Slavery was the immediate cause of the Civil War - Part One
(Please forgive the haphazardness of this post. I am in a terrible rush and must throw the thing together)
[btw-- you may think Jack Anderson’s essay historically accurate, but you must provide a basis for the thought if you want it to have weight. Anderson’s “essay” is accompanied by not a shred of support and is quite wrong, employing fallacies such as relying upon northern leaders to prove southern motivation, and using emotionally charged words such as “holocaust” to refer to the Civil War. This is no work worthy of any thinking man’s serious consideration, and will appeal only to those so wedded to their erroneous point-of-view they are compelled to avoid the truth.]
Rarely do two parties in a conflict assault one another upon their initial encounter. It generally takes clusters of events to build up hostility, followed by some primary catalyst. This was the case with the Civil War.
The Civil War germinated during the Revolutionary period. Prior to 1783 wealth was the primary basis for assessing state revenue quotas. But after 1783, the basis changed to population. Since the South had a considerable number of slaves, this change presented southerners great difficulty. Because of their great power in early American government, Southerners lobbied for and won four provisions that eliminated the problem:
1. Direct taxes would be rarely enacted at the time because the nation's primary source of revenue was tariffs and excise taxes,
2. A black person would be accounted for only 3/5ths a person, as described in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution,
3. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specified all taxes levied in the states be levied "uniformly," which is to say they would be levied in such a way as not to disproportionately affect one geographic province over another, and
4. the electoral college would be tied to congressional representation, which would be tied to population.
These facts presented an enormous benefit to the South, as they protected it from being taxed in proportion to its numbers, and yet gave it significant congressional representation due to the existence of its slaves. This is one reason why so many early U.S. presidents came from the South.
Having garnered Constitutional protection from a weighty tax burden, the Southerners began a concerted effort to acquire Constitutional protection against export duties against southern products. They feared the seminal anti-slavery force of the period could develop to employ tariffs against the South in order to assault slavery.
Northern politicians were loathe to give up this source of revenue, so a compromise on the issue was crafted and manifested in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution wherein a ban of the "migration or importation" of people is prohibited. That took care of the Southerners (though they had argued for language explicitly protecting “Negro slavery,” a thing fellow southerner James Madison was loath to permit into the Constitution). The Article also allowed for a duty of no more than ten dollars on each imported person, and that pleased the Northerners. (See tax.org Taxation and Slavery, beginning in the sixth paragraph)
This Southern legal protectionism set the stage for a paradigm shift in American fiscal policy. Duties and excise taxes would eventually succumb to revenue by tariff. But it also set the stage for the South's own demise. Should a change in demographics allow fewer Southerners the opportunity to make law, including tariff law, Southern interests would lose representation and protection.
That demographic shift occurred between 1810 and 1820. The South grew only 28 percent during that period, as opposed to 38 percent for the rest of America. Southern total American population representation decreased by 2 percent and the trend continued even after the decade. Growth was found in Mid-Atlantic and Western regions, the same regions where support for protectionist tariffs was strongest. (see tax.org under heading “1820”)
Correspondingly, Congress gradually became populated with pro-tariff leaders. When they voted for tariffs, their goal was to protect and advance their interests just as Southerners had done previously, and to that end, because of the adroit maneuverings of Southern politicians years prior, Northerners were left to work within the revenue-by-tariff paradigm.
The Tariff Act of 1816 was passed to help manufacturing interests, as were tariffs in 1824 and 1828. The South protested, and understandably, but by that time it had not enough power in government to stop these pieces of legislation. The Southerners, South Carolina in particular, decided to ignore the 1828 tariff on the basis of the perceived right of states to nullify laws with which they disagreed. This prompted the federal government to threaten armed assault. The conflict was diffused by a compromise in 1833.
In 1837 a decreased inflow of foreign capital caused a financial crisis and also a greater acceptance of tariff use. It was at this time that the Whig Party, with its philosophy of higher tariffs, came into prominence. The Whigs won both the presidency and a congressional majority in 1840. But its presidential candidate died after only a month in office. The VP, John Tyler, became president. Though a Whig, he was first a states-rights Southerner, and when given the opportunity, he discarded Whig initiatives. By 1846, the Polk administration had come to office with the philosophy of lowering tariffs while keeping a measure of protectionism on behalf of northern Democrat interests. He broke his promise to the North with the Walker Tariff, removing all protectionist tariffs.
By 1850 the seeds of anti-slavery sentiment, planted as far back as the 1700s, had sprouted and begun to bloom. America was amidst prosperity and so tariffs were not as much an issue as they had been previously. In 1857 Democrats lowered tariffs, and after an economic panic ensued the new Republican Party demanded higher tariffs. But it was slavery that had taken center stage by that time. (http://www.tax.org/museum/1816-1860.htm under heading “1850’s”)
(Continued…) |
