MUH TARIFFS

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

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TPM

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I am the 37 percent. 

I can't tell if this post is serious or not.  I find that quite worrying.

...There are actual people on this forum defending the existence of and supporting the idea of fighting for a nation based entirely on slavery.

Come on, you're actually telling me that you would allow your home to be destroyed for the sake of a war which, as its prosecutors made clear, was not being waged to abolish slavery? You're aware that around 70-80% of Southerners at the time did not own slaves, right?

The war was pretty clearly about slavery.  What do you think it was about?

Not this s**t again.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Whether or not Lincoln invaded the South to end slavery misses the point entirely.  The real motives behind secession were evident and secession was inevitable from Lincoln's election.  Tariffs couldn't have been an issue for the South considering the backers of the Tariff of 1857 were primarily from Southern and agricultural states. Slavery was the dominating issue during the 1860 campaign and it was one the last three presidents had to deal with almost exclusively (obviously I'm being slightly hyperbolic here).  Whether Lincoln's ultimate goal was to preserve the Union or abolish slavery has no bearing on why the Civil War actually happened.  That much is proven by copious records of speeches, writings, formal declarations, and CSA state constitutions that have already been posted a thousand times on this site.  And no, the majority of Southerners did not own slaves, but that doesn't take away the fact that white supremacy was the key element that inspired revolt and that a number of Southerners (and some Northerners) were petrified at the very idea of living in black-majority states unless slavery was law.  Anything else is just a red herring.

In short, if slavery weren't an issue, the country probably wouldn't have broken into civil war, tariffs and other irrelevant crap be damned.

This article offers some nice perspectives on the same tired arguments we hear in every "MUH TARIFFS" thread, on top of everything else that was regurgitated.

At this point I'd like to politely escort our distinguished history scholars to a site with people more captivated by persons of their caliber.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Whether or not Lincoln invaded the South to end slavery misses the point entirely.  The real motives behind secession were evident and secession was inevitable from Lincoln's election.  Tariffs couldn't have been an issue for the South considering the backers of the Tariff of 1857 were primarily from Southern and agricultural states.

Probably because the Tariff of 1857 was a major tariff reduction. Lincoln campaigned heavily on his support for the Morrill Tariff of 1861, at that time still in Congress, which dramatically raised the average tariff rate from about 15% to about 37%, and was also supported strongly by Northern manufacturing interests. In the words of the Republican steel magnate Henry Carey, "Without out it [the protective tariff], Mr. Lincoln's administration will be dead before the the day of inauguration."

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Hyperbolic is an understatement. Sorry, but that's just plain wrong and no historian will tell you any different. Tariffs, Federal land policy, corporate subsidies, internal improvement projects, and territorial expansions were all major issues. Just to be clear, I'm not denying that Southern politicians were racist slavery supporters. I'm simply arguing that Lincoln's intent in invading the South was not the abolition of slavery, but rather the enforcement of tariff laws.

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Tariffs were most certainly not irrelevant. Like in almost all American wars of conquest, powerful monied interests were a driving force behind the invasion. Following the first wave of seceding States, many Northern newspapers and merchants called for peaceful coexistence, citing the threat that war would pose to trade between the North and Lower South. They quickly changed their tune when the Confederate Constitution was fully drafted in March 1861. It contained a clause forbidding the imposition of import tariffs, which would have forced the Union to lower tariff rates in order to compete with tariff-free Confederate ports. This prospect alarmed Northern manufacturing interests, and despite the multitude of Northern editorials advocating allowing the Lower South to secede, few if any of that nature can be found after March 1861. Powerful businessmen began writing letters to Lincoln extolling the necessity of preserving the Union, and most if not all Northern newspapers that had previously supported the Lower South's right of secession (such as the New York Times) quickly reversed their position.

That, combined with fact that Lincoln threatened invasion over the tariff issue specifically, should be proof enough that tariffs were hardly irrelevant. 

On top of all that, you've still yet to offer any evidence for your position: That Lincoln invaded the South with the intent of abolishing slavery. You need to at least do that much before you can attack my position as nonsense.

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Nice one bro.

I'll amend what I said before in that the tariff was reason for further Southern irritation, but it was still peripheral to the dominating issue of slavery.  Incidentally, the Morrill Tariff passed the Senate after seven states seceded which turned control of the Senate over to Republicans.  Secession is what allowed that tariff to pass.  It's also worth mentioning that northern political interests were not uniform in supporting the tariff (the Chamber of Commerce of New York petitioned the Senate not to adopt the tariff) and the issue was far more complex than "north versus south."  Even so, secession was not the only solution available to the tariff's opponents, especially since the tariff hadn't even been in effect yet, even though it makes for hell of a cover-up to Confederate sympathizers.

And, once again, Lincoln's own intentions for war has nothing to do with my point and I never tried to argue that he sought war for the purpose of abolishing slavery.  Lincoln's top priority was preserving the Union.  That doesn't mean the primal motive behind Southern rebellion wasn't slavery and that tensions would have been just as severe absent the slavery issue.

If you still insist on placing literally everything else above the slavery issue, you're wagering on faith.

I will leave you with this.

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[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Closing this thread because it's long evident that the discussion has deviated from its intended purpose and is now basically a cyclical rehash of old arguments that lead to nowhere.

If at this point Deus and the like still don't understand the nature of the Civil War or its causes, I suggest they get their collective asses down to the local library and pick up a history book not published by the Mises Institute.

Thank you, and remember: sometimes silence speaks better than words can.