It is too bad that American History is no longer taught in this country, or maybe the old adage is true, “ the victors get to write the history.
There was no secession to avoid ending slavery. The southern states withdrew, legally, from the Union for the same reasons the Colonies went to war with England, taxes.
When Lincoln was elected President, he and the Congress immediately enacted the Morrill Tariff more than doubling the import tax rate from 20% to 47%. Though Southerners made up not 30% of the population, they paid 80% of all tariffs collected.
There weren’t even a handful of factories in the South at the time. Their’s was a agricultural economy. They sold cotton to England and France and bought the finished goods they required in return as the Industrial Revolution in Europe made these products much cheaper than those made here in Northern factories. No IR here for years to come.
After the South withdrew, the only way to collect those taxes was at the point of a bayonet, forcing the Southern States back into the Union.
The irony is that after the War was over, the Industrial Revolution did arrive at our shores and would have rendered the institution of slavery useless as the machines that were developed were much more effective, profitable, and much cheaper to maintain.
That was a major element but saying it was the reason for their leaving the Union is every bit as revisionist as the leftists who put it all down to class struggle or other angles they particularly like. Had slavery not been an issue for the elites in the South there would have been no Civil War. The Confederacy was not an 1860s TEA party any more than Jim Crow laws were just minor regulations.
have a nice day
I'm curious where you get this number.
Tariffs are essentially a sales tax. They are paid by the importer, who passes them on down the chain, where they are eventually paid by the consumer.
Do you seriously contend the South consumed 80% of imported goods on which tariffs were paid? If so, where did you get the number?
Gee, when I took AP American History, we read the Georgia Ordinance of Secession, which begins: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property...
Nothing about taxes. The whole thing is about "that property".
Now, I am more sympathetic than many to the enormous difficulties which arose for our Southern brethren out of their cohabitation with a large and generally hostile population of African-descended persons. Certainly we in the North, in the methods we chose to ameliorate the difficulty of living with a much smaller population of African-descended persons did not distinguish ourselves.
I think the Great Emancipator, or Great Constitution Destroyer (as you will), said it best: "One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war..."
"That property" was the problem. Of that, there can be no doubt.
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Feel free to read the entire document. When you find the sentence that mentions taxes, let me know.