(August 18, 2017 at 1:06 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Let's not forget their fear of losing congressional power granted by the three fifths compromise....which, amusingly, abolition strengthened - leading to years of congressional dominance by the south - which they used to perpetuate the inequality they'd lost a war fighting for. It was during -this- time that those statues went up, a literal whitewashing of history. So, if some "statue enthusiast" wants to talk history and heritage...there's their history and heritage - probably ought to nail it round their necks.
They also knew that per the Missouri compromise, the only land available as possibly future slave-states was the desert Southwest, where agriculture wouldn't flourish until modern irrigation and hence slavery would not be economical.
Given that, it was likely that they would in the Senate lose power relative to nonslave states and thus abolitionists, leading to a Senate that would vote for abolition. Given the disparity in population between the North and the South, the South could have no hope of controlling the House of Representatives. And that meant that slavery would be much easier to outlaw even without Constitutional redress.
