Tom, your comments remind me that William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, supported Northern secession from the union calling the constitution a "a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell."
Not a bad plan, really. Have the North secede, the seceding states can keep their laws outlawing slavery, they can overturn the evil fugutive slave laws and provide safe haven to runaway slaves from the South. The Constitution and the 10th Amendment are preserved. And, there aren't the 600,000 American corpses produced by the war.
Of course, most Northerners may have been like Lincoln and were perhaps far too racist to welcome an exodus of former slaves. --So only the hard core abolitionists like Garrison thought that was acceptable, I'm sure. Of course, they could always ship the freed slaves off to Africa or Central America as Lincoln suggested.
