gungasnake wrote:Slavery in America should have ended around 1812 when the British navy shut down the slave trade off of West Africa and nobody should have wanted any part of fighting a war to preserve slavery as an institution in 1860.
You don't know any more about history than you do about science, apparently. Article One, Section Nine of the Constitution reads, in part:
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
On March 2nd, 1807, Jefferson signed into law a bill which prohibited the importation of slaves effective January 1, 1808. The Royal Navy had nothing to do with it. The Parliament in London also passed a bill to outlaw the slave trade in 1807, but enforcement was a joke, and the proof was presented year after year to the Parliament by anti-slavery societies in England, until 1834, when a bill with real teeth was passed, and the First Lord of the Admiralty made a sincere promise to Wilberforce and the abolitionist in England to enforce the end of the slave trade. England paid literally millions of pounds sterling to Spain and Portugal to end the slave trade, which was not accomplished until 1853. Brazil, a very short sea voyage from the slave coast, did not cave into British pressure until 1852.
Furthermore, in 1812, the Royal Navy was engaged in a complete blockade of all European shipping, from the Skagerrak between Demark and Sweden, to the Straits of Gibraltar between Spain and North Africa. The primary reason that the United States Navy was able to survive the Naval War of 1812, and to do so well in single ship actions was that the Royal Navy was in no position to send major resources elsewhere in the world and could only spare a handful of frigates and sloops of war to confront the Americans. So, there were certainly no resources available to patrol and blockade the extensive west coast of Africa, and the Bight of Benin.
You just make this **** up, don't ya Gunga?