The War of the Rebellion (the official name at the time) was fought over tariffs. I thought we've been through this. As I recall, I didn't convince you of anything and you didn't convince me of anything. You are obviously driven by ideology on this and I have my own biases as well. OK, let's see if I can dig up some hitherto unused material.
A book by Charles Adams titled For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization has an interesting neutral take on this. Chapter 29 of his book deals with the Civil War, or if you prefer, "The Rich Man's War and the Poor Man's Fight." It's ironic to say the South was anti-capitalist when it was they who sought to make their ports tariff free. The North was adamant in not allowing that. Who is the anti-capitalist here?
In his book, Adams walks the reader through the earlier fights over high import taxes. In 1832 a convention was called in South Carolina to nullify the new federal import duties. The duties were declared unconstitutional, and the governor was authorized to resist any attempt at enforcement by the national government. Andrew Jackson reacted strongly and it looked as if a civil war was in the making. Cool heads prevailed and a compromise was worked out. The tariff was to be reduced over the next few years to levels South Carolina would tolerate. This was the great Compromise of 1833.
Lincoln was supported in his bid for the presidency by industrialists in the North. He paid his debt to them when he signed into law the Morrill Tariff, as it was called. It was the highest tariff in US history. It doubled the rates of the 1857 tariff to about 47% of the value of the imported products. The tariff struggle of 1832 was still a simmering issue, by this act Lincoln closed the door to any reconciliation.
An editorial that ran in the Boston Transcript on March 18, 1861:
It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the Union which they have abandoned. Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby.
The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties....The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.
There is much more that can be said, but I have to run. I'll end with this quote from Lysander Spooner, a vociferous abolitionist, who wrote in his pamphlet No Treason in 1870, All these cries of having 'abolished slavery,' of having 'saved the country,' of having preserved the union,' of establishing 'a government of consent,' and of 'maintaining the national honor' are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one. |
