A popular myth expounded by libertarians is that the Civil War was caused by disputes over tariffs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The main aspect of this myth is that the South was paying the majority of tariffs levied by the government, and the Morrill Tariff was the final nail in the coffin, forcing the South’s hand into secession from the Union.
To start, the South was not paying the majority of the tariffs. The southern economy was heavily slave-based, and infrastructure was less developed than the North (the prevalence of railroads in the North was one reason for the Union victory in the Civil War). [1] Being an agrarian society, the South imported manufactured goods from overseas in exchange for exporting cotton. Conversely, the North imported much (especially raw materials) due to their embracing of industrialization and slave-free labor, and their desire to protect American industries, while the South had an increasing oligarchic rule of slaveholders. The New York collection point alone was responsible for 63.5% of all taxed imports for 1859. [2] James McPherson estimated that the North paid for approximately 70% of these tariff duties. [3] Southern ports simply were not used as much due to lower demand for foreign goods in these areas. Robert Royal Russel wrote:
…while the South furnished two-thirds of the exports, she received directly only one-tenth of the imports of the United States. Francis Mallory estimated that nine-tenths of the exports went directly to Europe, while five-sevenths of the imports from abroad came indirectly by way of Northern seaports. [4, p. 19]
The intolerable tariff situation for the South espoused by libertarians was anything but. The yearly tariff rates show that rather than increasing tariffs, they were continuously declining.
U.S. TARIFF RATES – RATIO OF IMPORT DUTIES TO VALUES: 1821-1996 (percent) [5]
| Year | Total imports | Dutiable imports |
| 1850 | 24.50 | 27.14 |
| 1851 | 24.26 | 26.63 |
| 1852 | 24.35 | 27.38 |
| 1853 | 23.37 | 25.94 |
| 1854 | 23.52 | 25.61 |
| 1855 | 23.36 | 26.83 |
| 1856 | 21.68 | 26.05 |
| 1857 | 19.09 | 22.45 |
| 1858 | 17.33 | 22.44 |
| 1859 | 15.43 | 19.56 |
| 1860 | 15.67 | 19.67 |
| 1861 | 14.21 | 18.84 |
Tariffs “averaged only 20 per cent of dutiable imports during 1859-61, the lowest for any period during the hundred years 1821-1920.” [6, p. 49] This is why that even with the South’s reliance on importing manufactured goods, the tariff was not a significant issue.
The Nullification Crisis during Andrew Jackson’s presidency resulted in a lowering of taxes with the Compromise Tariff of 1833. While South Carolina’s discontent seemed to be with the high tariff, John C. Calhoun perceptively noted a much more important fact of the event:
I consider the Tariff, but as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institutions of the Southern States, and the consequent direction which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriation in opposite relation to the majority of the Union; against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have… their domestick institutions exhausted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness. [7]
He foresaw that slavery would be a major dividing issue in the future. It should not be surprising then that South Carolina was the first state to secede in 1860. The secession debates and resulting documents of secession solidified the nonissue of tariffs, and instead focused on slavery.
The South Carolina Secession Declaration Debate raised the issue of tariffs, but it was shown to be irrelevant with the issue of secession:
“My friend from Richland said that the violation of the Fugitive Slave Laws are not sufficient, and he calls up the Tariff. Is that one of the causes at this time? What is that cause? Your late Senators, and every one of your members of the House of Representatives, voted for the present tariff. [Mr. Miles. I did not.] Well, those who were there at the time voted for it, and I have no doubt you would, if you were in it. The question of the tariff did agitate us in 1832, and it did array this State against the Federal Government.
“…But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question.
“…Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it.” [8]
The “Declarations of Causes” of the seceding states emphasizes the role of slavery as their reasoning for secession. Georgia’s document says, speaking of the Republican party, “The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.” When writing of the poor enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act in non-slaveholding states, it says:
…for above twenty years the non-slaveholding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us.
The Mississippi document leaves no ambiguity about the cause of secession:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.
…That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
…It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
South Carolina also mentions the failure of Northern states to return slaves. Voicing their fears, the document reads:
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
After expressing dissatisfaction with the Federal government due to what they perceived as favoring Northern states, the document says that non-slaveholding states:
…demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
The short Virginia document mentions the “oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States” by the Federal government. [9]
The Morrill Tariff, the tariff cited by those who claim the war was fought over tariffs, was allowed to pass because of the seven southern states seceding. It would not have passed the Senate if the Southern representatives remained in congress.
Another aspect of the myth is that slavery was on the outs in the South. Lincoln’s letter to Alexander H. Stephens (who would become Vice President of the Confederacy) on December 22, 1860, gives the underlying details which would lead to the Civil War:
Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.
The South would be in no more danger in this respect, than it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. [10]
Disputed territories in the west continued the controversy of slavery.
When Stephens became Vice President of the Confederacy, he gave his infamous Cornerstone Address on March 21, 1861. He said:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
“…With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” [11]
Slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy, not free trade or states’ rights. Stephens later wrote in a diary entry in 1965 that the “speech was extemporaneous, the reporter’s notes, which were very imperfect, were hastily corrected by me; and were published without further revision and with several glaring errors.” He also wrote that “My own opinion of slavery, as often expressed, was that if the institution was not the best, or could not be made the best, for both races, looking to the advancement and progress of both, physically and morally, it ought to be abolished.” Yet, he still affirmed the core of the original speech and stated clearly the reason for secession:
Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession; out of it rose the breach of compact, for instance, on the part of several Northern States in refusing to comply with Constitutional obligations as to rendition of fugitives from service, a course betraying total disregard for all constitutional barriers and guarantees. [12]
Although the Constitution of the Confederate States prohibited the international slave trade as per Article I, Section 9, Jefferson Davis himself had previously spoken of his sympathies to the international slave trade in 1859. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine describes an address he gave to the Democratic State Convention of Mississippi:
Within the last ten years, he says that great progress has been made in respect to public sentiment as to the abstract right of holding the African in bondage—a right universally admitted at the South, and not unfrequently at the North.—Mr. Davis discusses at length, and in various aspects, the question of there-opening of the African Slave-trade. In respect to the law of 1820, which pronounces the trade to be piracy, he says that, while he does not deny that considerations of safety and public interest might have warranted the prohibition of the traffic, “they could not justify the Government in branding as infamous the source from which the chief part of the laboring population of the South is derived.” Upon this ground, and also because it has greatly increased the horrors of the “middle passage,” he urges the repeal of this law; he also suggests that the penalties of fine and imprisonment imposed by the law of 1818 upon those engaged in the slave-trade are excessive. He would prefer that the whole subject of the importation of Africans should be left to the respective States of the Union. As far as Mississippi is concerned, he was in favor of her existing laws designed to prevent such importation. He approved them, however, not on the ground of the alleged wrongfulness of the traffic; “not for the interest of the African, but for that of Mississippi,” whose place in history depended upon the “free, intelligent, high-minded sons of the governing race. Her arm was strengthened by the presence of a due proportion of the servile caste; but it might be paralyzed by such an influx as would probably follow if the gates of the African Slave-trade were thrown open to the present wealth, enterprise, and staples of the State.” This conclusion, he adds, is based upon the present condition of his own State, and is not applicable to Texas, New Mexico, or any new acquisitions to be made south of the Rio Grande. The increasing demand for cotton requires an increase of production, which can only be met by an additional supply of laborers; and, says he, “if negrophilism seeks to substitute the Chinaman or the Indiaman for the African, it will neglect all the lessons of experience.” The negro race, he affirms, has not here or in Liberia shown the capacity of governing itself, and “the good of society requires that they should be kept in their normal condition of servitude.”–Mr. Davis discusses at length the question of slavery in the Territories, maintaining that the right of property in slaves is recognized by the Constitution, and that Congress should pass laws, if such are needed, to protect this right in the Territories.—He also advocates the acquisition of Cuba, as advantageous to the Union as it is, and as especially necessary in the event of the formation of a Southern Confederacy. He concludes by expressing a wish for the dissolution of the Union in case a President is elected on the platform of Mr. Seward’s famous Rochester speech. [13]
The “Rochester speech,” otherwise known as the “Irrepressible Conflict” speech, was given by William Henry Seward in 1858. He said that “Our country is a theater which exhibits in full operation two radically different political systems—the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen.” He even warned of a civil war due to the tensions between these two beliefs. He went on to say that, “It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.” [14]
However, it was Seward who sponsored the Corwin Amendment, the proposed amendment which stated that “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” [15]
Lincoln’s aim was to preserve the Union. In his first inaugural address, he declared that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Speaking of the Corwin Amendment, he said:
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution–which amendment, however, I have not seen–has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” [16]
Lincoln expressed no issues with this amendment, a view which President Buchanan had concurred with.
The South viewed westward expansion as a necessity due to what they perceived as encroachment by the North in attempting to completely abolish slavery from the nation. The value of slaves increased exponentially in the South, since in “the seven states where most of the cotton was grown, almost one-half the population were slaves, and they accounted for 31 percent of white people’s income.” [17] Fire-Eaters fought to reinstitute the international slave trade but to no avail. Soil depletion was an issue for the South due to their emphasis on growing tobacco and cotton. They needed more land due to their Ricardian free trade concept of diminishing returns in regard to soil use, where they viewed capital as having no effect on soil fertility. This is in contrast to the “protectionists, especially the second (post-1848) generation,” who “drew upon the new discoveries in agricultural chemistry and physiology to demonstrate man’s ability to improve or exhaust the soil’s productive powers, and to enunciate the Economy of High Wages doctrine describing how the superior efficiency of highly-paid labor was in the capitalist’s interest.” [6, pp. 20-21] These protectionists, who made up the American System, would become influential in shaping the country’s economy in the latter half of the 19th century.
Westward expansion would also allow an opportunity for cheaper food to be grown for the increasing slave population. Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution of the Confederate States contained that
The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. [18]
There was even a Confederate colony in Brazil, where slavery was still legal. Over 10,000 Confederates immigrated to Brazil following the end of the Civil War. [19]
Even though the North promoted industrialization, they were by no means hostile to agrarian society. Abraham Lincoln established the Department of Agriculture with the intention of improving the agriculture industry.
Bibliography
[1] G. A. M. Jr., "A Railroad War," [Online]. Available: https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/a-railroad-war.html.
[2] A. Hall, "Walter E. Williams Polishes the Turd on Tariffs," 24 February 2013. [Online]. Available: https://deadconfederates.com/2013/02/24/walter-e-williams-polishes-the-turd-on-tariffs/.
[3] J. McPherson, "The Truth About Tariffs," 31 January 2004. [Online]. Available: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1069109/posts.
[4] R. R. Russel, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840-1861, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1924.
[5] [Online]. Available: http://www.econdataus.com/tariffs.html.
[6] M. Hudson, America's Protectionist Takeoff 1815-1914, ISLET, 2010.
[7] [Online]. Available: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/calhoun/2Bhed.html.
[8] "S.C. Secession Declaration Debate," 22 December 1860. [Online]. Available: http://history.furman.edu/benson/docs/scdebate2.htm.
[9] "The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States," [Online]. Available: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states.
[10] A. Lincoln, "To Alexander H. Stephens," 22 December 1860. [Online]. Available: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:250?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
[11] A. H. Stephens, ""Cornerstone" Speech," 21 March 1861. [Online]. Available: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/.
[12] A. H. Stephens, "What I Really Said in the Cornerstone Speech," 1865. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_I_Really_Said_in_the_Cornerstone_Speech.
[13] "Monthly Record of Current Events," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. XIX, pp. 694-695, June to November 1859.
[14] W. H. Seward, "His "Irrepressible Conflict" Speech," 25 October 1858. [Online]. Available: https://www.bartleby.com/268/9/16.html.
[15] [Online]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20120702135703/http://www.house.gov/house/Amendnotrat.shtml.
[16] A. Lincoln, "First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln," 4 March 1861. [Online]. Available: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp.
[17] R. L. Ransom, "The Economics of the Civil War," 24 August 2001. [Online]. Available: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/.
[18] "Constitution of the Confederate States," 11 March 1861. [Online]. Available: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp.
[19] J. Greenspan, "The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil," 31 August 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.history.com/news/confederacy-in-brazil-civil-war.
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