Why Did Lincoln Support Slavery?

By 1860, the bridge between the North and the South was quickly growing apart, mainly because of the issue of slavery. South Carolina, one of the most prominent southern states, strongly supported slavery. Therefore, when anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln was elected to be president on November 6, 1860, South Carolina General Assembly passed the "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act" three days later. This resolution had stated South Carolina’s intention to secede from the Union. The General Assembly formed a convention, the Convention of the People of South Carolina, to discuss and vote on secession. The president of this convention was David Flavel Jamison, a former member of the S.C. House of Representatives.
The first part of this quote states that “Written Constitutions are worthless, unless they are written, at the same time, in our hearts and founded on the interests of the people.” This means
that written Constitutions have no meaning unless they are written for the people. I think that based on this line, Jamison believed that the Constitution was not written in the interests of the people, more specifically the southerners, so therefore the Constitution is worthless. I conclude that Jamison believed that the Constitution doesn’t have the people’s interest at heart.
This quote by Jamison was also pro-secession as it states that “there is no common bond of sympathy or interests between the North and the South.” This means that the North and the South had irreparable rifts, and because the North and South don’t share any common interests, the South should secede from the Union.
However, according to this quote, Jamison was against the idea of war. Jamison states that “all efforts to preserve this Union will not only be fruitless, but fatal to the less numerous section.” This means that Jamison believed that any effort to keep the South and North united would fail, including going to war. Additionally, he also said that the effort would be fatal to the less numerous section. The population of the northern states had reached approximately 23 million by 1860 and the southern states had a population of 9 million, in which 39% were slaves. Therefore, Jamison was implying that the South, which had a much lower population than the North, would be destroyed in the attempt to keep the Union
together.
The quote by Jamison was part of the opening remarks of the convention. The speech listed six complaints about the North. Later that day, the Convention of the People of South Carolina voted unanimously (169-0) to secede from the Union. This speech might be spoken to convince South Carolinians to support the decision to secede from the Union. Three days after the meeting, the Convention drafted the Ordinance of Secession, officially declaring South Carolina independent from the Union. The convention also drafted the “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina” which lists the reasons South Carolina seceded from the Union. Within the next several months, South Carolina was joined by several other seceded states that eventually formed the Confederate States of America.