Following secession and up and until two weeks after Lincoln took office, a large part of the northern press contended that the States of the South had a full right to secede if the people desired to withdraw from the Union, and it was common to see in the northern press the words, “Erring sisters go in peace.”
Horace Greeley’s paper had said the following,
”If seven or eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at Washington, saying: ‘We hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it;we will give you the choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other,’ we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of self-government even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. “
'This conservative view of the question which Mr. Greeley gave to the world with such emphasis, and in which he expressed his opinion of the principle involved, had been reiterated for days, weeks and months after the election of Mr.Lincoln, and until after most of the Southern States had seceded.
'They continued until after the people of the South had adopted a constitution, and organized their new Confederate Government; after they had raised and equipped an army, appointed ambassadors to foreign courts, and convened a congress; after they had taken possession of three fourths of the arsenals and forts within their territory,and enrolled her as one of the nations of the earth.
After all this, Mr. Greeley’spaper continued to endorse the action of all southern people as fully as it was possible for language to enable it to do so. Mr. Greeley had said:
“Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views. “
The most prominent men and able editors of Republican papers all over the North had earnestly and ably supported Mr.Greeley in his views.
In addition to all this, the commander of the Federal army, General Winfield Scott, was very emphatic in endorsing the views of the New York Tribune and other papers, to the effect that secession was the proper course for the southern people to pursue, and his oft repeated expression, “Wayward sisters, part in peace,” seemed to meet the full approval of the great body of the people of the North.
This rapidly changed.
3/18/1861 It took only a week for Northern newspapers to understand the meaning of the low Confederate Tariff announced the week earlier in Montgomery.
The Boston Transcript wrote,
“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.
“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but 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 upon 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 Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York.In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“
“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”
The leaders in the South knew that there would only be two choices open to the federal government politicians who had always maintained a permanent monopoly on tax revenues.Either they would meet the South’s low tax rates and compete in a peacefulfree-market which would mean a drastic cut in government revenue, power and special interest benefits.
Or they would suffer financial losses, corporate and national bankruptcy. Not a likely scenario.
Or they would trump up some fake reasons to go to war and attempt to destroy the competitor.
Sure, some did, but the majority of Northern opinion was actually closer to that of Democrat President Buchanan.
Buchanan believed, and said so, that the Constitution does not legitimize unilateral unapproved state declarations of secession, but that the Federal Government could not do anything to stop them.
Incoming President Lincoln also followed that line of reasoning, in his Inaugural telling secessionists:
But, of course, secessionists had every reason to start war, and so they did, at Fort Sumter.
That changed everything.
PeaBrain speaking of Northern economic interests: "Or they would trump up some fake reasons to go to war and attempt to destroy the competitor."
But as it happened, there was no need for any "trump up", since Confederates were already eager to start war and took the first excuse they could, then quickly declared war and sent military aid to Confederates in Union states, thus sealing their ultimate fate.
And as a result, "war fever" became just as great amongst average Northerners as it had been among Fire Eater Confederates.