Greeley was slow to understand what an independant South with a low tarrif would do to the Northern economy with their high tarrif. When he at last understood he aligned himself with the Northern monied interests who stood ready to shed blood; as long as it wasn't their blood. You know of course that for a price the wealthy could buy a surrogate to serve in their stead.
Greeley was slow to understand what an independant South with a low tarrif would do to the Northern economy with their high tarrif.
Low tariffs?
Tariffs were higher in the so-called CSA. What a bunch of laughably incompetent bums.
From a newsgroup:
"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 further details, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill, NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."
You can't make the excuse for the so-called congress acting for the so-called CSA that they were forced by the exigencies of war to impose import tariffs in February, 1861.
They expected to win in a walk --- Yankees can't fight, don't you know.
Walt