In 1858, there were 15 slave states and 17 free states. Assuming all future states join as free states, that means the slave states could block constitutional amendments until there were 15/0.25 = 60 states. Heh.
So if they had passed an amendment denying Congress the power to ban or regulate slavery, the slave states could still block repeal of it.
Ah, I didn’t know about the Corwin amendment. Apparently it was too late at that point. If they’d tried something like that a decade earlier, I wonder how it would have gone.
True, as far as it goes. What you’re not saying is that it’s widely agreed – almost universally among historians – that the South’s unhappiness about tariffs was driven by their desire to preserve and extend plantation slavery.
The South clung to its slavery system as a social system it preferred over a manufacturing economy. A very strong component of the Southern contempt for manufacturing was the desire to maintain the social hierarchy in which white, landed, old-money families were the social and economic kings of the hill. This is evident all over the literature, pamphlets, newspapers, diaries, letters, and speeches of the day, if you read them.
The tariff did not disadvantage the South – unless the South refused to industrialize, which it did, largely because of the desire of the class in power to remain in power at the expense of others (quite literally, in the case of the slaves). And that class (and the attendant class structure) was supported by plantation slavery. So all talk of “tariffs” is just coded talk for slavery.
This isn’t something I’ve come up with sitting at my keyboard. Read Catton, Foote, and particularly McPherson.
I wonder if the takings clause was intended as something of a check to that effect on the federal government – the idea being that you’d need to amend the Constitution to emancipate slaves without paying just compensation.
The tariff was pretty much inevitable. There was no income tax back then and the main source of government revenue was tariffs. And in order to collect revenue, you have to put a tariff on goods that actually get imported into your country. There was no point in having a tariff on cotton or tobacco or other agricultural products - nobody imported agricultural products into the United States. The big imports were manufactured goods so that was where the government put the tariff.
This created an opportunity for American investors. The tariff raised the price of imported manufactured goods which meant there was a strong market for domestic manufactured goods. Smart investors saw this and started building factories.
It’s true that a large share of these factories were built in the northeast. But there was no government plan to this. Nothing prevented people in the south from building factories and taking advantage of the same conditions northern investors were using. It’s just that southern investors chose otherwise - due to social reasons, they preferred to invest in land rather than manufacturing.
Okay, they made their choice. But they had no cause to complain about the consequences of those choices. No sympathy to their cries of “it’s no fair their economy is growing faster than ours just because they made smarter investments than we did.”
I’ll also point out that the south wasn’t alone on the tariff issue. The western states were also based on an agricultural economy and the tariff system hurt them as well. But when the country divided, it didn’t split along pro-tariff and anti-tariff lines. The western states stayed with the northeast. The split was along slave and non-slave lines. Even in Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri there were attempts by slave holders to secede. But in those states, the majority was anti-slavery and they outvoted the pro-slavery minority.
Not a major one. It was a fringe idea in 1861. It’s still a fringe idea 150 years later. The guy you’re basing this on was so unpopular in his day that not only did they vote him out of office at the first opportunity but they convicted him in a military tribunal of attempting to hinder the war. He was eventually shipped to the Confederacy, which he later fled for Canada. Vallandigham’s views were completely rejected by the people at the time. You can’t pretend he spoke for them in any meaningful way.
I noted, going through his speech, that he was completely inaccurate in several of his claims. (The North, for example, never did anything to inhibit the South from building railroads or industry. Instead, the Southern plutocracy was simply indifferent to the notion of railroads and never invested in them, meaning they also lacked any infrastructure to ship manufacutured goods on a regular basis. (They also lacked the infrastructure to ship tobacco and cotton away from the rivers, but they rationalized that on the grounds that they could not justify the expense of railroads for seasonal shipments.)
Any argument that places the disgraced and loony Vallandigham against the actual declarations of secession that emanated from the South is going to fail on historical fact.
What are you talking about? One attempts to explain why the North went to war, the other to explain why the South went to war. How would they form a counter argument? I believe you may be confused.
I… what? There is no possible way this can be an honest question.
It was their country? I assume this is going to be some lame state’s rights segue, but are you really incapable of understanding that some people see the USA as a single entity? That the attack on Fort Sumter was an act of domestic terrorism? It’s like asking why Timothy McVeigh was condemned by people living outside Oklahoma.
The one that pretends to explain why the North went to war, however, is simply bullshit from a supporter of the South pretending to speak for the North.
I am gald for you that you have found one speech and a couple of cherry-picked editorials that make the spurious claim that the North went to war for economic reasons. Unfortunately, those reasons are ad hoc and are drowned out by the overwhelming number of speeches, editorials, and other information that demonstrate that the political leaders of the North and the populace of the North were pretty strongly unified by the notion that the South was breaking the union and that such an act was intolerable. There were also several regions in the South, (notably the northwest section of Virginia, the eastern section of Tennessee, and the northeast corner of Alabama), who resisted secession, but who should have been strictly aligned with the South if the issue was purely economic.
As I noted, Vallandigham got his basic facts wrong on multiple issues, so there is no reason to believe that he actually had a clue in regard to what he was saying.
Probably, no one thought you were serious. The North went to war to preserve the union. The actions of the South were seen as treasonous and, to a certain extent, insulting. They were claiming to secede to preserve slavery when only a tiny handful of Abolitionists, (who did not have the support of any major political party), were agitating against slavery and Northerners found it spiteful to wreck the country to preserve something that Northerners, by and large, did not believe was under attack.
First of all, Vallandigham was subsequently nominated as the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio in 1863 (though he lost in a landslide). Also, he was heavily involved in the party’s presidential convention in '64 and his peace plank was passed. To characterize him as a “loon”, “fringe”, and “disgraced” is either wrong or dishonest. There was obviously a contingent that supported his views.
Charles Dickens’ magazine in 1861: “Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils…The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel”
I have my doubts that this will work but I’ll be able to say I tried.
Here’s a link to the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States. These are the official public statements that the seceding states issued at the time they were seceding in which they explained the reasons they were seceding. So on the subject of why the southern states seceded, this is the Word of God.
Now go to that page and use your word search function. Look for the word “tariff”. How many times do you find it mentioned?
Now search for the word “slave”. How many times do you find that mentioned?
Anyway, this only explains why the states seceded, not why there was a war. The North could have let the states secede. They didn’t for economic reasons. The subject of this thread is whether or not the CW was inevitable. I believe it wasn’t inevitable, the Union could have let the states secede, but they did not.
Ok i’ll try again. It seems like you don’t want to read anything more than a sentence long so i’ll try to oblige and highlight the key parts:
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.
There is no possible way this can be an honest question.