Lincoln's Tariff War

Mises Daily ^ | May 06, 2002 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[dontreadthis]

When Charles Adams published his book For Good and Evil, a world history of taxation, the most controversial chapter by far was the one on whether or not tariffs caused the American War between the States. That chapter generated so much discussion and debate that Adams's publisher urged him to turn it into an entire book, in the form of When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession.

Many of the reviewers of this second book, so confident were they that slavery was the one and only possible reason for both Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and the war itself, excoriated Adams for his analysis that the tariff issue was a major cause of the war. (Adams recently told me in an email that after one presentation to a New York City audience, he felt lucky that "no one brought a rope.")

My book, The Real Lincoln, has received much the same response with regard to the tariff issue. But there is overwhelming evidence that: 1) Lincoln, a failed one-term congressman, would never have been elected had it not been for his career-long devotion to protectionism; and 2) the 1861 Morrill tariff, which Lincoln was expected to enforce, was the event that triggered Lincoln’s invasion, which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

... (snip)

"We are going to make tax slaves out of you," Lincoln was effectively saying, "and if you resist, there will be an invasion." That was on March 4. Five weeks later, on April 12, Fort Sumter, a tariff collection point in Charleston Harbor, was bombarded by the Confederates. No one was hurt or killed, and Lincoln later revealed that he manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot, which helped generate war fever in the North.

[Sherman Logan]

BTW, just ran across a fascinating study about the eternal argument over whether slavery was a profitable and viable institution in 1860, or was just about to go into decline, making was unnecessary to get rid of it.

The authors maintain an admirable, though somewhat creepy, detachment from the issues involved with the morality of the institution, examining only the economics.

Their conclusion is that slavery for most of the 1800 to 1860 period provided ROI at least equal to alternative methods of investing capital. Also that the institution showed none of the tell-tale signs of one in decline or about to start declining.

http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0606.pdf

[DBCJR]

You have obviously not read my posts. The source is highly suspect for a liberal slant because that is how he makes his money. I do not accept synthesized information from such a source as “truth”.

[DBCJR]

No one is defending slavery. My only point is that to say the slaves were 50% of the assets of the South is incredulous. Now, if your recent discovery is true, you have dropped the market value of the slaves even further as there marginal rate of substitution has been marginalized. In other words, if slavery was not profitable, the value of slaves drops like a rock.

[Sherman Logan]

I am unclear why you think the article posted shows slavery and value of slaves to be lower than expected. The article actually argues against those who claim slavery was unprofitable, demonstrating that it was considerably more profitable than other potential ways of investing capital.

ROI varied from around 10% to 16% from 1830 to 1860, and tended to increase towards the end of this period. Most people today would consider that a damn good return, especially in absence of capital gains tax.

IOW, value of slaves was increasing, quite dramatically, over this period.