Consider the following:
1) By 1860 slavery was already going broke. The economic model that supported it was fading away due to agricultural mechanization. Economists I have read gave it another 10-20 years at best. As the country would find out after the war, sharecropping was a much better deal for the land owners.
2) After Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861, Congress passed and (Lincoln forwarded to the States for approval) the Corwin amendment which would have explicitly preserved slavery in the South. Forever. In writing. Passage of the amendment through Congress clearly shows the priority of Northern Congressional delegations to be preservation of the political status quo, not the abolition of slavery.
3) In his first inaugural address, Lincoln specifically pledged not to interfere with any state’s internal practices. This was directly understood at the time to include slavery where it was currently practiced. Lincoln’s only condition was that states not secede. Lincoln was against expansion, but accepted the continued practice of slavery in the South. By his own words, Lincoln indicated he wasn’t going to pursue slavery in the South. Secession and expansion are his primary concerns.
4) Federal government revenues at the time came almost completely from import/export tariffs. In practice, the bulk of this revenue was paid by the South and spent by business interests the North. ‘Big steel’ and ‘big railroad’ were making a killing from a legally captive tax base. Read contemporary commentaries regarding the Morrill Tariff of 1860 for more detail. Secession of the tax paying South would have literally bankrupted the federal government and ended the gravy train for Northern business cartels. Coincidentally, Lincoln was closely tied to northern steel and coal interests who directed benefited from federal spending.
5) Lincoln specifically provoked a military attack at Sumter so that he would have a casus belli. The Southern ‘attack’ on Sumter was the official cause of the Civil War, not slavery. The whole incident reads a bit like the Gulf of Tonkin. Without such an incident, Lincoln could not have mobilized the North for war. Read Lincoln’s letters and private correspondence regarding his in ability to create a proper atmosphere for war among the Northern population.
6) On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning that he would emancipate all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863. None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, so the order took effect. That order was the celebrated “Emancipation Proclamation”. Only it wasn’t really anything of the sort. It was in reality a ‘rejoin the family or suffer’ proclamation. Proving that after more than a year of bloodshed, Lincoln’s primary focus was preserving the union, not ending slavery.
7) Slavery was legal in the North throughput the war (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky). This is consistent with Lincoln’s promise not to meddle in the internal affairs of the States. Slavery would only be outlawed after the war via Constitutional amendment. More direct proof that the war itself had nothing to do with ending slavery.?
The ‘South’ and the ‘North’ consistently fought over two issues for decades prior to the Civil War – slavery and tariffs. As demonstrated above, the primary issue with slavery was its expansion into new territories, not its continued existence in the south. Whereas, tariffs were a constant point of contention throughout the South for decades, and had prompted two separate secession movements. The war was always about secession.
So what was the motivation to secede? The Corwin amendment, continued slavery in Union states, and Lincoln’s preliminary proclamation in 1862 clearly demonstrate two important facts. First, the primary concern of the North was preservation of the Union, not slavery. Second, the South could have preserved slavery without secession. Secession only provided one otherwise unattainable benefit – removal of import tariffs and federal trade policies. A tariff and trade policies that were stifling the Southern economy and lining the pockets of Northern industrialists. Despite all the rhetoric from both sides about slavery, it appears obvious this was a tax revolt, not a war to end slavery.
For a bit more detail…… Abraham Lincoln – Corporate Shill
