Quote all the statistics you want, you are still not looking at what the issue that the South so vehemently was not going to knuckle under…the freeing of, and equalizing the slaves with the rest of the southern folk. This was going to affect the “Poor rural teenagers” as well as the “RICH population who owned slaves”.

Was Secession talk as prevalent BEFORE the John Brown raid? Not from what I have read.

Talk “States Rights” all you want, the BIG issue was slavery, without it there would not have been Secession/war.

Also (as Davis said in his speech) having the Northern States “surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless”. Also…”owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property”.

Viable grievances, no doubt, that eventually caused a domino effect with states following each other out of the union, when things escaladed.

No one comes out looking great in all this mess.

Kevin Dally