1861 Boston Newspaper: Cause of Civil War

(August 16, 2020) Too many historians wrongly equate the reasons for secession of the fist seven cotton states with the reasons for the Civil War. They are not the same. Northerners could have evacuated Fort Sumter and let the seven cotton states depart in peace thereby avoiding Civil War. They did not do so because they wanted to avoid the economic consequences of disunion—for them. The 1861 article below from the Boston Transcript shows that the newspaper even dismissed slavery as the cause of the war.

About a month before Fort Sumter surrendered, the Boston Transcript concluded on March 18, 1861 that the South did not secede to protect slavery, but did do because it wanted to become the North’s economic competitor.

Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States, but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the seceding States are now for commercial independence. . . The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston and Philadelphia may be shorn . . . of their mercantile greatness by a revenue system verging upon free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the businesses of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured.

The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederacy that the entire Northwest [present day Midwest] must find it to their advantage to purchase imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition, Northern manufacturers will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties. . .

The above does not deny that some of the secession Declaration of Causes cited slavery. It does, however, reveal the today’s historians too often fail to examine why Northerners chose to militarily coerce the cotton states back into the Union. It also shows why protective tariffs were a cause of the war for Northerners. It explains why tariffs on dutiable items increased from 19% before the Civil War to an average of 45% for more that fifty years thereafter.

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Was President Grant personally corrupt? Careful study of Jay Gould’s Gold Market Corner attempt and the later Whisky Tax Evasion Scandal raise questions. Learn more in Ulysses Grant’s Failed Presidency,

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Learn more about my books at  My Amazon Author Page.

The Confederacy at Flood Tide by Philip Leigh
Trading With the Enemy by Philip Leigh
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

2 thoughts on “1861 Boston Newspaper: Cause of Civil War

  1. Linda Ann

    Do you happen to have a reference for that Boston newspaper from 1861? Your information matches what I learned many years ago, but does not seem to be the current narrative.

    Reply

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