Lying about Lincoln

Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | May 10, 2002 | Thomas DiLorenzo

[davidjquackenbush]

<p>

Friday, May 10, 2002

Lincoln's Tariff War

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[Posted May 10, 2002]

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, which he did, 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.

A very important article that documents in great detail the role of protectionism in Lincoln’s ascendancy to the presidency is Columbia University historian Reinhard H. Luthin's "Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff," published in the July 1944 issue of The American Historical Review. As I document in The Real Lincoln, the sixteenth president was one of the most ardent protectionists in American politics during the first half of the nineteenth century and had established a long record of supporting protectionism and protectionist candidates in the Whig Party.

In 1860, Pennsylvania was the acknowledged key to success in the presidential election. It had the second highest number of electoral votes, and Pennsylvania Republicans let it be known that any candidate who wanted the state’s electoral votes must sign on to a high protectionist tariff to benefit the state’s steel and other manufacturing industries. As Luthin writes, the Morrill tariff bill itself "was sponsored by the Republicans in order to attract votes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey."

The most influential newspaper in Illinois at the time was the Chicago Press and Tribune under the editorship of Joseph Medill, who immediately recognized that favorite son Lincoln had just the protectionist credentials that the Pennsylvanians wanted. He editorialized that Lincoln "was an old Clay Whig, is right on the tariff and he is exactly right on all other issues. Is there any man who could suit Pennsylvania better?"

At the same time, a relative of Lincoln’s by marriage, a Dr. Edward Wallace of Pennsylvania, sounded Lincoln out on the tariff by communicating to Lincoln through his brother, William Wallace. On October 11, 1859, Lincoln wrote Dr. Edward Wallace: "My dear Sir:  [Y]our brother, Dr. William S. Wallace, showed me a letter of yours, in which you kindly mention my name, inquire for my tariff view, and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter upon the subject. I was an old Henry Clay-Tariff Whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject than any other. I have not since changed my views" (emphasis added).  Lincoln was establishing his bona fides as an ardent protectionist.

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, the protectionist tariff was a key plank. As Luthin writes, when the protectionist tariff plank was voted in, "The Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations were terrific in their applause over the tariff resolution, and their hilarity was contagious, finally pervading the whole vast auditorium." Lincoln received "the support of almost the entire Pennsylvania delegation" writes Luthin, "partly through the efforts of doctrinaire protectionists such as Morton McMichael . . . publisher of Philadelphia’s bible of protectionism, the North American newspaper."

Returning victorious to his home of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln attended a Republican Party rally that included "an immense wagon" bearing a gigantic sign reading "Protection for Home Industry." Lincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) economic guru, Pennsylvania steel industry publicist/lobbyist Henry C. Carey, declared that without a high protectionist tariff, "Mr. Lincoln’s administration will be dead before the day of inauguration."

The U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Morrill tariff in the 1859-1860 session, and the Senate passed it on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration. President James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian who owed much of his own political success to Pennsylvania protectionists, signed it into law. The bill immediately raised the average tariff rate from about 15 percent (according to Frank Taussig in Tariff History of the United States) to 37.5 percent, but with a greatly expanded list of covered items. The tax burden would about triple. Soon thereafter, a second tariff increase would increase the average rate to 47.06 percent, Taussig writes.

So, Lincoln owed everything--his nomination and election--to Northern protectionists, especially the ones in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He was expected to be the enforcer of the Morrill tariff. Understanding all too well that the South Carolina  tariff nullifiers had foiled the last attempt to impose a draconian protectionist tariff on the nation by voting in political convention not to collect the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations," Lincoln literally promised in his first inaugural address a military invasion if the new, tripled tariff rate was not collected.

At the time, Taussig says, the import-dependent South was paying as much as 80 percent of the tariff, while complaining bitterly that most of the revenues were being spent in the North. The South was being plundered by the tax system and wanted no more of it. Then along comes Lincoln and the Republicans, tripling (!) the rate of tariff taxation (before the war was an issue). Lincoln then threw down the gauntlet in his first inaugural: "The power confided in me," he said, "will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion--no using force against, or among the people anywhere" (emphasis added).

"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.

With slavery, Lincoln was conciliatory. In his first inaugural address, he said he had no intention of disturbing slavery, and he appealed to all his past speeches to any who may have doubted him. Even if he did, he said, it would be unconstitutional to do so. 

But with the tariff it was different. He was not about to back down to the South Carolina tariff nullifiers, as Andrew Jackson had done, and was willing to launch an invasion that would ultimately cost the lives of 620,000 Americans to prove his point. Lincoln’s economic guru, Henry C. Carey, was quite prescient when he wrote to Congressman Justin S. Morrill in mid-1860 that "Nothing less than a dictator is required for making a really good tariff"

[davidjquackenbush]

But in the second inaugural he does:

When a long course of class legislation, directed not to the general welfare, but to the aggrandizement of the Northern section of the Union, culminated in a warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States - when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States, withdrawing from the Union, confederated together to exercise the right and perform the duty of instituting a Government which would better secure the liberties for the preservation of which that Union was established.

[davidjquackenbush]

Sorry, I'll stop distracting your poem with texts. And you do read very fast.

[Treebeard]

mother of pearl...this is still going on?

Did history record Lincoln's views on brisket? Was he a dry rub sort, or a marinader? Pecan, mesquite, or hickory for the smoker, or was it a 3/5 clause (5 mesquite = 3 pecan)? What about the fugitive bratwurst act? If they fall on the ground, do you return 'em to the grill, or give 'em to the dog?

W.W.L.D. (What would Lincoln do?)

[Restorer]

Look, Lincoln was a lousy railroad lawyer. In the 1840s-50s, railroads were the epitome of corporate welfare.

You guys kill me. It is so obvious that you look back at the past from today's perspective and assume the US government had massive resources to distribute among favored groups. It didn't.

The total federal budget in 1860 was about $60,000,000. This was something around $2 per capita taxation. Crushing tax burden, huh?

Most of this gigantic sum was spent on the Army, Navy and post office. There just wasn't much left to distribute to favored groups, even had the government wished to.

I think you are also anachronistic by assigning the landgrants for the transcontinental railroad to this period. Obviously they were later, and there were huge abuses with regard to them. But I'm not aware of any massive payments by the federal government to railroad companies in the 40s and 50s.

State governments, that's another matter.

[Restorer]

You be funny!

[ravinson]

Funny how Jefferson Davis said nothing about slavery in his inaugural address.

You're not giving Davis much credit for figuring out what he should and shouldn't admit at a time when foreign recognition of the Confederacy was such a critical issue. But here's what Davis said about the Mississippi Declaration of Secession (where they stated that "our position is thoroughly identified with slavery") when he resigned from Congress:

"...if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her people before that act was taken, counseled them then that, if the state of things which they apprehended should exist when their Convention met, they should take the action which they have now adopted...

It has been a conviction of pressing necessity -- it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us -- which has brought Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made...They have no reference to the slave...we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the equality of footing with white men -- not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three-fifths. So stands the compact which binds us together."

And here's what Davis said in his first message (delivered on April 29, 1861) to the Confederate Congress:

As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provisions for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.

In the meantime, under the mild and genial climate of the Southern States and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000, at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact, to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented form about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."

As the Mississipians and the other Confederate states openly acknowledged in their declarations of secession, their position was indeed "thoroughly identified with slavery."

[ravinson]

Someone posted tariff revenue numbers a month or so ago that showed an overwhelmingly greater dollar amount of tariff revenue in northern ports than southern. Please excuse me if I don't trust Dr. DiLorenzo to get it just quite right. I'd like to see a source that includes some actual data and definition of terms. Can anyone help?

It's difficult to track down any data on what the Southern states were paying in tariffs circa 1860 because it was a nonissue at that time. The South Carolina declaration of secession makes no mention whatsoever of tariffs and is all about slavery and the Republican Party being a threat to it. The Georgia declaration of secession refers to tariffs as an issue in the past and makes it clear that the Republican threat to slavery -- which they valued at $3 billion -- was driving their decision.

The Mississippians made the centrality of slavery crystal clear at the very top of their declaration: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world..." There is not one word about tariffs or any other issue.

The Texas declaration also makes it clear that slavery is the overriding issue. It even includes a religious justification for slavery. They do throw in a vague reference to "unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance", but they devote more ink to complaints about the federal government failing "to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border."

These were the only four Confederate states that detailed their grievances in declarations. These were the main players in the creation of the Confederacy. Clearly they were not seceding to avoid tariffs. They were seceding to preserve slavery. Any other issues were way way way back in the deep background, almost totally out of sight to anyone but Confederate glorifiers like DiLorenzo who are determined to capitalize on the redneck market for "we'll always hate Lincoln even if we have to make up reasons to do so" books.

[davidjquackenbush]

Thanks. But there must be basic revenue numbers for the federal government. Where was the money collected in 1856, 1857, 1858, 59, etc. What ports collected how much? This would be objective data from the basic financial records of the national government. I assume, until told different, that the claim is that 80% of that money came in some recognizable way from tariffs paid by southerners. And I don't believe it.

[davidjquackenbush]

Lew Rockwell says here
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/civilwar.html

that:

The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the "tariff of abomination." Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime. The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.

I really don't believe it. I'm gonna keep looking till I find a Confederate apologist who claims they were paying 103% of federal tariff revenue.

[x]

I have to wonder why you keep posting articles by your archenemy. Are you multiple personalities of the same individual?

In any event, this is very true:

My problem is these massive superficial generalizations with no supporting evidence. Lincoln wasn't "schooled" in economics at all. He supported the Whig economic policy actively in the 1830's and 1840's, and quite obviously, from all the evidence anyone has bothered to look at, found other issues much more important in the 1850's. The letters I have posted on this thread as much as say -- "I have spent the 1850's thinking that economics is not an important issue right now."

Is there some reason to think that he read List? Met him? Discussed his views with anyone? Can you find three consecutive paragraphs in Lincoln anywhere that demonstrate that he was thinking about the theory of tariffs at all?

Most supporters of protection took the views they did because they viewed it as a means to economic development and to prosperity. They did not seek to create a massive federal bureaucracy.

There were limits to the revenue that could be gained through the tariffs and trade-offs between protection and revenue. There were limits to the scale of bureaucracy and redistribution that tariff-based policies would produce. Over time, tariffs did redistribute resources to protected manufacturers, but at the time, the supporters of protection viewed this primarily as a redistribution from foreigners to Americans. And no one in 1850 or 1860 could have foreseen the massive growth of wealth and industry that would follow the war. It was also possible that Southerners and others could benefit from tariff protection if they developed their own industries.

There were also good reasons for the nation to safeguard and develop its infant industries in an age when great powers throttled weaker competitors. And protectionist movements aimed at creating a freer, more unified national market, which the free trade party would break up and balkanize. It would be a major historical mistake to assume that generations of Republicans actually aimed to produce what Democrats have created since the New Deal. Or to assume that List's works were widely read and circulated on the Illinois frontier. Matthew Carey might be a better bet, but even here, most people decided such issues on the basis of what they saw around them, not theoretical books.

The Rockwellites are convinced that Mises has given them the key to economics and therefore to history. Whether or not this is true, Mises's key doesn't unlock other people's minds. The motivations of historical actors have to be understood on the basis of their own ideas and actions, not forced into the Misean scheme. Whether or not the tariff was the path to prosperity can long be debated, but it was taken as such by many people at the time and their arguments and beliefs shouldn't be so arrogantly pushed aside.

If on another thread, Di Lorenzo was accused of "Marxist economic analysis" that was wrong in the literal sense, but one can understand why such terms come to mind. Di Lorenzo does seem to view economics as lying at or near the foundation of political ideas he disagrees with. But that's an oversimplification.

When we explain our own beliefs and policy preferences we stop on what seems to us to be a comfortable and secure ground. When we try to explain the beliefs of our opponents we keep going until we reach something that will be entirely discredited, unworthy and malign. The protectionist equivalents of Rockwellites charged that their opponents wanted to leave the country impoverished, defenseless and under the thumb of Britain. You can still see these arguments in the LaRouche cult. But there's no reason to take those reductive arguments, or Di Lorenzo's seriously.

Take Lincoln's early career as an example. I really doubt Lincoln was elected to Congress because of the tariff. Other possibilities are that his area was Whig because of ethnocultural and historical reasons or antipathy to Democratic politicians or populations or long standing good relations with Whig politicians. In other words, support for the tariff may have been a result of Whig sentiments, rather than the primary cause for them. Illinois politics were shaped more by the mutual antipathy of Yankees and Southerners than be the practical benefits or theories of free trade and protection. And I believe that the Springfield area was loyal to the Whig politicians who had won the state capital for it.

Similarly, I doubt Buchanan was a convinced protectionist. More likely, he was trying to accomodate both the freetraders who dominated his party and the protectionists who were so powerful in his native state. There were limits on who much free trade or protectionism he would support.

Pennsylvania was a marginal constituency that both parties had to woo to some degree, but arguably Lincoln carried the state because the Democrats were split and Pennsylvania had no favorite son in the race. The fact that Lincoln was able to carry Indiana suggests that Pennsylvania would have gone for him in any case with or without the tariff. Indeed, protectionist manufacturers might make a display designed to impress others, but where they going to go in 1860? Who else would they have voted for? They may well have been the tail, rather than the dog. New Jersey's votes were split and not essential for Lincoln's victory. Local concerns over the tariff shouldn't obscure the great debates over slavery that dominated the election.

Di Lorenzo, Adams and others claim to want to get rid of simplistic devil theories of war over slavery. But what they offer is even more simplistic than what they oppose.

Thanks for finding the letters that refute this nonsense.

[ravinson]

Lew Rockwell says ... "the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue..."

I bet that his source for this is one of the Charles Adams books, since his writings seem to be what he, DiLorenzo, and most of the rest of the Confederate glorifiers are relying almost exclusively upon for their Civil War material. Here's a quote from one of Rockwell's columns:

"... if we were to recommend one work-based on originality, brevity, depth, and sheer rhetorical power-it would be Charles Adams’s time bomb of a book, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). In a mere 242 pages, he shows that almost everything we thought we knew about the war between the states is wrong.

Adams believes that both Northern and Southern leaders were lying when they invoked slavery as a reason for secession and for the war. Northerners were seeking a moral pretext for an aggressive war, while Southern leaders were seeking a threat more concrete than the Northern tariff to justify a drive to political independence. This was rhetoric designed for mass consumption . Adams amasses an amazing amount of evidence-including remarkable editorial cartoons and political speeches-to support his thesis that the war was really about government revenue."

And here is what I concluded about Rockwell's "lying about slavery" theory:

"So there it is. All that the declarations of secession and the Confederate Constitution’s slavery guarantee amounted to were a vast conspiratorial hoax upon the citizens of the Confederacy. In Rockwell’s reality, the Confederates had a secret plan to end slavery that involved convincing their citizens to fight a war to preserve it. In Rockwell’s reality, the Rebel leaders had `solid legal, moral, and economic reasons for secession', but instead of relying on those reasons for their rebellion, they perpetuated the biggest lie in political history so they could get their racist, ignorant constituents to go along with their war. The real truth about their secession was not being portrayed in the Confederates’ official documents, but rather in `editorial cartoons and political speeches'."

DiLorenzo has been careful to distance himself from the "slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War" rhetoric, but that doesn't stop him from claiming that "the tariff issue was a major cause of the war". I quoted the Mississippi declaration of secession ("[o]ur position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery") to him during the Independent Institute debate Q&A period, and he totally ducked my question regarding what particular causes would justify secession.

[rdf]

I'm having your wonderful piece posted at Declaration Foundation

I had the pleasure of several long conversations with Harry Jaffa yesterday. He is eager to have the transcript of the debate made public. So am I.

Regards,

Richard F.

[Non-Sequitur]

Stephen Wise posts the average net tariff collections from 15 ports in his book "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War". The figures he gives are quoted from Exec. Doc. No. 33, 36th Congress, 1st Session, 1860. The figures given are:

New York - $35,155,452.75
Boston - $5,133,414.55
Philadelphia - $2,262,349.57
New Orleans - $2,120,058.76
Charleston - $299,339.43
Mobile - $118,027.99
Galveston - $92,417.72
Savannah - $89,157.18
Norfolk - $70,897.73
Richmond - $47,763.63
Wilmington, N.C. - $33,104.67
Pensacols - $3,577.60

It should be noted that the reason the collections were so small had nothing to do with an inability of ports to handle imports. New Orleans, after all, exported almost 1.8 million bales of cotton. Mobile exported almost half a million bales, Charleston over a quarter of a million bales. With the capacity to handle such large amounts of cargo, the reason why so few goods were imported through these ports obviously has to be that there was little demand for the imported goods. So 95% of all tariffs were paid in the Northern ports, by Northern merchants. Adams claims have no basis in fact.

[davidjquackenbush]

Thank you. Let's form a betting pool on how soon a defender of the tariff theory of the Civil War will respond. I bet . . . . . six months.

[Non-Sequitur]

It may be sooner than that. There was one poster who used to spin a delightful scenario of Mr. and Mrs. Cottonplanter and their annual migration to Europe, accompanying their bales of cotton. Once there they would sell them and immediately spend everything on foreign goods that the nefarious Yankees would force them to bring in through New York. Never mind the fact that hundreds of thousands of southerners making an annual trip to Europe made no sense and if they spent all their money in Europe then there would be nothing left to keep the local economy going but that is how the sothron mindset works. The one inescapable fact is that if the south accounted for 87% of our imports then that kind of demand would lead to direct trade between southern ports and Europe. Charleston should have been pulling down $30 million per year in tariff revenues and New York should have been a ghost-town. But the opposite was true.

[4CJ]

Thanks for the link shuckmaster.

[davidjquackenbush]

"foreign goods that the nefarious Yankees would force them to bring in through New York.

Is there some claimed mechanism for this coercion?

[Non-Sequitur]

No, other than the evil North forcing the south against its will to route all imports through New York and northern ports for transhippment to points south. The general gist of their arguement is that since agriculture accounted for 75% to 85% of all exports then the south accounted for the same amount of imports. It totally ignores the fact that the person growing the cotton was not necessarily the person exporting it. The concept of a middleman gets lost in there somewhere. It also ignores the fact that if the south really did account for such an overwhelming percentage of all imports then they would have had the economic clout the get the goods shipped directly to their ports and forget the routing through New York. The fact that it didn't happen that way is strong evidence that the demand in the south just wasn't there.