Yes, Often conservative economists (like Walter Williams) have tried to make this point. You could make an economic argument for the Confederates case on tariffs and a minimalist Federal government. You would probably get at the root of the position of well educated southerners such as Calhoun or Jefferson Davis. However you would miss the long term causes of America's greatest war. Economists often do not look at the political and social issues that fuel wars, rebellions, and revolutions.
I could rightly point out that New England fishermen had it in their interest to rebel against Britain because they could ship their products to the West Indies and to the French and Dutch (which they were doing illegally already) without England's Navigation Acts on their backs. But please...the real underlying cause of the American Revolution was the fact that Americans by 1760 had identified themselves by language, custom, and culture as distinctly different than the parent country. They felt the parent country was interfering with American customs of local government (which were quite distinct locally from the British model), and felt slighted on diplomatic and cultural fronts.( i.e. Treatment during F&I War, taxes without representation, quartering of troops, crass royalist appointments. )These threatened America's manifest destiny to spread to the west. "if these people do no understand us, we must break away to secure our identity".
Likewise 80 years after the U.S. was born we find that the South is in much the same position. The South, which despite its low population, had previously held an enormous amount of clout in the Federal Govt. During the early 19th century Southerners had held 1/2 the Senate, most of the Supreme Court justices, and over half the presidents. By 1850 this power or equality of sectional power that had come out of the Constitutional process of 1787 (big states, small states, 3/5 slaves counted in representation, abolishment of slave trade) was continued in 1820 (Missouri) and 1850's (California, Wilmot proviso, etc.). It is at this point that a growing radical abolitionist movement in the Northeast begins questioning the South's "over representation". Southerners begin to feel threatened ideologically, and begin to identify themselves as distinct from their Northern brethren. A moderate Northern position (and some upper South Whigs) of popular sovereignty completely fails because the radical elements of both North and South squash it.
Politics becomes volatile at this point. Tariffs like any economic issues today rarely incite anger or violence. Allan Greenspan, Enron, and the deficit may decide elections among the informed electorate of both parties, but they do not cause people to fight in the streets. Today such hot button issues would include abortion, affirmative action, gun laws, immigration, and the death penalty. These are the issues that start internal violence. As excitable as these issues are, they do not cause civil war today because they do not divide Americans on regional lines. Believe me if the West Coast had abortion and East Coast did not, and one side or the other dominated the government, it could cause some real extreme violence.
Thus slavery is the only issue to so fundamentally divide 19th century Americans. It defined the political compromises of the 1787 Constitution, and the sectional balance of power juggling act, which Southerners by the 1850's keenly felt was threatened for the first time. Slavery also defined the entire social structure of the South. Most dangerously it led to the terrorism of 19th century bin Ladens such as John Brown and Nat Turner. It caused Southern defensiveness and radicalism to overcome moderate Southern Unionsim, and likewise Northern radicalism to counter it. It was the issue that caused the protestant churches to split by section, which caused charges of blasphemy. It caused books to be banned, and challenges of abuse of the First Amendment. In politics, slavery caused duels, pistol whippings in Congress, and ranting demogaugeric speeches. This is the cause of the Civil War.
But I implore Southerners and conservatives not to deny slavery as the big issue because it is so obviously morally wrong to us today. The South was constitutionally and morally justified to protect slavery if you understand the nature of 19th century life and government. Any Southerner who was alive at the time would willingly announce to you the connection of constitutional government and slavery. It seems harsh to us today but that was what the South thought it was getting in 1787. When slavery was threatened they developed an distinct Southern identity much the same as the Colonials of the 1760's. A rebellion is simply a failed revolution. The official name of the Civil War is still the War of the Rebellion. Calhoun himself said that slavery was justifiable in the American Republic because it allowed all white men to be equal. (Thus Jefferson in 1776 as a slave-owner is not being hypocritical) Even the great ancients such as Cicero and Cato whom the American republicans looked to were slave-owners themselves. As contradictory as slavery and the republic seem today, it was not an unnatural position for our forefathers to take.
Finally, it is historically naive to charge Lincoln with Clinton style liberalism. You really do not have that type of view of Government until FDR. Roosevelt (and to an extent Wilson) is the father of the modern Clinton big Government president. Lincoln certainly violated the Constitution but I would argue far less than what our "good" conservative modern presidents do today. Likewise, in American political history it is silly to paint Jefferson as a Reaganite and Hamilton as a Clintonite. The parties of 200 years ago were much different than today. Oddly then the big Government party was also anti-immigration and pro-Christian, while the small Government party was for more immigration and for deism.
Always be careful of "history" books not written by historians. In professional history you are cautioned about making these kinds of modern analogy leaps of faith. DiLorenzo may be a conservative but sadly he is our own version of Doris Kearns Goodwin or Ken Burns. Lincoln is by no means a saint, but if you attack him with books of this ilk you WILL BE CRUSHED in a debate with a Lincoln historian. For better ammunition read Emory Thomas' work of the Confederate Nation (1976).
I respectfully disagree in that the various positions of the causes of the War differ. The same history told by different folks will vary. I'll bet Japanese historians have a different account of Pearl Harbor than American historians. Read some accounts of the WBTS from Great Britain - they are pretty interesting.
By limiting your sources to those only written by "historians" you might miss other important information/perspectives.
Consider all opinions and accounts such as soldiers, commanders, aides, widows, economists, reporters, politicians, children, slaves, photographers, etc. Each is unique. Each has his/her agenda or purpose. A sample of these accounts may lend more credence to understanding what actually happened and why much more than a college historian's account.
The South was constitutionally and morally justified to protect slavery if you understand the nature of 19th century life and government. Any Southerner who was alive at the time would willingly announce to you the connection of constitutional government and slavery.
Unionists were prepared to make some concessions to keeping the Southern states in the union. Before the war they were more than willing to allow slavery to continue where it was already established. Ultimately, the slaveowners believed that Republican rule would mean an end to slavery, but that would have been a longer term consequence. So it wasn't just the survival of slavery in the narrower sense that was at issue. It was the questions of the expansion of slavery and the degree of power slaveowners would have that touched off the rebellion. These were means to the end of preserving slavery, but they went beyond the narrow understanding of maintaining slavery where it existed.
Were slaveowners and others "constitutionally and morally justified" in striving to preserve slavery? I'd have to say no, not constitutionally, and certainly not morally justified. An earlier generation of Virginians had recognized the evils of slavery and had dreamed of its end. It would have been far better to reconcile oneself to the end of slavery and work for gradual emancipation.
There were those in the antebellum South who held the idea that slavery underlay freedom, but it's not something we can accept today, nor was it something that ought to have been uncritically accepted at the time. And indeed, our idea of freedom may have grown up with or grown out of slavery, but even in Jefferson's time it was recognized that the two could not continue to coexist together forever. For many, 1860 was a turning point. The old combination of freedom and slavery was breaking down and a choice was necessary.
One can understand the Confederates and their ideas about freedom and slavery and why they acted as they did, and yet still not agree that what they did was wise or justifiable or for the best.
It is the southern Agrarians---John Crowe Ransom and others---who make a better case for a South with the BLOT of slavery that had other worthwhile institutions to offer, but could not overcome its racism. Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Walt
That is absolutely correct. Southerners were well grounded in defending slavery on --constitutional- grounds. That is why William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution a pact with the devil. It was the -moral- attack on slavery that irked the slave power --that, and the fact that the Constitution can be changed.
Walt