Did William Coggeshall Save Lincoln's Life?

[Wild Bill]

John,

I was just about to thumb back the hammer on my ole .44 when I read your second paragraph and realized that we will be arguing until the Devil’s domain freezes over.

The real argument that brought on the Civil War was not over slavery, but the expansion of slavery into the western territories. This is a political question, not a moral one. It generally was referred to as the Slave Power Conspiracy in the North. Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a citizen but with none of the rights of citizenship as ruled in the Dred Scott case.

The slave Power Conspiracy worked this way: Before the Civil War the white male population. i.e., potential voters, of the North outnumbered those of the South by about 2 to 1. Yet Southerners controlled fully half of all cabinet and diplomatic appointments and had 22 extra representative in the lower house of Congress from counting 3/5 of its slaves, The Old South, more or less, according to this theory, unfairly and disproportionately, ran the whole nation.

Not counting numerous clerkships, secretaries, sergeants at arms, and pages in every executive and congressional department of the Federal government, which, in that age of difficult and expensive travel, frequently went to local Washingtonians, Marylanders, and Virginians (who backed the institution of slavery if they were not slaveowners themselves ), individual presidential administrations were eve more lopsided in their appointment policies. Andrew Jackson, e.g., appointed 57% of his subordinates from the South.

In the 62 years between 1789 and 1850 slaveowners controlled the presidency 50 of those years, and only they served 2 terms. In the 1850s even the Northerners elected to the presidency were sympathetic to the South.

In addition, the Speakers of the House were Southerners for 51 of those years. During the same period, 18 of 31 Supreme Court justice were from the Old South, while the 2 most important Chief Justices were Southerners.

So slavery was important, John, just not in the way you posited.