 Since his old Whig days, Abe Lincoln was a fan of a high protective tariff. The tariff was on imports. Those who import also export. That is why it is called "trade." The South were the predominant international traders of the U.S. These states exported agricultural goods to Europe and brought back goods that competed with Northern manufactures. The manufacturers wanted protection from the foreign competition. So they asked Congress to do what it could to shut their competitors out. Congress could only put a tariff on imports. The first protective tariff was passed in 1816. The Tariff of Abominations was passed in 1828 around that time Abe said he supported a high tariff. SC refused to collect it.
Andrew Jackson was elected soon after that tariff passed and went to Congress to get the authority to force SC to collect the tariff. The Force Bill passed, but Jackson did not use it as a compromise tariff also passed. Jackson's authority under the Force Act expired with that session of Congress.
Flash forward 30 years. The South has lost the ability to block a new protective tariff called the Morrill Tariff. It raised the tax to close to that of the Tariff of Abominations. It passed the House in the spring of 1860. Lincoln, a fan of the high tax, was elected with no Southern support. The South's control of the Senate was dying due to a whole series of non-exporting and non-slaveholding territories gaining statehood. Kansas was soon to join them. First the cotton-exporting states seceded. Other slaveholding states held conventions and voted to remain in the Union. The Senate passed the tariff and Buchanan signed it into law a few days before Lincoln was inaugurated.
In his inaugural address Lincoln stated he would protect slavery where it already existed, but supported its exclusion from the territories. He had stated in a speech a few years before that he considered the territories to be a place for poor whites to go to better themselves and whites and negroes living together under any social structure was immoral.
He also said in his inaugural that other than to protect federal property and to collect the duties there would be no invasion and no bloodshed. In other words, he did not believe he needed to go to Congress to get the authority to invade a state to enforce the collection of taxes like Andrew Jackson did.
Other than to illustrate that the president could be elected with no Southern support, Lincoln did nothing as president elect to cause the first Southern states to secede. He did not need to. Congress had passed the tariff. Buchanan signed it. Lincoln endorsed it. The states seceded before Abe was inaugurated. President Buchanan sent the supply ship STAR OF THE WEST to relieve Fort Sumter. South Carolina troops fired on it. It turned around and went home. That was on Jan 9 1861. Buchanan didn't declare war over that.
South Carolina troops fired on Fort Sumter. Why did Lincoln call for troops to suppress the secession of all of the Confederate States and not just South Carolina? His unconstitutional act of calling for troops and telling Virginia to allow them to traverse its territory got Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee all to declare secession. Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky were all occupied by federal troops. Whether the latter two "officially" seceded is a debate that does not interest me.
The South that seceded before Lincoln's call for troops had an agricultural economy based on exports and international trade. The tariff would have killed that trade. Yes. They plantations ran on slave labor and that is a pity. But that is the way it had been for the entire history of the United States. What the North found so horrible about it was slavery gave the South control of Washington D.C. and the very idea of living around negroes was beyond the pale.
If the slave found life so terrible, and Lincoln wanted slavery ended because it was immoral, all he had to do was let the South leave and invite the negroes up North. He could have offered escaped slaves refuge. If life in the North, with its child labor in the mines, and textile mills, where the average work week was 64 hours, and every day was take your daughter to work day, was so much better, moral, and filled with opportunity, surely the South would soon be empty of slaves. No troops, no war, would have been needed to end slavery.
As it was, Lincoln declared war to force the South to pay the tariff. He declared slaves, in areas his government did not control, free in the hopes the slaves would rebel. They did no such thing. There was no slave uprising anywhere. Four million slaves and there was no rebellion.
Ezra Pound said that a slave was someone who waited for someone else to come free him.
If there had been no war, I believe it would ultimately have been up to the slaves to end slavery.  Commented 3944 days ago |
