Because,
rustbucket: "If so, why were a number of Republicans calling for the repeal of the Morrill Tariff or the blockade of the Southern ports?"
rustbucket: "It sounds like you are using your error filled almanac again.
Or perhaps Lincoln said that in his dry run on Sunday, March 3, the day before his inaugural speech on March 4."
According to this site, that was the speech delivered on March 4, 1861.
rustbucket: "He was going to collect tariff revenue from states that had seceded.
How could that be accomplished without resistance from the seceded states?"
In early March, 1861 Lincoln believed it could be.
Events soon proved him mistaken in that idea.
rustbucket: "The states had seceded consistent with Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison's statements that they could reassume/resume their powers of government.
Those three founders were the authors of the Federalist Papers that explained what the Constitution meant."
In fact, by Madison's definition and others, Fire Eaters had declared their secessions "at pleasure", which was not considered legitimate.
In early 1861 Democrat ex-president Van Buren, Whig ex-president Fillmore and Democrat ex-president Pierce all opposed secession along with Democrat President Buchanan and Republican President-elect Lincoln.
All also believed that secession by itself was not justification for war.
When war came at Fort Sumter, former Presidents Van Buren, Fillmore and Buchanan supported it, while Pierce criticized war & Lincoln throughout.
rustbucket: "Remember that December 1860 Chicago Times article I posted:
'We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe.
This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.' "
Once again:
rustbucket: "Overall looses were not as severe as Northern newspapers had predicted because Lincoln blockaded Southern ports thereby stemming the flow of imported goods that would have gone directly to the South."
That argument has been shown bogus now several times on this thread.
The reasons are:
rustbucket: "Remember Lincoln's blockade proclamation, the proclamation that the Supreme Court said was the start of the Civil War."
Constitutionally, the Supreme Court does not declare war, so that case strictly covered a civil suit regarding, iirc, pension payments.
It has no bearing on the fact that Jefferson Davis ordered war / rebellion to begin at Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861.
Fort Sumter was just as much a game-changer as Pearl Harbor eighty years later.
rustbucket: "Another way of looking at the import figures was that they tell how much of the imports were going to the North and how much (the missing part) had been going to the South.
The actual volume of imports to the North dropped more than the 41.4% that the revenue decreased by because it took fewer imports to produce equivalent revenue at higher tariff rates than the volume of imports needed to produce that revenue in 1860."
Again, I'll refer you to PeaRidge's post #1,540 and my response in post #1,553.
They clearly show that overall loss of revenues was only 26% in 1861, after which tariff revenues grew 19%, 37% and 51% in following years.
Such numbers demonstrate that loss of Confederate products was not the great economic catastrophe some have claimed.
rustbucket quoting Lincoln: " 'You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Ft. Sumter, even if it had failed; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the results.'
The result of the Sumter expedition was war."
But clearly, Lincoln here acknowledges his mission to Fort Sumter "failed".
His consolation is that, with war now started, he could take military actions to defeat the rebellion.
Lincoln's position here is nearly identical to that of President Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.
rustbucket quoting: " '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.'
Some of us can see through Lincoln's ruse.
Others on this thread cannot."
No "ruse", just as FDR did not "ruse" the Japanese by sending the US fleet to Pearl Harbor.
In both cases, enemy military took advantage of perceived US weaknesses to start a war.
Wars both then lost.
Too bad about that.
Wigfall had been in the Senate for a year when he made his prediction of how the future Morrill vote would go.
2.Second, even if passed in the new Congress, a determined Southern opposition could have modified the bill more to their liking -- or less to their disliking, as the case may be,
The opposition had the votes to pass whatever they wanted.
3.Third, Wigfall was a dedicated Fire Eater most interested in making the case for secession, not working out compromises with Unionists.
That may be true, but there were folks on the other side just as determined not to compromise. And besides, the other side had the votes to pass whatever they wanted.
Speaking of those determined not to compromise, according to the following April 5, 1861 letter to Lincoln from one of his close supporters, Lincoln had told him that he (Lincoln) did not want to call a special session of Congress apparently as Congress might compromise with the South over issues. [Source: Carl Schurz letter to Lincoln found by poster southernsunshine, my emphasis below]:
Some time ago you told me, that you did not want to call an extra-session of Congress for fear of reopening the compromise-agitation. You were undoubtedly right then. But any vigorous act on the part of your Administration, any display of power and courage will remove that danger. If you first reinforce the forts and then call Congress together, the enthusiasm of the masses will be so great and overwhelming, that Congress will be obliged to give you any legislation you may ask for. You will be master of the situation, and supported by the confidence of the people, the government will be stronger than it ever was before. But on the other hand, if an undecided vacillating policy is followed, we shall be beaten in most of the Northern states at the fall-elections, and your administration will be at the mercy of democratic demagoguism--
Schurz had marked his letter "Confidential." So we are getting a peak at one of the confidential "emails" of the time that exposed what Lincoln was thinking.
This reminds me of Lincoln's March 28, 1861 reply to the Special Session of the Senate then in session when they asked him if he had anything of importance to convey to them before they adjourned. Here from the "Congressional Globe" on March 28, 1861, is documentation about the Senate checking with Lincoln and his reply:
Mr. Powell, from the committee appointed to wait on the President of the United States and notify him that unless he has some further communication to make, the Senate is ready to adjourn, reported that the committee had waited on the President, and had been informed by him that he had no further communication to make to the Senate.
That same day, March 28 [Klein, "Days of Defiance", page 358], Lincoln instructed Fox to prepare an order arranging for the things necessary for the Sumter expedition, an expedition that his military advisors and cabinet previously said would result in a shooting war. Lincoln waited until the Senate adjourned (the House had already adjourned) to plan his effort to provoke war. If Lincoln's expedition was simply a peaceful expedition to provide food for Fort Sumter, why not tell the Senate? Besides, until it became clear to the Confederacy in early April that an armed expedition was being prepared by Lincoln, Fort Sumter had been allowed to get food from Charleston.
Somehow a probable war was not important enough inform the Senate and keep them in session? Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war, not the President.
Lincoln kept Congress out of session until July 4. In the interim, he invaded the South, started the blockade, spent money he had no authorization to spend, enrolled troops for longer periods than allowed by law, ignored habeas corpus, jailed newspaper editors and writers opposing his actions. He did all this without having the normal checks and balances that the Congress would provide. He didn't want the Congress interfering with his plans. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, reconvened his Congress about two weeks after Fort Sumter.
I'm out of pocket for a good while. More later.
A lot of papers in March 1861 had mentioned repealing the law, which obviously happened after it was signed (duh). And even Lincoln's Treasury Secretary Chase was reported to say that it must be repealed.
With regard to Fort Sumter, perhaps you are forgetting leaks to the press in March that Fort Sumter was going to be evacuated. That was what Lincoln's messenger Lamon had also said to the Governor of South Carolina and to Major Anderson in the fort. The book Lamon wrote after the war said he told them what Lincoln instructed him to say.
Anderson was mad about this when he later learned the expedition was coming:
I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.
It is, of course, now too late for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of Captain Fox. I fear that its result cannot fail to be disastrous to all concerned. ...
I ought to have been informed that this expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out. We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced.
[BroJoeK in Post 1,647]: "3.Fact #3: Lincoln himself, on March 3, 1861 addressed collecting tariffs this way:
[rustbucket in Post 1,648]: It sounds like you are using your error filled almanac again. Or perhaps Lincoln said that in his dry run on Sunday, March 3, the day before his inaugural speech on March 4.
[BroJoeK in Post 1,649]: According to this site, that was the speech delivered on March 4, 1861.
Yes, I know. You first said that Lincoln said those words on March 3, 1861. Then I said, March 3 was the day before his inaugural speech on March 4. Why was he saying it on March 3 like you first claimed? That is why I asked about your old error-filled almanac, which for all I know did say March 3.
In early March, 1861 Lincoln believed it [rb: collecting tariff revenue from seceding states without resistence] could be.
Events soon proved him mistaken in that idea.
If Lincoln believed that he could do that without resistence from the seceded states, he was hopelessly naïve. All he had to do was to read editorials about his inaugural speech in Southern newspapers and Northern Democrat newspapers. [Link]
Lincoln wasn't naïve. As you know, I believe he wanted to start a war that would not be blamed on him as his secretaries Nicolay and Hay later said in their book about Lincoln.
Your Civil War education is sorely lacking. I recommend to you the book, "Lincoln Takes Command, How Lincoln Got The War He Wanted" by John Shipley Tilley. It is a good book. It covers a lot of the things we Southern posters have independently discovered and posted on these threads.
Oh, but I forgot. You earlier said: I "get" that you wish to confuse & conflate issues to make Northerners look bad
I am sorry if the historical documents, newspaper articles, quotes from the Congressional Globe and the Official Record, and data from various sources that the Southern posters provide don't agree with Northern posters' preconceived notions and therefore apparently confuse them. Should I put a trigger warning on my posts?
In fact, by Madison's definition and others, Fire Eaters had declared their secessions "at pleasure", which was not considered legitimate.
To justify their 1861 secession, the Virginia Secession Convention used the exact words that Madison and other Federalists had put in (and voted for) the 1788 Virginia ratification document.
As you know, Hamilton and Jay, the other two authors of the Federalist papers, voted for the New York ratification document which said:
... the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness ...
The question was put to the people of Virginia, and they overwhelmingly voted to secede.
1.Tariffs protected all US manufacturing and while Southern & Western production was less than Northern, they were also growing rapidly, thanks to tariff protections.
If Southern manufacturing were such a big deal, why did 40 Southern members of the House vote against the Morrill Tariff, while only one voted for it?
A major potential problem for the North was that goods imported into Southern ports could be smuggled into the North without paying a Northern tariff and sold at prices below those supported by the Morrill Tariff.
In the future Southern market, Northern goods would face competition from lower priced, better quality, European goods imported to Southern ports under the lower Confederate tariff. Northern manufacturers could not sell their goods at Morrill Tariff-inflated prices in the South because of that competition and also because the South would place a tariff on goods coming from the North. I think it was Kettell who calculated the value of Northern goods sold annually to the South at 240 million dollars.
The South would have the same problem with Northern goods being smuggled to the South that the North would have for goods smuggled the other way. It perhaps would have been better if the two sides separated peaceably and agreed to no tariff being applied to Northern or Southern goods going to the other region.