[ggekko]

"though it does call into question the wisdom of Southern leadership...."

There is no comparison between Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln as wartime leaders. Davis lacked any sense of the strategic center of gravity duirng the conflict as was demonstrated by several epically obtuse decisions made during the war. The contrast between Davis and Lincoln could not be more stark favoring Lincoln's judgement and ruthless streak. Davis was also hampered by the very founding principle of the Confederacy: State's Rights.

"were regarded by many as consigning America to a weak and subservient position with respect to the British empire...."

Exactly so. But mainstream Civil War historians jump through hoops to avoid coming to this conclusion! There is no question to my mind that Lincoln's one unambiguous accomplishment in winning the Civil War for the North was the economic integration of the United States. In this respect his contribution was very similar to Bismarck's in Germany who forged a powerful nation out of a gaggle of battling fiefdoms. Lincoln was not the great emancipator, he was the great centralizer. The 100 year philosophical argument between Hamilton and Jefferson had been decided on the battlefield in Hamilton's favor.

"Everyone knew tariffs would be revised upwards...."

The politics of the 1860 campaign belie this analysis. The raising of tariffs was a centerpoint of Lincoln's campaign as was the establishment of National Bank. Even though Buchanan signed the bill into law an expanded tariff regime was understood to be an integral part of Lincoln's program. This part of lincoln's platform was designed to win the key Northern state of Pennsylavnia. Lincoln did not carry a single Southern state; he did not their votes to win. the Morill tariff must be considered as part of a series of tariffs implemented since in "Tariff of Abominations" in 1828. Southern leaders consisently called the the tariff regime the equivalent of "paying tribute" to North. This feeling would have been would have been far less pronounced if some of the Federal infrastructure money had made its way south of the Mason-Dixon line but a laughably small amount of this money did. The Morill tariff should be viewed in the context of a 50 year tariff regime whose effect was disproportionate and inequitable from a Southern perspective. Viewed in this context, the Morill tariff was seen in the Deep South as the last link in a chain of depredations from the North.

"Saying that Lincoln threatened to use force to enforce the Morrill tariff gives the wrong impression..."

The Morill tariff was legally enacted and was supported by a coalition of constituencies represented in Congress. There was no question that Lincoln had the legal authority to compell the collection of this tariff. Lincoln's threat to use force had a more subtle objective: by threatening to use force Lincoln repudiated 100 years of Constituional scholarship about a sovereign State's right of secession. Lincoln's message to South Carolina and other secession-leaning states was clear: we do not recognize your right to secede and we will restrain you by force from doing so. All of the Founding Fathers would have found Lincoln's novel legal doctrine of the Union "creating" the sovereign states to be outrageous and tyrannical; even Seward thought it to be a fanciful legal fiction. But on this highly questionalble legal basis Lincoln prosecuted the war.

"It's clear that more was involved than slavery..."

This thread started as a discussion about the movie "Gods and Generals" and whether the movie was "too sympathetic" to the Southern perspective. If movie presents the Southerners as fighting for freedoms to which they believed they were Constitutionally entitled then I would be satisfied. The Southerners were undoubtedly morally comprised because of their toleration of human slavery but what called to them to arms was a conviction that their "way of life" was being threatened by a hostile Northern government. If the movie can strike this sense balance on this question then I believe it shall have been a success.

[x]

The Morill tariff should be viewed in the context of a 50 year tariff regime whose effect was disproportionate and inequitable from a Southern perspective. Viewed in this context, the Morill tariff was seen in the Deep South as the last link in a chain of depredations from the North.

That would have made it more like the first, than the last link. And it's a backwards way of looking at history. Rather than the tariff making the war, it looks like the war made the tariff. Certainly the fifty years of Republican dominance and high tariffs were the product of the war, and of the conflict over slavery that preceded it. It was secession and war that turned a minor revision of the tariff into something much more drastic and long-lived.

Lincoln's threat to use force had a more subtle objective: by threatening to use force Lincoln repudiated 100 years of Constitutional scholarship about a sovereign State's right of secession. Lincoln's message to South Carolina and other secession-leaning states was clear: we do not recognize your right to secede and we will restrain you by force from doing so. All of the Founding Fathers would have found Lincoln's novel legal doctrine of the Union "creating" the sovereign states to be outrageous and tyrannical

Most Americans probably had not considered the question of secession prior to 1860 and among those who did there was much disagreement. If you listen to latter day Confederates they will tell you that unilateral secession was universally assumed to be valid, but that's far from the truth. Many disputed such an idea. And even those who did accept it didn't presume that whatever the seceders did would be right. The idea of the union creating states was hardly "outrageous and tyrannical." The federal government played an important role in acquiring and settling territory and would-be states had to petition the federal government for admission.

Lincoln was not the great emancipator, he was the great centralizer.

I would say that he was the great emancipator and the great preserver. Of course it was the 13th Amendment, passed after Lincoln's death and ratified in part as a tribute to him that finally freed the slaves. But if one must attach a name to emancipation, who would be more appropriate? True political centralization would come later with the progressives and the New Deal. Railroads and corporations also promoted a national market. A Confederate victory would have been a setback for centralization in the form that we've experienced it (though Davis had shown centralizing tendencies of his own), but Lincoln is more in continuity with Washington, Madison, Jackson and others, than a new departure. He shared with the Founders a knowledge of the dangers disunion could bring. Nationalism didn't begin with Lincoln, nor did the welfare state.