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A man might be for or against the tariff, the bank, the land distribution, or internal improvements; he might be a Protestant or Catholic, a Christian or infidel; but if he was only actuated by an intense feeling of hostility to negro slavery, or, as that is interwoven with the social system of the South, if it were only known that he was anxious that the Federal Government should exercise all its powers for the destruction of the southern States, that man would have been accepted as a good member of the Black Republican party

Yeah, the noise about slavery was definitely higher than it was on tariffs.

"[The chief obstacle to reconciliation] is the absoulute impossibility of revolutionizing Northern opinion in relation to slavery. Without a change of heart, radical and thorough, all guarantees which might be offered are not worth the paper on which they are inscribed. As long as slavery is looked upon by the North with abhorrance; as long as the south is regarded as a mere slave-breding and slave-driving community; as long as false and pernicious theories are cherish respecting the inherant equality and rights of every human being, ther can be no satisfactory political union between the two sections." New Orleans Bee, December 14, 1860 Quoted in "The Causes of the Civil War" Keneth M. Stampp, ed.

Walt

Clingman's 1860 speech is worth looking at. Clingman says that secession may come if Republicans win the election. And he says that the essence of the Republican party was its opposition to slavery. And that slavery was "interwoven with the social system of the South." This is certainly grounds to condemn him today, but it was a common position at the time. In any event, it's a very clear statement of the link between secession and slavery that some deny here.

Clingman himself began his career as a Whig from a mountain district. So he was at least in theory not ill-disposed towards the party of higher tariffs early on in his career. In 1845 he lost an election because he was perceived as being insufficiently pro-slavery. As is very common in politics, he apparently resolved not to give his opponents cause to make that reproach against him, and became very proslavery and well disposed towards secession. In 1852 he left the declining Whig party and was eventually rewarded by the Democrats with a Senate seat.

Clingman's contributions to DeBow's Review (Coolies, Cuba and Emancipation, and North Carolina, Her Wealth, Resources and History reveal him to be a brutal biological racist and an imperialist. Clingman thought nothing of being published in the same volume with proslavery theorists like Henry Hughes and George Fitzhugh. It's natural that he would support tariff policies that would promote a slaveholding empire, and oppose those that hurt slaveholding interests, but he was certainly not an innocent freetrader devoid of interest in slavery expansion and racialism and provoked to rebellion by the Morrill Tariff.

If this speech of Clingman's is worth posting, his speech of 4 February 1861 is surely worth reading. It was reprinted and widely circulated as a pamphlet in the slave states.

Look, Mr. President, over the southern country, and ask yourself what would be the greatest injury that could be done to it? It would not be the establishment of a monarchy, or a military despotism, because we know that monarchies and military despotisms offen afford a high degree of security and civil liberty to those subject to them. The greatest possible injury would be to liberate the slaves, and leave them as free negroes in those communities. It is sometimes said that they are worth $4,000,000,000 in money. This I suppose, is true; but that is only a portion of the pecuniary loss, if we were deprived of them. In the North, for example, if the horses and working cattle were removed, in addition to their other property, such as vehicles and working utensils, the lands themselves would be rendered valueless to a great extent; and so, in fact, if you were to liberate the Slaves of the South, so great would be the loss that financial ruin would be inevitable. And yet, sir, this is not the greatest evil. It is that social destruction of our society by infusing into it a large free negro population that is most dreaded. [Emphasis added]

Clingman mentions tariffs later, but it's clear that they aren't what's most important to him. And his intial discussion of import duties is framed not in terms of Northern high tariff oppression of the South, as in terms of the impetus that a low Southern tariff will give to the secessionist movement. And while he certainly deplores the new tariff, he repeats his earlier assertion that anti-slavery was at the heart of the Republican party and that tariffs were only supported to secure the support of Pennsylvania.

When Clingman returns to the question, he groups and links his opposition to the tariffs with his opposition to railway subsidies, and the Homestead Act. All three are viewed as massive giveaways (as indeed was the refusal by Northern states to return fugitive slaves, according to Clingman), but neither tariffs nor railroad subsidies, nor the Homestead act were as dangerous in Clingman's mind as opposition to slavery. In this speech, they are all subsidiary matters. One can protest that the GOP didn't threaten slavery where it existed, but that was certainly Clingman's impression.

Of course if one wants to believe -- has to believe -- that tariffs were at the heart of everything one will dismiss the bulk of Clingman's speech and focus only on his references to the tariff. The intent seems to be to produced a bleached-out version of history. Clingman's racial theories and fears, his desire to use the government to determine the precise degree of White and Black blood of the mixed-race population, his hunger for annexation, his support of vigilantism in dealing with dissenters, his vaulting ambition, his appealing to the lowest prejudices in the electorate and the other unattractive characteristics that made Clingman what he was are all pushed to the side. What we're left with is a plaster bust or a puppet mouthing Econ 1 theories. But to do this sort of violence to history is to abandon all claims of accuracy or objectivity.