That is false. Every southern state was present for the vote in the House, and it passed on a strictly sectional breakdown. I believe only one southern congressman voted yes.
As for the senate, it is a similar falsehood that they could have blocked it beyond March 1861 even if every southerner had remained and voted no. I have the vote data itself printed out at home and will happily provide you with its details if you desire, but the situation they faced was essentially this:
In January 1861 Kansas was admitted as the 34th state, giving the senate 68 members total. That meant that, at a bare minimum and presuming all senators were present, it would take 34 yes votes for the Morrill tariff to pass plus a tiebreaker by Republican vice president Hannibal Hamlin (This could have potentially been delayed for some time by parliamentary tactics but not indefinately and, as I will note shortly, most of those tactics had already been exhausted).
The incoming senate that took office on March 1861 had, IIRC, 31 Republican members - up from around 27 or 28 in the previous session thanks to a change in some seats and the 2 new Kansas senators. That means 31 yes votes were virtually guaranteed and they would have to gain 3 others, or take advantage of a mid-term vacancy, to pass the bill. Now lets assume the south never left and everything continued business as normal after March. Of the northern democrats, one came from the strongly pro-tariff state of New Jersey and may be generally predicted to have voted for it. A second from Delaware was absent the day that the real vote happened but his earlier speeches indicated how he would determine his vote. He offered to vote for the bill on the condition that a single amendment that benefitted his state would be added, so his vote could have been obtained. That puts us at 33.
Of the remaining northern democrats it is a bit harder to determine how they would have voted. Three we can fairly safely say would have voted no: Stephen Douglas of IL, Jesse Bright of IN, and one other who indicated his opposition (I believe he was from minnesota). The west coast democrat senators, a constitutional unionist from Missouri, and a couple others are harder to determine. But a couple scenarios are indeed possible.
1. One of the California senate seats was vacant briefly in mid 1861 after they took office in March. This would have meant that 67 members were present instead of 68, so simply getting 1 more vote would have given a clear majority and passed it without even a tiebreaker.
2. Stephen Douglas died in June 1861 and was replaced with a Republican, which would have given them 34 votes.
3. One of the undetermined northern democrats and others - could either have been for it already, or could have been swayed either by cutting a deal with him etc. Lincoln indicated that he was intent upon doing this a few months earlier in his speech at Pittsburgh, where he pledged to make the tariff - if unpassed by March - his top legislative priority.
But the south was not even uniformely opposed to higher tariffs.
That too is false. For all practical purposes, the southern governments were dominated by free traders. Protectionists were a small minority. This is evidenced in the House vote, where only one single southerner voted yes. In the senate only one southerner could be counted on to have supported it as well - John Crittenden of Kentucky, a Henry Clay protege - and his term ended in 1861 when John Breckinridge took office.
Southern politicians did bandy about the nonsense about abusive taxes in the south though becaue 90% of the population couldn't read or write, and on top of it, most of them were so dirt poor they couldn't have afforded to pay the miniscule tariffs, even if they wanted or needed to, which they did not. It's simply amazing though to see how many illiterate southerners bought the line.
In fact though, the North didn't need to pass the Morrill tariff if the war had not come and the southern states were let go. The 1860 tariffs could have easily been cut into half and still produced large surplusses for the north, where the tariffs were hardly felt at all by any one with an average income. Tax Freedom day under the Morrill Tariff was still about the seventh of January. January 1 if you were a poor southerner.
LOL. That's why the first act of the Confederate congress was to pass a 15 - 25% protectionist tariff.
You are a trip into fantasy land GOP -- a True Beliver who will stick with your Confederate Lost Cause mythology regardless of any and all evidence. But for any lurkers here who are somehow being mislead by your revisionism, here's some stuff from the actual record. The Civil War was about preserving slavery, and to paraphrase Lincoln, they would preserve slavery with a tariff, or without a tariff.
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Virginia and Confederate Tariffs
When the secession crisis of 1860-61 forced supporters of southern independence to articulate their vision of an Confederate economy, calls for a southern tariff became even more popular. Especially in Virginia, the complicated politics of secession created political incentives that encouraged pro-independence politicians to focus on a Confederate tariff. Even after Lincoln’s election and the secession of the cotton states, many Virginians remained doubtful about the desirability of southern independence. Unionist sentiment was especially strong in the western portion of the state, which had relatively few slaves and strong economic ties to the North. Many of the Unionists, moreover, were former Whigs from prosperous commercial centers. Ever distrustful of radical change, Whigs feared the economic consequences of secession, especially if the new Confederacy embraced free trade doctrines. “What will become of the promised manufacturing industry and enterprise of Virginia and the other border states of which we hear so much?” asked one Alexandria Unionist.30 To persuade a Unionist majority, secessionists at the Virginia state convention in 1861 often focused on the economics of tariffs and trade.
Virginia secessionists had many eager allies in their effort to promote a Confederate tariff. Many cotton state secessionists desirous of luring the border states into the Confederacy, envisioned a regional division of labor with the upper South replacing New England as the manufacturing center of the newly configured nation. Cotton state emissaries entrusted with the task of persuading border state delegates to join the new Confederacy based their appeals on the promise of future industrial grandeur. Embedded in these appeals was the conviction that the Union had been a barrier to the development of manufacturing in the upper South. Secession would allow these states to pursue their industrial aspirations free from the fetters of ruinous competition with northern industry, which had been artificially raised by unjust federal tariff policy in the first place. While such a prospect was especially attractive to Virginians, secession commissioners offered similar appeals elsewhere in the upper South. The Georgia commissioner to North Carolina, for example, assured the convention that “All your material interests must be promoted by your speedy union with us in the new government. The princely treasures which have hitherto been lavished with a generous hand upon ungrateful New England, will be poured into your lap.”
The key to securing such “princely treasures” was a moderate revenue tariff that would have a significant protective element. William Benning of Georgia—one of three emissaries from the cotton states to address the Virginia secession convention—offered Virginians a twenty percent revenue tariff that would allow the Old Dominion to monopolize the lucrative southern market. “Why will not she [Virginia] take the place now held by New England and New York, and furnish to the South these goods?” he asked. Benning painted an alluring picture of prosperity and progress that would benefit all Virginians. Virginia’s manufacturing industry would flourish; northern mechanics and capitalists would move to Virginia and stimulate the growth of villages, towns and cities; property values would rise, as farmers and planters would have a profitable home market for their produce. Richmond itself would “take the place of New York” and become “the centre of the Earth.”
Virginian secessionists echoed Benning’s optimistic assessment of a Confederate tariff. The hum of machinery and the buzz of progress—not pastoral descriptions of a southern agrarian landscape—became the favorite images of Virginia secessionists. John Goode, Jr. of Bedford County, for example, predicted that “our noble water-falls would whistle with machinery, and the spindles of the North would be transferred to the Potomac, the Rappahannock, and the James; and Norfolk, with her magnificent harbor, would become the grandest commercial emporium of the world.”33 Even when sounding a more cautionary note, Virginia secessionists could hardly contain their enthusiasm for a new industrial order. “It would not be in the interest of Virginia to become a great manufacturing State at once,” James Bruce of Halifax County noted. Yet a few moments later, he boldly pronounced that “when we are divided [from the North], and become a great commercial and manufacturing people, then we shall fulfill the destinies of Virginia.”34
The coming industrial glory of Virginia, secessionists argued, would be quite compatible with the Old Dominion’s slave society. The relationship between slavery and industry was an important one, especially in Richmond, where the massive Tredegar Iron Works in 1847 had replaced striking white workers with slaves.35 Would such conflict become endemic as Virginia industrialized behind a Confederate tariff? George Randolph, a Richmond lawyer, reassured members of the convention that slaves would naturally be confined to operations such as agriculture and mining, while white laborers would monopolize “the higher processes of mining, manufacturers, navigation, and the mechanic arts.” White mechanics and artisans, he argued, had far more to fear from the competition of cheap northern labor than the competition of slaves. “The true competitors of our laboring whites,” he declared, “are the gigantic manufacturing corporations of the North which flood our market with everything that white labor can produce.”36 Randolph made clear that only a Confederate tariff could protect Virginia’s white mechanics from these “gigantic manufacturing corporations.”
Far from undermining slavery, a Confederate tariff would help southern slaveholders keep their “peculiar institution” safe from northern attack. James Barbour of Culpepper County argued that encouraging white labor by way of a Confederate tariff was akin to developing the state’s “imperial resources.” Planters and other property holders who would bear the cost of a Confederate tariff, he argued, should do so happily. “While resolutely protecting slave labor, let us also give the fullest encouragement to the labor of the mechanic and the merchant and the artisan . . . When we build up commerce, manufactures, and trades, the accumulated wealth and population will be a source of strength and safety which will be cheaply purchased.” For southerners concerned with the potential threat that the hated “Black Republicans” posed for slavery, the image of a growing and economically vigorous Confederacy was especially appealing.
(snip)
Virginia secessionists delivered what they promised. Reflecting the firm southern consensus on the revenue tariff, the Confederacy enacted tariff schedules within the 20 to 15 percent range. On February 9 (four days before the Virginia Secession Convention opened), the provisional Confederate Congress passed a tariff—almost identical to the U. S. Tariff of 1857—that imposed an ad valorem duty of 24 percent on most manufactured goods. Nine days later, the Confederate Congress amended this act to expand the free list of goods to include most food products as well as arms, ammunition, and gunpowder. On March 15—when the Virginia convention was still meeting—the Confederacy lowered the duty on pig iron and other iron products to 15 percent.54 In May of 1861, after Virginia had joined the Confederacy, the Confederate Congress implemented a new tariff schedule with duties ranging from 25 percent to 5 percent. For the manufactured goods that that the Confederacy was most likely to import—iron products, textiles, boots and shoes, furniture, and wagons—the ad valorem duty was pegged at 15 percent.55
Although significantly lower than the U. S. Tariff of 1857 and the Morrill Tariff of 1861, the Confederate tariff nevertheless fell far short of Unionist predictions of free trade. There is good reason to believe that a peacetime Confederate tariff might have been even higher. Facing the imminent prospect of war, the Confederacy had little time to nurse infant industries to maturity. To encourage the rapid importation of goods needed to win the war, the Confederacy lowered its duties for foodstuffs, iron plating, railroad equipment, and arms of all types. Significantly, refined sugar and manufactured tobacco—products not related to the war effort and produced in great quantities in the Confederacy—had duties of 20 and 25 percent, respectively.56 That type of protection might well have been more common if northerners had let the Confederacy part in peace.
Regardless of the level of the tariff, there is little doubt that the Confederacy was prepared to collect duties on northern goods. Circulars issued by the Treasury department established revenue officers not only in Atlantic ports, but also in Norfolk (on the Mississippi River) and on various railroads that connected the Confederacy with the North. The circulars created formidable bureaucratic regulations to collect the tariff, with those importing goods via railways facing particularly onerous requirements. The railroad conductor had to submit triplicate copies of a manifest at the nearest government revenue station, and then wait for the revenue guard to inspect the train to insure that “the goods described therein are placed in separate cars from which mails or passengers are conveyed.” The revenue agent then placed Confederate revenue locks on the freight cars, which could only be opened at specified Confederate revenue depots. Once at the revenue depot, the merchandise in question was then moved to “a warehouse of deposit.” After executing a bond guaranteeing the payment of duties, the importer was finally granted a “permit for inland transportation” so that the goods could finally reach their destination. The treasury department even authorized Confederate revenue officers to inspect passenger baggage for dutiable goods.
The Confederacy, of course, never had a chance to collect a tariff, but if the seceding states had been allowed to leave without war, the economic impact of the Confederate tariff would have been significant. According to economist Thomas F. Huertas, the South imported $200 million worth of northern goods in 1860 (See Table 1).58 With an independent Confederacy, northern goods would have been transformed into dutiable foreign trade. Under Confederate tariff schedules passed in May 1861, imported manufacturing goods from the North and Europe would have yielded the Confederate treasury almost $34 million dollars. The $34 million figure is undoubtedly an upper-bound estimate—consumers may have decided to buy fewer manufactured goods in the face of higher prices, and smugglers might have avoided some of the duties. Yet even if the Confederate government only collected $25 million in tariff revenue, free southerners would have paid $4.46 per capita in duties. In comparison, the entire United States in 1860 (both North and South) collected duties worth $53 million, or $1.94 per free resident.59
These revenue figures, of course, tell us little about the potential costs and benefits of the Confederate tariff regime to southerners in general and Virginians in particular. At least in the short term, Confederate Virginians would undoubtedly have purchased more European goods and domestic manufacturers at the expense of northern imports, but we are not in position to calculate the magnitude of such changes. Some economists, though, have speculated a Confederate tariff might have “promoted southern industrialization and raised southern income.”60 A Confederate tariff, they have hypothesized, would have diverted resources into manufacturing and out of cotton production, thus raising the price of cotton and the price of slaves. Virginia secessionists might have gotten the best of both worlds: a new manufacturing empire and higher slave prices to boot.
One could paint a far bleaker economic future, though, for Virginia and the rest of the Confederacy. Confederate independence would have hemmed Virginians into the rather small southern market. Whereas northern manufacturers operating behind a protective tariff could count on a national market of some 27 million free consumers in 1860, Virginia manufacturers in the Confederacy could only rely on a market of only 5.6 million free residents, which were spread out over a wide area. Confederate independence, moreover, would lock southern manufactures out of the potentially rich markets of the Northeast and Midwest, since they would have to pay the high U. S. tariffs. A highly constrained market might have had potentially devastating results for the Confederacy, especially in the long run. Recent research has stressed the crucial importance of market size in giving firms in the antebellum period the incentive to innovate and increase productivity.61 Lacking such incentives, the Confederate manufacturing sector might well have been composed of small, relatively inefficient firms that needed increasingly higher degrees of tariff protection to remain viable. The Confederate revenue tariff could have proved yet another failure for southerners anxiously trying to modernize their economy. Whatever future the Confederacy faced without war, the experiences of the Union blockade intensified support for an even more protective tariff. When one correspondent to the Southern Literary Messenger called for a peacetime economy of free trade to actively discourage the growth of manufacturing, a rejoinder from “C. R. C.” appeared a few issues later. Calling for a “protective tariff” that would eliminate northern competition in the South, C. R. C.’s 1863 essay went far beyond the 1861 secessionists. A protective tariff would allow the Confederacy to extinguish its large debt and, more importantly, establish the industrial power necessary for national independence. Keeping the experience of the war firmly in mind, he argued that “The South should be densely populated, and with manufactories in every region, and with double lines of rail roads in all directions; a future blockade would bring but little of the suffering and heartless speculations in provisions and clothing.” Adopt a policy of free trade, he predicted, and the “future blockade would find the South little better prepared for self-defense than at present.”62
C. R. C.’s arguments highlight an important point that historians have often overlooked. Civil War historians have often viewed the Confederacy as a reaction against northern modernization and industrialization.63 Our evidence suggests that claim is largely true—Virginia secessionists were increasingly fearful of the growing economic power of the North. Virginia secessionists, however, envisioned the Confederacy not as a refuge from the modern world of industry and commerce, but as a vehicle for promoting the economic modernization of their region. Of course, war and the resulting Union blockade gave the Confederacy far more autarky than it bargained for. But in the heady days before wrecked railroads, destroyed plantations, and pressing shortages, Virginia secessionists imagining their economic future wrote and spoke in a Hamiltonian idiom of industrial expansion, economic independence, and national greatness. Historians should therefore not be surprised that Confederate Virginians eagerly embraced the tariff—the principle instrument of economic nationalism in the nineteenth century—as they debated the prospect of separate nationhood.