Which would have put an undue burden on the South as an agrarian society.
We can argue semantics about the Morrill Tariff until the end of time, but we know three facts that are not in dispute.
1. Secession was a right of the individual states. Were it not, the US Constitution would have not have been ratified. If not the case, why did outgoing President Buchanan take no action after the first Southern states seceded before Lincoln’s inauguration?
2. Confederate Leadership was not tried for treason after the war, see Chase’s quote for the reasons why. Would anyone argue that the leaders of the Revolution would have been treated in the same manner?
3. Had the war truly been about slavery, why no Emancipation Proclamation until 1863?
In the end, had the Southern Confederacy ponied up the money that Washington was expecting from Morrill, there wouldn’t have been a war.
A New England cloth manufacturer buying British made spinning machinery paid the tariff just like the Southern planter importing French lace, or English riding boots.
As for Fact:1 Show me in the Constitution where secession is authorized. If it was so important, one would have thought that it would have actually been written into that document. In the 1869 Supreme Court Case Texas V. White, the Court ruled secession unconstitutional.
Buchanan did take some action. He sent the Star of the West Steamer with provisions to supply Fort Sumter in January 1861. She was fired on by South Carolina batteries and returned to New York.
2. Don’t Know. Actions of men like Davis could be construed as meeting the Constitutional definition of treason.
3. Never claimed that the war was about slavery. Secession of the first seven states was driven primarily by the Slavery issue. War started because the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter.
The Morrill Tariff act became effective in March of 1861. By that time seven states had already seceded from the Union. Only 2 of those states mention tariffs as one of the causes for secession. All seven mention slavery as one of the causes for secession.
Actually, if those seven states had not seceded, there would have been no Morrill Tariff. The Senate vote to pass the Morrill tariff was 25 for and 14 opposed. Had the 14 Senators from SC, GA, FL, AL, MI, LA, and TX been in Congress when the vote was taken, and assuming they would have voted no, the vote would have been 25 yea, 28 nay, the act is not approved.
I think that is very much a wrong conclusion. It wasn't just the money lost to the Federal treasury that was the issue here. The South, by becoming independent, was going to wreck a huge swath through northern industry.
New York was the hub of Import shipping because there was no benefit to going to other ports. The Tariff costs were the same, and a port such as Charleston was 800 miles further journey. Additionally New York had mostly sewn up the cotton trade and shipping for all Southern produced products.
What was going to happen was that 200 million dollars per year was going to get cut out of the New York economy and moved to Southern ports. It would there be used to finance other industries that would later compete with Northern industries. Furthermore, low tariff products would be shipped up the Mississippi to eventually supply all the Western States which would have then come into the economic orbit of the Confederate states. That would have eventually led to them becoming part of the Confederacy instead of the Union.
I've just briefly touched the various ways in which an independent South posed a very serious financial threat to the existing power structure of the North, and it is more the threat to the Northern Power Barons finances that caused there to be a war than the immediate threat to the Federal Treasury. Remember, Lincoln was heavily backed by the Wealthy men of New York. Lincoln had to have that war or these same wealthy men would have been very badly hurt financially by the consequences of an independent South.
Everything I said was also said in various newspaper editorials from the time period.