Check out this source.
Note it says there was a special session of the 36th Congress from March 4 to March 10, 1859.
So, the article you posted says this particular event took place on March 9, which would be during that special session of the 36th Congress.
That would make those 68 endorsers 49% of all 138 Republican Congressmen & Senators.
Certainly a minor & arcane point, but interesting.
rustbucket: "The 68 who endorsed on March 9, 1859 were all in the House of Representatives, likely members of the 35th House session that ended on March 3."
See my link above, the 36th Congress was in special session on March 9, 1859, so 68 would be 49% of the total 138 Republicans.
rustbucket: "The South had already been a minority in Congress for some time.
They weren't able to stop the Morrill Tariff in the House in 1859, even though all but one Southerner voted against it."
But Southern Democrats had always allied with Northern Democrats to make large majorities in both House & Senate.
Of course, the strength of that alliance depended on political passions of a particular issue.
On matters of great importance to Southern Democrats, they could call on not just their Northern Democrat allies, but also Southern Whigs or American Party, and possibly even Northern Border state Republicans.
That's why my argument here is that Southern Democrats didn't really care as much about the Morrill tariff bill as they later pretended.
When you look at the numbers, you see there were enough abstentions to have defeated the bill, if they had voted against it.
Bottom line: in 1860 tariffs were just "politics as usual", they went up, they went down based on many factors, and had never been considered a justification for extreme measures like secession.
Even in 1861 the Morrill tariff was not mentioned by any of the four seceding state conventions which produced official "Reason for Secession" documents.
Those documents all focused on the real reason for secession: their fears over what might happen to their "peculiar institution" under Republican government in Washington, DC.
It was not secession with mutual consent.
It was not secession for material cause.
It was secession "at pleasure".
rustbucket: "You know better than Wigfall how Senators would vote?
Wigfall, who knew the Senators well?
Is there any end to your omnipotence? (/sarc)"
You forget that Wigfall was only elected to the Senate in December 1859, so by December 1860 had exactly one year of seniority.
That did not make him the most experienced & knowledgeable Senator in Washington.
So Wigfall's judgment on these matters should be taken with a healthy dose of salt.
Again, the historical fact is that Southern Democrats had always worked with Northern & Western allies, sometimes called "Doughfaced", and could continue doing so in 1861 and beyond, if they wanted.
But the voting on November 6, 1860 convinced many that it was too much effort and time had come to declare secession.
But it was secession "at pleasure" because in fact, at that time, nothing had changed.
I thought you would have learned by now not to rely solely on Wikipedia. Check out this more authoritative source for the dates of the 35th and 36th congresses: [Link]. As you'll see, only the 36th Senate was in session on March 4 to March 10, but not the House.
As I said before, using that correct source and a comment in a January 1860 Congressional Globe issue, the 36th House wasn't in session until December 5, 1859, and the members of the 36th House were not sworn in officially until sometime in 1860. The 36th House couldn't act until they were sworn in. The endorsement of Helper's Book was done by 68 members of the 35th House (73.9%).
Even in 1861 the Morrill tariff was not mentioned by any of the four seceding state conventions which produced official "Reason for Secession" documents.
Sectional aggrandizement was mentioned in Texas and Georgia's causes of secession documents. The tariff was but one part of that sectional aggrandizement. Protective tariffs helped Northern manufacturers and gave Northern workers jobs, at the expense of money extracted from the South.
TEXAS: They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
GEORGIA: The Georgia causes document mentioned aggrandizement by the North concerning navigation, manufacturing, commercial interests, fishing, shipbuilders, and miners. They mentioned high duties that had been charged in the past as one of the aggrandizements, and that protectionism had been beaten down. At least, it had been at the time Georgia wrote their causes document - but the protectionism issue arose again when the Morrill Tariff passed after Georgia left the Union.
Certainly the Morrill Tariff was an issue. Consider what Georgia Senator Robert Toombs, a member of the 36th Congress, said about the tariff and other sectional aggrandizement on November 13, 1860 [paragraph breaks mine]:
Even the fishermen of Massachusetts and New England demand and receive from the public treasury about half a million of dollars per annum as a pure bounty on their business of catching codfish. The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan in brass, or iron, or wood, or weaver, or spinner in wool or cotton, or a calicomaker, or iron-master, or a coal-owner, in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government. No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor.
It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate.
It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South.
Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its ordinary and most favorable action, bounties and protection to every interest and every pursuit in the North, to the extent of at least fifty millions per annum, besides the expenditure of at least sixty millions out of every seventy of the public expenditure among them, thus making the treasury a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands.
Even in 1861 the Morrill tariff was not mentioned by any of the four seceding state conventions which produced official "Reason for Secession" documents.
Not mentioned in the state secession conventions perhaps because it had not yet become law. But high tariffs were mentioned. Here from the speech of John S. Preston, the South Carolina Commissioner to the Virginia Secession Convention, is what he told the Virginia Secession Convention on February 19, 1861 [paragraph breaks mine; a lot of aggrandizement talk here, it's not just about tariffs]:
I would state. as preliminary, that a large portion of the revenue of the government of the United States has always been drawn from duties on imports. Now, the products that have been necessary to purchase these imports, were at one time almost exclusively, and have always mainly been the result of slave labor, and therefore the burden of the revenue duties upon imports purchased by these exports must fall upon the producer who happens also to be the consumer of the imports.
In addition to this, it may be stated, that at a very early period of the existence of this Government, the Northern people, from a variety of causes, entered upon the industries of manufacture and of commerce, but of agriculture scarcely to the extent of self support. This may have arisen from a variety of causes; among them, perhaps, an uncongenial climate, a barren soil, but an alluring sea coast adapted to commerce, besides an inherent tendency upon the part of the people of these latitudes to the arts of manucraft and traffic; and while, therefore, it was important that all the sources of the revenue should be kept up to meet the increasing expenses of the Government, it also manifestly became of great importance that these articles of manufacture in which they have been engaged should be subject to the purchase of their confederates.
They, therefore, invented a system of duties partial and discriminating, by which the whole burden of the revenue from this extraordinary system fell upon those who produced the articles of exports which purchased the articles of imports, and which articles of import were consumed mainly, or to a great extent, by those who produced the exports.
Now, the State of South Carolina being at the time one of the largest exporters and consumers of imports, was so oppressed by the operations of this system upon her, that she was driven to the necessity of interposing her sovereign reservation to arrest it, so far as she was concerned. This interposition, together with the rapid spread of the principle of free trade all over the world, did arrest the iniquity in the shape in which it was then presented. It could no longer be the avowed policy of the Government to tax one section for the purpose of building up another. But so successful had been the system; to such an extent had it already, in a few years, been pushed; so vast had been its accumulations of capital; so vastly had it been diffused throughout its ramifications as seemingly to inter-weave the very life of industry itself, in the two sections into each other in the form of mechanics, of manufactures, ships, merchants, and bankers.
The people of the Northern States have so crawled and crept into every crevice of our industry which they could approach, and they have themselves so conformed to it, that we ourselves began to believe that they were absolutely necessary to its vitality; and they have so fed and fattened, and grown so great and large as they feed and fatten upon this sweating giant of the South, that with the insolence natural to sudden and bloated wealth and power, they begin to believe that the giant was created only as their tributary.
[me]: They weren't able to stop the Morrill Tariff in the House in 1859, even though all but one Southerner voted against it.
[you]: But Southern Democrats had always allied with Northern Democrats to make large majorities in both House & Senate.
If your argument were correct, the Northern Democrats should have come to the rescue and stopped the Morrill Tariff from passing the House. But they didn't. Perhaps Wigfall recognized that the South could no longer count on that strong support, but you, 155 years later, can't seem to see it.
"at pleasure", "at pleasure"
Yes, we know what you think and don't agree with your version of history.