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?
Your recent posts to me weren't sounding like the old x whose posts I used to archive to read. On the other hand, this post is fine and for that I thank you.
That is an interesting Richmond Daily Dispatch quote. I hadn't seen it before -- I hadn't looked on that web site because I was focused on how the Morrill Tariff was going to affect the North. Had the war and the blockade not started, I think the tariff would have been a major problem for the North and a boon to the South whose ports would get much more business. But that is speculation on my part.
I don't believe the South seceded because of the tariff. The tariff was a smoldering issue that moved some people, but the slavery issue was more effective in firing up the masses.
What I do believe is that the effect of the two tariffs (Morrill and Confederate) would have been a great problem for Lincoln. As PeaRidge pointed out in post 328, a committee of concerned New York merchants visited Lincoln and talked about the tariff issue and how it was destroying business. My quote from the New York Day Book about the number of businesses that had shut down confirmed that the difference in rates between the two tariffs was a serious problem.
How could Lincoln solve the tariff problem and at the same time provoke the South to fire first? I think Lincoln had already analyzed the problem before the merchants arrived and decided on his course of action. He was a smart man who thought outside of the box.
The following things I’m sure you know. Lincoln’s generals and cabinet had told him that Fox’s plan for sending supplies to Sumter would result in a clash of arms. Lamon had told Lincoln the same thing based on his trip to Charleston. On March 28 Lincoln told the Senate that he didn’t have anything important to tell them and they could adjourn (which they did). On the same day, Lincoln asked for a draft of secret orders to be prepared for the Sumter expedition, the expedition that would likely result in a shooting war.
One definition of an act of war is doing something that will cause the other side to start fighting. On that basis the Sumter expedition qualified as an act of war. When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.
Lincoln then did not reconvene Congress until July 4. During the intervening time he maneuvered the country onto a war footing, calling for forces to invade the South, calling for the blockade, extending the service period of some in the army. He probably thought he couldn’t do that if Congress was there interfering and muddying up his plans.
I would provide two short quotes to support my theory, if you don’t mind.
May 1, 1861, Lincoln to Fox, the leader of the Sumter expedition
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.The result, of course, was war. Then there is this from Lincoln’s secretaries, Nicolay and Hay:
President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to "send bread to Anderson"; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.
I had seen both of these quotes on these threads more than once. I’m sure you must have seen them too.
I see I’ve wandered off topic a bit, but I thought I would flesh out a little how the tariff might have played a role in Lincoln’s thinking and what he ended up doing that was consistent with neutering the tariff as an issue and provoking war with the South. I’ve Monday quarterbacked on these threads that the South would have been better off not to attack Sumter and let Lincoln try to stop foreign ships heading to Southern ports to collect his tariff. That would have been another act of war, this time against foreign countries. But who am I to say what should have been done?
Unfortunately, I will be traveling the next few days. I’ll respond to your other points when I return.