“... the mask [of protecting slavery] has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possesed of the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade....The government would be false if this state of things were not provided against.”
~Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861
Interesting.....in that this editor seemed to think that the issue of secession had been used as a diversionary excuse.
Did he not believe the Cornerstone Speech? Looks like he did not.
He certainly believed that the entire issue was about MONEY.
“...That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop....”
~New York Evening Post, March 1861
“Blockade Southern Ports. With no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls”
~Philadelphia Press, March 18, 1861
“...The government...is bound to collect the revenue duties on every ship which enters a Southern port. Its revenue cutters can and will hover out of reach of the shore guns round the mouth of the ports, and compel the payment of the Federal tribute....”
~The Living Age, Boston, March 23, 1861.
Still no mention of slavery as a cause for the blockade.
ONLY MONEY.
Charles Dickens also thought it was a diversionary excuse. I think he accurately pegged the cause of the conflict at the time.
"I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.
"Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
And yet again I can find no record of such a newspaper in the histories of newspapers.
Of course, it's totally typical for Lost Causers to concoct their own "history" wherever the real thing doesn't suit them.
After all, by definition, Lost Causers are Dixiecrats, which is to say Democrats of the Old South.
Lying is what Democrats do, it's their basic fundamental nature, their political DNA, so to speak.