Evidence Builds for DeLorenzo's Lincoln

October 16, 2002 | Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire.

I always thought that war with the secessionist South started because the South seceded.

[billbears]

Dixie ping!!

[billbears]

McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not

[Robe]

AY TOLD YA SO .......(:^)

[Seydlitz]

DiLorenzo's book is the biggest load of Hogwash this side of the Clintons. Talk about using quotes out of context! The guy can never stoop low enough to trash Lincoln. DiLorenzo must have been an editor at Pravda, circa 1932, in a past incarnation.

[rdb3]

Let me check again. Yep. I was right. The year is 2002.

I knew it was the 21^st century. I think it would be nice once everybody finally got the hell out of the 19^th!

No mercy.
Coming soon: Tha SYNDICATE.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.

[billbears]

One question: Have you read it?

[dasboot]

Incoming! :^)

[patent]

>>>>>I always thought that war with the secessionist South started because the South seceded.

And shot at people, who shot back, and then came a callin' whereupon there was more shootin.

[Non-Sequitur]

Evidence Builds for DeLorenzo's Lincoln.

Only if you ignore the writings and speeches of the leaders of the time.

BTW, I don't suppose that McGuire's and Van Cott's research uncovered the fact that one of the first acts of the confederate congress was to impose...are you ready for this... a protectionist tariff? One of the reasons why the lack of a confederate supreme court was so handy. Nobody around to tell you it was unconstitutional.

[vetvetdoug]

DiLorenzo merely pulled together the information that was already in print from a variety of primary historical sources. Unlike McPherson, who uses quotes and information from openly biased sources that further his personal agenda, DiLorenzo formed a hypothesis and put forward primary data that bolstered the thesis; much to the chagrin of the Lincoln cannonizers. Now that the Rubicon has been crossed writing the true history of Lincoln we shall see much more truth and find Lincoln in a not so positive light.

[Non-Sequitur]

Yes, I've heard it all before from southern supporters of today, but damned little from the southern leaders of the time. You don't suppose it's because tariffs were a very minor issue when compared with slavery, do you?

[billbears]

Well considering tariffs had been on the forefront of national discord for over 40 years and the fact that slavery wasn't even broached by the Whig/Republicans seriously until the mid 1850s (got to pick something the people 'care' about to get elected right?), what do you think?

BTW, since this was such a 'serious' concern, exactly how many members did the Abolition Party (percentage wise of entire population) have circa 1860 in the north?

[drjimmy]

Now that the Rubicon has been crossed writing the true history of Lincoln we shall see much more truth and find Lincoln in a not so positive light.
Enjoy your circle jerk. You Lincoln haters have been pushing your bile for a long time now, and yet I don't see much of a movement to take him off Mt. Rushmore.

[LS]

More neo-Confederate goofiness, from a once-great economist. Note that the authors cannot get their "research" in a reputable journal such as Journal of Economic History or American Economic Review, which, believe me, will take ANYTHING that passes muster with the #s.

Yah, tariff revenues were real important. Oh, that slavery stuff, who cared about that? These guys are in denial worse than the Democratic National Committee.

[The Iguana]

I have always been a big fan of Roberts.

I am not sure if he isn't overstating the case here for DiLorenzo.

Certainly economic issues - tariffs especially - played a larger role than is usually credited. North and South were not only defined by greatly different societies, but economies as well. And the impact of tariffs on each was certainly dichotomous.

But did they have a greater impact than slavery in causing the war?

Perhaps the the way to approach the question is this: Ask ourselves if it is possible to imagine the war erupting without either issue. Can we conceived of the election of 1860 - and the consequent secession of eleven states - unfolding as it did without slavery? Or without the tariff issue?

I have difficulty conceiving of the former. I think that the conflict between the two could have been resolved peacefully if the issues involved were merely economic.

Tariffs did not stir the blood like slavery did. John Brown did not massacre Kansas settlers or raid Harpers Ferry over tariffs. Lincoln did not demolish the Little Giant's presidential aspirations - or largely cement his own - over the issue of tariffs in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Sumner did not get his head beat in on the Senate floor over tariffs. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraksa Acts were primarily addressed to slavery, not tariffs. Lincoln failed to draw a single vote in five southern states, and while many of them may have been lost over the issue of tariffs, I think one would be hard pressed to argue that most men down there didn't have the slavery issue foremost on their minds when they entered their polling stations.

But perhaps the larger point missed is that the two issues are ultimately intertwined. Slavery was part and parcel of the South's economic system - which by its nature was overwhelmingly agrarian and oriented to large-scale exports of cheaply produced and therefore competitively priced agricultural goods (i.e., cotton) and therefore vulnerable to the consequences of industrial tariffs. Trying to separate the two issues is not so easy as DiLorenzo seems to suggest.

In the end, however, what separation we can achieve point more to slavery. Contemporary accounts point to the passions engendered by chattel slavery; to cite even a tithe is to belabor the point. Without that passion it is very difficult indeed to conceive of the Civil War as we know it.

In the end, however, one suspects larger agendas being advanced in this endless debate over the Civil War's causes. I fail to see why it is necessary to cleanse the Confederacy's moral stature to advance a true understanding of the need to return to a federalism approximating that envisioned by the Founding Fathers - a goal that all of us here share.

[vetvetdoug]

Attending Lincoln Memorial University allowed me to read a lot of information that is not in available print and see many of Lincoln's primary documents. I am not a Lincoln hater, I am just more educated than you.

[Lee_Atwater]

I was always under the impression that Economic Inquiry was a reputable journal. It is certainly not JPE, however.

[drjimmy]

I am just more educated than you.
Yes, you are obviously more educated than we "Lincoln cannonizers" are.