Lincoln's Tariff War

Lew Rockwell ^ | 5/13/02 | Thomas Dilorenzo

[WhowasGustavusFox]

Lincoln's Tariff War

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo

When Charles Adams published his book "For Good and Evil", a world history of taxation, the most controversial chapter by far was the one on whether or not tariffs caused the American War between the States. That chapter generated so much discussion and debate that Adams's publisher urged him to turn it into an entire book, which he did, in the form of "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession."

Many of the reviewers of this second book, so confident were they that slavery was the one and only possible reason for both Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and the war itself, excoriated Adams for his analysis that the tariff issue was a major cause of the war. (Adams recently told me in an email that after one presentation to a New York City audience, he felt lucky that "no one brought a rope.")

My book, "The Real Lincoln", has received much the same response with regard to the tariff issue. But there is overwhelming evidence that: 1) Lincoln, a failed one-term congressman, would never have been elected had it not been for his career-long devotion to protectionism; and 2) the 1861 Morrill tariff, which Lincoln was expected to enforce, was the event that triggered Lincoln’s invasion, which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

A very important article that documents in great detail the role of protectionism in Lincoln’s ascendancy to the presidency is Columbia University historian Reinhard H. Luthin's "Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff," published in the July 1944 issue of The American Historical Review. As I document in The Real Lincoln, the sixteenth president was one of the most ardent protectionists in American politics during the first half of the nineteenth century and had established a long record of supporting protectionism and protectionist candidates in the Whig Party.

In 1860, Pennsylvania was the acknowledged key to success in the presidential election. It had the second highest number of electoral votes, and Pennsylvania Republicans let it be known that any candidate who wanted the state’s electoral votes must sign on to a high protectionist tariff to benefit the state’s steel and other manufacturing industries. As Luthin writes, the Morrill tariff bill itself "was sponsored by the Republicans in order to attract votes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey."

The most influential newspaper in Illinois at the time was the Chicago Press and Tribune under the editorship of Joseph Medill, who immediately recognized that favorite son Lincoln had just the protectionist credentials that the Pennsylvanians wanted. He editorialized that Lincoln "was an old Clay Whig, is right on the tariff and he is exactly right on all other issues. Is there any man who could suit Pennsylvania better?"

At the same time, a relative of Lincoln’s by marriage, a Dr. Edward Wallace of Pennsylvania, sounded Lincoln out on the tariff by communicating to Lincoln through his brother, William Wallace. On October 11, 1859, Lincoln wrote Dr. Edward Wallace: "My dear Sir: [Y]our brother, Dr. William S. Wallace, showed me a letter of yours, in which you kindly mention my name, inquire for my tariff view, and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter upon the subject. I was an old Henry Clay-Tariff Whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject than any other. I have not since changed my views" (emphasis added). Lincoln was establishing his bona fides as an ardent protectionist.

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, the protectionist tariff was a key plank. As Luthin writes, when the protectionist tariff plank was voted in, "The Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations were terrific in their applause over the tariff resolution, and their hilarity was contagious, finally pervading the whole vast auditorium." Lincoln received "the support of almost the entire Pennsylvania delegation" writes Luthin, "partly through the efforts of doctrinaire protectionists such as Morton McMichael . . . publisher of Philadelphia’s bible of protectionism, the North American newspaper."

Returning victorious to his home of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln attended a Republican Party rally that included "an immense wagon" bearing a gigantic sign reading "Protection for Home Industry." Lincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) economic guru, Pennsylvania steel industry publicist/lobbyist Henry C. Carey, declared that without a high protectionist tariff, "Mr. Lincoln’s administration will be dead before the day of inauguration."

The U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Morrill tariff in the 1859-1860 session, and the Senate passed it on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration. President James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian who owed much of his own political success to Pennsylvania protectionists, signed it into law. The bill immediately raised the average tariff rate from about 15 percent (according to Frank Taussig in Tariff History of the United States) to 37.5 percent, but with a greatly expanded list of covered items. The tax burden would about triple. Soon thereafter, a second tariff increase would increase the average rate to 47.06 percent, Taussig writes.

So, Lincoln owed everything--his nomination and election--to Northern protectionists, especially the ones in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He was expected to be the enforcer of the Morrill tariff. Understanding all too well that the South Carolina tariff nullifiers had foiled the last attempt to impose a draconian protectionist tariff on the nation by voting in political convention not to collect the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations," Lincoln literally promised in his first inaugural address a military invasion if the new, tripled tariff rate was not collected.

At the time, Taussig says, the import-dependent South was paying as much as 80 percent of the tariff, while complaining bitterly that most of the revenues were being spent in the North. The South was being plundered by the tax system and wanted no more of it. Then along comes Lincoln and the Republicans, tripling (!) the rate of tariff taxation (before the war was an issue). Lincoln then threw down the gauntlet in his first inaugural: "The power confided in me," he said, "will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion--no using force against, or among the people anywhere" (emphasis added).

"We are going to make tax slaves out of you," Lincoln was effectively saying, "and if you resist, there will be an invasion." That was on March 4. Five weeks later, on April 12, Fort Sumter, a tariff collection point in Charleston Harbor, was bombarded by the Confederates. No one was hurt or killed, and Lincoln later revealed that he manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot, which helped generate war fever in the North.

With slavery, Lincoln was conciliatory. In his first inaugural address, he said he had no intention of disturbing slavery, and he appealed to all his past speeches to any who may have doubted him. Even if he did, he said, it would be unconstitutional to do so.

But with the tariff it was different. He was not about to back down to the South Carolina tariff nullifiers, as Andrew Jackson had done, and was willing to launch an invasion that would ultimately cost the lives of 620,000 Americans to prove his point. Lincoln’s economic guru, Henry C. Carey, was quite prescient when he wrote to Congressman Justin S. Morrill in mid-1860 that "Nothing less than a dictator is required for making a really good tariff" (p. 614, "Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff").

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Non-Sequitur]

As a further inducement, emancipation would negate the 3/5ths clause, thereby increasing representation of southern states, certainly something that they would have desired.

Increase southern representation? Now that is something that the Northern senators wouldn't have gone for. But it doesn't change the fact that for emancipation to have occured and an end to slavery reached it would have taken a Constitutional amendment. And that was not possible in the mid 1800's and would not have been possible until Oklahoma became the 46th state.

[stainlessbanner]

if the southern demand for imported good was so high then why weren’t the goods shipped directly to them?

That's exactly what Northern interests were scared of. After the Morrill Tariff which taxed 50% duty on iron products, 25% on clothing, and an average rate of 47%, the South countered by creating a free trade zone between itself and Europe.

Consider this prediction from 1860 by the Chicago Daily Times:

"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."

The North needed the South while the South felt it did not need the North.

[stainlessbanner]

I need a new keyboard, to learn HTML, take typing lessons

Or you could just cut & paste! < /grin>

[4CJ]

Increase southern representation? Now that is something that the Northern senators wouldn't have gone for. But it doesn't change the fact that for emancipation to have occured and an end to slavery reached it would have taken a Constitutional amendment.

I answered how slaves could be freed legally, to end slavery itself would require an anmendment. But, as you so succinctly observed, increasing southern representation and having to pay southerners was the worst possible solution to yankees, although it would have been legal, and fairest solution.

[4CJ]

Or you could just cut & paste! < /grin>

The glue is hard to read thru on-screen. ;o)

[GOPcapitalist]

You are missing the economic point of tariffs, and perhaps intentionally so.

Tariffs are instituted primarily for economic protectionism. Funds raised from them are a significantly distinct and secondary function of them. There is no disputing the fact that the north advocated protectionism by tariffs, and in many cases got it.

The south on the other hand, as expressed repeatedly in pre-war editorials and by two of the four states that wrote declarations of causes for the war, was against protectionism because it ruined crop prices on the international trade.

[GOPcapitalist]

Fort Sumter was a fort, a military institution. It was not used as a tariff collection point prior to the time Major Anderson moved his command there and it wasn't used as such afterwards. The Customs House was (and still is) on East Bay Street. Just another DiLorenzo whopper.

Actually, in a March 18th cabinet meeting discussing what to do about Sumter, Lincoln specifically brought up and addressed the question of whether to use Sumter as a tariff collection point, or to transfer that role to ships outside the harbor.

Notes from the meeting specifically mention the question being asked "Is [Sumter] available under existing circumstances for the purpose of collecting the revenue" or could that role be "better subserved by Ships of War, outside the harbor."

In other words, DiLorenzo is correct about one of Sumter's intended roles by Lincoln being tariff collection. You are the one lying.

[GOPcapitalist]

The North needed the South while the South felt it did not need the North.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote 30 years earlier, only states with a vested interest in preserving the union itself would act to stop another state from leaving. He predicted they would also do so citing their motive to be that of preserving the union itself, though the real interest would be something else:

"If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others...If one of the federated states acquires a preponderance sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of the central authority, it will consider the other states as subject provinces and will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union" - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

[GOPcapitalist]

Looks like the rebels disagree with you. They say it was slavery, not tarrifs.

Oh really? Four states did declarations of causes when they seceded. You cited one, Mississippi, and concluded that the whole of the south therefore "disagrees" with the assertion that the tariff was an issue. For the record, I do not consider an issue to have been the sole issue of an inherently complex war and consider it foolish to make attempts to simplify an irreducably complex conflict to single issues such as slavery, as northern apologists often do. That being said, the issue of the tariff itself was indisputably high among the many causes of the war. Two of those four states that drafted declarations of causes cited it among them - Georgia and Texas. Texas listed it as a point among many. Georgia discussed it at length over several paragraphs composing a major part of their declaration.

Georgia, A Declaration of Causes of Secession, January 29, 1861:

"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country. But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments"

That was Georgia, taking issue with protectionism at length and in great detail. As I noted, Texas asserted the issue as well among its causes:

A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union. February 2, 1861

"They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."

And if you still dispute the inescapable fact that the tariff issue was a major cause in the war, why not look at the word of one of your own? The following excerpt comes from an eyewitness account to the secession crisis. Its author, himself a prominent participant in Lincoln's policy at the time, openly admits at least three major disputes were occuring before Congress in the winter of 1860-61, and concedes that Lincoln intentionally worked to make sure the public debate was frame around slavery. With my emphasis added...

"Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington and took up the reigns of control. It soon became very evident that, so far as the Republican party is concerned, secession if properly managed is rather a benefit than a misfortune. Anti-slavery was the only ground on which it could act with anything like unanimity. In ordinary times, the tariff bill would have broken it down, and even under the tremendous pressure of disunion, the struggle over the Cabinet shook it to its very center. On all questions except that of slavery it can never act together with any reliable degree of concert, made up as it is of incongruous elements freshly and roughly joined together." - Henry Adams, March 1861

In case you do not know your history, Henry Adams was the son of Congressman Charles Francis Adams, son of the former president and a main Lincoln ally during the secession crisis.

[DallasMike]

Sir - Is that all you have to provide.

Sir -- care to rebut any of what I provided, sir?

I did make one mistake when I said that we nearly got into a Civil in the late 1830s. It was actually in 1832-1833 when South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification. The state refused to collect the "Tariff of Abominations," passed several years earlier, threatened to withdraw from the Union, and even appropriated money for purchasing arms. President Jackson ordered 5 Coast Guard cutters to Charleston harbor, sent troops to South Carolina, and the situation became even more heated. Congress defused the situation when it revised the "Tariff of Abominations" in early 1833. South Carolina made secession rumblings in 1852 and again in 1856 as the north began talk of raising tariffs.

In 1860, Lincoln and the Republicans ran on a platform that would not interfere with slavery -- but would raise tariffs. Higher tariffs were imposed upon the South with Morill tariff of March 1861, which was signed by President Buchanan before Lincoln took the oath of office. It imposed a 50% duty on iron products and 25% on clothing -- overall tariff rates averaged 47% and were the highest that the country has seen before or after the Civil War. The tariffs were designed to enrich northern industries at the expense of the mostly rural south. Do you suppose that if higher tariffs almost caused a civil war in the 1830s, that even higher tariffs they might have the same effect in 1861?

If you would like to educate yourself and read the Emancipation Proclamation, you would find that Lincoln allowed slavery to continue in the 4 Union states which allowed slavery, and exempted large parts of the south -- including New Orleans and much of Lousiana, Norfolk, Portsmouth, the chunk of Virginia that later became West Virginia, and other places as well. If Lincoln was so eager to free the slaves, then why didn't he free them in the north and in Union-controlled lands?

Finally, if you think that Lincoln and the Republican Party platform of 1861 were hell-bent on ending slavery, you might bother yourself to actually read some of his words. Here are some quotes from Lincoln's first inaugural address:

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

"Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

"There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

Was slavery an issue for the Civil War? Of course -- only a dolt would deny that. But to say that slavery was the only issue and that the imposition of onerous tariffs played no part is equally silly. You're pretty good with parroting poorly-formed opinions, do you have any facts to buttress your arguments -- sir?

[DallasMike]

There were never any tariffs on Southern-produced goods. Tariffs are on imports, not exports.

You are correct. However, the tariffs were to prevent southerners from buying cheaper goods and to force them instead to buy more expensive goods manufactured in the north. When you consider that the tariff on goods covered by the Morrill Act approached 47%, that leaves a lot of room for price-gouging by the north, which is exactly what happened.

Further, many southern exports had to pass through northern ports before being shipped overseas, thus further impoverishing the south.

One has to wonder how much longer slavery in the south was prolonged by northern economic aggression in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Slavery in the north died out not only because of the abolitionists but also because it was no longer economically viable.

[DallasMike]

You're one of the few I've seen post anything about the economic conditions of the depression/recession, which hit the Northern economy hard, and left the Southern economy virtually untouched.

Yep, and what was the north's solution to their depression/recession? Raise tariffs on goods imported into the south!

[DallasMike]

I'm aware of what tariffs are for, but what these figures show is that the claim that the majority of tariffs were paid by southerners is false.

This author (never heard of him) is playing with statistics. The north had 2-1/2 times the population of the south and 3 times the wealth.

Most of those outbound ships arrived empty, because there wasn't sufficient demand for imports to justify sending them directly to the south..

Think about it -- those figures actually work against the point that you're making. The reason that tariffs were low was because they were working as intended -- southerners were being forced to choose between very expensive northern goods and even more expensive (because of the tariff) imported goods. The south chose to pay the north in higher prices instead of even higher tariffs. What effect does the current steel tariff have on the U.S.? You got it -- it drives out imported goods and forces business to buy American steel. In the case of the south before the Civil War, southern dollars were being diverted to the north instead of to other countries.

Again, this author is making you believe that his statistics prove a point when they actually work against him. I don't know whether he's intentionally lying or if he just doesn't understand economics.

[DallasMike]

On the one hand we are told that Lincoln was a high tariff man going back for years. On the other hand we're told the tariff was something promoted to win the election.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive, and I didn't gather that they were from DiLorenzo's article. Lincoln was a high-tariff man and the tariff issue in the 1860 election was calculated to play well in the more populous north.

[DallasMike]

For the record, I do not consider an issue to have been the sole issue of an inherently complex war and consider it foolish to make attempts to simplify an irreducably complex conflict to single issues such as slavery, as northern apologists often do.

Thank you!

I believe that the attempt to justify the Civil War totally on the basis of slavery is just to make the apologists feel better about things. In a very similar manner, abortion supporters use comfort words like "choice" and gin up issues like stem-cell research to encourage people to feel better about their "choice."

[medved]

The civil war was indeed primarily over Lincoln's desire to turn America into a first rate technological nation by preventing the British empire from dumping manufactured goods on our markets, and he was absolutely right. Let the South win the civil war or let Lincoln die of cancer before taking office and the free-traders take over, and we'd be a banana republic with nazi flags flying over us.

[GOPcapitalist]

The civil war was indeed primarily over Lincoln's desire to turn America into a first rate technological nation by preventing the British empire from dumping manufactured goods on our markets, and he was absolutely right.

Now that's funny, cause history has proven time and time again that the market, along with its innovative instrument, functions best under competition. It's classical capitalism. And it was precisely the element of competition that Lincoln wanted to eliminate by tariffs, thereby impeding the capitalist market's primary functioning agent.

Let the South win the civil war or let Lincoln die of cancer before taking office and the free-traders take over, and we'd be a banana republic with nazi flags flying over us.

I'm not quite sure how you reached that absurd conclusion, as it doesn't even follow coherently from your premise.

[x]

The evidence suggests that the tariff wasn't a major issue in the election, nor was it a major reason why Lincoln was elected. Lincoln would have carried the states he carried whatever stand he took on the issue. Di Lorenzo devotes so much effort to pursuing such red herrings as part of his indictment of Lincoln. Rather than accept the exaggerated claims of the supporters or opponents of tariffs, why not just accept that Lincoln favored protection on principle?

Of course Lincoln addressed himself to those in the manufacturing community who desired protection, though it had little influence on the stance he took in the election. Agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, that is a prerogative of any politician or elected official, as President Bush could tell you. Protective tariffs may not be the best of policies, but representative politics means speaking to the concerns of citizens. How was support for the tariff more reprehensible than addressing oneself to slaveowners and attending to their interests?

Concentrating on the tariff issue and throwing away the other issues of 1860 allows one to portray Lincoln and the Republicans in the cynical terms of power politics and economic interests while depicting Southerners and secessionists in the familiar hazy light of victimhood and martyrology. When we look at all the issues of that year, we see that no one was far from political or power considerations, least of all the fireeaters and secessionists. Examining that fuller picture we see that Lincoln was not devoid of principled concerns either.

Indeed, an examination of other political actors of the era could tell us much. It would give us an understanding of how political and economic ideas, as well as philosophical or moral concerns, shaped the actions of all political actors and movements. Perhaps we would also understand finally that the Morill tariff was a result of proto-secessionist politics and secession, and not their cause. The Southern-oriented Democrats had been the majority party since Jackson, or even Jefferson. Given the rules of the Senate, they could have blocked any increase in the tariff, if they had remained together as a party and really cared about the tariff more than about slavery.

One reason why these threads are so circular and get nowhere is that people begin start with the dismissive assumption that we learned in school that it was "all about slavery" and end with the conclusion "you see, it wasn't all about slavery." I didn't learn in high school that it was "all about slavery" and I doubt most people did either, especially in the South. I don't know what kids are learning now, but Di Lorenzo is actually more simplified and less nuanced than the average high school textbook of previous decades.

Why not begin with the new orthodoxy of Di Lorenzo and start moving in the direction of "you see, it wasn't just about tariffs?" How far will you get?