Oh, good point Jim. There has to be more to it than just the 'textbook' reasons. Maybe it was a combination of events that helped Lincoln get the ball running and there was really no way to stop it without the South just backing down and being quiet. One 'event' on its own merit may not show any real strategy but add a few, it just snowballed. You can bet that if there were articles or reports of insurrections and other alarming events, they got squashed and deleted.

Another small thing. With Lee there, at the Brown trial and execution, he pretty much had a better sense of how the climate was on the slavery issue. Maybe this added to his committment to Virginia is in part, why he went with the Confederacy and not the Union.

Pam