I give you a few quotes and you give me back a mess of quotations from secession advocates, and their Northern and British allies, the sort of thing politicians and propagandists are always saying without any regard for the truth. And the quotes are spread out over years of history without any context.
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James Spence might have had a point if he was writing during the American Civil War, as he apparently was. The very high war tariffs may well have affected British ability and willingness to buy American goods. But in earlier years with a tariff of 17% this wouldn’t have been a great factor. Britain’s plan had been to abolish British tariffs, buy cheap foreign raw materials, and flood the world with British manufactures. Other countries didn’t want to play along, and they were right not to. No country that hoped to preserve or develop its own industries would have thrown their borders open to British goods.
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“Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free,” wrote the New York Times.
Which country? There would be two of them. The border would be a tense one. Tariffs would be imposed on goods coming up from New Orleans to the Western states. Smuggling would involve breaking up goods into concealable packages, and some goods could not be broken down.
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“Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern Heart’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation”
Out of context. The author goes on to say, “If the nullification of 1832 had become an active rebellion, the tariff would not have been the cause of the war, but only the pretext for it.” In the writer’s view, Southern politicians desire for power was the root of the war, not slavery, but also not the tariff or economics: “It is the inordinate political ambition of the Southern politicians which is the cause of the rebellion, — slavery being only a remote agency, as it fosters and develops that ambition, and furnishes it with a subject for agitation ...”
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“[T]he South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact?”
This is the “have your cake and eat it too” theory of economics. Money circulates. It’s used to buy things and then it isn’t there. While the Southern states exported much to Britain and Europe, they also “imported” much from the North. In effect, they had a negative “balance of payments” with the North. Northerners then had money to import goods from abroad and pay taxes on them. Plantation owners complained about the fees involved in cotton exportation, but they would not have gotten easier credit and insurance terms from British or European merchants.
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“You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and our institutions.”
Turn it around. Congressman Reagan’s real complaint isn’t his litany of real and invented economic complaints, it’s the “relentless crusade” against slavery. That’s the climax his rhetoric is building up to and the thing that really motivates him.
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“Secession, southerners argued, would ‘liberate’ the South and produce the kind of balanced economy that was proving so successful in the North and so unachievable in the South.”
A twentieth century opinion. The trend of the other remarks you cite and of secessionist argumentation at the time was that the South was a rural region that would happily provide raw materials to Britain in exchange for manufactured goods. There was a wish to remain agricultural and a belief that the South could. See Senator James Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech if you still think Wigfall was an outlier (Wigfall was certainly eccentric in his personality, but not in his preference for an agrarian slave-based society). Some of the elite looked forward to building up industry, but that was a minority opinion. If there were real conflicts between slavery and industrialization, that was recognized by people at the time and the choice was made in favor of the agriculture and slavery.
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Stephen Colwell’s 1861 book “The Five Cotton States and New York” provides a good rebuttal of secessionist economic arguments.
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Another startling find:
Did Tariffs Really Cause the American Civil War?
https://mises.org/wire/did-tariffs-really-cause-american-civil-war
Mises.org has been a hotbed of the “Tariffs caused the Civil War” nonsense, but they had the honesty to put up an article that rebuts that theory.
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Here’s what Laurence Keitt, a US and then a CS Congressman, said at South Carolina’s secession convention:
“But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question. ...
“African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism. . . . The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States.”
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“Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it” Laurence Keitt (Charleston, South Carolina, Courier, Dec. 22, 1860)
You give me quotes and I give you quotes saying the opposite. Several of them were from Northern newspapers which were most definitely not "secession advocates". You trying to dismiss them is done without regard for the truth.
James Spence might have had a point if he was writing during the American Civil War, as he apparently was. The very high war tariffs may well have affected British ability and willingness to buy American goods. But in earlier years with a tariff of 17% this wouldn’t have been a great factor. Britain’s plan had been to abolish British tariffs, buy cheap foreign raw materials, and flood the world with British manufactures. Other countries didn’t want to play along, and they were right not to. No country that hoped to preserve or develop its own industries would have thrown their borders open to British goods.
Britain's tariffs at that time were quite low. You say 17% tariffs are "low" but that is only in comparison to what they had been before and the sky high Morrill Tariff which spurred the Southern states to secede. The Confederate Constitution only allowed for a revenue tariff which was commonly understood to mean a maximum of 10%. So 17% was quite a bit higher than the Southern states themselves had in mind.
Which country? There would be two of them. The border would be a tense one. Tariffs would be imposed on goods coming up from New Orleans to the Western states. Smuggling would involve breaking up goods into concealable packages, and some goods could not be broken down.
No doubt there would have been smuggling to avoid the tariff.
This is the “have your cake and eat it too” theory of economics. Money circulates. It’s used to buy things and then it isn’t there. While the Southern states exported much to Britain and Europe, they also “imported” much from the North. In effect, they had a negative “balance of payments” with the North. Northerners then had money to import goods from abroad and pay taxes on them. Plantation owners complained about the fees involved in cotton exportation, but they would not have gotten easier credit and insurance terms from British or European merchants.
Yes they imported from the North....at higher prices thanks to the tariff. Without the tariff they could have imported from abroad at much lower prices. The North did not import much from abroad, Southerners did the importing to fill the holds of the ships they had contracted to carry their goods to Europe for the return journey. The North was making quite a bit of money servicing Southern exports. Had the banking, insurance, shipping and Factors (ie wholesalers) been in the Southern states which they definitely would have been post secession, that would have kept a lot of money and jobs in the Southern states. Northern newspapers made this point several times.
Turn it around. Congressman Reagan’s real complaint isn’t his litany of real and invented economic complaints, it’s the “relentless crusade” against slavery. That’s the climax his rhetoric is building up to and the thing that really motivates him.
Wrong. That was an excerpt. Here is the full quote: You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions.... We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition. But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to assert and maintain our separate independence. It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to none of them.
His real complaint was economic. He made the point that the South would be better off independent from the North.
A twentieth century opinion. The trend of the other remarks you cite and of secessionist argumentation at the time was that the South was a rural region that would happily provide raw materials to Britain in exchange for manufactured goods. There was a wish to remain agricultural and a belief that the South could. See Senator James Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech if you still think Wigfall was an outlier (Wigfall was certainly eccentric in his personality, but not in his preference for an agrarian slave-based society). Some of the elite looked forward to building up industry, but that was a minority opinion. If there were real conflicts between slavery and industrialization, that was recognized by people at the time and the choice was made in favor of the agriculture and slavery.
Evidently it was not a 20th century opinion since the authors cited Southerners making that argument at the time. Some Southerners did not want to industrialize. Others did. Obviously the Upper South was industrializing at a rapid rate by 1860. The margins on cotton and other commodities would not stay high for too much longer. The British were developing a cotton industry of their own within their empire.
Stephen Colwell’s 1861 book “The Five Cotton States and New York” provides a good rebuttal of secessionist economic arguments.
You've cited this one book and I've cited others which argue to the contrary.
Another startling find: Did Tariffs Really Cause the American Civil War? https://mises.org/wire/did-tariffs-really-cause-american-civil-war
The article offers no evidence - only his opinions. He says the Southern states seceded to preserve slavery but never mentions that slavery was not threatened within the US nor does he mention that by seceding they were giving up the benefits and protections of the fugitive slave clause of the US constitution thus making it very easy for many slaves to simply cross the border and be free. Finally, he never even mentions the Corwin Amendment which would have expressly protected slavery effectively forever by constitutional amendment or the Southern states' rejection of it. In short, he offers nothing to support his opinion.
Mises.org has been a hotbed of the “Tariffs caused the Civil War” nonsense, but they had the honesty to put up an article that rebuts that theory.
The Mises Institute is a leading Libertarian think tank and supporter of Austrian economics. They've produced many excellent articles which argue persuasively that Tariffs lay at the very heart of both secession and the North's desire to wage a war of aggression to prevent secession.
Here’s what Laurence Keitt, a US and then a CS Congressman, said at South Carolina’s secession convention:
I've read it. That was his opinion. Others such as Jefferson Davis were of the opposite opinion.