Tenchusatsu, It was an economic problem first and foremost. But not so much over slavery. Lincoln promised in his inaugural address not to disturb the practice of slavery in the states that already had it. But he did try to impose additional tariffs. Protective tariffs that benefited the North and penalized the South. I did not want to get into a long drawn out teaching session here, but let's start with this. Keep in mind, I have no axe to grind here other than the discovery of the truth. Remember this: In a war's aftermath, history is always written by the victor:
This is what Jefferson Davis had to say about the matter, and he was not the only one.
"The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever upon the passions, prejudices, or sympathies of mankind was so potent that it has been spread like a thick cloud over the whole horizon of historic truth.
The rupture he’s referencing in 1832 is the threatened secession of South Carolina. He explains further in Part II “The Constitution,” Chapter XIV “The Necessity for Secession.” Davis explains:
At a critical and memorable period, that pure spirit, luminous intellect, and devoted adherent of the Constitution, the great statesman of South Carolina, invoked this remedy of state interposition against the Tariff Act of 1828, which was deemed injurious and oppressive to his state. No purpose was then declared to coerce the state, as such, but measures were taken to break the protective shield of her authority and enforce the laws of Congress upon her citizens, by compelling them to pay outside of her ports the duties on imports, which the state had declared unconstitutional and had forbidden to be collected in her ports.
There remained at that day enough of the spirit in which the Union had been founded – enough respect for the sovereignty of states and of regard for the limitations of the Constitution – to prevent a conflict of arms. The compromise of 1833 was adopted, which South Carolina agreed to accept, the principle for which she contended being virtually conceded.
The protectionism in the Tariff of 1832 and the Tariff of Abominations (1828) had been the last straw. South Carolina, fed up with the discrimination of protectionism, threatened secession. It was only the compromise of 1833 (also called the Tariff of 1833) which brought them back. The new tariff act was supposed gradually reduce the rates of tariffs. By 1842, the compromise was nearly successful with rates approaching 20%, the rate it was prior to 1832. The problem was the reduction was abandoned in 1842 when Congress passed The Black Tariff, which, among other things, doubled the average tariff rates to 40%."
In Part IV “The War”, Chapter XIII “Sources Whence Revenue was Derived”, he comments further on this controversy:
So the tariff act in 1828, known at the time as ‘the bill of abominations,’ was resisted by Southern representatives because it was the invasion of private rights in violation of the compact by which the states were united. In the last stage of the proceeding, after the friends of the bill had advocated it as a measure for protecting capital invested in manufacturers, Drayton of South Carolina moved to amend the title so that it should read, ‘An act to increase the duties upon certain imports, for the purpose of increasing the profits of certain manufacturers,’ and stated his purpose for desiring to amend the title to be that, upon some case which would arise under the execution of the law, an appeal might be made to the Supreme Court of the United States, to test its constitutionality. Those who had passed the bill refused to allow the opportunity to test the validity of a tax imposed of the protection of a particular industry. Though the debates showed clearly enough the purpose to be to impose duties for protection, the phraseology of the law presented it as enacted to raise revenue, and therefore the victims of the discrimination were deprived of an appeal to the tribunal instituted to hear and decide on the constitutionality of a law.
South Carolina, oppressed by onerous duties and stung by the injustice of a refusal to allow her the ordinary remedy against unconstitutional legislation, asserted the right, as a sovereign state, to nullify the law. This conflict between the authority of the United States and one of the states threatened for a time such disastrous consequences as to excite intense feeling in all who loved the Union as the fraternal federation of equal states. Before an actual collision of arms occurred, Congress wisely adopted the compromise act of 1833. By that the fact of protection remained, but the principle of duties for revenue was recognized by a sliding scale of reduction, and it was hoped the question had been placed upon a basis that promised a permanent peace. The party of protective duties, however, came into power about the close of the period when the compromise measure had reached the result it proposed, and the contest was renewed with little faith on the part of the the dominant party and with more than all of its former bitterness. The cause of the departure from a sound principle of a tariff for revenue, which had prevailed during the first quarter of a century, and the adoption in 1816 of the rule imposing duties for protection, was stated by McDuffie to be that politicians and capitalists had seized upon the subject and used it for their own purposed – the former for political advancement, the latter for their own pecuniary profit – and that the question had become one of partisan politics and sectional enrichment. Contemporaneously with this theory of protective duties arose the policy of making appropriations from the common treasury for local improvements. As the Southern representatives were mainly those who denied the constitutional power to make such expenditures, it naturally resulted that the mass of those appropriations were made for Northern works. Now that direct taxes had in practice been so wholly abandoned as to be almost an obsolete idea, and now that the treasury was supplied by the collection of duties upon imports, two golden streams flowed steadily to enrich the Northern and manufacturing region by impoverishment of the Southern and agricultural section. In the train of wealth and demand for labor followed immigration and the more rapid increase of population in the capital Northern than in the Southern states. I do not deny the existence of other causes, such as the fertile region of the Northwest, the better harbors, the greater amount of shipping of the Northeastern states, and the prejudice of Europeans against contact with the negro race; the causes I have first stated were, I think, the chief, and those only which are referable to the action of the general government.
…discontent therefore was steadily accumulating, and, as stated in the beginning of this chapter, I think was due to class legislation in the form of protective duties and its consequences more than to any and all other causes combined.
The Union was lucky that force was not necessary and, even though they broke their promise, the compromise of 1833 quieted the dispute. However, less than thirty years later in December 1860, South Carolina was the first state to actually secede.
These ideas of Jefferson Davis seem to be the sentiment among many economists or civil war buffs. Regardless though, many others seem to not be willing even to concede the statement, “Protective tariffs were one of the primary causes of the Civil War.”
It is of course the case that slavery played a role in causing the Civil War as well. The South feared that slavery not being extended to the western states would mean that they would be more easily outvoted in the future. And they faulted the northern states for not upholding the Constitution and Supreme Court cases regarding slavery.
In Part I, Chapter I on Page 4, Jefferson Davis describes one of the confederacy’s main grievances involving slavery and laments what he believes to be the weakness of argument from which the North fueled their retelling. He writes:
Southern statesmen may perhaps have been too indifferent to this consideration – overlooking in their ardent pursuit of principles, the effects of phrases.
This is especially true with regard to that familiar but most fallacious expression, “the extension of slavery.” To the reader unfamiliar with the subject, or viewing it only on the surface, it would perhaps never occur that, as used in the great controversies respecting the territories of the United States, it does not, never did, and never could, imply the addition of a single slave to the number already existing. The question was merely whether the slaveholder should be permitted to go, with his slaves, into territory (the common property of all) into which the non-slaveholder could go with his property of any sort. There was no proposal or desire on the part of the Southern states to reopen the slave trade, which they had been foremost in suppressing, or to add to the number of slaves. It was a question of the distribution, or dispersion, of the slaves, rather than of the ‘extension of slavery.’ Removal is not extension. Indeed, if emancipation was the end to be desired, the dispersion of the negros over a wider area among additional territories, eventually to become states, in climates unfavorable to slave labor, instead of hindering, would have promoted this object by diminishing the difficulties in the way of ultimate emancipation.
In other words, the discussion of the emancipation of slaves was continuing during the time that the Union was acquiring new territories. From 1836 – 1861, 10 new states were admitted to the Union. Thus, one of the debates of the day was over “the extension of slavery,” or could slaveholders bring their slaves with them into the new territories without forfeiting their rights of ownership.
The problem was that slaveholders had no way of extracting the capital they had invested into their slaves. Even if a slaveholder wanted to believe in the freedom of all people, it was a foolish business decision for him to just let all his slaves go free. That’s why in other European countries, the government compensated slaveholders, literally buying slaves out of slavery. That way, no one could have economic concerns holding them back from emancipation.
But if the extension of slavery was prohibited, slaveholders, with no way of getting the capital out and no way to move into the new territories, would have been essentially caged into their home states. They wouldn’t be able to partake in the benefit of the new states or territories and again the government would be discriminating against them.
However the turn of phrase is what Davis is lamenting. Supporting the “extension of slavery” sounds like you’re supporting bringing over more slaves, even though this turn of phrase “does not, never did, and never could” actually imply that. However, many who retell our history now do make it mean just that. It is almost certain that Lincoln and Johnson danced around such turns of phrase in order to spread the idea of the primary cause of the Civil War being slavery.
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