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To: P-40
Which time frame are you talking about? I'd certainly agree with you that towards the end of negotiations slavery became the central theme. It is hard to sound a rallying cry over tariffs but easy to do so over more tangible examples of your economic livelihood.

The southern compromise proposals floated by Crittenden, Toombs, Davis, and Hindman were all proposed in January 1861.

A couple of problems with this arguement that I see. First, it means that the southern cause was built on a lie. Second, if it was about tariffs then I would see that as a more universal rallying cry than slavery. We're constantly told that only a minority owned slaves but taxation would hit everyone, wouldn't it? Third, tariffs were not a problem. The south paid very little of the tariff income to begin with.

243 posted on 06/15/2006 6:42:40 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
The south paid very little of the tariff income to begin with.

Taxation is a harder issue to understand. If you read the publications from the period you'll understand its import...but it just did not have the sizzle of the loss of an economic asset that the slavery issue provided. As to where you are getting the information on what tariffs meant to the South...I don't know. Are you talking about total dollars or relative dollars?
245 posted on 06/15/2006 6:46:47 AM PDT by P-40 (Al Qaeda was working in Iraq. They were just undocumented.)
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