Thanks for your far more than averagely thoughtful reply.
I hate to break it to you, but the theory that the war was over trade issues is a revisionist falsehood, or at least exaggeration. Its support comes almost exclusively from three sort-of contemporary sources:
1. Post-war apologists who couldn’t convincingly defend slavery as a bright and shining cause, so came up with the notion of tariffs and trade as “the cause.”
2. European America-haters like Dickens, who refused to ascribe anything but the most base motives to Americans.
3. Radicals like Marx, who ascribed EVERYTHING to the most base materials motives.
The notion that the war was fought over control of trade and desire to maintain its revenue doesn’t even make any sense. Let us assume the South paid the entire revenue of $60M the government took in, and further that the entire revenue was spent in the North, neither one of which is even vaguely true. But under this most extreme of possible scenarios the North is ripping off the South for $60M/year.
The final cost of the war for the Union was over $6000M. Thus the Union taxed itself to spend 100x the money they were supposedly extorting from the South, and without which “their finances would collapse.” Well, don’t you think it would have made a lot better financial sense to just tax themselves to replace the “lost” $60M, rather than spend 100x that amount to get it back?
The notion of the protective tariff as “the cause” is particularly odd. The PT started, pushed most strongly by Henry Clay, a southerner and slaveowner, BTW, after the War of 1812, when it became perfectly clear that depending on imports for military and other necessary industrial supplies might not be the best idea. Especially when the Royal Navy controlled the seas, and Britain was a quite likely future antagonist. So the idea was that vital “infant industries” would be protected against foreign competition so they could get a running start.
Obviously protective tariffs soon got caught up in political deals and logrolling. But the notion that the CSA would not be impelled itself to put in protective tariffs, had it won independence, is ludicrous. The CSA wouldn’t want to build up its own armament industry? It would be content to leave its military supplies open to blockade by the USA or UK? Really?
I could be wrong on this, but I believe the pre-secession tariff was the lowest in decades. Each of the seceding states laid out a declaration of the reasons impelling it to do so.
Every single one featured the protection of slavery as a primary cause, most as THE primary cause. I believe only one or two, at most, even mentioned trade or tariff issues as a cause.
In his great Cornerstone Speech, acclaimed at the time as the most eloquent and comprehensive statement of the southern cause, the Veep of the CSA stated that tariffs and trade weren’t the issue, that the South seceded to uphold the great principle of human inequality, on which the Founders were unfortunately mistaken.
The Lincoln/Douglass debates, which I recently read in full, were widely accepted at the time as the most comprehensive spelling out of the issues between the sections. Every single debate was totally concerned with slavery. Not one other issue was even brought up. Odd if slavery was only a side issue, with trade and tariffs the main thing.
Perhaps most importantly, one must distinguish between the causes of secession, and the causes of the war. At least in theory, it would have been possible for the South to secede peacefully.
As others have pointed out, the primary reason the South seceded was that it wanted to protect its way of life against what it saw as mortal threat. Unfortunately, the way of life it wanted to protect was based on slavery. Southerners at the time were perfectly clear in saying so. Only after the war did some of the wimpier ones try to find other reasons for secession.
Did the Union go to war, initially, to destroy slavery? Nope, but the destruction of slavery was an inevitable consequence of the war itself, as I’ve pointed out in a timeline upthread.
The oddest thing of all, to me, is the implicit assumption in the argument that trade caused the war that the really very minor economic exploitation claimed (whether it existed in fact is another issue) by the South somehow justified the war when the defense of slavery could not.
The entire US federal budget in 1860 was $60M. The GDP was $4345M. The federal government therefore consumed about 1.4% of GDP. I suspect most of us wish we could return to those days of intolerable federal oppression justifying secession and civil war!
(We are presently closing on 20% of GDP spent by the feds.)
I also suspect any conceivable CSA government, after independence was won, would have consumed a good deal more than 1.4% of the CSA’s GDP.
It’s all really quite simple. The only “uncompromisable” issue between the sections was slavery. The South insisted it be accepted as a positive good, and its expansion protected by federal law and federal troops. The North refused this and demanded that slavery be confined to its existing locations. Since neither side would back down, the only solution was secession. Secession led directly to war.
Had the Union agreed to let the erring sisters go in peace, I suspect the CSA would have immediately made demands for a peace or all of the territories. After all, the precipitating cause of secession was a demand for access to the territories. So after secession they happily agree to keep slavery cooped up in the existing states, the very cause that impelled them to secede? Really?
I also suspect the CSA would have demanded that MO, KY and MD be allowed to join them, and would have gone to war if the demand were resisted.
IOW, had war not started at Sumter, it almost certainly would have started over the territories or border states.