Thanks.
Please go back to rusty's post with all those New York Herald quotes.
Now remember the NY Herald was an anti-Republican, Democrat supporting, Dred-Scott excusing, Chris Matthews level "tingle up my leg" Slave-Power loving, Dough-Faced Northern partisan political organ.
Thanks for the comment. It may well be true that the Herald opposed anything the Republicans did. I also posted comments from the New York Times, the New York Evening Post, and the New York Day Book. The New York Times was a Republican paper, the Day Book was a business oriented paper, and the Evening Post was apparently Republican.
PeaRidge also supplied a tariff-related quote from the (Republican) New York Times [see Link].
x said business oriented papers with ties to the South could overplay the effects of the tariff. That is true. The New York Day Book article I posted showed what happened to New York businesses after the tariff had been in effect for a couple of months. On an inflation adjusted basis tariff revenue fell significantly during the war as the papers critical to the Morrill tariff had forecast even though the tariff rate kept being adjusted higher and higher during the war.
I checked the online Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper for further comments about the tariff. The Eagle had the largest circulation of any evening newspaper in the country back then. They said that opposition to the Morrill Tariff came from both Republicans and Democrats. Here are some comments they made about the tariff (caution, x, here is some more "junk"):
This measure is as loudly denounced by republicans as democrats. The Evening Post, the Courier and Enquirer denounce it as a measure destructive to their party, as well as commerce. The responsibility is with their party and they will have to meet it, as they will do, if the bill passes, in a fearful falling off of the revenue, which will be needed to carry on the operation of the Government. [February 7, 1861]
It is a bad sign to see a party on its advent to power favoring huge projects of one hand while on the other it pretends the absolute necessity of the government requires the imposition of a heavy tax on the industry of the people. ... It is not anticipated that the President will refuse to sign the bill should it pass both Houses. It is intended to benefit the iron interests of Pennsylvania, and the President’s last act almost can hardly be to defeat a project for the success of which his native state has long been contending. [February 27, 1861]
A Mr. Nettlefold of England obtained from this country machinery to make pointed screws, which at present rate of duty at 24 percent were imported. The Providence consolidated company [an American screw making monopoly formed from all American screw makers] sent an agent to England, who pays Mr. Nettlefold 5,000 [pound] sterling or twenty-five thousand dollars per annum not to file any orders for America. Recently, both in England [and] Germany, manufactories have been established for making pointed screws, and to head them off, this monster monopoly have now secured in the Morrill tariff a rate of duty for screws that will prove entirely prohibitory, and it will secure for them the control of the trade, as is plainly shown by the figures submitted, to wit: [Here the paper mentioned a number of different sizes of screws with new duty rates ranging from 31 percent, 51 percent, 56 percent, 75 percent, 84 percent, and 90 percent compared to the old 24 percent.] [February 13, 1861]
And sometimes, a lot of us feel like the "face palm guy." For me it can happen when I hear about the Morrill Tariff for the umpteenth time and similar quotes are trotted out yet again. Maybe one reason why protective tariffs were scrapped is that voters just got tired of hearing about them all the time.
But you still haven't looked at how secessionist Southerners actually reacted to the tariff. Here is the Richmond Daily Dispatch positively gleeful about the new tariff:
If the friends of the South had been permitted to devise a machine that would enrich the South, impoverish the North, break down the Federal Government, and leave it impotent in its malice as a madman in his chains, they could not have devised as effectual an expedient as this Morrill Tariff. The first news from Europe, after the arrival of intelligence that the Morrill Tariff had passed Congress, is the first puff of a coming hurricane which is destined to hurl the old wreck of the Abolition Government high and dry among the breakers, and send the noble Confederate Ship of State' with swelling sails and flowing streamers, on a glorious and triumphant voyage.
Heady stuff. The new tariff was expected by the paper to bankrupt the North, enrich the South, drive the remaining slave states into the Confederacy, and turn Britain against the United States for once and for all. Maybe I exaggerate a little, but there were even voices in the South suggesting that New York City might secede in response to the tariff.
So was the tariff Lincoln's evil plan to provoke the South? Well, first of all an upward revision of the tariff was in the works for months. It wasn't something adopted on the spur of the moment for tactical reasons. Maybe it could have been stopped if it were felt that it would make a difference -- if the choice was between a tariff increase and secession -- but that offer doesn't appear to have been on the table to my knowledge. The bill may have been a mistake, but I'm not aware that anybody offered to cancel secession if it were defeated.
Secondly, we really don't know just how much the new tariff was Lincoln's and how much was Congress's or who had control of the provisions and the timing. You may like to think of Lincoln as a tyrant, but the Whig Party he'd belonged to for much of his career wasn't in favor of a strong executive and wanted to leave much up to Congress. You'd have to look into the matter a little more closely: relations between Congress and the White House were different in 1861 than they were a century later.
Thirdly, are you really trying to say that South Carolinians or the CSA regime fired on Sumter in response to the Morrill Tariff? They already considered themselves to be outside the union. As we've seen they welcomed the US protective tariff as something likely to turn Southerners against the federal government and into their own Confederacy, as something that would help them secure recognition by foreign governments, even as something that would divide the Northern states.
An interesting thing about the Southern papers of the day: after the initial complaints about the new tariff and speculation about its effects, the discussion, so far as I can tell, turned to what tariffs the Confederacy would have. In other words, secessionists weren't fuming very long about the US tariff. They had already chosen their path and were following it.
Fourthly, if resupplying the fort was some sort of horrible provocation to the rebel regime, wasn't it enough? Why would you want to offend potential supporters with a high tariff? Why not let the fools fire on your fort because of the resupply or even because of your simple refusal to evacuate it -- without helping them out with an offensive tariff that would win them support? Why make their regime stronger through one's own ineptitude?
In order to crush the rebels in a more convincing, more spectacular, more devastating fashion? Making the Confederacy stronger and stronger so that the thud when it fell would be deafening? Sorry, but that theory looks like something concocted after the fact. In 1861 it, let alone in some spectacular, devastating fashion. Needlessly alienating potential supporters before a shot was fired was something Lincoln wasn't very likely to do if he was expecting or desiring war.
So was it maybe part of some very long game? Talk about raising tariffs for months or years to drive the South to secession and administer the final blow with passage of the tariff? I guess -- if you just want to ignore everything that was actually going on at the time and everything that secessionists actually said. Whatever floats your boat. But you've already said that you didn't think that tariffs prompted secession. So why would higher tariffs in a country the secessionists had already renounced be a provocation to the new Confederacy?