Now look, rustbucket, South Carolina did not first secede on December 20/24, 1860, because all-of-a-sudden they suffered some drastic increase in the rate of tariffs they had been happily paying for many years.
Tariffs had NOTHING to do with it! You've read South Carolina's Declaration of Immediate Causes, and you know perfectly well, it says NOT ONE WORD about tariffs.
Tariffs were the LAST thing on South Carolina's mind. Tariffs could easily have been solved by normal political processes, if that was South Carolina's major concern. But it wasn't, not in the least.
As it's Declaration clearly spells out, South Carolina's immediate reasons for secession were:
But Northern "nullification" of Fugitive Slave laws had been going on for many years, and did not cause South Carolina to secede. What caused secession was the election of anti-slavery candidate Lincoln, pure and simple, and NOTHING ELSE.
rustbucket: "The New Orleans Daily Picayune said something similar (emphasis mine): "
Did you really just "forget" to quote for us the date of that article, and provide a link to it? Why am I guessing that you have taken their words pretty badly out of context?
rustbucket: "Virginia seceded mainly because of Lincoln’s calls for troops to coerce the South. I would guess they saw through Lincoln’s ploy of getting the South to attack when he sent down a battle fleet to South Carolina’s territorial waters."
"getting the South to attack"? I don't think so. Remember that since the firing on Star of the West on January 10, President Buchanan had at least twice (Jan 13 & Feb 5) told South Carolina envoys he would not surrender Fort Sumter, and South Carolina's legislature had declared on January 14 that any attempt to resupply Fort Sumter was tantamount to war.
So both sides knew since January that Fort Sumter must be either resupplied or surrendered, and it would not be surrendered, it must be resupplied, and that South Carolina had declared resupplying Fort Sumter tantamount to war.
Since January, both sides knew perfectly well what would happen.
But step back for a minute, and look at the "big picture." Here's what you need to remember:
between December 20, 1860 and February 1, 1861 -- just 6 weeks -- seven states voted to secede, all from the Deep South: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. These seven states had a free white population of 2.8 million.
But EIGHT other slave states specifically REJECTED secession: the Upper South of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas (2.9 million whites), plus the Border States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri (2.8 million whites).
So Confederate President Davis needed something -- anything -- to CHANGE THE MINDS of those Upper-South and Border States. He chose Fort Sumter, and it worked for him. As a direct result of Fort Sumter, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas all CHANGED THEIR MINDS and decided to secede.
Firing on Fort Sumter was a brilliant strategic offensive move by President Davis, increasing the Confederacy from 7 states to 11, and DOUBLING its white population.
Sure, he did it at the price of starting a war for Southern Independence, but I'll say it again: he considered that war both inevitable and necessary anyway.
It's often said that the Civil War put the South on strategic defense, and the North on offense. But that's only true after 1861. Throughout all of 1861 and into 1862 it was the South on strategic offense: first in persuading the Upper South to secede, and later in sending Confederate armies into the Union Border States.
Anyway, that's my theory on Fort Sumter... ;-)
Why did you bring South Carolina into the conversation? Virginia was the state I was talking about, not South Carolina. South Carolina seceded before the drastic increase in tariffs was passed and signed into law. Virginia, the state I was talking about, seceded after the Morrill Tariff became law.
Tariffs could easily have been solved by normal political processes, if that was South Carolina's major concern.
That is what happened in the 1830s. But in 1861, the new tariff was a major contributor to why Lincoln instigated the war, IMO. The Morrill Tariff was signed into law just before Lincoln was inaugurated and after the Confederacy had passed their own tariff. The Confederate tariff was lower but not too different from the 1857 US tariff in effect before the Morrill Tariff.
Had the two countries been allowed to peacefully separate and at the same time retain such large differences in their tariffs:
- Northern ports would suffer a large loss of business.
- Since Northern goods imported to the South would now be charged the Southern tariff, Northern manufacturers would now have to reduce the price of their goods to maintain their previous market share in the South. This would cut their profits and likely result in job losses. Northern manufacturers no longer had a more or less captive market in the South created by a tariff that protected them from lower price European goods.
- The tariff revenue of the United states would fall.
It is no wonder that Lincoln cried 'what about my revenue?' and decided to blockade Southern ports to deprive them of revenue to run the war.
Did you really just "forget" to quote for us the date of that article, and provide a link to it? Why am I guessing that you have taken their words pretty badly out of context?
Unlike you I have a collection of perhaps thousands of articles from newspapers of that time. I've been collecting them for the last seven or eight years. The date of the article was April 3, 1861. There is no link to it that I'm aware of except my own posts of it in the past.
The article was entitled, "The Northern Tariff." I think it was on the front page of an afternoon edition. The article was a full column and a half long. Go to a library and look up that edition of the newspaper. If they have decent libraries in Pennsylvania, you'll find it.
The first paragraph I posted was the first paragraph of the article. The paper put the meat of the article right up front. The second paragraph I posted was the first three sentences of the fourth paragraph. That fourth paragraph continued with ...
The breach between the sections must be widened. The Northern party, in its endeavor to promote Northern at the expense of Southern interests, made a shocking miscalculation. Instead of injuring the South, the Morrill Tariff spread terror throughout the North, and fearful visions of its ruinous effects now haunt those who but a few months ago insanely rejoiced in the promise of peaxce, plenty, and unbounded prosperity.
The article continued by quoting Northern denunciations of the Morrill tariff. Here is a link to one of my posts from 2002 that contained a couple of quotes from that article by Northern papers. Link
I would post the image of the entire article as it appeared in the paper, but I respect the rights of the people who prepared the microfilm of the newspaper. The words of the article are no longer under copyright, but I believe the image is the property of the microfilm preparer. At one library I had to prepare a signed list of the pages I copied from an original copy of a newspaper. Their conditions allowing me to photograph the paper prohibited me from publishing the images. I honor those restrictions.