Am I correct that Lincoln wanted to raise tariffs exceptionally high to finance infrastructure building and subsidize businesses working in the territories? Also, since Lincoln favored a “free-soil” position, was the South mainly concerned about the tariff burden or that the tariffs would be used to aid free territories?
Yes, Lincoln wanted to raise tariffs. Tariffs were a very important issue in the Union because the South depended on a large amount of cheap capital from foreign nations with better industrialization than the United States. Moreover, any trade wars would have greatly damaged the South’s cotton, indigo, tobacco, and other cash crop exports.
Here is an excellent piece by DiLorenzo about how the Civil War was really sparked by tariff fears. Here is a youtube video of DiLorenzo giving a speech about the “Tariff War.”
That, and yes, (unfortunately) the slavery issue was a part of our larger economic interests. The war didnt really get going until Lincoln’s call for troops (a defacto declaration of war), to which the states of the northern South responded by secceeding (with my great-great-great-great grandfather and his sons volunteering for sevice with the Virginia regiments).
How tightly was slavery tied to economic issues? What relationship did the contraversy of whether or not to allow slavery in the territories have on Lincoln’s policies and Southern secession?
If you really want to understand these issues in depth, you need to read DiLorenzo’s two books on Lincoln. They are well written and packed with information.
Slavery really had nothing to do with the start of the War between the States. It had to due with raising tariffs and implementation of the American System that Lincoln adopted from Henry Clay and the old Whig party. Slavery became an issue when Lincold determined he could use the threat of emancipation as a war strategy. To illustrate: Two of Lincoln’s generals earlier in the war after capturing several states declared emancipation. Lincoln overruled both acts. When Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclmation it only applied to southern States that were not under Union control. So, those slave states that were already capture could continue with slavery. It took the Thirteenth Amendment to thankfully bring an end to the horrible enterpise of slavery.
Again, I suggest DiLorenzo’s books on Lincoln for a complete explanation.
I have already read Lincoln Unmasked by DiLorenzo. I know Tom Woods says that slavery was an issue in the North-South division. Did slavery have any effect on the Southern states’ decision to secede.
It was an issue to be sure. Southerners were always concerned that the North would seek to abolish slavery. For some, it was likely the primary issue, but not for all. Slave holders were a small minority in the South. So, abolition of slavery would have affected a small group. In Jefferson Davis’ inaugural the issue of slavery was not mentioned once. Whereas, all would be affected by the imposition of high tariffs. Tariffs were a central theme in the inaugural.
So, Lincoln wasn’t using the revenue from the tariff to subsidize businesses operating in the territories?
It was the main reason. Read the proclamations of the seceding states.
That may be true for the lower South, but for the upper South it was Lincoln’s call up of troops. Remember, slavery was not threatened under Lincoln - he tried to tempt them with a constitutional ammendment and they refused. DiLorenzo is not crazy when he says other issues (Including the tariff, among others) probably had some additional influence in the decision - remember, this almost caused South Carolina to leave 20 years earlier. A good example of this is Georgia, reading the debates over it (not online) they spent a long time arguing the tariff. At its root, the conflict between north and south was economic. If it wasnt slavery, it was tariffs. If it wasnt tariffs, it was the subsidies for big business in the north. In the Constitution of the Confederate States, not only was the protection on slavery clarified, but there was a ban on protectionism and corporate welfare.
All I know is that Lincoln definitely used the slavery issue as an issue to lure the south into war, and that he hated everyone.
He was not a very bright individual, nor anywhere close to a good president. He was simply a tyrant. Of course, It was only until 6 presidents later that there was a president who wittingly wanted to let Reconstruction fail. Even then, Blaine nearly won, because Grover Cleveland did something unpopular, but perfectly fine (pretty revolution-like, especially the “Tell them the truth” part, about his child born of wedlock who he paid for anyway); he was unpopular for standing by his principles, of not fighting in the war; then, he apparently was the only one of 2 presidents, to know anything about economics. He was unpopular for that. Silver is too common and all sorts of problems arise from that, especially impurities.
Martin van Buren’s support of Lincoln’s War, largely prevents him from being anywhere close to libertarian.
It also is quite ironic that he’s considered the Founder of the Republican party, that Jefferson is a Democratic Republican and that Grover Cleveland had to be called a Democrat, and suffer from 99.5% of the Democratic rule (that figure includes Abe Lincoln’s Party) because he couldn’t be known as what he was–a true Republican, the minority party of Gold, Goldwater and Dr. Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul.
At least Wilson, Obama, and FDR are Democrats; but then Joe Lieberman is an independent or a War Democrat, when the latter phrase is redundant.
But more on topic, it sucks that the majority of the nation didn’t have good sense back then. That was the perfect time to just get rid of the Constitution and let each of the states have their own rights, and it only would’ve become better from there. Lincoln basically sealed the fate of self-government, and deprived any hope of ever returning to Jeffersonian principles, for the entire world. He hurt the entire world, through his tarriffs. He set up Reconstruction terribly.
Richard Hofstadter-- He was probably the first historian to begin the re-writing of Civil War history, a one time communist turned goose stepping left-wing hack who infected academia with the idea that Slavery was the cause of the civil war
The issue of slavery certainly did contribute to the tensions between the North and South, but it wasn’t the primary reason, political power was. The slave debate just masked the real issue. In fact, there were more than 4 times the amount of anti-slavery societies in the South than in the North. Southern generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee opposed slavery. And if you read For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War by James McPherson, he reveals that most of the letters and diaries of the Confederate soldiers show they were mostly fighting for self-determination.
No, he didn’t - he even proposed keeping slavery in order to preserve the union. He only abolished slavery (in the Confederacy, that is) to keep the Birtish from intervening.
I’d be wary of McPherson’s work. He’s probably the grand-poobah of the Lincoln Cult.
All the better, given the fact that even the cult leader reveals it wasn’t about slavery.
Yeah I was going to say that, but I remembered this is the guy who calls members of the SCV (IE, me) rascists and closet KKK members.
The collapse of the Whig party and the election of a Republican in 1860 probably made secession inevitable regardless of the individual issues. The Whig and Democratic parties had each been divided internally over most of the major issues that divided the North and South. Either party might side with the North on one issue and with the South on another. The Republican party was however, in the words of Republican party leader Wendell Phillips, “a party of the North pledged against the South”. The Republican party favored northern interests on every issue. Textbooks often mention that Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in the southern states; but this is usually left unexplained and one is left to assume some sort of foul play. The truth is there were no Republican party organizations in the southern states and Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot because the Republican party simply didn’t nominate him there.
Are you sure?
Red herring. No one denies he inherted slaves through his father-in-law. And one could condemn abolitionists (the persons, who often otherwise were the worst statists) while still not approving of slavery.
And as for that letter he wrote right before the war started, he’d obviously had changed his mind by the time he wrote his reply to Lord Acton in 1866:
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