Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
My research and haphazard filing methods have not yielded the link that would put you directly in touch with that article. I believe I found it through a link someone else posted on some other thread. Maybe that person will recognize the article and repost the link.
The article was apparently published in "The Journal of Political Economy: Vol. LXVI, April, 1958, No. 12." The article was written by Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer under the funding of Harvard University. It was titled "The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South."
It is scholarly and a sure cure for sleeplessness, but it is so crammed with information that each paragraph produced a gasp of amazement. It is many pages long, but a lot of those pages are tables of highly informative tables. Well worth finding and keeping on file.
Sorry, Ole.
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I scanned in a copy of that article and posted it on a couple of Yahoo groups.
The name of the file is "Economics of Slavery in Ante Bellum South.doc" and you have to be a member of the Yahoo Group in order to access and download.
Cash:
Thanks for the post. I will bookmark those links (and probably lose them). Have you looked into the link Mr. Powers provided on shifting cultivation. It's OT (kinda) but filled with fascinating information. Am evaluating that one, but it is very interesting.
Ole
Mr. Powers:
You can join YahooGroups for free. It's a good place to look for chatrooms, other discussion groups and, as Cash has indicated, a goldmine of information.
I'm in the process of reading the document you offered on shifting cultivation. So far I haven't run across indication of the extent of the practice, and the paper seems to be based on universality. But I am getting my eyes opened with every page.
Hey guys just joined the group.I've read all of the discussion about the tarrif issue.The research cited was incredible, but you may want to consider this question deeper.Whether or not the tarrif actually penalized the South and helped the North may not be the critical issue.The critical issue may be whether Southerners felt that way.Whether the evils of the tarrif were real or imagined it could be a factor leading to war if Billy Bob thought that due to the tarrif the shovel he needed cost $3 more.Just a thought.Union Blue you obviously put hard scholarly work into this issue.I commend you for that , but those tables tell me nothing about how the average Southerner perceived the issue.Take Hurricane Katrina .I think it's ridiculous some of those poeple in New Orleans actually believe the government purposely flooded a majority African-American part of town to try to kill them.This may be a bad example but perception of a situation can sometimes be even more powerful than reality.I'll appreciate your response.
Hey guys just joined the group.I've read all of the discussion about the tarrif issue.The research cited was incredible, but you may want to consider this question deeper.Whether or not the tarrif actually penalized the South and helped the North may not be the critical issue.The critical issue may be whether Southerners felt that way.Whether the evils of the tarrif were real or imagined it could be a factor leading to war if Billy Bob thought that due to the tarrif the shovel he needed cost $3 more.Just a thought.Union Blue you obviously put hard scholarly work into this issue.I commend you for that , but those tables tell me nothing about how the average Southerner perceived the issue.Take Hurricane Katrina .I think it's ridiculous some of those poeple in New Orleans actually believe the government purposely flooded a majority African-American part of town to try to kill them.This may be a bad example but perception of a situation can sometimes be even more powerful than reality.I'll appreciate your response.
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Welcome to the group. We appreciate your contribution. I haven't read yet of any confederate soldier who said he was fighting because of the tariff. Perhaps my reading just isn't broad enough yet.
We do have at least one southerner, Congressman Lawrence Keitt of South Carolina, who said in the South Carolina Secession Debate on 22 Dec 1860:
"But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question.
"The Whig party, thoughout all the States, have been protective Tariff men, and they cling to that old issue with all the passion incident to the pride of human opinions. Are we to go off now, when other Southern States are bringing their people up to the true mark? Are we to go off on debateable and doctrinal points? Are we to go back to the consideration of this question, of this great controversy; go back to that party's politics, around which so many passions cluster? Names are much -- associations and passions cluster around names.
"I can give no better illustration than to relate an anecdote given me by a member from Louisiana. He said, after the election of Lincoln, he went to an old Whig party friend and said to him: We have been beaten -- our honor requires a dissolution of the Union. Let us see if we cannot agree together, and offered him a resolution to this effect --Resolved, That the honor of Louisiana requires her to disrupt every tie that binds her to the Federal Government. [Laughter.]
"It is name, and when we come to more practicability we must consult names. Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it. I believe the address, in this respect, cannot. The gentlemen from Chesterfield (Mr. Inglis) says that certain constructions of the Act of Pennsylvania are denied. He might have gone further and have said that certain constructions of the Personal Liberty Bills are denied. I have never seen any Abolitionist yet who did not say that these Acts had no reference to fugitive slaves.
"I, myself, have very great doubts about the propriety of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Constitution was, in the first place, a compact between the several States, and in the second, a treaty between sections, and, I believe, the Fugitive Slave Law was a treaty between sections. It was the act of sovereign States as a section; and I believe therefore, and have very great doubts whether it ought not have been left to the execution of the several States, and failing of enforcement , I believe it should have been regarded as a causi belli.
"I go for the address, because, I believe it does present succinctly and conspicuously what are the main primary causes." [Lawrence M. Keitt, South Carolina Secession Debates, 22 Dec 1860]
This is not to say that the tariff was not a cause of sectional tensions and resentments, nor is it to say that no one in the south felt the tariff alone was cause for secession and eventual war. Maxcy Gregg, a lawyer from Richland and later a brigadier general in the confederate army, felt not only slavery but the tariff and the expenditures by the Federal Government all justified secession. The point is that the number of people who felt the tariff was sufficient cause for secession and eventual war was too small to matter. It simply doesn't have the support necessary to make it a valid cause, especially with Louisiana, a state that favored high tariffs.
Thanks Cash.I guess I always wondered not what the educated Southerner felt , but what pardon my french the poor white trash felt about the issue.I've read several books of soldier's letters and I don't remember the tarrif listed prominantly as a cause for war in any of them.Many of the letters were written by privates so maybe the tarrif wasn't that big a deal to Confederates.Most of the letters I read talked about defending their home, rights etch...I did hear one time that the Confederate Constitution prohibited tarrifs but I haven't seen it myself.I'm sure someone on this board would know though.
Thanks Cash.I guess I always wondered not what the educated Southerner felt , but what pardon my french the poor white trash felt about the issue.I've read several books of soldier's letters and I don't remember the tarrif listed prominantly as a cause for war in any of them.Many of the letters were written by privates so maybe the tarrif wasn't that big a deal to Confederates.Most of the letters I read talked about defending their home, rights etch...I did hear one time that the Confederate Constitution prohibited tarrifs but I haven't seen it myself.I'm sure someone on this board would know though.
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The confederate constitution prohibited protective tariffs, not revenue tariffs, but it also allowed tariffs on exports, which the US Constitution did not allow. The confederates also drastically increased the number of goods that were considered dutiable.
The confederates passed a tariff that averaged about 15%, and they used the moderate protection provided by that tariff as inducement for Virginia to join with them prior to Fort Sumter.
See Jay Carlander and John Majewski, "Imagining 'A Great Manufacturing Empire': Virginia and the Possibilities of a Confederate Tariff," Civil War History, December, 2003:
"Secessionists argued that a Confederate tariff would accelerate Virginia's industrialization by classifying Northern products as dutiable foreign goods. Safely protected from more efficient Northern competitors, Virginia would give Southerners the industrial muscle they needed to sustain political independence. Far from conceiving their state as part of an agrarian nation committed to staple-crop agriculture, Virginians envisioned a Confederacy filled with large factories, teeming cities, and prosperous merchants. Willoughby Newton, an ardent secessionist, declared in 1858 that a Confederate tariff aimed at Northern goods 'would give such protection to manufacturers that all our water falls would bristle with machinery, and the hum of manufacturing industry would be heard in all the inland towns of the state.' A few years later, one speaker at the Virginia secession convention declared that a Confederate tariff would allow the state 'to become a great manufacturing empire.'"
Thanks Cash.I guess I always wondered not what the educated Southerner felt , but what pardon my french the poor white trash felt about the issue.
The engine for secession was not the poor white trash, but the planter class. The poor white trash were along for the ride (except in West Virginia).
Quote:
Whether the evils of the tarrif were real or imagined it could be a factor leading to war if Billy Bob thought that due to the tarrif the shovel he needed cost $3 more.
Billy Bob apparently didn't like the idea of an income tax or property tax any better. In fact, tariffs had the advantage that they often burdened the foreign importer with the tax. Taxes are always more popular with everyone if they raise revenue by hitting some else's pocket. Cigarette taxes are popular wih non-smokers; alcohol taxes are popular with non-drinkers; hotel taxes are popular with locals; and tariffs were popular with folks who didn't buy many foreign dutiable articles. Billy Bob probably didn't wear Dungarees made in Paris and I doubt he had any idea what a tariff might have done to the price of his domestic pairs. But he must have realized that he paid about the same for them as his cousin in Pennslyvania.
The US Census shows about 5.15 million families in the US in 1860. The federal government collected $52.7 million in tariff revenues that same year. IOW, on average, a family paid about $10 per year in tariffs. When you look at the extreme disparity of wealth in the South though, you quickly see that the average farmer probably didn't pay 1/5th of that. He certainly paid far more going to war.
Good points.It's probably correct to assume that we're more educated about the tarrif than most Southerners at the time were.I agree the rich folk lead the way but I think the common Confederate soldier believed in his cause.I was thinking of the tarrif as to how it affects say vehicle prices in our time.If we didn't have a tarrif on them obviously imported cars would be much cheaper.I'm not against are tarrifs today.If he just thought he paid the same as his relative for his shovel then it wouldn't be an issue.If they thought goods cost more because of the tarrif then it would be an issue because they would still be paying out of pocket like we do today for Japanese vehicles.We don't get the money back when we pay a higher price for the car because of the tarrif.This tarrif issue was probably not as big a deal as historians make it out to be.But in my humble opinion its obvious that perception was the tarrif as a whole benefited thr Northern states more than the South.Thanks for the input.Again to be clear I in no way think the Confederate soldier went to war solely because of the tarrif.I do think the issue contributed to already strong feelings of sectionalism.Nice point about the average farmer not paying 1/5 th of that.You're probably correct.
With the tariff issue being raised yet once again as a leading factor as one of the causes of the Civil War, I thought it important to post and move this thread up to the 'front of the line' once again.
Again, after much research on the Congressional Globe web site and others, I cannot understand how anyone can equate that the much debated Morrill Tariff was a cause of secession or the war that followed. Too often I have seen that those who abscribe to this idea ignore the fact that the Morrill Tariff that was passed was first presented by a Southern president to help prevent a gap in finances of the United States and that it was NOT the 47% or higher figure that was finally passed. Timing is the biggest problem with this theory of the cause of the war and is constantly ignored.
This thread should be continued if new information has been brought to light on this particular area.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
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