Replies

FLR-bird: "Nope! its the reality.
The denial of it is the lie."

FRiend, you are here peddling Lost Cause propaganda, which by definition is a pack of lies.
Of course, any propaganda will include the occasional fact and truth, but only where those coincidentally support the overall fake narrative.
So, I'm happy to acknowledge occasional facts appearing in Lost Cause narratives, but by definition, those are not "Lost Cause", they are simply elements of history.

FLR-bird: "Its true that the Wealthy owned a grossly disproportionate share of the slaves.
Of that 5.63% of all White Southerners who owned slaves, half owned 5 or fewer."

Your 5.63% number comes from the 1860 census which reported 316,632 named slaveholders in the 11 Deep South and Upper South states, out of their 5,482,222 total free population.
Your suggestion -- that large numbers of these slaveholders were other than adult white men -- is not supported by any data, and all logic dictates that the adult male "head of household" was listed on the census as the named slaveholder regardless of whom the family itself may have considered "owned" each slave.

Further, where you could find multiple slaveholders listed on the census for one family -- if anywhere -- is among the 1% of slaveholders who owned circa 25% of all slaves, meaning statistically it's insignificant.

And we do have a number for the average household size in 1860 -- it was 5.5 members, meaning circa 300,000 slaveholder families represented 1,650,000 people, or 30% of all whites in Confederate states.
However, the distribution of slaves and slaveholders was highly uneven, ranging from over 50% in some counties to fewer than 1% in others.

FLR-bird: "The percentage of White families which owned slaves was relatively small and this was more true in the Upper South where industrialization was more advanced and where for the most part the land was less suited to growing cash crops like cotton and tobacco."

Any map of the time shows where slavery was concentrated (up to 50%) and where it was weakest (less than 1%).
In Southern regions where slavery was weakest, there anti-slavery Unionism was strongest.

FLR-bird on McPherson's estimate of 1/3 slaveholder families: "Yeah I've seen his claims here and don't find them credible.
He doesn't provide much evidence for his guesstimate."

Here is the truth of this matter -- McPherson could easily have estimated 20% or 25% or 40% and all of those numbers are correct for some Confederate Army units from some Confederate regions, but the "overall" estimate depends 100% on how you decide to calculate it.
Regardless, one thing we can be certain of -- almost 100% of Confederate army officers and political leaders were slaveholders, regardless of how many of their troops did, or did not, come from slaveholding families.

FLR-bird: "Gosh, how did these parties do in the Deep South?
Oh that's right!
They were complete non entities.
The Southern Democrats utterly dominated the South - most especially the Deep South and they were not at all shy in their complaints about the Tariff or about the totally unequal federal government expenditures.
They had not been shy about complaining about it bitterly for years and years."

1860 Presidential Election, green = Southern Democrats

And yet... and yet... all your endless nonsense notwithstanding, the 1860 Southern Democrat Party platform said... {wait for it...}... not one word about tariffs!!

Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 campaign.

FLR-bird: "This is 100% pure unadulterated BS.
Southerners saw the effects of the tariff when they got less money from Wholesalers for their cash crops."

That is such a bald-faced lie I can't even believe you'd claim it -- have you no intellectual honesty at all??

Import Tariffs -- over 90% paid in Northern ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- had nothing whatever, zero, zip, nada, zilch, to do with wholesale prices paid to cotton farmers in Mississippi, or anywhere else.

How can you conceivably not understand that??

FLR-bird: "They saw the effects of the tariff when they saw sales of their cash crops decline in foreign markets. "

And yet the value of Southern exports grew exponentially from, say, 1820 to 1860.
In 1860 the American South was among the most prosperous regions on earth.

FLR-bird: "They saw the effects of the tariff when the price of the manufactured goods they needed to buy went up considerably."

And still, you're talking nonsense because the top items "imported" by Southerners "from the North" were:

Clothing made from Southern Cotton
Woolen goods made from Northern Wool.
Shoes and other leather goods made from Western Leather.

Imported luxury goods like silk, linen, musical instruments and furniture were only purchased by the wealthiest of slaveholders, not average Southerners.

Yes, cast iron stoves, railroad iron, bar, sheet and iron nails -- all those were slightly more expensive due to tariffs on iron imports.
But those tariffs were the same as tariffs on Southern exports of cotton, tobacco and sugar, so surely, what was good for the goose should be good for the entire flock, right?

FLR-bird: "They knew full well exactly what caused all of this - high tariffs.
That's what caused the Nullification Crisis after all."

The 1832 Nullification Crisis was caused by the 1828 Tariff of Abominations which had been supported by many Southerners including, most famously, Democrat Pres. Andrew Jackson.

The 1832 Nullification Crisis resulted in drastic tariff reductions in 1832, 1833, 1846 and 1857.
As a result of the 1857 Tariff reductions, the US national debt doubled under Democrat Pres. Buchanan, which led to Morrill's proposal to increase tariffs back to their 1846 Walker levels.

Tariffs were not a political issue in the South or anywhere else in 1860.

FLR-bird: "More complete and utter BS.
It was a political issue in the 1820s.
It was a political issue during the Nullification Crisis.
It had been an ongoing political issue ever since then.
Multiple Southern politicians said quite openly that the ruinously high tariffs were ample ground for them to secede.
They had been saying similar things for a long time."

Sure, Southern Democrat Fire Eaters (Yancey, Wigfall, Rhett, etc.) grasping at every straw they could find to justify secession and war against the USA -- however, even they well understood that Tariffs were a non-issue among the vast majority of Southern voters, which is why they stayed focused on slavery, slavery, slavery.

Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 election.

FLR-bird: "They didn't say "Morrill" Tariff specifically but they said "they drain our substance via sectional partisan legislation" (Texas)..."

Well, first of all, you've misquoted, the actual words are:

"They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."

Those words are vague enough to mean anything, or nothing at all -- they don't mention either tariffs or duties, much less the Morrill Tariff specifically -- plus, they are flatly untrue, since in 1860 few regions on earth were more prosperous than the American South.

FLR-bird: "they complained bitterly about tariffs and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Georgia)"

No, in fact, the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" commended the Walker Tariff of 1846, which are just the rates Morrill was intending to restore.

"After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.
The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy."

FLR-bird: "...or they complained bitterly about both the Tariff and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Rhett's address attached to and sent out with South Carolina's declaration of Causes)."

There's no doubt, of the seven documents which provided Reasons for Secession before Fort Sumter (SC, GA, MS, TX, AL, Rhett & Stephens), Rhett (from 1832 Nullifier South Carolina) put more words into his complaints about tariffs than any other.
However, even Rhett paired his economic complaints together with slavery:

"It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing among them had existed when the Constitution was framed.
There was then no tariff -- no negro fanaticism."
Here Rhett is simply wrong because our Founders well intended both tariffs and "negro fanaticism", meaning abolition wherever possible.
"To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and Slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things."
Again, notice that even Rhett, from tariff nullifying South Carolina, pairs tariffs and slavery as equal issues.
No other "Reasons for Secession" gives such prominence to complaints over tariffs.
And even Rhett does not mention the Morrill Tariff, for the perhaps obvious reason that as of December 14, 1860, the Morrill Tariff was dead in Congress -- Morrill was not an issue in the 1860 campaign nor at the time of South Carolina's declaration of secession.

FLR-bird: "No, that is false.
Everybody knew the first round of the Morrill Tariff would not be the last.
They "only" proposed to double tariff rates but once they pushed that through, they weren't going to stop."

Sorry, but now you are just babbling fact-free nonsense, since your "everybody knew" is nothing more than your own mythologizing fantasy.

The actual historical fact is that the Tariff of 1857 had reduced the previous 1846 Walker Tariff to levels lower than any since our first tariffs in 1790, and the predictable results were to double the national debt between 1857 and 1860.
That is exactly why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto Morrill after Southern Democrat withdrawals from Congress finally let it pass on March 2, 1861.

All of your nonsense about a "round two" happened during the Civil War, when there were no revenues from Confederate ports and there was a war to be paid for -- not anticipated in 1860.

Finally, the original increase from Morrill in 1862 was to ~26% from the 1857 rate of 16% and compared to the 1846 Walker average rate of 25%.
Even at the peak of the Civil War, Morrill rates did not reach those of the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations".

FLR-bird: "They'd keep pushing until the Tariff rates were pushed to the stratosphere as indeed they were going to an incredible 53% where they stayed until passage of the 16th amendment in 1913.
The Walker Tariff was 25%."

No, overall tariff rates were reduced below 30% in 1873, where they remained in the high 20%s until 1888 when tariffs fell below 25% and then to 20% in 1911.

The number one reason for the high tariff rates was to generate surplus revenues used to pay down the Civil War national debt -- which over those years was reduced from 33% of GDP in 1865 to 8% of GDP in 1910.

Today's national debt is north of 122% of GDP.

FLR-bird: "Southerners agreed to the Walker Tariff because that was as low as they could get the tariff rates and they knew it.
It was still far far higher than would have been appropriate to meet their needs.
Free to set their own tariff rates in the Confederate Constitution they set their maximum at 10%."

That is a total myth.
The truth is that Confederates simply adopted the US 1857 Tariff rates with some minor adjustments, in February 1861.
Then on March 15:

"March 15, 1861.
"The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That an ad valorem duty of fifteen per cent. shall be imposed on the following named articles imported from abroad into the Confederate States of America, in lieu of the duties now imposed by law, to wit: Coal, cheese, iron in blooms, pigs, bars, bolts and slabs, and on all iron in a less manufactured state; also on railroad rails, spikes, fishing plates, and chairs used in the construction of railroads; paper of all sorts and all manufactures of; wood, unmanufactured, of all sorts."

Then on May 21, 1861 Confederates published a new schedule of tariffs which ranged from zero to over 25% and which we discussed at great length here, in 2019

Those final Confederate tariffs were supposed to take effect on August 31, 1861, but in fact were never really paid, since by then the Union blockade had all but eliminated normal tariff revenue producing imports.
During the Civil War, Confederate blockade runners were not known for paying normal tariffs.

FLR-bird: "LOL!
Pure BS.
The Tariff was raised because corporate interests had been screaming for it for commercial reasons.
A higher tariff meant they could raise price and still gain market share.
Similarly, who were the ones who had their greedy hands out grasping for ever more federal pork paid for mostly by Southerners?
Why that would be Northerners yet again.
It was they who got all kinds of subsidies for their fishing fleets, for mining, for public works like the Erie Canal and the Sewer system for NYC and especially for Railroads."

Sorry, but all of that is fact-free nonsense unconnected to any historical records or reality.

The actual historical facts are simple -- when Southern Democrats had majorities in 1857, they reduced the 1846 Walker tariff from ~25% to 16%.
However, they did not correspondingly reduce profligate Federal spending (Democrats never do) and so the US national debt doubled from 1857 to 1860.
This created a perceived need for higher tariffs and Morrill's proposal was to, basically, return rates to the 25% Walker 1846 levels which Southern Democrats had previously proposed and approved.

That's why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto the new Morrill Tariff when it finally passed Congress on March 2, 1861.

And this is a good place to stop for now...

BroJoeK: PC Revisionist propaganda, which by definition is a pack of lies. Of course, any propaganda will include the occasional fact and truth, but only where those coincidentally support the overall fake narrative. So, I'm happy to acknowledge occasional facts appearing in PC Revisionist narratives, but by definition, those are not "PC Revisionist", they are simply elements of history.

FIFY

BroJoeK: Your 5.63% number comes from the 1860 census which reported 316,632 named slaveholders in the 11 Deep South and Upper South states, out of their 5,482,222 total free population. Your suggestion -- that large numbers of these slaveholders were other than adult white men -- is not supported by any data, and all logic dictates that the adult male "head of household" was listed on the census as the named slaveholder regardless of whom the family itself may have considered "owned" each slave.

Your claim that only adult head of household White men were slaveholders is what is really not supported by any data. We know of numerous examples of women being slave owners like Lee's and Grant's wives who inherited them from their families. We know of several examples of adult children being slave owners such as personal valets etc. You are simply ASSUMING that only the male head of household could possible be a slaveowner - in defiance of numerous examples - so you can maximize the number of slave owning families. You couldn't be more transparent.

BroJoeK: Further, where you could find multiple slaveholders listed on the census for one family -- if anywhere -- is among the 1% of slaveholders who owned circa 25% of all slaves, meaning statistically it's insignificant.

Again, you are wrong. Half of the 5.63% of the White population who were slaveowners fell into the more than 5 category. So 2.8%, not 1%.

Of course this only holds if the false assumption that only the male head of household could possibly own slaves and we know this to be false.

BroJoeK: Any map of the time shows where slavery was concentrated (up to 50%) and where it was weakest (less than 1%). In Southern regions where slavery was weakest, there anti-slavery Unionism was strongest.

Not uniformly and this often had as much to do with social class and....the mountain folk were rather clannish. They always had been and still are today. Many of them weren't necessarily pro union though there were some. More of them just wanted to be left alone and particularly did not want to be conscripted.

BroJoeK: Here is the truth of this matter -- McPherson could easily have estimated 20% or 25% or 40% and all of those numbers are correct for some Confederate Army units from some Confederate regions, but the "overall" estimate depends 100% on how you decide to calculate it. Regardless, one thing we can be certain of -- almost 100% of Confederate army officers and political leaders were slaveholders, regardless of how many of their troops did, or did not, come from slaveholding families.

As I said, McPherson didn't provide any evidence backing up his guesstimate. ROTFLMAO!!!! at the claim that almost all Confederate army officers were slaveholders. Total BS. You know how you became a captain and the head of a company in both armies North and South? You got elected by the troops! YES! My G-G-Grandfather was one of those captains who was elected by his men. I know from the 1860 US Census he was not a slaveowner nor were any of his 5 brothers who also served in the Confederate Army....nor his wife's two brothers who also served in the Confederate army nor my G-G-Uncle from the namebearing line who also served in the Confederate army. Not a single slaveowner among them. Multiple officers. Several other army officers were likewise not slave owners. This is more of your PC Revisionist propaganda and lies.

BroJoeK: And yet... and yet... all your endless nonsense notwithstanding, the 1860 Southern Democrat Party platform said... {wait for it...}... not one word about tariffs!!

And yet.....and yet....all your BS denials can't hide the fact that numerous Southern Political leaders had been complaining bitterly about the tariffs and grossly unequal federal expenditures for decades and the two largest newspapers from the original 7 seceding states made it quite clear that what was really driving all of this was the Tariff issue.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 campaign.

Slavery was a non issue in secession. It was merely the pretext which allowed Southern states to argue truthfully that the Northern states had violated the compact.

BroJoeK: That is such a bald-faced lie I can't even believe you'd claim it -- have you no intellectual honesty at all??

Nope! Its 100% true and your denial is the bald faced lie. Talk about lack of intellectual honesty!

BroJoeK: Import Tariffs -- over 90% paid in Northern ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- had nothing whatever, zero, zip, nada, zilch, to do with wholesale prices paid to cotton farmers in Mississippi, or anywhere else.

Where a tariff is paid is IRRELEVANT. WHO PAYS IT is what matters. Southerners, being the exporters and importers, were the ones paying - not Northern ports. As for Wholesale prices being depressed by high tariffs...OF COURSE THEY WERE. Its basic economics. If your imports are heavily tariffed, you are not going to make as much from the whole export/import venture. That's money out of your pocket. You therefore are not going to be able to pay as much for the commodity you are exporting. Also since their export sales are reduced due to the tariff, the English and French are not going to have as much money and will not be able to buy as much imports. So as the Southern exporter, not only are your profits reduced, the sales of your commodity are reduced as well.

This wasn't theoretical. Southerners already saw all of this happen in the 1820s.

BroJoeK: How can you conceivably not understand that??

How can you not?....and how can you just sit there and lie about it?

BroJoeK: And yet the value of Southern exports grew exponentially from, say, 1820 to 1860. In 1860 the American South was among the most prosperous regions on earth.

And yet they saw their sales decline in the 1820s when tariff rates were about as high as the Morrill Tariff would go.

BroJoeK: And still, you're talking nonsense because the top items "imported" by Southerners "from the North" were: Clothing made from Southern Cotton Woolen goods made from Northern Wool. Shoes and other leather goods made from Western Leather. Imported luxury goods like silk, linen, musical instruments and furniture were only purchased by the wealthiest of slaveholders, not average Southerners. Yes, cast iron stoves, railroad iron, bar, sheet and iron nails -- all those were slightly more expensive due to tariffs on iron imports.

You forgot agricultural equipment which was a major item. All of those goods could be and were manufactured by the English and French. The English in particular had a massive textile industry. The price of all those goods went up considerably as tariff rates were jacked up.

BroJoeK: But those tariffs were the same as tariffs on Southern exports of cotton, tobacco and sugar, so surely, what was good for the goose should be good for the entire flock, right?

Who was the low cost producer that was undercutting the South on price for those items? Gee, that would be....errr.......nobody! It wasn't the South that was clamoring for higher tariffs. Quite the opposite.

BroJoeK: The 1832 Nullification Crisis was caused by the 1828 Tariff of Abominations which had been supported by many Southerners including, most famously, Democrat Pres. Andrew Jackson. The 1832 Nullification Crisis resulted in drastic tariff reductions in 1832, 1833, 1846 and 1857.

Its true many Southern Politicians had supported high tariffs initially not understanding the effects they would have. Once they saw it in the 1820s they very quickly changed their minds and wanted them repealed. It was of course Northern manufacturers who loved those sky high tariffs.

BroJoeK: As a result of the 1857 Tariff reductions, the US national debt doubled under Democrat Pres. Buchanan, which led to Morrill's proposal to increase tariffs back to their 1846 Walker levels.

Repeating your BS is not going to make it any less false. The national debt was not caused by low tariffs. It was caused by excessive government spending - excessive demands by Northern special interests for subsidies. What the government needed to do was cut those subsidies.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were not a political issue in the South or anywhere else in 1860.

This is a bold faced lie as I have shown many times.

BroJoeK: Sure, Southern Democrat Fire Eaters (Yancey, Wigfall, Rhett, etc.) grasping at every straw they could find to justify secession and war against the USA -- however, even they well understood that Tariffs were a non-issue among the vast majority of Southern voters, which is why they stayed focused on slavery, slavery, slavery.

More of your BS and lies.

"The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue," John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question," March 4, 1850

"Northerners are the fount of most troubles in the new Union. Connecticut and Massachusetts exhaust our strength and substance and its inhabitants are marked by such a perversity of character they have divided themselves from the rest of America - Thomas Jefferson in an 1820 letter

"Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the 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? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this." ----Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, cited at page 49 of The South Was Right!, by James Ronald Kennedy & Walter Donald Kennedy

South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties. In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000. When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Succession Charles Adams

[To a Northern Congressman] "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 Capitalist. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and our institutions." Rep. John H. Reagan of Texas

“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Senator Jefferson Davis 1860

On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South."

Gosh......looks like a live political issue to me both long before 1860 and right through 1860.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 election.

The North had a sectional party that in its party platform called for high tariffs. The South was dominated by a political party that supported low tariffs. Each of those parties saw little opposition in their regions.

BroJoeK: Well, first of all, you've misquoted, the actual words are: "They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."

I paraphrased.

BroJoeK: Those words are vague enough to mean anything, or nothing at all -- they don't mention either tariffs or duties, much less the Morrill Tariff specifically -- plus, they are flatly untrue, since in 1860 few regions on earth were more prosperous than the American South.

Another of your completely laughable lies. "Drain our substance" in those days specifically meant "suck money out of our pockets/wallets". Look at the phrase Thomas Jefferson used in his 1820 letter complaining of the same thing. Look at the numerous comments I've listed above - one by a Texas US Representative say. Its OBVIOUS what they meant here. And one doesn't need to mention the Morrill tariff specifically. There had been other tariffs in the past and for all they knew could be others in the future. The Morrill Tariff was but the latest attempt. It was jacking tariff rates up and the grossly unequal federal government expenditures they complained of - not just one particular attempt to jack those tariff rates up one time.

BroJoeK: No, in fact, the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" commended the Walker Tariff of 1846, which are just the rates Morrill was intending to restore. "After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy."

As we've already discussed the Morrill Tariff proposed doubling tariff rates and everyone knew they would not stop there. That was just the first bite of the apple. Also, we need to remember that even the 16 tariff was considerably higher than the Southern States wanted as evidenced by them setting 10% as the maximum tariff rate allowable under the Confederate Constitution.

BroJoek: There's no doubt, of the seven documents which provided Reasons for Secession before Fort Sumter (SC, GA, MS, TX, AL, Rhett & Stephens), Rhett (from 1832 Nullifier South Carolina) put more words into his complaints about tariffs than any other. However, even Rhett paired his economic complaints together with slavery:

Of course he did! Violation of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution by the Northern states WAS actually unconstitutional. This was an ironclad legal argument Southern political leaders could use.....just the excuse they were looking for. Oh, and of course only 4 states issued declarations of causes, not 7.

BroJoeK: "It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing among them had existed when the Constitution was framed. There was then no tariff -- no negro fanaticism." Here Rhett is simply wrong because our Founders well intended both tariffs and "negro fanaticism", meaning abolition wherever possible.

Southern political leaders thought the tariffs and subsidies of Northern "infant industries" would be TEMPORARY. They did not think they were signing up to have their and their children's pockets picked for generations. The should have listened to Patrick Henry who warned this is exactly what would happen since there was no limit on the "General Welfare" in the US Constitution. As for "negro fanaticism" remember John Brown's terrorist attack and the financial backing it received in the North and the refusal to punish the supporters of terrorism directed against the Southern states. I don't think anybody envisioned that when the Constitution was being ratified.

BroJoeK: "To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and Slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things." Again, notice that even Rhett, from tariff nullifying South Carolina, pairs tariffs and slavery as equal issues. No other "Reasons for Secession" gives such prominence to complaints over tariffs.

Notice what Rhett was saying. Slavery was being used as a wedge issue by Northern corporate interests to keep the Midwest from siding with the South. Their interests otherwise aligned and they would have had no more cause to support high tariffs than the Southern states did. THAT is the sense in which Rhett meant the slavery issue here. None of the other declarations of causes goes on to the length Rhett does in describing Tariffs as a big driver of secession. Georgia focuses much more on grossly unequal federal expenditures. Texas does talk about the economics but has complaints that the federal government is failing to secure the border (sound familiar?) and failing to protect them adequately against the Commanche who were as savage in their raids as Hamas AND that this was done maliciously ie because Texas was a Southern state and allowed slavery. They also talked about the specific attempts by Northern terrorists to foment slave rebellions using the US mail, etc. So Texas had broader concerns than the other Southern states.

BroJoeK: And even Rhett does not mention the Morrill Tariff, for the perhaps obvious reason that as of December 14, 1860, the Morrill Tariff was dead in Congress -- Morrill was not an issue in the 1860 campaign nor at the time of South Carolina's declaration of secession.

Again, there was no need to mention one specific tariff when the issue had been tariffs in general and grossly unequal federal expenditures. Of course, the Morrill Tariff passed the House in the Spring of 1860 and was sure to pass the Senate in the Spring of 1861 as everyone knew. So yes, this latest attempt to jack the tariff rate up very high which everyone knew was coming was very much an issue in 1860.

BroJoeK: Sorry, but now you are just babbling fact-free nonsense, since your "everybody knew" is nothing more than your own mythologizing fantasy.<.i>

Sorry, but now you're just lying again. Everybody knew the Morrill Tariff passed the House in 1860 and was just one or two votes shy of passing the Senate. They also knew that the Republicans were staunchly in favor of high tariffs. The only question was which Senator or two would be picked off first. The whole power struggle for year after year had been about votes in the Senate. Southerners knew they couldn't hope to prevail in the House due to their smaller population. They knew that it was highly unlikely they'd be able to get Southerners sympathetic to their interests in the White House anymore for the same reason. Their only hope of stopping legislation that would really damage them - like the Morrill Tariff - was the US Senate. But the balance between the two sections had been thrown off with the admission of California so now Southerners knew they no longer had the votes in the Senate to protect themselves.

BroJoeK: The actual historical fact is that the Tariff of 1857 had reduced the previous 1846 Walker Tariff to levels lower than any since our first tariffs in 1790, and the predictable results were to double the national debt between 1857 and 1860.

the actual historical fact is that even the 16% tariff was considerably higher than the South wanted and Washington DC did not have a revenue problem. It had a spending problem (sound familiar?). That spending went overwhelmingly to Northern special interests by way of subsidies.

BroJoeK: That is exactly why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto Morrill after Southern Democrat withdrawals from Congress finally let it pass on March 2, 1861.

Buchanan was a Pennsylvanian. Pennsylvania was staunchly in favor of high tariffs. It would benefit them greatly.

BroJoeK: All of your nonsense about a "round two" happened during the Civil War, when there were no revenues from Confederate ports and there was a war to be paid for -- not anticipated in 1860.

All of your BS denials fall flat. They DID go for round two which DID jack tariff rates up higher than they had ever been and they left these rates in place for over FIFTY YEARS! By the way......since the goods landed in Northern ports mostly shouldn't the lack of tariff revenue from Southern ports have been no problem? Gosh....its almost as if the ports weren't paying the tariff but instead the OWNERS OF THE GOODS were paying the tariff and the owners of those goods were overwhelmingly Southerners....thus the massive drop in revenue. Huh? Seems somebody has been making that point over and over again and somebody else has failed to grasp it.

BroJoeK: Finally, the original increase from Morrill in 1862 was to ~26% from the 1857 rate of 16% and compared to the 1846 Walker average rate of 25%. Even at the peak of the Civil War, Morrill rates did not reach those of the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations".

No, they reached HIGHER than the Tariff of Abominations. The Morrill Tariff was the highest in US history and stayed in place for over FIFTY YEARS. This played a large role in reducing the South from the richest region of the country to the poorest in that time.....exactly as Southern political leaders knew it would when they opposed it.

BroJoeK: No, overall tariff rates were reduced below 30% in 1873, where they remained in the high 20%s until 1888 when tariffs fell below 25% and then to 20% in 1911. The number one reason for the high tariff rates was to generate surplus revenues used to pay down the Civil War national debt -- which over those years was reduced from 33% of GDP in 1865 to 8% of GDP in 1910.

Straight from wikipedia if anybody cares to look: "The tariff inaugurated a period of continuous protectionism in the United States, and that policy remained until the adoption of the Revenue Act of 1913, or Underwood Tariff. The schedule of the Morrill Tariff and both of its successors were retained long after the end of the Civil War." Though this is hardly a definitive source, the general thrust here is undeniable. It is exactly as I said above. Starting with the Morrill Tariff, Tariff rates remained very high until passage of the 16th amendment allowed the federal government to impose an income tax in 1913.

BroJoeK: That is a total myth. The truth is that Confederates simply adopted the US 1857 Tariff rates with some minor adjustments, in February 1861.

Nope! Its completely true and furthermore everyone can see that its completely true. The Confederate Constitution did not allow a protectionist tariff - only a tariff for revenue which was universally understood to never be more than 10%.

BroJoeK: Then on March 15: "The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That an ad valorem duty of fifteen per cent. shall be imposed on the following named articles imported from abroad into the Confederate States of America, in lieu of the duties now imposed by law, to wit: Coal, cheese, iron in blooms, pigs, bars, bolts and slabs, and on all iron in a less manufactured state; also on railroad rails, spikes, fishing plates, and chairs used in the construction of railroads; paper of all sorts and all manufactures of; wood, unmanufactured, of all sorts." Then on May 21, 1861 Confederates published a new schedule of tariffs which ranged from zero to over 25% and which we discussed at great length here, in 2019 Those final Confederate tariffs were supposed to take effect on August 31, 1861, but in fact were never really paid, since by then the Union blockade had all but eliminated normal tariff revenue producing imports. During the Civil War, Confederate blockade runners were not known for paying normal tariffs.

So you're saying due to having to fight a war of national survival forced on them by the Lincoln administration, the Confederate Government jacked tariff rates up to raise additional revenue???? Shocker!

BroJoeK: Sorry, but all of that is fact-free nonsense unconnected to any historical records or reality.

Sorry but the denial is simply an unfactual pack of lies. The historical records make quite clear that the vast majority of federal subsidies went to the Northern states, not the Southern states.

The actual historical facts are simple -- when Southern Democrats had majorities in 1857, they reduced the 1846 Walker tariff from ~25% to 16%. However, they did not correspondingly reduce profligate Federal spending (Democrats never do) and so the US national debt doubled from 1857 to 1860.

Not all Democrats were Southern. Northern Democrats were often as motivated to support the federal pork going to their districts as Northern Republicans were. And yes, the vast majority of federal expenditures went to the Northern states.

BroJoeL: This created a perceived need for higher tariffs and Morrill's proposal was to, basically, return rates to the 25% Walker 1846 levels which Southern Democrats had previously proposed and approved.

This is so much nonsense. The push to raise tariff rates was about protectionism much more than about raising revenue for the federal government. Northern manufacturers stood to benefit directly from high tariff rates.

BroJoeK: That's why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto the new Morrill Tariff when it finally passed Congress on March 2, 1861.

Pennsylvanian Buchanan supported it because it would greatly benefit manufacturing interests in his home state.