Secession, Slavery and Import Duties

(December 16, 2019) While most modern historians can cite statistics showing a correlation between a Southern state’s propensity to secede in 1861 and its proportional slave ownership, they never cite statistics showing that the propensity also applies to those states opposed to the Morrill Tariff. Since the second correlation does not fit the currently popular Civil-War-was-all-about-slavery interpretation, it is hard to find. Consequently, the tariff-vote data in the table below comes from the May 1860 Morrill Tariff vote in the House of Representatives. Since that vote was six months before Lincoln was elected President, it wasn’t distorted by the secession crisis that began in December 1860.

To be sure, the table documents a correlation between the percent of a state’s 1860 population that is slave and its inclination to secede. But it also shows a correlation between committed opposition to the Morrill Tariff and secession. For example, slaves composed 47% of the population in the seven cotton states that seceded before President Lincoln called for 75,000 military volunteers to coerce them back into the Union, whereas slaves were only 27% in the four Upper-South that joined the Confederacy afterward. Likewise, 100% of the congressmen from the cotton states voted against the Morrill Tariff as did 94% of those in the Upper-South seceding states.

Similarly, slaves represented merely 14% of the population in the border states that did not secede while only 27% of their congressmen voted against the Morrill Tariff. Finally, while none of the “free” states (with no slaves) joined the Confederacy only 13% of their congressmen voted against the Morrill Tariff. Thus, they favored protective tariffs nearly as overwhelmingly as the South opposed them.

Most modern historians dismiss tariffs as a cause of the war because they are fixated on the general preponderance of slavery among the topics covered in the Declaration of Causes for Secession in most of the seven cotton states. As a result, such historians don’t bother to look for correlations with tariff opposition even though they are as obvious as cow patties on a snowbank.

Such historians also generally ignore the fact that tariffs on dutiable items increased from 19% before the war to an average of 45% for nearly fifty years thereafter. Regardless of what Northern leaders might have said to rationalize their decision to invade the Southern states, what they did was a better indication of their objectives.  Everyone learns in kindergarten, if not sooner, to judge a person’s honesty by what they do instead of what they say. Since the states north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers were the chief beneficiaries of protective tariffs they selfishly imposed them on the entire country for generations after the war to the detriment of the South’s export economy. That’s what they did, regardless of what they said.

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The Confederacy at Flood Tide by Philip Leigh
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Lee’s Lost Dispatch & Other Civil War Controversies by Philip Leigh
Southern Reconstruction by Philip Leigh
U. S. Grant’s Failed Presidency by Philip Leigh