No and its not necessary to know them to know that slavery was wrong and I'm guessing that "Alabamians in 1860 knew about all of these things" is a bit of an exaggeration. Alabamians in 1860 were probably more concerned with their day to day lives.
Here is a glimpse of southern thinking as they considered seeking safety out of the Union.
John Brown murdered, with
cutlasses, five men on Pottawatomie Creek in May 1856. Afterwards, he went on a fund-raising tour in the northern states, raising money for his “Kansas work.” Northerners gave liberally. Republican former congressman Joshua R. Giddings was among those giving Brown money. Brown took the money, and weapons donated by New England abolitionists, and went to Iowa to train his “army.” In May 1858, Brown and his friends drafted
a replacement Constitution for the United States (called the Chatham Constitution), which he planned to put in place after he had overthrown the federal government. At the same time, Hugh Forbes, Brown’s drillmaster, revealed to Republican Senators William Seward (Republican front-runner for president in 1860) and Republican Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts the details of Brown’s planned attack on a federal facility in Virginia. In his conversation with Seward, Forbes “went fully into the whole matter in all its bearings.” (“Interview with Seward,”
New York Herald, October 27, 1859, p. 4, col. 2.) Seward said he did not object to Brown attacking a federal facility, he just “expressed regret that he had been told.” (These interviews came to light a year and a half later after John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry.
Richmond Enquirer, October 25, 1859, p. 2, col. 3.) Neither Wilson nor Seward ever warned any federal or state authority of Brown's impending attack.
After John Brown’s arrest, Republicans raised money for Brown’s legal defense and for the benefit John Brown’s family. (Imagine how people would react if Republicans went to raising money for the defense of the terrorist-murderer of Charlottesville). John Andrew, soon to be the Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts, said, “John Brown was right.” Henry David Thoreau, an acquaintance of Brown’s, called the government of the United States “this most hypocritical and diabolical government.” On November 1, 1859, abolitionist Wendell Phillips told a Brooklyn crowd “the lesson of the hour is insurrection.” When Brown was executed for murder, treason and inciting servile insurrection, towns all over the northern mourned his passing by ringing bells, decking churches in black, etc. The editor of the
Savannah (Ga.) Daily Morning News wrote, “when treason and insurrection are applauded at the North, is it not time for the South to take measures for her own protection?” (
Savannah (Ga.) Daily Morning News, November 8, 1859, p. 1, col. 2.)
Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of Alabama, Feb. 24, 1860, WHEREAS, anti-slavery agitation persistently continued in the non-slaveholding States of this Union, for more than a third of a century, marked at every stage of its progress by contempt for the obligations of law and the sanctity of compacts, evincing a
deadly hostility to the rights and institutions of the Southern people, and a settled purpose to effect their overthrow even by subversion of the Constitution, and at the hazard of
violence and bloodshed; and whereas, a sectional party calling itself Republican, committed alike by its own acts and antecedents, and the public avowals and secret machinations of its leaders to the execution of these atrocious designs, has acquired the ascendancy in nearly every Northern State, and hopes by success in the approaching Presidential election to seize the Government itself; and whereas, to permit such seizure by those whose unmistakable aim is to pervert its whole machinery to the destruction of a portion of its members would be an act of suicidal folly and madness, almost without a parallel in history; and whereas, the General Assembly of Alabama, representing a people loyally devoted to the Union of the Constitution, but scorning the Union which fanaticism would erect upon its ruins, deem it their solemn duty to provide in advance the means by which they may escape such
peril and dishonor, and devise new securities for perpetuating the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity; therefore … upon … the election of a President advocating the principles and action of the party in the Northern States calling itself the Republican Party, it shall be the duty of the Governor, … to issue his Proclamation, calling upon the qualified voters … to elect delegates to a Convention of the State, to consider, determine and do whatever in the opinion of said Convention, the rights, interests, and honor of the State of Alabama requires to be done for their protection. (William R. Smith,
The History and Debates of the Convention of the People of Alabama, (Montgomery, Ala: White, Pfister, & Co, 1861), 9-10.)
William Lowndes Yancey of Montgomery gave a speech in Washington DC in September 1860. “My friends, there is one issue before you, and to all sensible men but one issue, and but two sides of that issue. The slavery question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the commercial question is but one of the symbols of that issue; the Union question is but one of those symbols; the only issue before this country in this canvas is the integrity and the safety of the Constitution. . [Great applause and cries of “good.”] He is a true Union man who intends to stand by that Constitution with all its checks and balances. He is a disunion man who means to destroy one single letter of that sacred instrument.” Yancey then addressed his northern countrymen attempting to show how the election of a Republican would be viewed by southerners. “Suppose that party [the Republican party] gets into power; suppose another John Brown raid takes place in a frontier state; suppose ‘Sharpe’s rifles’ and pikes and bowie knives, and all the other instruments of warfare are brought to bear upon an inoffensive, peaceful and unfortunate people, and that Lincoln or Seward is in the presidential chair, where will then be a force of United States marines to check that band? Suppose that is the case – that the frontiers of the country will be lighted up by flames of midnight arson; as it is in Texas [the Texas Troubles of 1860]; that towns are burned; that the peace of our families is disturbed; that poison is found secreted throughout the whole country and immense quantities; that men are found to prowling about in our land distributing that poison in order that it may be placed in our springs and our wells; with arms and ammunition placed in the hands of this semi-barbarous people, what will be our fate? Where will be the United States Marshals to interfere? Where will be the dread of this General Government that exists under this present administration? Where will be the fear of the United States army to intimidate or prevent such movements?” Yancey continued: “Well, then, if John Brown commits a raid on that state while in the peace of God, and while in the peace of the country, under the peace of the Constitution that is supposed to protect it – if he comes with pike, with musket and bayonet and cannon; if he slaughter an inoffensive people; if his myrmidons are scattered all over our country, where it is supposed rests this institution which is so unpalatable, inciting our slaves to midnight arson, to midnight murder, to midnight insurrection against the sparsely scattered white people; if the brotherhood of this nation shall be broken up and the Constitution be ignored; if the protection that is due from every citizen to every other citizen shall be no longer afforded; if, in the place of it,
a wild and bloodthirsty spirit – not of avenge, for we have done no wrong to be revenged – but
a bloodthirsty spirit of assassination, of murder, of wrong, takes its place, and we find scattered throughout all our borders these people, and we find the midnight skies lighted up by the fires of our dwellings, and the wells from which we hourly drink poisoned by strychnine; and our wives and our children, when we are away at our business, are found murdered by our hearthstones, my answer, my friend, is in these words: what would
you do?” [Loud applause] A voice from the audience: “I would stop him before he got that far.” (“Mr. Yancey’s Speech,”
Richmond Enquirer, September 25, 1860, p. 2, col. 4-6)
When a Republican won, the governor called for an election to a state convention.
It is not an accident that southern state seceded almost exactly in the order of the percentage of the population that was African-American (the states with the highest percentage of black inhabitants, SC and MSS were the first to leave), not because African-Americans voted, but because white voters did. White southerners, whether they owned slaves or not, were deeply concerned with slave insurrection because all would be threatened with the violence of a slave insurrection. Insurrections by definition are indiscriminate.
With all your education and experience, you have still not figured out that abortion on demand as a means of birth control is wrong.
