I always thought that war with the secessionist South started because the South seceded.
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.
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.
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.
Good grief, these Lost Cause Myths are like the Energize Bunny --- they just keep going and going.
The slave states made out like bandits on the tariff, which was the primary source of federal revenues in the days before the income tax.
Over 75% of tariff revenue was collected in the North while the south accounted for 50% of federal spending. Northern taxpayers subsidized the south, not the other way around.
Roberts should take some time to look at original sources and not just rely on the propaganda turned out by kooks like DiLorenzo and the LouRockwell fanatics. He could start with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens.
The Civil War had one and only one cause --- S-L-A-V-E-R-Y
"In point of fact, the long-standing Federal sugar import tariff imposed to protect Louisiana sugar growers was extensively debated at the Montgomery Convention and, in spite the highly-touted Confederate devotion to free trade principles, was retained in the Confederacy through out the ACW. Additionally,the Confederacy placed tariffs on exports, including a duty on exported cotton. I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs! They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, as goes the modern formula for hypocrisy.It is humorous to note that the prewar Federal iron import tariff, so despised by Secessionist firebrands, was continued by the Confederacy after some of the realities of fiscal and industrial policy set in. On 16 February 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress blithely passed a bill providing for free import of railway iron. A month later, however, fiscal realities set in and an ad valorem import tax was imposed on such goods at the rate of 15%--- a rate confirmed in the Confederate Tariff Act of 21 May 1861. For furtherdetails, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill,NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."
-- From the AOL ACW area.
"...these problems , indeed, were so grave and pointed so surely towards final defeat that one is faced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom they were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who who were familiar with valor, the classics and heroric atttitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it....Essentially, this was the reliance of a group that knew little of the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran exactly parallel to Mr. Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy--the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.
The trouble was it did matter. It mattered enormously."
the Coming Fury, p. 438-439
In other words, as Rhett Butler said: "it's going to make a great deal of difference toa great many gentlemen."
Ignorance, as usual, is bliss for the neo-rebs.
Walt
There were few people in the mid-18th century America who didn't favor an American empire. But the distorted, fragile slave based economy of the south was not going to be a big help in securing it.
The great bulk of the tariff money was collected in the north.
Here is the inaugural speech of Governor Pickens of South Carolina of 12/18/60. See anything about tariffs?
"Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: --
You have called me to preside as Chief Magistrate of South Carolina at a critical juncture in our public affairs. I deeply feel the responsibilities of the position I am about to assume. For seventy-three years this State has been connected by a Federal compact with co-states under a bond of Union, for great national objects common to all. In recent years there has been a powerful party organized upon principles of ambition and fanaticism, whose undisguised purpose is to divest the Federal Government from external, and turn its power upon the internal interests and domestic institutions of these States. They have thus combined a party exclusively in the Northern States, whose avowed objects, not only endanger the peace, but the very existence of near one-half the States of this Confederacy. And in the recent election for President and Vice-President of these States, they have carried the election upon principles that make it no longer safe for us to rely upon the powers of the Federal Government or the guarantees of the Federal compact. This is the great overt act of the people of in the Northern States at the ballot box, in the exercise of their sovereign power at the polls, from which there is no higher appeal recognized under our system of government in its ordinary and habitual operations. They thus propose to inaugurate a Chief Magistrate at the head of the Army and Navy with vast powers, not to preside over the common interests and destinies of all the States alike, but upon issues of malignant hostility and uncompromising war to be urged upon the rights, the interests and the peace of half the States of this Union.
In the Southern States there are two entirely distinct and separate races, and one has been held in subjection to the other by peaceful inheritance from worthy and patriotic ancestors, and all who know the races, well know that it is the only form of government that can preserve both and administer the blessings of civilization with order and in harmony. Any thing tending to change or weaken this government and the subordination between the races not only endangers the peace, but the very existence of our society itself. We have for years warned the Northern people of the dangers they were producing by their wanton and lawless course. We have often appealed to our sister States of the South to act with us in concert upon some firm and moderate system by which we might be able to save the Federal Constitution, and yet feel safe under the general compact of union; but we could obtain no fair hearing from the North, nor could we see any concerted plan, proposed by any of our co-States of the South, calculated to make us feel safe and secure. Under all these circumstances, we now have no alternative left but to interpose our sovereign power as an independent State, to protect the rights and ancient privileges of the people of South Carolina. This State was one of the original parties to the Federal compact of union. We agreed to it, as a State, under peculiar circumstances; when we were surrounded with great external pressure, for purposes of national protection and to advance the interests and general welfare of all the States equally and Alike; and when it ceased to do this, it is no longer a perpetual union. It would be an absurdity to suppose it was a perpetual union for our ruin. The Constitution is a compact between co-States and not with the Federal Government. On questions vital, and involving the peace and safety of the parties to the compact, from the very nature of the instrument each State must judge of the mode and measure of protection necessary for her peace and the preservation of her local and domestic institutions, South Carolina will therefore decide for herself, and will, as she has a right to do, assume her original powers of government as an Independent State, and as such, will negotiate with other powers, such treaties, leagues or covenants, as she may deem proper.
I think I am not assuming too much when I say that our interests will lead her to open her ports free to the tonnage and trade of all nations, reserving to herself the right to discriminate only against those who may be our public enemies. She has fine harbors, accessible to foreign commerce, and she is in the centre of those extensive agricultural productions, that enter so largely into the foreign trade and commerce of the world; and from the basis of those comforts in food and clothing so essential to the artizans and mechanic laborers in higher latitudes, and which are so essential to the prosperity and success of manufacturing capital in the North and in Europe. I therefore may safely say it is for the benefit of all who may be interested in commerce, in manufactories, and in the comforts of artizans and mechanic labor everywhere, to make such speedy and peaceful arrangements with us as may advance the interests and happiness of all concerned.
There is one thing certain, and I think it due to the country to say so in advance, that South Carolina is resolved to assert her separate independence; and, as she acceded separately to the compact of union, so she will, most assuredly, secede separately and alone, be the consequences what they may. And I think it right to say, with no unkind feelings whatever, that, on this point, there can be no compromise, let it be offered from where it may. The issues are too grave and too momentous to admit of any counsel that looks to anything but direct and straightforward independence. In the present emergency, the firmest and most decided measures are the safest and wisest.
To our sister States, who are identified with us in interest and in feeling, we will cordially and kindly look for co-operation and for a future union, but it must be after we have asserted and resumed our original and inalienable rights and powers of sovereignty and independence. We can then form a government with them, having a common interest with peoples of homogeneous feelings, united together by all the ties that can bind States in one common destiny. From the position we may occupy towards the Northern States, as well as from our own internal structure of society, the government may, from necessity, become strongly military in its organization.
When we look back upon the inheritance that we, as a State, have had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, no language can express the feelings of the human heart, as we turn from the contemplation and sternly look to the great future that opens before us. It is our sincere desire to separate from the States of the North in peace, and leave them to develop their own civilization to their own sense of duty and of interest. But if, under the guide of ambition and fanaticism, they decide otherwise, then be it so. We are prepared for any event, and, in humble reliance upon that Providence who presides over the destinies of men and nations, we will endeavor to do our duty faithfully, bravely, and honestly. I am now ready to take the oath of office and swear undivided allegiance to South Carolina."
There's not a word about tariffs there. Tariffs were just not an irritant in the pre-ACW era.
Walt
It's the same old rhetoric and insults. I noticed the DiLorenzo insults (mostly by those who have not read his work either) and the "neo-reb" comments by the same 'ol hooligans.
l8pilot gave ya'll a headstart by citing a source. Go read it and organize your rebuttal if you disagree with the paper.