I know I’m late to the party on this thread, but I felt I needed to address some of the claims on this thread. It’s unfortunately still very common to hear Southern apologists argue against slavery as a cause for the war, as if that institution were somehow tangential or incidental to the conflict. This is absurdly revisionist. The most common refrain concerns the Morrill Tariff of 1861, which supposedly placed an untenable burden on the Southern economy and practically necessitated secession.
It should be noted that a tariff would not directly tax Southern exports of cotton, but rather the imports which the South purchased. So although a tariff would certainly be damaging to Southern agrarian interests (as any tariff is ultimately damaging to a market, although tariffs can be beneficial in developing industry in underdeveloped markets in semi-industrial societies, re: the U.S. Northeast in the 1860s or Japan in the 1880s/1960s), it's effect couldn't be considered enough to destroy the Southern lifestyle. What you would see is the South being forced by market pressures to purchase more expensive American manufactured goods rather than cheaper British goods, leading to Northern purchases of Southern cotton due to the increased demand (likely at cheaper prices than what Europeans would have paid). Furthermore, the Morrill Tariff was actually lower than the Tariffs passed by John Quincy Adams, an administration that, to my knowledge, the South both survived and remained within the Union. In fact, the quoted tariff of 40% was the ultimate rate on most dutiable goods, but that was an increase from 20%, not from 0%. Furthermore, the duties of the period prior to the Morrill Tariff were decidedly low by international standards. As to their effect on the South, it's far more complex than previously stated.
Imagine a textile mill in Pennsylvania that, due to a 40% tariff on British clothing imports vs. the prior 20% ($5 per unit, $6 per unit under the original tariff, 7$ under the Morrill Tariff), is now able to offer comparable clothing at, let's say, $6.50 per unit. Obviously, under the previous tariff, a Southerner saved $0.50 by purchasing from Britain. Under the Morrill Tariff, which leads to Northern goods becoming more competitive compared to British imports, the Southerners now paid a full 8.5% more for their clothing, and see their profit margins slashed. Furthermore, the British, losing a large market for their goods, are forced to cut imports of cotton as their factories shut down. The South, facing falling demand by the British and rising demand by Northern factories fueled by Southern purchases of their textiles, shifts its exports to the North. No longer facing competing demand from British factories, it's likely that cotton prices would fall moderately, since Southern demand for textiles would fall commensurate with the increased cost of purchase from Northern factories vs. British factories. Even in this case, demand would fall less than the 8.5% increase in price would suggest, since there is a certain amount of need for manufactured goods that would cause Southerners to simply change their buying habits. ie. A single Southerner might pay for $0.25 of the 0.50$ extra cost for a unit of textiles by purchasing less clothing, and another $0.25 by putting off those weekly bourbon purchases. This equals a net 4.25% decline in textile demand by the South. As a result, the true decline in Southern demand for textiles would be somewhat less than 8.5%, let alone 20% despite the 20% increase in tariffs and 8.5% increase in textile prices. The 8.5% price increase of my example is simply illustrative; we have no way of knowing the precise changes.
To take this example even further, a 4.25% decline in Southern demand for textiles would not likely lead to a corresponding 4.25% decrease in global demand. Northern manufacturers would likely see an increase in production over and above what a Southern shift to purchasing Northern textiles would suggest for a couple of reasons. First, domestic Northern demand for textiles would likely increase as a result of the increased wealth brought by Southern demand, raising demand for cotton. Second, as the primary beneficiaries of cheaper Southern cotton, Northern factories would become more competitive on the global market, thus leading to more textile exports and concurrently more demand for Southern cotton. Add to this that a decline in British textile production would have an effect on cotton production worldwide, rather than just the Southern United States, and the damage to Southern cotton production is ultimately far less the increase in tariffs.
To reiterate, the maximum potential effect of this tariff is a 20% decline in demand for Southern cotton exports. Naturally, such a decline would be quite destructive to Southern economic interests. Practically speaking however, Northern demand would supersede declining British demand for Southern cotton and Northern manufacturers would supersede British goods in Southern markets, so the decline in Southern exports would be decidedly less drastic. The real damage would likely be to the profit margins of the Plantation owners and, to a lesser extent, the purchasing power of average Southerners. Even then, the effect would be, at highest range of cost, around a 5% decline in demand for Southern cotton, quite possibly much less. In a society as dependent on the export of this one commodity, a 5% decline in gross sales would be a significant cost. It would not, however, be ruinous. Especially in light of prior tariffs being just as heavy, for a Southerner to seriously contemplate secession over a maximum of a 5% decline in net worth is stupid at best, clinically insane at worst. It would be the equivalent of seceding due to the repeal of George W. Bush's tax cuts (from 34% to 39% on the top income bracket).
Tariff issues aside, there was one issue that did seriously threaten the Southern way of life: Slavery. The entire Southern economy was built upon slavery. While fewer than 10% of whites owned slaves, the entire Southern economy revolved around the production of agricultural goods by slave labor. Even if Isaiah Northcutt, white laborer in Charleston, had never owned a slave in his life, he nonetheless saw his wages paid by Slave-owners, his clothes manufactured in exchange for cotton, and his public services financed by taxes raised from plantations. Furthermore, in the South there existed a hierarchy similar to Old World Europe: Plantation owners formed the aristocracy, white freeholders were the gentry, and black slaves were the peasants. No matter how bad your life was, at least you were white citizen. Such a social pact kept class warfare to a minimum, preventing the types of unrest seen in the factories of New England. Truly, slavery was such an integral part of the South that to eliminate it would be to effectively eliminate Southern Society itself.
The election of Abraham Lincoln, a decidedly moderate Republican but a Republican nonetheless, was a wakeup call to Southern elites. For the first time in decades the prospect of abolition seemed possible. Certainly Lincoln himself was no threat to abolish the institution. As has been stated, Congress held no authority over State policy on slavery. The states themselves were roughly evenly divided, with 15 Slave States and 18 Free States in 1860. To abolish Slavery would require a Constitutional Amendment, which itself requires a super-majority in both Houses of Congress, or a 2/3rds vote. In a 66-member Senate, this meant 44 members had to support abolition. With only 36 Senators from Free States, this was impossible.
In addition the two Senators per state leading to the gridlock in the Senate over slavery, the Constitution provided the South with a unique advantage in the House as well, at least initially. Slaves themselves counted as 3/5ths of a Citizen for purposes of re-districting. In effect, this gave white voters in the South extra votes when compared to Northern voters. Prior to the Civil War, roughly one in three people in the South were slaves. This meant that a white voter in the South received the equivalent of 1.3 votes while, obviously, black slaves received none. This meant that the interests of the white majority (and in the case of South Carolina, the white minority), roughly 6 million strong in 1850, punched above their weight at roughly 7.8 million votes.
All of this was, of course, by design. The so-called “3/5th Compromise” was formulated during the framing of the Constitution. The Senate, which has 2 Senators from each state, is unaffected by population. However, the House of Representatives is determined by the population of each state. So, those colonies with many slaves, like Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, felt that their entire population, including slaves, should get representation. Since although these colonies had large populations, they had comparatively smaller WHITE populations, it was imperative that they count slaves to balance the large, predominantly white populations in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Naturally, this was vehemently opposed by both large population states with few slaves and the lightly populated New England colonies already dwarfed by the Southern giants, with or without slaves. Every colony sought to maximize it’s representation in the future government, and for slave-owning states, this was an important way to do just that, both on an individual basis by essentially appropriating their slave populations’ votes, and on the state level.
Due to the immense population of the Southern colonies, as well as the economic might of Virginia, the United States could not survive without the cooperation of the South. Likewise, New England, Massachusetts especially, was already becoming a center of industry, including the incredibly important shipbuilding industry. Neither side could afford to completely alienate the other. As a result, the framers finally agreed that each slave would count toward 3/5ths of a vote, neither providing the South with their entire slave population nor completely ignoring it.
This compromise had two major implications. First, it meant that representation of Southern slaveholders and other slave-dependent interests in the House of Representatives was worth roughly 30% more than their population would indicate. Especially in the early years of the republic, when the Southern states’ had a larger white population than the North as well as having 3/5ths of their slave population counting toward their House delegations, this was immensely important. Second, it meant that the Free States needed a smaller population to achieve the same representation as the Slave States. For example, if Virginia had 1 million people, but 250,000 were slaves, and Pennsylvania had 950,000 people, A Virginian voter would have 1.2 votes per Pennsylvanian voter, but Pennsylvanian votes would outnumber Virginian votes by 50,000 despite Virginia’s larger overall population. In essence, the South had gained extra voting power for their individual citizens at the expense of less power overall. Again, this did not become a serious issue until the population of the Northern states caught up and surpassed that of the Southern states.
By 1860, however, the Northern states had not only caught up to the Southern states in population, but surpassed them. In 1850, Free States accounted for 60% of the U.S. population. In 1860 they accounted for an even greater share. As the North Industrialized, and its share of U.S. exports eventually came to overtake the South’s, immigrants, including poor Southerners, flocked to the booming Northern economy. The South, by contrast, stagnated in relation to the North. This was abundantly clear to the leading men of the time, who recognized that were the North to control both the House and Senate, slavery as an institution would be in grave jeopardy. This led Southern politicians to adopt a strategy focused on expansion into the frontier, thereby increasing the number of Slave States relative to Free States and securing the Senate. It was this strategy which led to the many conflicts from the 1830s to the 1850s over expansion, leading ultimately to the Missouri compromise and a rigid, geographical boundary for slavery. So long as the Southern states had a relatively similar population to the Free states, and the number Slave vs. Free states stayed roughly the same, the Presidency and Congress were free from the threat of abolition.
Let me take this opportunity to point out that the North was absolutely opposed to slavery, especially its expansion. This is not to say Northern politicians were principled abolitionists, quite the contrary, they could care less about the plight of the black slaves. Rather, the institution of slavery itself was detrimental to both Northern power and the Northern economy. In fact, Free States still resented the extra power afforded to individual citizens by the 3/5ths compromise, seeing it as an affront to democracy (again, not because of the disenfranchised African-Americans, but because their own citizens had less of a vote). Furthermore, slave labor competed directly with the homesteaders in the Midwest, where the industrialized scale of a Plantation, fueled by the cheapest of labor, could easily outcompete cash croppers in Ohio and Indiana. In addition, the constant clamoring by Southern politicians for more territory grated on the New England capitalists for whom war was bad for business (The Mexican-American War was started largely due to pressure from Southern politicians, eager to annex the huge state of Texas, thereby adding another Slave State. The treaty of annexation even provides for breaking Texas into smaller units, a provision intended to add slave states if necessary).
It was within this context that the Republican Party was founded from remnants of the old Northern Whigs and the defunct Free Soil party. While a large portion of the Republican platform included federal funding of internal infrastructure through high tariffs, a position carried over from the Whigs, they were also the first major party to fervently oppose the expansion of slavery into the territories. The Whigs were split on the issue, as were the Democrats, dependent on whether they were Northern or Southern. The Free Soil party was never viable, having no discernable platform outside of this one issue. However, the Republicans were a different animal, absorbing the Whigs with their support of an activist Federal government (ironically), and the Free Soil party with their opposition to Slave Power. For Southerners, the Republicans would be a disaster. Not only would they raise tariffs, as shown a powerful nuisance, but if the Republicans were elected and prevented the expansion of new Slave States it would only be a matter of time before abolition received a majority in both houses of Congress. Southern slaveholders rightly feared that without the explicit guarantees in place under Democratic administrations, like in Kansas, Northern abolitionists would flood the Border States and overturn slavery. Eventually, the Deep South would exist as little more than a rump, unable to stop the tide of abolition.
The election of 1860 was the wakeup call for the South. Abraham Lincoln won a majority of electoral votes, yet received a mere 40% of the vote. Furthermore, not a single Slave State voted for Lincoln. If things were this bad already, it could only get worse in future elections. Before Lincoln had even taken office, secession had begun.
Considering the ultimately limited effect of tariffs on the Southern economy and the fact that the South seceded prior to Republicans even instituting such a tariff (especially considering that had the South not seceded, it’s unlikely the Morrill Tariff would have even passed), it’s unreasonable to consider this single act as the cause of secession. Far more likely is the Southern realization that their ability to control congress has essentially disappeared. By 1860, and Lincoln’s election, it had become abundantly clear that the North had grown too influential and it was merely a matter of time before the votes for abolition would materialize. Even more worrying, every year the South waited was another year the North expanded its lead over the South. If ever there was a time to leave, it was 1861. By this point, the Southern economy, so inextricably dependent on slave labor, could not afford abolition. Federal economic policy, under northern influence destined to favor a national bank, industry, tariffs, federal infrastructural investment, and free movement of labor, was diametrically opposed to the interests of a slave-holding aristocracy. The same philosophical battles fought between European Aristocrats and the Bourgeoisie in the early 19th Century found themselves playing out again in 1861.
Southern leaders were smart. They knew exactly what industrialization meant for their society. It wasn’t any single bill that lit a spark, but rather a fundamental threat to the foundation of the Southern economy: slavery. If slavery were to survive, then ties to the North would have to be severed. They could see the trends just as we could. To say that slavery did not cause the Civil War is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. Slavery wasn’t just a cause, it was THE cause. Every other issue leading to the Civil War, tariff policies, infrastructure investments, territorial expansion, etc… was ultimately driven by Southern society’s dependence on and perpetuation of slavery. This is not to say that the North were saints. The Northern industrialists supported union because it served their purposes, not because it served those of African-Americans’. However, any defense of the South and it’s actions during this time period is an implicit defense of the institution of slavery.
