Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
In this case I agree with you absolutely.
I just noticed this. Should I go through his points one by one and show how many of them are themselves wrong, or even outright lies, or will you take my word for it?
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You already did
I find it about 50% true, but I never let truth get in the way of a good argument if it stirs a northern feather....
Still, we will continue to disagree the war was about slavery or the south protecting slaves, leaving the union over slaves.
The industrial North for years leading up to the war wanted tariffs. The South believed in free trade, the North didn't. It wanted to
force the South to buy their goods. Lincoln said the Morrill tariff was the most important issue in the US in his campaign, that he would pass it.
Add the issue with new states being slave or free, it became an issue of political power and votes. Certainly the tariffs were a big part of SC succeeding.
"Robert Barnwell Rhett similarly railed against the then-pending Morrill Tariff before the South Carolina convention. Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860 to accompany its secession ordinance.
And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. 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.[23]"
You can argue had several states not succeeded, Morrill wouldn't have passed, but that misses the point. Lincoln running promoting it, new states to be non slave, thus insuring later votes for the North, states simply were tired of the industrial North protectionist policies and left the union to protect their economic status, which of course was crops and slaves. Lincoln calling up troops was the nail. It's hard for many to grasp, but with the attitude and feelings the South had towards the North, the thought of Northern armies crossing into their states, the war was a done deal.
We do know the North as a whole had no issue over slavery. If the South hadn't left and Morrill passed, it would've been a great benefit to the North.
Charles Dickens
“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.”