Cause for US Civil War: Taxes?
July 9, 2020 6:14 AM Subscribe
I saw a Confederacy apologist unloading a new-to-me argument for the reason the southern states seceded from the union: that they paid disproportionately more in taxes than northern states, and received little in return. There are a number of websites advancing this argument, but my quick perusal suggests they're all run by Confederacy apologists. I'm wondering if there's anything to this argument, and if not, what sources debunk it.
Honestly, the easiest thing to do is read the Articles of Secession written by the States themselves.
These are primary sources and are very accessible. Here is a large section of the Georgia text:
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer the practice of our Government for the first thirty years of its existence in complete refutation of the position that any such power is either necessary or proper to the execution of any other power in relation to the Territories. We offer the judgment of a large minority of the people of the North, amounting to more than one-third, who united with the unanimous voice of the South against this usurpation; and, finally, we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive that we have never surrendered this right. The conduct of our adversaries admonishes us that if we had surrendered it, it is time to resume it.
The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility.
The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.
The public law of civilized nations requires every State to restrain its citizens or subjects from committing acts injurious to the peace and security of any other State and from attempting to excite insurrection, or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquillity of their neighbors, and our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offenses against the laws of nations.
These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.
These are the same men who say the Union shall be preserved.
Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.
posted by unexpected at 6:36 AM on July 9, 2020 [28 favorites]
These are primary sources and are very accessible. Here is a large section of the Georgia text:
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer the practice of our Government for the first thirty years of its existence in complete refutation of the position that any such power is either necessary or proper to the execution of any other power in relation to the Territories. We offer the judgment of a large minority of the people of the North, amounting to more than one-third, who united with the unanimous voice of the South against this usurpation; and, finally, we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive that we have never surrendered this right. The conduct of our adversaries admonishes us that if we had surrendered it, it is time to resume it.
The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility.
The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.
The public law of civilized nations requires every State to restrain its citizens or subjects from committing acts injurious to the peace and security of any other State and from attempting to excite insurrection, or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquillity of their neighbors, and our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offenses against the laws of nations.
These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.
These are the same men who say the Union shall be preserved.
Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.
posted by unexpected at 6:36 AM on July 9, 2020 [28 favorites]
Taxes (and tariffs, and government revenue-raising in general) are not mentioned at all in the Declarations of the Immediate Causes of the Seceding States. The closest they get to objecting to taxes is objecting to specific federal expenditures. Georgia's Declaration goes on at some length about the federal expenditures on the support of the northern maritime industry. You could read into this a subtextual complaint that Southern taxes support Northern industry, but it's not laid out in those terms.
posted by jackbishop at 6:44 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by jackbishop at 6:44 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]
Best answer: This argument is a new one on me and seems disingenuous. Here's a badly skewed opinion article making the argument (poorly). I only include it because it contains links to some cherry-picked quotes emphasizing the tax question. Note that the Morrill Tariff it refers to is a bit of a red herring; at least, the Wikipedia article summary doesn't indicate that particular new tariff was particularly bad for the South.
Here's a good rebuttal to the argument that the Civil War was about taxes. It briefly debunks arguments that the South paid more taxes than the North, or received less benefit from them. Also points out that in this era taxes were almost entirely on imports; a very different kind of tax code than our production and income oriented tax system now.
The blanket rebuttal to any "the Civil War was not about slavery" argument is to point out that the most important, primary political debate in America since its founding was about slavery. So many of our politics in the first century was about balancing the power of the slave states and non-slave states.
posted by Nelson at 7:16 AM on July 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
Here's a good rebuttal to the argument that the Civil War was about taxes. It briefly debunks arguments that the South paid more taxes than the North, or received less benefit from them. Also points out that in this era taxes were almost entirely on imports; a very different kind of tax code than our production and income oriented tax system now.
The blanket rebuttal to any "the Civil War was not about slavery" argument is to point out that the most important, primary political debate in America since its founding was about slavery. So many of our politics in the first century was about balancing the power of the slave states and non-slave states.
posted by Nelson at 7:16 AM on July 9, 2020 [7 favorites]
In addition to the Articles of Secession mentioned above, there's also the Cornerstone Speech, by Jefferson Davis's vice-president.
posted by emelenjr at 8:17 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by emelenjr at 8:17 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Most states wrote and published a declaration of causes for seceding.
--------------------
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:25 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
--------------------
State and number of words before slavery is directly referenced in their declaration of causes State Words ------ ------- Georgia 50 Mississippi 49 South Carolina 67 Texas 186 Virginia 98 Source: The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:25 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]
Mod note: A few comments removed; the history of tax policy after the Civil War has all kind of racist aspects for sure, but this question is specifically about sources debunking a claim about tax agitation leading up to the Civil War and we need answers to stay focused on that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:00 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:00 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
It's an argument without evidence, especially -- as has been copiously noted previously -- since the treasonous states very helpfully documented their exact reasons for seceding for posterity.
It was slavery. It was entirely slavery.
I grew up in one of these awful states (Mississippi). American History classes there never even mention the existence of these documents. Why? Because if you mention them, then you have to read them. And if you read them, you can no longer teach -- as they did then, and almost certainly do now -- that the Civil War had a complex cocktail of causes, of which slavery was a minor portion.
(Yes, they really did teach this.)
I'm beginning to suspect this omission is far more widespread than I thought.
posted by uberchet at 11:03 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
It was slavery. It was entirely slavery.
I grew up in one of these awful states (Mississippi). American History classes there never even mention the existence of these documents. Why? Because if you mention them, then you have to read them. And if you read them, you can no longer teach -- as they did then, and almost certainly do now -- that the Civil War had a complex cocktail of causes, of which slavery was a minor portion.
(Yes, they really did teach this.)
I'm beginning to suspect this omission is far more widespread than I thought.
posted by uberchet at 11:03 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
I can't tell if you're intending to engage in dialogue with the apologist in question. But if so, I think the answer to any such claim is "Show me where the 'founding fathers' of the CSA talked about [taxes, states' rights, etc]". Because they talked a lot about slavery, and about their desire to stay rich (!), and their supposed fear of violence from freed slaves, and the one specific right of a state to be a slave state (and against another, inconvenient right of a state to declare any person within its borders free). They conspicuously didn't talk about any of the reasons apologists keep dredging up. The burden of proof should be to show that they did.
posted by trig at 11:21 AM on July 9, 2020
posted by trig at 11:21 AM on July 9, 2020
Maybe what this person was thinking of were the controversies around import tariffs in the 1820s and 1830s, to which Southern states objected. Caveat: I am not a historian and I’ve only gone to Wikipedia to refresh my memory, and not looked any deeper. But I dimly recall that my high school history classes in Virginia linked the tariffs to the Civil War (like uberchet, I was taught that there were many causes for the war, not just slavery).
posted by bluebird at 2:01 PM on July 9, 2020
posted by bluebird at 2:01 PM on July 9, 2020
This talk was recently posted on the Blue and gives clear reasons for secession with sources.
The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU's top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism.
The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
posted by a humble nudibranch at 4:37 PM on July 9, 2020
The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU's top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism.
The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
posted by a humble nudibranch at 4:37 PM on July 9, 2020
My twelfth grade history class tried to sell me this bunk, in all sincerity. If you are convinced that your correspondents are sincere then the above suggestions are excellent. But be careful not to play defense against people who are just trying to distract.
Never Play Defense
posted by SLC Mom at 11:42 PM on July 9, 2020
Never Play Defense
posted by SLC Mom at 11:42 PM on July 9, 2020
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During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina, hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported.
These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.
posted by Comrade_robot at 6:28 AM on July 9, 2020 [14 favorites]