Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...

OK, from a state perspective I see your point. However, to me a free
country means that individuals have freedom, not just states. The slaves
in the southern states certainly wouldn't have considered themselves to be
living in a free country.


Agreed. Slavery was wrong, no question about that. But it was not
unconstitutional and it would have eventually ended here without a war just
as it did in the rest of the Americas, except Haiti, I believe.

Ending slavery without a war was tried in the US and it failed.

Escaped slaves and Native Americans in Brazil banded together
and formed their own nation (DAGS maroons) internal to Brazil that
fought for freedom for most of its ~75 year history.

Interestingly, some of the the leaders of the Haitian slave
rebellion were veterans of the American Revolutionary War,
e.g. commony referred to in our history books as 'French
troops.'

Lincoln is
revered today for preserving the Union, but he did so in only a geographical
sense. The relationship of the federal government to the states was
significantly different after the war. While slaves gained freedom via the
war, every other American was less free.

"If one man is not free, no man is free." There's more truth to
that than meets the eye. Slavery devalued labor, depriving
all laborers of freedom of economic opportunity. De Maupassant
wrote about the societal differences along the Ohio River. On
the North bank hard workers were respected and they could
advance their lot in society via the fruits of their labors. Not
so on the South Bank, where men who worked for a living
were deemed to be hardly better than slaves.

--

FF