anti-slave legislation, and that would be
>enforced even more in the South.

They didn't care if the North had slaves, but they wanted slavery accessible everywhere else, particularly the new territories and states. That would make the residents of those areas sympathetic to slavery also, which would help them gain an advantage in Congress and maintain a pro-slavery White House, as most of the presidents before Lincoln were.

If the North were to introduce several more anti-slavery measures, the Civil War would have happened a lot sooner. The whole purpose of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 was to keep equal power between pro-slavery and anti-slavery states, so the North couldn't pass those measures anyway, at least through the Senate.

>The problem with this was that they weren't considered
>"residents" of the US. The FREE men were considered
>3/5th's of a man. The 3/5th's of a man thing were for voting
>purposes, and slaves couldn't vote. The slaves were
>considered
>"property".

Wrong. The 3/5ths Compromise did not extend to freedmen. It was only to slaves. Freedmen were full citizens.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~c030115/30001RES/tsld004.htm

>So the kidnapping theory wouldn't apply,
>because it was seen as you can't kidnap anything you
>own. The biggest point of slavery was their rights
>were for the most part at the discretion of their
>masters. As morally wrong as that is, that was what
>was legal. If slaves had any sorts of rights, most of
>the abuses and whippings and murders for
>insubordination would get masters at the very least
>arrested (although the times dictated very little, if
>anything would happen to them).

But the fact that the slaves were counted to begin with makes them residents; not full citizens, but still a part of the nation they were in.

According to the Declaration of Independence which was the standard of secession of the time, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It defined secession as justifiable when liberty is being threatened. It's hypocritical and quite backward for a group of people to secede - claiming oppression, mind you - for the express purpose to keep others in bondage.

The slavery issue was about extending freedom to EVERYONE, while it was the South that wanted to limit liberty, which makes the Civil War, by the standards placed forth by the Founding Fathers, an illegal rebellion.
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