War of Northern Aggression
"It is common knowledge that Lincoln did not want to abolish slavery in the South. He had said so too often. High school textbooks tell this story. The textbooks usually don't talk about what he was really interested in: collecting tariffs in southern ports, especially Charleston and New Orleans. They claim he was solely motivated by his desire to save the Union. He did want to save the Union, but he was not solely motivated to save the Union. He wanted his tariffs. Tariffs were basic to the Republican Party, just as they had been basic to the Whig Party, out of which the Republicans had emerged in 1854. Lincoln and been a high tariff politician ever since his first political campaign in 1832. He was open about this." - Gary North
"We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a party better than he loves his country.....Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor." Providence Daily Post, 13 April 1861 “All these cries of having ‘abolished slavery,’ of having ‘saved the country,’ of having ‘preserved the Union,’ of establishing a ‘government of consent,’ and of ‘maintaining the national honor’ are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats—so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.” - Lysander Spooner, prominent Northern abolitionist, attorney and legal scholar, five years after the end of the War "That this war was made, not to preserve a constitutional Union, but solely to promote the aims of a faction, is confirmed by these further facts. Its purpose was clearly betrayed by the final reply of Mr. Lincoln to Colonel Baldwin's noble appeal for conciliation: "What, then, will become of my tariff?" He might as well have said out aloud, that he was making this war, not to preserve a Union, but to enforce his projected high tariff." - Robert Lewis Dabney "Though Northern agitation toward African slavery, especially fomenting slave insurrection in the American South, pushed the Southern States to political secession, economic questions that had been weakening the fraternal Union since 1788 had become a paramount concern of Northern business interests in early 1861. Those interests would not accept an independent South with a lower tariff structure which would leave Northern ports idle, and helped influence Lincoln to wage his destructive war." - Gary North Whose War was it Anyway? The American Civil War was a war that the North wanted. It was the North's war for two reasons. First it was the North that was trying to force the South back into the Union. The South was not trying to force the Northern states into the Confederacy. Second, the North initiated the war by maneuvering the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter to make it look like the South started the war. This is why it was a war of Northern aggression. It truly was the North's war. The South wanted to be left alone. Secession - the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state. War - a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state. When you look the word "secession" up in the dictionary and then you look the word "war" up in the dictionary, you can see that they have different meanings. Yet, historians see that the South seceded because of slavery and they conclude that the Civil War started because of slavery. They jump from secession to war and they assume that just because the South seceded to defend slavery the North must have went to war to suppress slavery. The cause of secession and the cause of the war are two separate issues. Secession did not cause the war. Just because the South seceded does not mean the North had to invade. The North could have let the South go in peace. What was it that drove the North to conquer the South? Slavery does not explain why the North forced the South back into the Union. Today's mainstream and pro-Northern historians are quick to point out that the historical documentation proves the South seceded because of slavery and so they incorrectly conclude that the war itself was about slavery. They conveniently ignore the historical documentation that shows the war was not over slavery, but was instead fought over economic reasons. The cause of secession and the cause of the war are two separate issues simply because secession did not cause the war. Just because the South seceded does not mean the North had to invade. The South may have seceded because of slavery, but the North definitely did not go to war to suppress slavery. Lincoln went to war for tariff collection. Slavery was used by the North as a pretext for war so it could seek the moral high ground. Secession was about slavery. The war was about economics. The North went to war for economic control of the South. This is why it was a war of Northern aggression. Lincoln did not go to war to suppress slavery. The North did what they could to protect slavery so that the South would not secede. On 2 March 1861 congress passed the Corwin Amendment which protected slavery. As long as the South stayed in the Union, slavery would have been safe. This proves the North did not go to war to end slavery. On 4 March 1861, in his inaugural address, Lincoln approved of the Corwin Amendment. "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." Lincoln also stated that he had no intention of interfering with slavery in the South. "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." - Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Address on the Capitol steps, 4 March 1861, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (vol. 4, p.263) Lincoln further stated in letters that slavery was not the purpose for the war. "Do the people of the South really entertain fear 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." -- Letter from Abraham Lincoln to A.H. Stephens, 22 December 1860, Public and Private Letters of Alexander Stephens, p. 150 "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." - Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, "Letter to Horace Greeley" (22 August 1862), p. 388. Clearly, Lincoln was not interested in ending slavery in the South, therefore the invasion of the South by the North was not to suppress slavery. Lincoln went to war for tariff collection. If Lincoln did not go to war to suppress slavery then what was the motivation for forcing the southern states back into the Union? Historian Gary North said: "The North was dragged into the war by Lincoln's decision to use military force to suppress secession. Lincoln had a messianic view of the Union. His rhetoric repeatedly revealed this commitment. Tariffs were the primary source of income for the Union, and he was determined to preserve the Union and the tariff as well. The two were an indissoluble unity in Lincoln's mind: Union and tariff. But his rhetoric invoked the Union, not the tariff. However, in his inaugural address of 4 March 1861, he made it clear that he was willing to fight to collect the tariff: "In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion–no using of force against, or among the people anywhere." - Abraham Lincoln, 4 March 1861 Two days earlier, President James Buchanan had signed a new law (The Morrill Tariff) that more than doubled the tariff rate -- 15% to 37% -- and extended it to many new items. A month later, South Carolina fired on Ft. Sumter. But South Carolina had already seceded by the time the new tariffs act was passed and signed into law. Lincoln went to war for two reasons: his commitment to the idea of the Union, which he repeated publicly over and over, and his commitment to collect the tariff, which he rarely mentioned in public. Most historians have neglected the tariff issue. The sovereign right to collect tariffs was no one's high moral ground, North or South. Neither side admitted that tariff-collection was Lincoln's immediate motivation to send U.S. Navy ships to Charleston. Both sides regarded this issue -- the issue that made that war a true civil war-- as too trivial for the purpose of mobilizing the troops to fight and die for." In his letter of 29 December 1860,to James Web, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, Lincoln wrote: “I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue.” Many Northern Newspapers were concerned about losing the tariff collection from the South and some advocated war because of it. New Haven Daily Register, 11 February 1861: "There never was a more ill-timed, injudicious and destructive measure proposed, (so far as northern interests are concerned,) than the Morrill tariff bill, now pending before Congress. It proposes to greatly increase the duties on all imported goods, and in many articles to carry up the increase to the prohibitory point. It also proposes at the same time to so change the present warehouse system of the custom houses, as to embarrass, obstruct, and nearly break up the facilities of trade now extended to the large importing cities of the North. The effect of this new policy, should it be carried through, would be to turn away a great part of the importing business from New York and Boston, and direct it to the Southern and gulf ports of the seceding States, which under the policy of the Southern Confederacy, now formed or forming, are to become free trade ports." In an editorial on November 20, 1860, Cleveland’s Daily National Democrat wrote: “The entire amount, in dollars and cents, of produce and of manufactured articles exported to foreign countries from the United States for the year ending June, 1858, was $293,758,279, of which amount the raw cotton exported alone amounted to $131,386,661. . . taking the estimate of the cotton used [in the] North . . . and adding it to the worth of the cotton sent abroad, and we have over one hundred and fifty-eight million dollars worth of cotton as the amount furnished by the South. Deduct from the exports the silver and gold and the foreign goods exported, and the cotton crop of the South alone exported exceeds the other entire export of the United States, and when to this we add the hemp and Naval stores, sugar, rice, and tobacco, produced alone in the Southern States, we have near two-thirds of the value entire of exports from the South. Let the States of the South separate, and the cotton, the rice, hemp, sugar and tobacco, now consumed in the Northern States must be purchased [from the] South, subject to a Tariff duty, greatly enhancing their cost. The cotton factories of New England now, by getting their raw cotton duty free, are enabled to contend with the English in the markets of their own Provinces, and in other parts of the world. A separation would take from us this advantage, and it would take from the vessels owned by the North the carrying trade of the South, now mostly monopolised by them.” On 10 December 1860, an editorial in the Daily Chicago Times said: “With her immense staples, [the South] has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two per cent. Of the whole . . . It is almost impossible to estimate the amount of money realized yearly out of the South by the North. It, beyond all question, amounts to hundreds of millions. By the present arrangement, also, we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually. The result would follow any tariff, for revenue or otherwise.” “But, ...Let us, for a moment, reverse the picture, and look dissolution in the face: At one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufacturers would be in utter ruin. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would alike follow. If protection be wholly withdrawn from our labor, it could not compete, with all the prejudices against it, with the labor of Europe. We should be driven from the market, and millions of our people would be compelled to go out of employment.” In its editorial of 15 January 1861, the Philadelphia Press wrote: “It is the enforcement of the revenue laws, NOT the coercion of the State, that is the question of the hour. If those laws cannot be enforced, the union is clearly gone.” On 12 March 1861, the New York Evening Post wrote, "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." The Boston Transcript wrote on 18 March 1861: ”now the 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 . . . 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.” An editorial in the Newark Daily Advertiser 2 April 1861, : “We apprehend, that the Cotton States, especially the chief instigator of the present troubles-- South Carolina,—have all along for years been preparing the way for the adoption of the policy of free trade.” The Pittsburgh Post 2 April 1861: “The argument is that by repealing the tariff, the commerce of the North may be enabled to compete with the commerce of the South upon equal footing. Repeal the tariff and place the commercial interest of the nations upon the same footing, and still the North would be the loser and not the gainer thereby.” As the North’s fear of the loss of its tariff subsidies grew, demands soon appeared for an invasion of the South. In its editorial of 17 May 1861, the Montpelier DailyGreen Mountain Freeman advocated war against the South: "Millions and tens of millions of dollars, due from Southern traders for goods of recent purchase, and now perhaps mostly on their shelves, or due on the most sacred of honorary obligations, have thus been, within the last three months, unblushingly repudiated, and irrecoverably lost to the mercantile classes of our cities....Let the North take her pay for all her wronged citizens in real estate, to be taken with less gentle hands than those of a levying Sheriff, and to be settled by her free people, who will convert that land of treason and barbarism into one of law, order and civil liberty. Let those who would carp at this suggestion as too agrarian in the treatment of the South, bear in mind that it would be but a mild form of a just retribution, whether applied to right the plundered Government, or reimburse its plundered individual citizens." New York Times 22 and 23 March 1861: "At once shut up every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States... a state of war would almost be preferable to the passive action the government has been following." On 18 March 1861 the Philadelphia Press advocated war by shutting down all Southern ports. Fort Sumter and the First Shot Lincoln instigated the war by manipulating the Confederacy to fire the first shot at Fort Sumter. Holding the Forts was important to Lincoln. Confidential Hon. F. P. Blair, Ser. Springfield, Ills. My dear Sir Dec. 21. 1860 Yours giving an account of an interview with Gen. Scott, is received, and for which I thank you. According to my present view, if the forts shall be given up before the inaugeration, the General must retake them afterwards. Yours truly A. LINCOLN Confidential Hon. E. B. Washburne Springfield, Ills. My dear Sir: Dec. 21. 1860 Last night I received your letter giving an account of your interview with Gen. Scott, and for which I thank you. Please present my respects to the General, and tell him, confidentially, I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either hold, or retake, the forts → , as the case may require, at, and after the inaugeration. Yours as ever A. LINCOLN In his letter of December 29, 1860,to James Web, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, Lincoln wrote: “I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue.” George Victor, author of The Pearl Harbor Myth said: "On becoming president in 1861, Abraham Lincoln’s highest priority was preserving the Union. To end the secession, he was willing to guarantee federal noninterference with slavery. He therefore pushed a constitutional amendment for noninterference through Congress, and three states quickly ratified it, but the secession continued. Lincoln was also willing – if necessary for preserving the Union – to fight a war. But he found his nation – and his own cabinet – against such a war. Even radical abolitionists opposed it. The Confederacy had taken over most federal installations in its states – installations surrendered on request by their administrators. Of those remaining in federal hands, Fort Sumter in South Carolina was exposed to attack and running out of supplies. Lincoln asked his cabinet’s advice on whether to supply the fort. With one exception, they opposed it because doing it risked war. Lincoln then sent the supplies, prompting an attack on the fort which became the incident he used to start the Civil War. If known at the time, Lincoln’s deliberate exposure of the fort might have caused serious political repercussions. Later historical accounts that imputed to him the intention of fostering an incident for war in order to preserve the Union have created little stir. His towering place in history is undamaged by them and he, too, is viewed as a president with a clear idea of his mission, effective in carrying it out." - George Victor, The Pearl Harbor Myth http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson8.html On 15 April 1861, two days after the battle, the New York Times wrote: “The first act in the drama which has terminated in the surrender of Fort Sumter, instead of being a defeat, is, when we come to look at its effects, a most brilliant success. It has thrown upon the Confederated States the entire responsibility of commencing the war. It has given us time to arm for offensive operations and to collect and to place before every Southern port a fleet sufficient to enforce the revenue laws . . .” On 13 April 1861, as the Battle of Fort Sumter was ending, Lincoln replied (citing his own First Inaugural Address) to the concerns of a committee from the Virginia Convention: “As I then, and therein, said, I now repeat: “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess, the property, and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but, beyond what is necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using of force against, or among the people anywhere” . . . But if, as now appears to be true, in pursuit of a purpose to drive the United States authority from these places, an unprovoked assault has been made upon Fort-Sumpter [sic], I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess, if I can, like places which had been seized before the Government was devolved upon me.” Lincoln wrote to Gustavus Fox on May 1, 1861: Washington, May 1st, 1861. Capt. G.V. Fox: My Dear Sir, I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground ; while, by an accident, for which you were in nowise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent, was, you were deprived of a war-vessel, with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprise. I most cheerfully and truthfully declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort have greatly heightened you in my estimation. For a daring and dangerous enterprise of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man of all my acquaintances whom I would select. You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. Very truly your friend, A. LINCOLN. How Europe Saw the War Many contemporaries in Europe correctly saw the war as a tariff war. “The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions are the general opinions of the English nation.” -London Times, 7 November 1861 The struggle of today is on the one side for empire and on the other side for independence. - Wigan Examiner (UK) May 1861 The Southerners are admired for everything but their slavery and that their independence may be speedily acknowledged by France and England is, we are convinced, the strong desire of the vast majority, not only in England, but throughout Europe. -Liverpool Daily Post, 11 March 1862 Fraser’s Magazine, in an article entitled “The American Quarrel” (April 1861), observed that, “Congress was rapidly passing a new tariff of the most strongest protectionism to Northern manufacturers! . . . The unseemliness of the measure has filled all England with astonishment. It is a new affront and wrong to the slave States, and raises a wall against the return of the seceders.” The 21 December 1861, issue of the Athenaeum commented: “As a rule, the great mass of the public expenditures were made from the North, not in the South, so that Southerners found themselves doubly taxed—taxed first for the benefit of the Northern manufacturers, and then, in the disbursement of the public funds, denied an equal participation in the benefits accruing therefrom.” Karl Marx 20 October 1861 “The war between the North and 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 Northern lust for sovereignty. Finally, even if justice is on the side of the North , does it not remain a vain endeavor to want to subjugate eight million Anglo-Saxons by force! Would not the separation of the South release the North from all connection with Negro slavery and assure to it, with its twenty million inhabitants and its vast territory, a higher, hitherto scarcely dreamt of, development? Accordingly must not the North welcome secession as a happy event, instead of wanting to put it down by a bloody and futile civil war? The war between North and South -- so runs the first excuse -- is a mere tariff war, a war between a protection system and a free trade system, and England naturally stands on the side of free trade. Shall the slave owner enjoy the fruits of slave labor in their entirety or shall he be cheated of a portion of these by the protectionists of the North? That is the question which is at issue in this war.” - Charles Dickens, American Disunion in All the Year Round, a British periodical 21 December 1861. "So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. 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 many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." A letter from Charles Dickens to the W. W. Cerjat on 16 March 1862: "I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs. Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens." "As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly provable by State papers that Washington, considered it no such thing – that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again – and that years ago, when the two Carolinas began to train their militia expressly for Secession, commissioners sent to treat with them and to represent the disastrous policy of such secession, never hinted it would be rebellion." http://rcocean.blogspot.com/2012/09/charles-dickens-on-civil-war-march-1862.html |
ECONOMIC CAUSES OF THE WAR
Books When in the Course of Human Events Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Blood Money: The Civil War and the Federal Reserve Northern Editorials on Secession Articles Lincoln's Tariff War (DiLorenzo) American Disunion (Dickens) The Morrill Tariff (Dickens) True Causes of the Uncivil War (Scruggs) Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff (Luthin) True Purpose of the Civil War (Dabney) The Material Decline of the South in the Union (Pollard) Gettysburg Address Decoded (North) Economic Causes of the War Tariff Origins of the War A New Look at the "Civil War" (Pearlston) Protective Tariffs: The Primary Cause of the Civil War Why Did Lincoln Invade the South? Just War (Rothbard) How Europeans Viewed the War Video Lincoln's Tariff War THE FIRST SHOT - FORT SUMTER Books A Century of War (ch 2 Lincoln and the First Shot) America's Caesar (ch 9 Economic Background of the War) The Truth of the War Conspiracy of 1861 Understanding Abe Lincoln's First Shot Strategy: Inciting Confederates to Fire First at Fort Sumter Lincoln’s Little War Lincoln and the First Shot Mr. Lincoln Goes to War Articles Lincoln and the First Shot of the War Fort Sumter and Coercion Lincoln Instigated the War Lincoln and Fort Sumter (Charles Ramsdell) Did Lincoln Want War? CHARLES DICKENS American Disunion The Morrill Tariff Letter to W. W. Cerjat on 16 March 1862 |