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.
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.