CHAPTER NINE:
The Economic Background of the War
Lincoln's Cabinet Members Warn of Civil War
Abraham Lincoln's message to the people of the seceded Southern States in his first Inaugural Address was of a pacific and conciliatory nature. "The Government will not assail you," was his promise. "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." However, his actions henceforth taken proved these expressed sentiments to be insincere and deliberately worded to set the stage for an unprecedented act of treachery against those whom Lincoln affirmed to be his "fellow countrymen" — an act which was intended to incite a violent reaction. It is one of the most terrible of history's ironies that Lincoln, foremost in America's mind as the man who "saved the Union," was actually responsible for its deliberate destruction. The threat of Republican Senator Thaddeus Stevens that "this Union never shall... be restored under the Constitution as it is,"(1) was indeed carried out to fulfillment by the Lincoln Administration. To establish this fact, let us now turn our attention to the firing upon of Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter, situated in the entrance to the Charleston harbor in South Carolina, was held by United States troops under the command of Major Robert Anderson. A native of Kentucky, Anderson nevertheless saw his duty to the Union as paramount over his loyalty to his section of the country. However, he understood, in light of the armistice which had been entered into between South Carolina and the Buchanan Administration on 6 December 1860,(2) that an attempt by the United States military to garrison the fort would precipitate war. Such was the sentiment of all but two of the seven members of Lincoln's own Cabinet. In a letter dated 15 March 1861, Lincoln asked his Cabinet whether it was wise to attempt to provision the fort,(3) to which question his Secretary of State, William Seward, replied:
If it were possible to peaceably provision Fort Sumter, of course, I should answer that it would be both unwise and inhuman not to attempt it. But the facts of the case are known to be that the attempt must be made with the employment of military and marine force which would provoke combat and probably initiate a civil war which the Government of the United States would be committed to maintain, through all changes, to some definite conclusion....
Suppose the expedition successful, we have then a garrison in Fort Sumter that can defy assault for six months. What is it to do then? Is it to make war by opening its batteries to demolish the defenses of the Carolinians? Can it demolish them if it tries? If it cannot, what is the advantage we shall have gained? If it can, how will it check or prevent disunion? In either case, it seems to me, that we will have inaugurated a civil war by our own act, without an adequate object, after which reunion will be hopeless, at least under this Administration or in any other way than by a popular disavowal both of the war and of the Administration which unnecessarily commenced it. Fraternity is the element of union; war the very element of disunion.(4)
Secretary of War Simon Cameron's response was that "it would be unwise now to make such an attempt" to garrison Fort Sumter and that "the cause of humanity and the highest obligation of the public interest would be best promoted" by abandoning the fort. He concluded, "Whatever might have been done as late as a month ago, it is too sadly evident that it cannot now be done without the sacrifice of life and treasure not at all commensurate with the object to be attained; and as the abandonment of the fort in a few weeks, sooner or later, appears to be the inevitable necessity, it seems to me that the sooner it be done the better."(5)
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote, "By sending or attempting to send provisions into Fort Sumter, will not war be precipitated? It may be impossible to escape it under any course of policy that may be pursued, but I am not prepared to advise a course that would provoke hostilities.... I do not, therefore, under all the circumstances, think it wise to provision Fort Sumter."(6) Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith's reply was as follows:
The commencement of civil war would be a calamity greatly to be deplored and should be avoided if the just authority of the Government may be maintained without it. If such a conflict should become inevitable, it is much better that it should commence by the resistance of the authorities or the people of South Carolina to the legal action of the Government in enforcing the laws of the United States....
If a conflict should be provoked by the attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter, a divided sentiment in the North would paralyze the arm of the Government, while the treason in the Southern States would be openly encouraged in the North.... I, therefore, respectfully answer the inquiry of the President by saying that in my opinion it would not be wise, under all the circumstances, to attempt to provision Fort Sumter.(7)
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase returned an affirmative answer, but added, "I will oppose any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter, if it means war."(8) Postmaster General Montgomery Blair was the only member of Lincoln's Cabinet who gave an unqualified affirmative reply to Lincoln's query, stating his opinion that, "This would completely demoralize the rebellion," and "No expense nor care should therefore be spared to achieve this success."(9)
The South's Traditional Opposition to Protectionism
[The] contrast between the Northern and Southern minds is vividly illustrated in the different ideas and styles of their worship of that great American idol — the Union. In the North there never was any lack of rhetorical fervor for the Union; its praises were sounded in every note of tumid literature, and it was familiarly entitled "the glorious." But the North worshipped the Union in a very low, commercial sense; it was a source of boundless profit; it was productive of tariffs and bounties; and it had been used for years as the means of sectional aggrandizement.
The South regarded the Union in a very different light. It estimated it at its real value, and although quiet and precise in its appreciation, and not given to transports, there is this remarkable assertion to be made: that the moral veneration of the Union was peculiarly a sentiment of the South and entirely foreign to the Northern mind. It could not be otherwise, looking to the different political schools of the two sections [emphasis in original].(10)
Before we proceed with the Fort Sumter narrative, the historical background requires explanation. As most wars have been throughout modern history, the War of 1861 was at bottom a financial conflict.(11) More precisely, it was, as Matthew Josephson noted, a "fatal clash of the two economic nations within the republic" which resulted from a gradual departure on the part of the North "from the old ways toward large-scale industry, toward giant capitalism, [and] toward a centralized, national economy...." and a firm resistance to such change on the part of the South.(12) In a speech delivered in the Virginia Convention of 1788, Patrick Henry had predicted that the South would eventually find itself economically subjugated to the North once the latter had secured to itself a majority in the new federal Government: "This government subjects every thing to the Northern majority. Is there not, then, a settled purpose to check the Southern interest?... How can the Southern members prevent the adoption of the most oppressive mode of taxation in the Southern States, as there is a majority in favor of the Northern States?"(13) Henry's prediction was not long in being realized. As early as 1789, the first impost bill was introduced in Congress which protected the New England fishing industry and its production of molasses, and exhibited, in the opinion of William Grayson, "a great disposition... for the advancement of commerce and manufactures in preference to agriculture." Thus, when the Union under the Constitution was but two months old, many Southerners felt that their States were already being obliged to serve the North as "the milch cow out of whom the substance would be extracted."(14) In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.(15)
From the days of the illustrious Henry onwards, the South had generally stood in the way of the Northern goal to make such an unjust system of taxation permanent.(16) According to John Taylor of Virginia, a high protective tariff system, like that which existed in Great Britain, was "undoubtedly the best which has ever appeared for extracting money from the people; and commercial restrictions, both upon foreign and domestick commerce, are its most effectual means for accomplishing this object. No equal mode of enriching the party of government, and impoverishing the party of people, has ever been discovered."(17) Nevertheless, the North clung tenaciously to its protectionist policy and managed to push through the tariff legislation of 1828 which provoked South Carolina to resistance to the general Government and nearly to secession from the Union during the Administration of Andrew Jackson.(18) It should be noted that, by 1828, the public debt was near to extinction and, at the current rate of taxation on imported goods, a twelve to thirteen million dollar annual surplus would have been created in the Treasury.(19) Thus, the excuse for a high tariff system as a source of Government revenue was a flimsy one at best; the so-called "Tariff of Abomination" really served no other purpose than to "rob and plunder nearly one half of the Union, for the benefit of the residue."(20) James Spence of London explained the effects of such a high tariff on the Southern economy:
This system of protecting Northern manufactures, has an injurious influence, beyond the effect immediately apparent. It is doubly injurious to the Southern States, in raising what they have to buy, and lowering what they have to sell. They are the exporters of the Union, and require that other countries shall take their productions. But other countries will have difficulty in taking them, unless permitted to pay for them in the commodities which are their only means of payment. They are willing to receive cotton, and to pay for it in iron, earthenware, woollens. But if by extravagant duties, these be prohibited from entering the Union, or greatly restricted, the effect must needs be, to restrict the power to buy the products of the South. Our imports of Southern productions, have nearly reached thirty millions sterling a year. Suppose the North to succeed in the object of its desire, and to exclude our manufactures altogether, with what are we to pay? It is plainly impossible for any country to export largely, unless it be willing also, to import largely. Should the Union be restored, and its commerce be conducted under the present tariff, the balance of trade against us must become so great, as either to derange our monetary system, or compel us to restrict our purchases from those, who practically exclude other payment than gold. With the rate of exchange constantly depressed, the South would receive an actual money payment, much below the current value of its products. We should be driven to other markets for our supplies, and thus the exclusion of our manufactures by the North, would result in a compulsory exclusion, on our part, of the products of the South.
This is a consideration of no importance to the Northern manufacturer, whose only thought is the immediate profit he may obtain, by shutting out competition. It may be, however, of very extreme importance to others — to those who have products they are anxious to sell to us, who are desirous to receive in payment, the very goods we wish to dispose of, and yet are debarred from this. Is there not something of the nature of commercial slavery, in the fetters of a system that prevents it? If we consider the terms of the compact, and the gigantic magnitude of Southern trade, it becomes amazing, that even the attempt should be made, to deal with it in such a manner as this.(21)
George McDuffie of South Carolina stated in the House of Representatives, "If the union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, historians who record these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation."(22) While the Northern manufacturer enjoyed free trade with the South, the Southern planter was not allowed to enjoy free trade with those countries to which he could market his goods at the most benefit to himself. Furthermore, while the six cotton States — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — had less than one-eighth of the representation in Congress, they furnished two-thirds of the exports of the country, much of which was exchanged for imported necessities.(23) Thus, McDuffie noted that because the import tariff effectively hindered Southern commerce, the relation which the Cotton States bore to the protected manufacturing States of the North was now the same as that which the colonies had once borne to Great Britain; under the current system, they had merely changed masters.(24)
Such was the consistent argument of South Carolinian politicians and editorialists right up to the moment of secession in late 1860. Robert Barnwell Rhett, who served in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, said in 1850: "The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives."(25) Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:
The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city.(26)
In a letter to the Carolina Times in 1857, Representative Laurence Keitt wrote, "I believe that the safety of the South is only in herself."(27) James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, "I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy."(28)
The Protectionist Roots of the Republican Party
When the tariff was temporarily lowered in 1833, Henry Clay, the Kentuckian Whig who "courted Northern popularity,"(29) vowed to "defy the South, the president, and the devil" in order to have it raised again.(30) With the demise of the old Whig party in 1856, "eastern manufacturing interests saw in the Republican party their only hope of capturing the Federal government for the cause of protection.... [P]owerful economic factors were working in the direction of an alliance between diverse partners: antislavery agitators and 'big business' in the North, though for very different purposes, were desiring the same things in terms of governmental control and party supremacy."(31) Supported by "business interests which were now weaning the Northwest away from its Southern alliance,"(32) former Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln held to the Hamiltonian principles of a strong centralized government and a corresponding weakening of the States, the desirability of a central banking system and a perpetual national debt, and taxpayer-funded internal improvements and Government subsidies which would mainly benefit corporations in the manufacturing North at the expense of the agricultural South. In particular, they supported the reinstitution of a high protective import tariff.
Just as John C. Calhoun had predicted in 1828, agitation of the slavery issue was thereafter seized upon by the Northern protectionists as a means to remove this persistent Southern obstacle.(33) Those of a more moderate stripe sought to accomplish this by excluding slavery from the Territories and thereby confining and minimizing the political influence of the South, while those who adopted a more radical approach sought to drive the Southern States from the Union entirely. That slavery was merely a pretext in this sectional struggle is beyond dispute. We have already seen how former big-government Whigs were naturally attracted to the new Republican party, which Wendell Phillips admitted was a purely sectional faction "organized against the South." According to the 3 November 1860 edition of the Charleston Mercury, "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government, from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism."(34) According to Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, "[T]he exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.... Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government." He stated that, as a result of unfair legislation, wealth flowed from the South to the North in "one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream."(35) This economic tug-of-war had been going on between the North and South for decades and finally the sectional party which had openly avowed hostility to the South had gained control of both Congress and the White House. It should be remembered that throughout his political career, Lincoln had always identified himself as a disciple of Henry Clay in fiscal matters, and the whole country knew that upon his nomination, he had committed himself to a high tariff policy if elected President. This state of affairs sheds valuable light on why the Gulf States reacted to Lincoln's victory as they did. The complaints of the South were sometimes couched in terms of slavery and other times in terms of finances, but it is clear that self-preservation alone drove the Southern States out of the Union. In a statement issued on 25 December 1860, the South Carolina Convention summarized the South's complaint against the North as follows:
Discontent and contention have moved in the bosom of the Confederacy for the last thirty-five years. During this time, South Carolina has twice called her people together in solemn convention, to take into consideration the aggressions and unconstitutional wrongs perpetrated by the people of the North on the people of the South. These wrongs were submitted to by the people of the South, under the hope and expectation that they would be final. But these hopes and expectations have proved to be void.
The one great evil, from which all the other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution. The Government is no longer the government of a Confederate Republic, but of a consolidated democracy. It is no longer a free government, but a despotism. The Revolution of 1776 turned upon one great principle — self-government and self-taxation — the criterion of self-government.
The Southern States now stand in the same relation towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors, in the British Parliament, for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States, have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue — to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the people of the Northern States, but, after the taxes are collected, three-fourths of them are expended in the North.(36)
John H. Reagan of Texas, who would later become Postmaster-General of the Confederate Government, expressed similar sentiments when addressing the Republican members of the House of Representatives on 15 January 1861:
You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions....
We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition. But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to assert and maintain our separate independence. It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to none of them.(37)
Less than a week later, on 21 January 1861, an editorial appeared in the New Orleans Daily Crescent which made the same observations:
They know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it.(38)
The Beginning of the Tariff War
Justifying the fears of the South, one of the first acts of the Republican-dominated Thirty-Seventh Congress upon the departure of the Gulf States was to pass the so-called Morrill Tariff into law on 2 March 1861. Under this tariff, which one British observer described as "a very masterpiece of folly and injustice,"(39) duties began at an average of 37% and by June of 1864 were raised to 47%,(40) making it the highest in the history of the country. True to Republican campaign promises, special preference was given to the steel industry of Pennsylvania. At the same time, the Confederate Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, in accordance with the South's traditional aversion to protective tariffs and general acceptance of the free trade doctrines of Adam Smith(41) and Thomas Jefferson,(42) and in compliance with the provisions of the C.S. Constitution,(43) instituted a low tariff with duties averaging 10%, the natural result of which would have been to divert most, if not all, foreign trade away from the principle Northern ports in New York and Boston to the Southern ports, particularly Charleston and New Orleans. The Boston Transcript of 18 March 1861 stated in this regard:
[T]he mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed of the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade.... The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.(44)
In the words of the New York Times:
The nations of Europe with whom we have the most intimate commercial relations are earnest advocates of free trade. Yet at the very moment that we most desire their sympathy and co-operation, we insult their conviction and strike the severest blow in our power at their interests. The seceding states will take instant advantage of our blunder, and will make every effort to secure their will, if not an actual recognition, by adopting a commercial policy in harmony with their own....
At home and abroad, we are already feeling the effects of our gratuitous folly. Both English and French journals are teeming with ill-natured and unfavorable remarks; with contrasts either openly stated or implied in favor of the seceding states.(45)
The New York Evening Post of 12 March 1861 likewise stated:
That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.(46)
This result was also clearly seen by most of the business and financial men in the North. In their eyes, the question was no longer one of the morality of slavery or the constitutionality of secession; it was now, in the words of New York banker August Belmont, a "question of national existence and commercial prosperity."(47) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were watching the events in America from Europe with keen interest, observed, "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."(48) This was essentially the same conclusion drawn by Philip Foner in his book, Business and Slavery, in which he demonstrated how financially dependent Northern businessmen were upon the South being forced to remain in the Union in a subordinated condition.(49) Consequently, the Daily Advertiser of Newark, New Jersey boldly insisted on 2 April 1861 that Southern ports, beginning at Charleston, must be closed by military force.(50)
It is therefore easy to see what an important role Fort Sumter thereafter played in the unfolding drama. Should the secession of the South go unchallenged, and the U.S. troops be withdrawn from the fort, the tariff in the North would either have to be lowered to at least match that of the South, or the Northern States would be left to suffer financial ruin. Neither of these options was acceptable to Lincoln, who had already vowed in his Inaugural Address to enforce the Morrill Tariff at Charleston and other Southern ports. While his own Cabinet had almost unanimously advised against reinforcing the fort, Lincoln's ears were captivated by other advisors, who had assured him that "all the resolutions and speeches and declarations [of independence]... from the South were but a 'game of brag,' intended to intimidate the administrative party," and that, at the first show of force by the U.S. Government, "there would 'be nothing in it but talk.'"(51)
On 4 April 1861, Colonel John B. Baldwin of Virginia arrived in Washington, D.C. at Lincoln's behest to discuss the Peace Conference then in session in that State. According to Baldwin's sworn testimony in 1866, Lincoln's words to him during the ensuing meeting were as follows: "Mr. Baldwin, I am afraid you have come too late.... I wish you could have been here three or four days ago.... Why do you not all adjourn the Virginia convention?... [I]t is a standing menace to me, which embarrasses me very much."(52) The question which immediately comes to mind is: Why would a man who had pledged a pacific policy in his Inaugural Address view as a standing menace and a source of embarrassment a conference of States which had been convened to promote that very same policy? Robert Lewis Dabney provided the obvious answer:
The action of the seven States... perplexed the Lincoln faction excessively. On the other hand, the greed and spite of the hungry crew, who were now grasping the power and spoils so long passionately craved, could not endure the thought that the prize should thus collapse in their hands. Hence, when the administration assembled at Washington, it probably had no very definite policy.... Colonel Baldwin supposed it was the visit, and the terrorizing of the "radical Governors," which had just decided Lincoln to adopt the violent policy. They had successfully asserted that the secession of the seven States, and the convening and solemn admonitions of State conventions in the others, formed but a system of bluster...; that the Southern States were neither willing nor able to fight for their own cause, being paralyzed by their fear of servile insurrection. Thus they had urged upon Lincoln, that the best way to secure his party triumph was to precipitate a collision. Lincoln had probably committed himself to this policy, without Seward's privity, within the last four days; and the very men whom Colonel Baldwin found in conclave with him were probably intent upon this conspiracy at the time. But when Colonel Baldwin solemnly assured Lincoln that this violent policy would infallibly precipitate the border States into an obstinate war, the natural shrewdness of the latter was sufficient to open his eyes, at least partially, and he saw that his factious counsellors, blinded by hatred and contempt of the South, had reasoned falsely; yet, having just committed himself to them, he had not manliness enough to recede. And above all, the policy urged by Colonel Baldwin would have disappointed the hopes of legislative plunder, by means of inflated tariffs, which were the real aims for which free-soil was the mask.(53)
Such was the essence of Colonel Baldwin's testimony in 1866: when it was urged upon Lincoln to issue an "appeal to the American people to settle the question in the spirit in which the Constitution was made" and to relinquish both Forts Sumter and Pickens as "a concession of an asserted right in the interest of peace," Lincoln's response was to refer "with some apprehension to the idea that his friends would not be pleased with such a step."(54) Finally, when it was suggested that the provisional Government at Montgomery be allowed to continue unmolested until the seceded States could be brought back peaceably, Lincoln replied, "And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten per cent tariff? What then, would become of my tariff?" [emphasis in original](55) With that remark, Lincoln terminated the conversation and dismissed Baldwin.
The Northern Radicals Demand Coercion
Lincoln's behavior during his meeting with Baldwin was demonstrative of a man who had just been made to realize a fatal error to which he was nevertheless committed. Evidence that Lincoln had succumbed to pressure from the Northern Radicals to pursue a ruinous policy of coercion against the South, though in the main circumstantial, is nevertheless quite weighty. First of all, the "friends" whom Lincoln expected "would not be pleased" with an abandonment of the forts could not have been the members of his own cabinet, for they had nearly unanimously advised that very thing. Furthermore, Lincoln had been in conference with nine Republican Governors, including Oliver Morton of Indiana and John Andrews of Massachusetts, when Baldwin arrived at the White House.(56) That these Governors were notoriously anti-Southern is a matter of record. However, there were other visitors who visited the President during those tense days. Joseph Medill, the editor of the rabidly anti-Southern Chicago Tribune who was dubbed "the oracle of the Protectionists in the West,"(57) recalled some years later:
In 1864, when the call for extra troops came, Chicago revolted. Chicago had sent 22,000 and was drained. There were no young men to go, no aliens except what was already bought. The citizens held a mass meeting and appointed three men, of whom I was one, to go to Washington and ask Stanton to give Cook County a new enrollment. On reaching Washington, we went to Stanton with our statement. He refused. Then we went to President Lincoln. "I can not do it," said Lincoln, "but I will go with you to Stanton and hear the arguments of both sides." So we all went over to the War Department together. Stanton and General Frye were there, and they both contended that the quota should not be changed. The argument went on for some time, and was finally referred to Lincoln, who had been silently listening. When appealed to, Lincoln turned to us with a black and frowning face: "Gentlemen," he said, with a voice full of bitterness, "after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest opposed the South, as New England opposed the South. It is you, Medill, who is largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until you had it. I have given it to you. What you have asked for you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for more men, which I have made to carry on the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Go home and raise your 6,000 men. And you, Medill, you and your Tribune have had more influence than any other paper in the Northwest in making this war. Go home and send me those men I want" [emphasis in original].(58)
It was Medill who denounced "the Union as it is" as "a thing of the past, hated by every patriot, and destined never to curse an honest people, or blot the pages of history again."(59) Such was the character of the men with whom Lincoln consulted to formulate his policy to "save the Union."
Another important factor in the history of this time is that the Northern States were in the midst of a depression before the war broke out as a result of the banking crash of 1857. According to the record, liabilities in business failures throughout the country amounted to $291,000,000, a full 46% of which burden was borne by the cities of New York and Brooklyn.(60) In the words of James G. Randall, "The human aspects of the panic were seen in the struggles of bankrupt individuals with debts and foreclosures, in the forty thousand who were thrown out of work in New York City, in shivering crowds of city beggars, in violent hunger demonstrations, in decreased immigration, in the unrecorded misery that affected the working class, and in consequent labor unrest."(61) Of course, the Republicans blamed this economic distress on the low Democratic tariff then in place and it was the avowed purpose to raise it which had resulted in their tremendous victory throughout the North in the election of 1858.(62) Furthermore, the United States Treasury was bankrupt, and there were no available funds with which to finance a protracted war with the South. However, this would all change after the bloodshed had begun. In their book entitled Our Nation, Eugene C. Barker and Henry Steele Commager admitted that the war was waged by the North primarily for economic reasons:
The War Between the North and the South aided business.... [T]he War between the North and the South caused great and rapid expansion in all forms of industry and business in the North. Farms and factories had to supply the needs of the armies. Mines and furnaces had to furnish material for building engines and rolling stock and for the rapidly lengthening railroad mileage.
The discovery of new resources of oil, coal, and iron ore; the rapid expansion of our foreign commerce; and the creation of the national banking system all furnished new opportunities for speculation and for profits.(63)
Randall likewise noted that "thousands were fattening on the war and selfishly desired it to continue.... Railroad earnings were enormously increased. The earnings of the Erie Railroad, for example, rose from $5,000,000 in 1860 to $10,000,000 in 1863, while its stock rose in three years from 17% to 126%."(64) As noted above, it was also during this period that the advocates of a central bank and a large multi-generational public debt stepped onto the scene to push through their unconstitutional schemes. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter Twenty-Two.
Endnotes
1. Thaddeus Stevens, Congressional Globe (Thirty-Seven Congress, Third Session), 9 December 1862, page 51.
2. H.W. Johnstone, Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861 (Idylwild, Georgia: self-published, 1921), page 9; Lyon Gardiner Tyler, John Tyler and Abraham Lincoln: Who Was the Dwarf? (Richmond, Virginia: Richmond Press, Inc., 1929), pages 16-17; Webb Garrison, Lincoln's Little War (Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1997), page 51.
3. Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln: Complete Works, Volume II, page 11; United States War Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880), Series I, Volume I, page 196.
4. William H. Seward, reply to Lincoln; in Lincoln: Complete Works, Volume II, pages 11, 14.
5. Simon Cameron, reply to Lincoln; in ibid., page 17; Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, pages 196, 199.
6. Gideon Welles, reply to Lincoln; in Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln: Complete Works, Volume II, page 18.
7. Caleb B. Smith, reply to Lincoln; in ibid., pages 19-20.
8. Salmon Portland Chase, reply to Lincoln; in ibid., page 15.
9. Montgomery Blair, reply to Lincoln; in ibid., page 21.
10. Pollard, Lost Cause, page 52.
11. On this point, Alexander Hamilton was correct when he wrote:
Has commerce hitherto done anything more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have not there been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? (Federalist, Number VI).
12. Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861-1901 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934), pages 3, 4.
13. Patrick Henry, in Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions, Volume III, page 328.
14. William Grayson, letter to Patrick Henry, 12 June 1789; quoted by Carpenter, South as a Conscious Minority, pages 29-30.
15. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett, The Union, Past and Future: How It Works and How to Save It (Charleston, South Carolina: Walker and James Press, 1850), page 12.
16. John C. Calhoun, "South Carolina Exposition and Protest," 19 December 1828; in Ross M. Lence (editor), Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1992), pages 313-365.
17. John Taylor, Tyranny Unmasked (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1992), page 11. In this book, Taylor also made the following and very remarkable prediction: "I believe that a loss of independent internal power by our confederated States, and an acquisition of supreme power by the Federal department, or by any branch of it, will substantially establish a consolidated republic over all the territories of the United States, though a federal phraseology might still remain; that this consolidation would introduce a monarchy; and that the monarchy, however limited, checked, or balanced, would finally become a complete tyranny" (page xxvii). Whether or not this prediction has proven true the reader will be able to judge for himself.
18. John G. Van Deusen, Economic Bases of Disunion in South Carolina (New York: AMS Press, Incorporated, 1928), pages 19-21, 59-103, 328.
19. Pollard, Lost Cause, page 61.
20. John Randolph, speech delivered in the House of Representatives on 22 April 1828; in Register of Debates in Congress (Twentieth Congress, First Session), page 2472.
21. Spence, American Union, pages 178-179.
22. George McDuffie, Register of Debates (Twentieth Congress, First Session), page 2470.
23. Van Deusen, Economic Bases of Disunion, page 63.
24. McDuffie, Register of Debates (Twentieth Congress, First Session), page 859.
25. Robert Barnwell Rhett, speech delivered at Charleston, South Carolina on 20 July 1850; quoted by Van Deusen, Economic Bases of Disunion, page 98.
26. John Cunningham, editorial for the Charleston Mercury, 18 August 1851; quoted by Van Deusen, op. cit., page 218.
27. Laurence Keitt, letter to the Carolina Times, 16 July 1857; quoted by Van Deusen, op. cit., page 102.
28. James H. Hammond, speech delivered at Charleston, South Carolina on 29 October 1858; quoted by Van Deusen, ibid.
29. Pollard, Lost Cause, page 61.
30. Henry Clay, quoted by Maurice Baxter, Henry Clay and the American System (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1995), page 75.
31. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, page 145.
32. Randall, ibid., page 179.
33. Referring to a time when the high tariff would either be repealed or lowered, Calhoun predicted, "Those who now make war on our gains, would then make it on our labor. They would not tolerate, that those, who now cultivate our plantations, and furnish them with the material, and the market for the products of their arts, should, by becoming their rivals, take bread out of the mouths of their wives and children" (Exposition and Protest, in Lence, Union and Liberty, page 323). It is noteworthy that the Abolitionist movement officially commenced its operations in the North within two years of the 1833 compromise tariff bill. This war on Southern labor later took the form of "Free Soilism."
34. Charleston Mercury, 3 November 1860; quoted in Dwight Lowell Dumond (editor), Southern Editorials on Secession (Glouscester, Massachusetts: 1964), page 292.
35. Thomas Hart Benton, quoted by Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat (Baltimore, Maryland: Kelly, Piet and Company, 1869), page 60.
36. Statement issued by the South Carolina Convention on 25 December 1860; quoted by McHenry, Cotton States, page lxi.
37. John H. Reagan, speech in the House of Representatives on 15 January 1861; quoted by Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War (Inglewood, New Jersey: Spectrum Books, 1960), page 89.
38. New Orleans Daily Crescent, 21 January 1861, page 408.
39. James Spence, Northern British Review, February 1862, page 240.
40. Luthin, "Lincoln and the Tariff," page 628.
41. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis, Indiana The Liberty Fund, [1776], 1981).
42. Jefferson, as Secretary of State in the Washington Administration, said, "Instead of embarrassing commerce under files of laws, duties, and prohibitions, it should be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the world. Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system of free intercourse it would be advisable to begin with that nation" (quoted by McHenry, Cotton Trade, page 185).
43. Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1 and 3 of the Constitution reads:
Congress shall have power... to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States.....
[Congress shall have power] to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; in all which cases such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof.
Commenting on these provisions, Robert Hardy Smith, a member of the Constitutional Convention from Alabama, stated:
Holding steadily in view the principle that the great object of the Federal Government is to perform national functions and not to aggrandize or depress sectional, or local, or individual interests, and adhering to and enforcing the doctrine that a people should be left to pursue and develop their individual thrift without direct aids or drawbacks from Government, and that internal improvements are best judged of, and more wisely and economically directed by the localities desiring them, even when they legitimately come within the scope of Federal action, and knowing that, as the regulation of commerce was one of the chief objects of creating the Government, and that under this power lurked danger of sectional legislation and lavish expenditure, the Constitution denies to Congress the right to make appropriations for any internal improvement, even though intended to facilitate commerce, except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, buoys and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; and the cost and expenses of even these objects must be paid by duties levied on the navigation facilitated (An Address to the Citizens of Alabama on the Constitution and Laws of the Confederate States of America [Mobile, Alabama: Mobile Daily Register, 1861], pages 11-12).
44. Boston Transcript, 18 March 1861; quoted by Stampp, Causes of the Civil War, page 80.
45. New York Times, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 147.
46. New York Evening Post, 12 March 1861; in Howard Cecil Perkins (editor), Northern Editorials on Secession (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1942), Volume I, pages 598-599.
47. August Belmont, quoted by Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case For Southern Secession (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), page 64.
48. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1937), page 58.
49. Philip Foner, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), page 297.
50. Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, Volume I, page 602.
51. Robert Lewis Dabney, essay: "Memoir of a Narrative Received of Colonel John B. Baldwin," Discussions (Mexico, Missouri: S.B. Ervin, 1897), Volume IV, page 92.
52. Lincoln, quoted by John B. Baldwin, testimony given in Washington, D.C. on 10 February 1866; in Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1866), Part II: Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, pages 102, 103.
53. Dabney, "Colonel John B. Baldwin," pages 95-96.
54. Baldwin testimony, page 104.
55. Lincoln, quoted by Dabney, "Colonel John B. Baldwin," page 94.
56. Baldwin testimony, page 105.
57. Howard K. Beale, The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930), page 295.
58. Joseph Medill, quoted by Ida Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Lincoln Memorial Association, 1900), Volume II, page 144.
59. Medill, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 119.
60. American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1861 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1862), page 312.
61. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, page 89.
62. Luthin, "Lincoln and the Tariff," page 612.
63. Eugene C. Barker and Henry Steele Commager, Our Nation, (Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson and Company, 1942), pages 500-501.
64. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, page 627.
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