There is a TV spot discussing the causes of the Civil War recently introduced in some localities. The Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans created the ad and it is one of twelve running. Thus far the only place I’ve seen a web copy of the ad is on Facebook (here). While those on Facebook can view this, those non-socializing members of the internet community might have trouble getting there. (If you know of a copy of it on YouTube or other site, please let me know).
The ad takes the well-worn path proclaiming the Civil War was about tariffs. No surprise there. So what, you say, that’s been debunked already right? The argument advanced in the ad is built upon the premise that the South (with about 25% of the population) paid 87% of the taxes… er… tariffs before the Civil War. The twist here is not that southern leaders were hot over the tariffs, but that southerners were tired of paying an unfair share of taxes, and thus rebelled.
Something just doesn’t sound right there. Think about the nature of tariff collection. Only imports are subject to tariffs, not exports. So don’t go thinking that was cotton money. And agents collect those tariffs at the port of entry. So where did imports enter the US during those antibellum years? No surprise – New York.
The statistics pushed by the New York Chamber of Commerce (so take it with a grain of salt) claim two-thirds of all goods entering the US came through Gotham :
Yes, if you go with those figures then the port of New York actually ran a trade deficit – receiving more than it sent out – in terms of dollars. As for the actual collection of tariffs, the Chamber offered these stats:
So 73% of all goods on which tariffs were collected in 1858-59 passed through New York.
Sure, I’d rather have an actual Treasury statement indicating this breakdown. So if you are aware of concrete data, not filtered through the New York businessmen, I’m all ears. Still this matches with cited figures that New York handled about 70% of the nation’s overseas trade in 1860 (followed distantly by Boston then New Orleans). So if you really want to discuss where the customs officials collected the tariff money, New York was the goose laying the golden egg.
The New York Chamber also provided a lengthy list of items which processed through the port “duty free” and the value of those items on which duties were collected. Of note, coffee and tea were tax exempt. In terms of dollar value, the tariff controlled items that passed through New York in the largest volume was wool cloth products – to the tune of $29 million worth of it. Other tariff controlled commodities of note included silk cloth at $22 million, brown sugar at $19 million, whole cotton cloth at $13 million, rawhide and skins at $8.5 million, flax cloth at $8 million, tobacco at $3.5 million, and various forms of raw iron at about $3.5 million total. In short, eight products make up over half of the taxable imports.
Now we all know that the enterprising folks who imported those goods didn’t just eat the cost of the tariff. They passed along that cost to the consumer as they do today. But who was the consumer? Who wore more wool products – the people of Charleston, South Carolina or Chicago, Illinois? What about consumption of brown sugar, were southerners more inclined to have a sweet tooth? And are we to believe only ladies in Natchez favored silk lace?
Further, some of the tariff targets actually helped the southerners. Certainly a tariff on tobacco appeared favorable to southern farmers. And, while I don’t know for sure, I suppose J.R. Anderson (Tredegar Foundry) and Junius L. Archer (Bellona Foundry) in Richmond preferred a tariff on English pig and railroad iron.
Railroad iron… oh, all those improvements the tariff money paid for? I would point out that a third or so of the Federal budget in 1860 went to the War and Navy Departments. What were those departments spending money on? Garrison troops (of which a substantial portion were in the south and west), navy yard maintenance, and seacoast fort improvements. And yes Fort Sumter was among those improvements. I’ll save detailed analysis for another day, as it deserves close examination.
The line that “the south paid 87% of the taxes” attempts to redirect the audience from the central issue of slavery. But I also think the the line about unfair taxation aims to strike a cord with the current mood of the country. So is the SCV looking to sip some of that duty free tea here?
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Mike Simons
March 21, 2011
http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/gettkidz/cause.htm
They list Tariffs as the first cause. While the snap shot stats posted here may be accurate. Over all history shows the South to being opposed to tafiffs on finished goods and products.
Craig Swain
March 21, 2011
All I’m saying here is that the notion that the South paid an unfair amount of taxes is not well grounded in facts. With all due respect to the Gettysburg Kidz page…. well wait… that might explain the brown sugar.
Andy Hall
March 21, 2011
Craig, you may want to have a look at the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting a report from the Register of the Treasury, of the commerce and navigation of the United States for the year ending June 30, 1858. It has extensively detailed tables; I didn’t see any that explicitly enumerated dtuies collected, but it does show value of imports of specific commodities, whether duty-free or taxed, in each Treasury district. Table 14 may be useful as well, giving the total value of imports and exports for each state and territory.
Craig Swain
March 21, 2011
Thanks Andy. At first glance, the values in Table 14 appear to match those given by the NYC CoC for 1858.
Susan Evelyn McDowell Cole
March 21, 2011
Interesting article. Makes you wonder why a well trained civil engineer like General Irvin McDowell was investigating cotton frauds after Bull Run. When McDowell was finally sent to command the Army of the Pacific, he started building dams, roads, railroads, mines, forts and towns.
James F. Epperson
March 21, 2011
There is a table breaking down tariff collection via port of entry in Wise’s book on blockade running. I’m working on an article debunking this “tariffs as a cause” nonsense. You do have to understand that if a dutiable widget was imported into NY, but bought by someone in the South, then the tariff would be collected *in* NY, but paid *by* the Southerner.
Craig Swain
March 21, 2011
Indeed, as I said the importer would certainly pass the cost of the tariff on to the consumer. But also I pointed out that still does not mean southerners held an inordinate amount of the burden. If someone can indicate that the bulk of the wool, brown sugar, cotton cloth, silk, flax cloth, and tobacco were shipped to southern markets, I might be convinced.
Just seems to me that nature of consumption would bring those goods to both northern and southern markets – perhaps with greater volume going to the greater density of population.
Mike Simons
March 31, 2011
Yep they did what we do today pass the cost on the consumer.
James F. Epperson
March 21, 2011
I don’t think there is any question most of the tariff was paid by Northerners. There are some economic arguments that can be made to argue that the tariff was to some extent a form of regional wealth transfer, but the tariff was paid by consumers, and there were a lot more consumers in the North than in the South.
James F. Epperson
March 22, 2011
One of the most authoritative (if old—my PDF is from the 1924 edition) sources on this subject is Russel’s “Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840-1861.” On page 107, he writes (after a discussion on attempts to shift more of the import traffic to Southern ports): “There were difficulties to be overcome before direct importations could be established other than deficiency of capital and credit, the long credit system, or the absence of a thoroughly Southern mercantile class. One lay in the comparatively small amounts of foreign goods consumed in the South.”
Bill Newcomer
March 22, 2011
A while back I did an on-line lookup for the acts of succession of the several Confederate states. I did not find them all but the ones I did find were illuminating. At that time I was more intrested in how the acts of succession referenced slavery and as such do not recall mention of taxes or tariffs… Tariffs or not, the acts clearly referenced maintaining the institution of slavery…
How many of us, Union or Confederate, have actually read the various acts of succession… In my mind it is those acts that tell us what succsession and the war was really about…
Robert Moore
March 23, 2011
Bill, Yes, but reading the secession ordinances isn’t the “explain-all” when trying to assess reasons for everyone in the South. You really have to consider who wrote these ordinances and who they were written for. In my opinion, they don’t hold the interests of the common Southern man.
Craig Swain
March 23, 2011
And that also moves into the fuzzy line between “causes” and “motivations.” I would submit that the reasons given by a collective group (i.e. a state) for secession could differ greatly from the individual’s motivations for serving in the armed forces or the leadership of that secession movement.
Russ
August 24, 2012
I think one of the most interestiing questions is what did motivate the common man.
It is difficult to explain why a young man on the farm in the south, who owned no slaves would risk his life and his families future for slavery. I suspect that the reasons were many and not as lofty as some would have us believe.
Bryant Henderson
October 17, 2015
Respectfully, Mr. Newcomer, would the word you are intending to use be not “succession,” but “secession?”
succession – suc-ces-sion [suh k-sesh-uh n] – noun
1. the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in the course of events: many troubles in succession.
2. a number of persons or things following one another in order or sequence.
3. the right, act, or process, by which one person succeeds to the office, rank, estate, or the like, of another.
4. the order or line of those entitled to succeed one another.
5. the descent or transmission of a throne, dignity, estate, or the like.
***************************************************
secession – se-ces-sion [si-sesh-uh n] – noun
1. an act or instance of seceding.
2. (often initial capital letter) U.S. History. the withdrawal from the Union of 11 Southern states in the period 1860–61, which brought on the Civil War.
James F. Epperson
March 22, 2011
The ordinances of secession, plus much else, are all on my website:
http://www.civilwarcauses.org
Craig Swain
March 23, 2011
Lots of good information there, James.
KSterling
June 3, 2015
It matters little WHERE the ship landed. What mattered was who ordered the goods. The import tariff was ultimately paid by the entity that ordered the goods, not by the port where the ship landed. Good Lord, what kind of logic is that? The fact is, the South DID pay nearly 90% of the tariffs, and that’s why, if you study history at all, you’ll find that Southerners always opposed high tariffs. If they weren’t the ones paying them, then why would they oppose them? And Northerners were always supporting high tariffs – thus the Tariff of Abominations, so fiercely opposed by the South. Northern industries, meanwhile, were protected from paying tariffs, or indeed taxes of any kind, and received in essence government grants, paid for with monies collected from tariffs imposed on Southerners. It’s pretty easy to build industry when you get free money. That’s what eventually led Southerners to revolt. It’s not some fiction created post-war to excuse the South.
If you really want to learn some tariff history, start here: http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm
Thomas Scovill
July 13, 2015
The Walker Tariff of 1846 was the product of a southern President Polk, his Mississippi Secretary of the Treasury, and a Democrat Congress. Its rates were much lower than those at the time of the Nullification crisis. And the 1857 Tariff lowered rates even more. It was also the product of Democrats.
Naperdude05
August 22, 2015
“The fact is, the South DID pay nearly 90% of the tariffs, and that’s why, if you study history at all, you’ll find that Southerners always opposed high tariffs.”
It’s not a fact unless it can be proven.