Posted on 02/02/2013 5:07:52 AM PST by iowamark
The same as saying Hooray for Bill Ayres.
Total BS and even Robert E. Lee would have called you on that.
Take your revisionism somewhere where there are people stupid enough to buy it.
“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.......... 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.” Slavery where it existed was OK. Not paying duties and imposts not so much.
There wasn't anything the Republicans could do about slavery in the slave states, and trying to do anything about it would have split the country.
What Lincoln and the Republicans were concerned about was the spread of slavery -- and the break-up of the union. Giving guarantees to slaveowners in the slave states if it would preserve the union was an acceptable policy for them.
How was the federal government's presence felt in 1860? How did most people interact with it? The mails, the courts, the customhouses, maybe the land offices in the West.
Maintaining forts, delivering the mails, collecting import taxes were ways that the federal government could maintain that the union was intact, and work or wait to resolve the situation. So it's not surprising that the collection of import duties, like the delivery of the mails was mentioned in Lincoln's inaugural address.
The idea that "it was all about tariffs" was something that developed after the war when it was clear that support for "slaveowners' rights" wasn't an appealing issue to most people.
But if you really want to say that the Civil War was all about money and power that would apply to both sides. Don't pretend that there weren't strong economic motivations on the secessionist side that were even less legitimate than what you ascribe to Lincoln and the unionists.
Lincoln implied the use of force/violence in his address not over the ‘spread’ of slavery but amongst other things the collection of those ‘duties and imports’. Tariffs had been an issue with many of the Southern states for decades. South Carolina threatened succession in 1832 not over slavery but tariffs. Tariffs were a powder keg with the South. Slavery was the fuse. As it appears opinions are fairly set on this subject, I will peacefully ‘secede’ from further comment.
The fire in the Union rear was not nearly as great as the one burning in the Confederate rear. And the means Lincoln used to fight his fire was not nearly as heavy-handed as the methods the Confederates used to suppress southern citizens.
Democrats, committing treason in support of race based slavery. Rather like Democrats supporting treason in support of communist slavery.
Okay, so I get the last word.
Slavery was the great issue of the 1850s. The country was up in arms over the expansion of slavery (and the threat to freedom it implied) and the spread of abolitionism (and the explicit threat to slavery it carried). Nobody was very excited about the tariff. Nobody was screaming about the tariff in 1860.
That doesn't mean most supporters of the union cared about slavery. They were concerned about the fate of the union. And it doesn't mean that all confederates cared only about slavery. Many of them only supported secession because of Lincoln's call for an army to keep the Deep South states (which largely did secede because of slavery) in the union.
But without slavery, there wouldn't have been a war. The tariff question was one that could have been resolved peacefully. By 1860. the slavery question couldn't. It was only after the war, after slavery became a dirty word that the myth that the war was fought over tariffs came into its own.
And Lincoln himself? This whole caricature of him obsessed by the tariff doesn't ring true. Tariffs were one way you knew which country you were in and where the border was, and the continued existence of the country within the existing borders under the existing laws was what mattered to him.
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