WEBVTT NOTE Lincoln's Tariff War 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.500 And I'm amazed to see so many of you up on Saturday morning here to listen to a talk on Lincoln's terraform. 2 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:15.760 I brushed on this last night, very briefly, when I talked about what I called three American tax revolutions, 3 00:00:15.760 --> 00:00:25.760 1776, 1861, and 1913, but I'm going to talk a lot more now about the 1861 tax revolution, as I call it. 4 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:30.760 And it didn't really begin in 1861, it began in 1824. 5 00:00:30.760 --> 00:00:34.400 And what happened in 1824? 6 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:38.060 Well, as far as tariff history goes in the United States, 7 00:00:38.060 --> 00:00:41.760 and of course, tariffs are taxes on imports, on imported goods. 8 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:45.400 In 1816, there was a tariff increase, 9 00:00:45.400 --> 00:00:48.360 and even John C. Calhoun, who was a free trader 10 00:00:48.360 --> 00:00:49.800 for the rest of his life, 11 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:54.360 wasn't supported a tariff increase in 1816. 12 00:00:54.360 --> 00:01:01.960 And the reason was that earlier, the British had been confiscating American ships and when 13 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:06.840 Thomas Jefferson was president, Jefferson responded to the confiscation of American 14 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:13.360 ships and sailors by imposing a trade embargo. 15 00:01:13.360 --> 00:01:19.920 The only thing he could think of doing, apparently, was to not allow for trade to happen because 16 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.960 the British were confiscating our ships. 17 00:01:22.960 --> 00:01:28.040 And so James Madison enforced this when he became president as well. 18 00:01:28.040 --> 00:01:32.840 And this was economically devastating to the New England shipping industry. 19 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:37.440 And so to compensate the New England shipping industry for the damage the government had 20 00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:43.640 created with the embargo, they supported a moderate tariff in 1816. 21 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:46.880 And a lot of Calhoun's enemies have said, oh, he's a hypocrite. 22 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:49.520 He really wasn't a free trader. 23 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:50.520 Look at this. 24 00:01:50.520 --> 00:01:51.520 He supported his tariff. 25 00:01:51.520 --> 00:01:55.460 But they're unaware of the reason for his support of this early tariff. 26 00:01:55.460 --> 00:01:57.600 It wasn't because he was a protectionist. 27 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:04.020 It was because he and the others felt responsible for all the economic damage to the New England 28 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:08.800 shipping industry that their earlier, the embargo had created and Calhoun had supported 29 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:10.480 the embargo. 30 00:02:10.480 --> 00:02:18.260 But then in 1824, a genuine protectionist tariff was enacted and at this time Henry 31 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:28.260 Henry Clay was the leader of the protectionist movement as he would be for the rest of his life until he died in 1852. 32 00:02:28.260 --> 00:02:37.260 And Clay, in fact, was the champion of a combination of economic policies that he labeled the American system, 33 00:02:37.260 --> 00:02:45.260 which is a very clever labeling because the implication is if you oppose my policy proposals, you're un-American and unpatriotic. 34 00:02:45.260 --> 00:02:48.260 You know, you're in favor of the un-American system if you're against me. 35 00:02:48.260 --> 00:03:00.260 And the so-called American system had three components, protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare for road-building companies and canal-building companies, and a national bank. 36 00:03:00.260 --> 00:03:12.260 That was it. And Abraham Lincoln, by the way, would later speak very eloquently about how Henry Clay was the fount of all his ideas with regard to politics. 37 00:03:12.260 --> 00:03:42.260 Lincoln was a Whig, as was Clay, and Lincoln spent pretty much his 28-year on-and-off political career before becoming president, championing the American system, protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, he was a highly paid railroad lawyer, by the way, for those of you who haven't really read up on it, and national banking, he was also a big defender of national banking. But in 1824, this all came into being, this battle that turned into a battle between the 38 00:03:42.260 --> 00:03:48.420 protectionists mostly of the north and the free traders primarily of the south. 39 00:03:48.420 --> 00:03:53.060 There were northern free traders, especially in New York City, and there were southern 40 00:03:53.060 --> 00:03:59.580 protectionists who, you know, certain farmer, hemp farmers, for example, who wanted tariffs 41 00:03:59.580 --> 00:04:00.620 on hemp. 42 00:04:00.620 --> 00:04:06.300 But overall, the overwhelming majority of protectionists were from the northern states 43 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:10.960 because that's where manufacturing was getting its start and it was their manufactured goods 44 00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:16.840 that were being protected from competition from abroad by these tariffs, and the overwhelming 45 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:22.440 opposition came from the South, which was agricultural, and they didn't see any benefit 46 00:04:22.440 --> 00:04:24.480 really to this. 47 00:04:24.480 --> 00:04:28.520 And so that's what happened. 48 00:04:28.520 --> 00:04:36.600 And by 1828, the protectionists had the higher hand, and they raised tariffs to almost 50%. 49 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:45.000 In the south, called this tariff of 1828, the tariff of abominations, and there's a 50 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:50.720 book on it, a very good book on it by a man named Chauncey Boucher, B-O-U-C-H-E-R, and 51 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:55.640 the book is called The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, and what eventually happened 52 00:04:55.640 --> 00:05:00.320 was South Carolina just announced to the federal government that they were not going to collect 53 00:05:00.320 --> 00:05:04.840 the tariff at Charleston Harbor, and so there was a big confrontation. 54 00:05:04.840 --> 00:05:11.040 And here's what Chauncey Boucher said about this, about this whole episode, the 1824 to 55 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:16.480 1828 protectionist episode. He said this, At the session of the South Carolina Legislature, 56 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:22.440 which convened in November of 1825, Judge William Smith introduced a set of anti-bank, 57 00:05:22.440 --> 00:05:28.320 that is anti-national bank, central bank, anti-internal improvement, internal improvement 58 00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:34.240 was a euphemism for corporate welfare, as we call it today, and anti-tariff resolutions. 59 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:39.680 They were adopted before this session, there had appeared in South Carolina scattered evidence 60 00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:44.520 of the opposition to nationalism, but this episode may be said to mark the beginning 61 00:05:44.520 --> 00:05:50.160 of the formidable anti-nationalist movement in the state, and not only in that state, 62 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:56.660 but in the South in general, and most of you are probably familiar with the early American 63 00:05:56.660 --> 00:06:03.120 history of being a conflict between the Jeffersonians on the one hand, the states right Jeffersonians, 64 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:08.960 They were also the free trade Jeffersonians, the anti-bank Jeffersonians, and anti-internal 65 00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:15.360 improvements Jeffersonians, and the Hamiltonians who were in favor of just the opposite, protectionist 66 00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:21.440 tariffs, central banking, and taxpayer subsidies for corporations to build roads and canals 67 00:06:21.440 --> 00:06:22.560 and things. 68 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:27.840 And so the conflict between the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians manifested itself for 69 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:31.680 decades in the context of these economic disputes. 70 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:33.680 It wasn't just a philosophical dispute. 71 00:06:33.680 --> 00:06:38.720 This is how the philosophical dispute manifested itself in real policy. 72 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:44.200 And these resolutions condemned what they called usurpations. 73 00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:49.240 And they said this, the tariff was denounced as a system of robbery and plunder, destructive 74 00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:53.480 to the southern states. 75 00:06:53.480 --> 00:07:07.120 And then by 1828, as I said, the South Carolina legislature passed a nullification law that 76 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:13.120 essentially said we are not going to enforce this tariff, this 50% tariff. 77 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:14.600 And what did that say? 78 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:21.600 It said that the Tariff Acts of 1828 is unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and 79 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:30.600 and violates the true meaning and intent thereof, and therefore are null, void and no law, nor binding upon this state its officers or citizens. 80 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:39.600 And so back in those days you had a state taking what was at the time known as the Jeffersonian dictum of nullification. 81 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:46.600 Jefferson was the author of this idea of nullification through something called the Kentucky Resolve of 1798. 82 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:50.600 And this was a response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. 83 00:07:50.600 --> 00:07:56.400 And when President John Adams was in office, and they passed the Alien and Sedition Act, 84 00:07:56.400 --> 00:08:02.600 the Sedition Act in particular, made it illegal essentially to criticize the government. 85 00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:10.900 And the Sedition Act was enacted into law in such a way that it would become no longer 86 00:08:10.900 --> 00:08:14.180 be law on the day John Adams left office. 87 00:08:14.180 --> 00:08:18.940 So it was never to apply to the Federalists like John Adams, it was only to apply to 88 00:08:18.940 --> 00:08:22.940 at Jefferson's party, and the only people who were ever prosecuted under the Sedition 89 00:08:22.940 --> 00:08:29.180 Act were members of Jefferson's party. There were no Federalists that were ever prosecuted. 90 00:08:29.180 --> 00:08:33.940 And this included newspaper people, politicians, and so forth. So Jefferson responded with 91 00:08:33.940 --> 00:08:42.060 this Kentucky Resolve of 1798 that essentially said that we, the people of the states, have 92 00:08:42.060 --> 00:09:03.060 have every much a right to decide on issues of constitutionality as any other branch of government, as the Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the executive branch, and so we don't think this law, the Sedition Act, is constitutional, and we don't plan on obeying it. 93 00:09:03.060 --> 00:09:09.700 So what South Carolina did in 1828 was taken strictly out of the Jeffersonian book with 94 00:09:09.700 --> 00:09:11.420 regard to nullification. 95 00:09:11.420 --> 00:09:16.140 And this is an interesting, it's hard to imagine that the citizens of the state would do something 96 00:09:16.140 --> 00:09:17.140 like this today. 97 00:09:17.140 --> 00:09:25.000 But what this nullification law authorized importers, remember this is a 50% tax on imports, 98 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:30.580 it authorized importers themselves to recover any goods that had been impounded by federal 99 00:09:30.580 --> 00:09:35.740 of Tariff Collectors, sheriffs were instructed to seize the private property of the tariff 100 00:09:35.740 --> 00:09:41.660 collectors. So if you're a tariff collector, I think it sees your property, everything 101 00:09:41.660 --> 00:09:48.460 you personally own, and award that property to the importers until the seized imported 102 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:53.620 goods were recovered by the importers. That's an incentive for you. Any duties that were 103 00:09:53.620 --> 00:09:58.940 paid were to be reimbursed with interest to the importers. Anyone arrested for failure 104 00:09:58.940 --> 00:10:04.940 Failure to pay the tariff was to be immediately liberated from jail, no property titles were 105 00:10:04.940 --> 00:10:09.620 recognized for property sold in order to pay the tariff, tariff collectors and all their 106 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:15.820 assistants were subject to fines and imprisonment for any attempt to resist the nullification 107 00:10:15.820 --> 00:10:22.460 law. This is how to treat federal bureaucrats, in my view. And no public jail in the state 108 00:10:22.460 --> 00:10:27.560 could be used to imprison anyone for failure to pay the tariff. And here's the finally, 109 00:10:27.560 --> 00:10:39.560 And my favorite part of the law, a fund of $200,000 was made available to the governor of South Carolina to purchase guns if necessary to enforce the nullification law to the state militia. 110 00:10:39.560 --> 00:10:44.560 So they were serious about not collecting this tax. 111 00:10:44.560 --> 00:10:51.560 So that was back in the days when the citizens did not just sit back and be taxed like slaves like we all do now. 112 00:10:51.560 --> 00:10:59.860 They had a method for opposing what they thought were unconstitutional usurpations of power by the federal government 113 00:10:59.860 --> 00:11:01.860 and it was called nullification. 114 00:11:01.860 --> 00:11:05.860 This forced Andrew Jackson, President Andrew Jackson, to back down, 115 00:11:05.860 --> 00:11:12.860 the famous Indian fighter back down to the South Carolina legislature, basically. 116 00:11:12.860 --> 00:11:14.860 And there was a compromise lower tariff. 117 00:11:14.860 --> 00:11:20.860 And in the handout that I put on all the tables here, there's a chart, a great chart there, 118 00:11:20.860 --> 00:11:28.860 there, and it shows the average tariff rate from 1810 to 1870, and you can see the tariff 119 00:11:28.860 --> 00:11:35.660 of abominations there in 1828, the high point where the average rate actually dipped above 120 00:11:35.660 --> 00:11:44.620 60% there for a while, but then after this confrontation in 1832 over the tariff of abominations, 121 00:11:44.620 --> 00:11:49.720 the free traders pretty much had their way, and the average tariff rate went on a downward 122 00:11:49.720 --> 00:12:00.220 spiral up until 1861, where it was below 20%, it was close to 15% actually, by 1857, 1858. 123 00:12:00.220 --> 00:12:04.200 And then, and I'll talk later about how, you know, it's shot up after that, during the 124 00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:08.840 Lincoln administration, and it ends there in 1865 or so. 125 00:12:08.840 --> 00:12:14.200 But what happened from then on, you could probably draw almost a straight line from 126 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:19.680 the last data point there to 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was office, and sort of hovered around 127 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:26.680 Around 50% of the average tariff rate, 40 to 50% until 1913. 128 00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:40.680 So this tariff confrontation was one of the biggest confrontations between the state and the federal government in the history of America, certainly up to that point, and the free traders won. 129 00:12:40.680 --> 00:12:53.680 But by 1857, the old Whigs, which by then were Republicans, there was no longer a Whig Party, were still influential and were gaining influence with the new Republican Party. 130 00:12:53.680 --> 00:13:02.680 And there was a very deep recession in 1857, and as a result of that, the argument was made that, well, there's a recession, and what happens during the recession? 131 00:13:02.680 --> 00:13:08.680 Our standard of living goes down, people lose their jobs, we have less income to buy goods and services, 132 00:13:08.680 --> 00:13:15.680 Because many of us are unemployed, what's the answer to that according to the Republicans in 1857? 133 00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:21.680 Raise prices. Make things more expensive. How to do that? Raise the tariff. 134 00:13:21.680 --> 00:13:30.680 And so they saw the recession of 1857 as an excuse to wage a campaign to raise the tariff once again 135 00:13:30.680 --> 00:13:40.380 after, you know, for several decades of losing the political battle, and they did succeed in increasing the tariff. 136 00:13:40.380 --> 00:13:47.480 It was called the Morrill Tariff, M-O-R-R-I-L, named after Justin Morrill of Vermont, a member of Congress, 137 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:56.980 and this was passed by, excuse me, by the House of Representatives during the 1859-1860 session, 138 00:13:56.980 --> 00:14:03.980 Before Abraham Lincoln was even nominated, by the way, and passed the House, and then passed the Senate just a couple of days before he took office. 139 00:14:03.980 --> 00:14:11.480 And there are two economists named Robert McGuire and Norman Van Cot at Ball State University in Indiana, 140 00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:17.480 who wrote a very interesting little article on the tariff and the Civil War in a journal called Economic Inquiry, 141 00:14:17.480 --> 00:14:20.980 which is one of the top economic journals in the economics profession. 142 00:14:20.980 --> 00:14:50.980 And here's what they say, they say, during this time a drum beat for protection among various northeasterners, industries and labor groups commenced in late 1857 and of course raising the tariffs had been a paramount objective of the Republican Party and they took a look at the votes on the moral tariff by region and what they found was that 87% of the northern congressmen voted for the moral tariff but only 12% of southern congressmen 143 00:14:50.980 --> 00:14:57.380 Congressman. And of the states that seceded, of the 11 states that seceded, just one out 144 00:14:57.380 --> 00:15:03.180 of 40 congressmen voted in favor of the moral tariff. So there was a very clear split between 145 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:09.420 North and South on the issue of protectionist tariffs. And for a very good reason, I touched 146 00:15:09.420 --> 00:15:16.420 upon this last night. It has to do with simply the fact that most of the manufacturing was 147 00:15:16.420 --> 00:15:21.420 Most of the manufacturing was in the north, and that was what was being protected by the tariff. 148 00:15:21.420 --> 00:15:28.420 And if you protect northern manufacturers from competition from abroad, they're able to charge higher prices. 149 00:15:28.420 --> 00:15:39.420 And so the south, which was an agricultural economy, and purchased most of its manufactured goods, farm tools and everything else, woolen blankets and so forth, 150 00:15:39.420 --> 00:15:48.420 They saw it as all the burden is on us, that we're paying everything and there's nothing being protected down here. 151 00:15:48.420 --> 00:15:56.420 And then when they tried to pass on their prices, the tariff in the form of higher prices in European markets, they couldn't do it. 152 00:15:56.420 --> 00:16:01.420 And the South sold about 75% of all its produce on European markets. 153 00:16:01.420 --> 00:16:08.420 They found them to be very, very competitive and they couldn't pass on the higher tariff cost of living to the European markets. 154 00:16:08.420 --> 00:16:38.420 Markets. And the southerners recognized this. Calhoun said this in September 1st, 1828 in a letter. He was a genius in economics. Calhoun understood international economics, I think, better than most modern economists today do. And he said this, a protectionist tariffs gives to one section, the north, the power of recharging the duty. That is, if you're a person in the north and you're a merchant and you 155 00:16:38.420 --> 00:16:41.740 You have to pay more for shoes, because there's tariff on shoes. 156 00:16:41.740 --> 00:16:46.340 You have a little more latitude to charge more for what you're selling, okay? 157 00:16:46.340 --> 00:16:52.500 Then he says, while to the other section, the South, is a pure unmitigated burden, because 158 00:16:52.500 --> 00:16:57.900 the South was engaged in cultivating the great staples of the country for our foreign market 159 00:16:57.900 --> 00:17:02.820 in a market where we can receive no protection and where we cannot receive one cent more 160 00:17:02.820 --> 00:17:08.500 or to indemnify us for the heavy duties we have to pay as consumers. 161 00:17:08.500 --> 00:17:12.380 And so Calhoun recognized this in 1828. 162 00:17:12.380 --> 00:17:18.500 This is also recognized in all the modern economic textbooks that export dependent regions 163 00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:23.380 always pay a disproportionate burden of a tariff. 164 00:17:23.380 --> 00:17:29.460 Here's one textbook that I quote from in an article of mine by Brown and Hogan Dorn, 165 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:34.980 If any students in the audience here, of what happens with the tariffs is consumers include 166 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:39.020 the price increases in their wage and salary demands. Everybody tries to pass the tax to 167 00:17:39.020 --> 00:17:45.740 someone else. The only group that is powerless to pass the costs on further are the exporters 168 00:17:45.740 --> 00:17:50.940 who have to sell at world prices and swallow these costs. In essence, a tax on imports 169 00:17:50.940 --> 00:17:56.140 becomes a tax on exports. So if you're an export-dependent region, you essentially have 170 00:17:56.140 --> 00:18:02.140 have a tax specifically on you, as opposed to regions of the country that aren't so export dependent. 171 00:18:02.140 --> 00:18:07.140 Milton and Rose Friedman recognize this in their famous book, Free to Choose. 172 00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:16.140 Here's what they say, if tariffs are imposed on, say, textiles, that will add to output and employment in the domestic textile industry. 173 00:18:16.140 --> 00:18:24.140 Good for them. However, foreign producers who no longer can sell their textiles in the United States earn fewer dollars. 174 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:27.140 They will have less to spend in the United States. 175 00:18:27.140 --> 00:18:31.640 Exports will go down to balance decreased imports. 176 00:18:31.640 --> 00:18:36.640 Employment will go up in the textile industry, but down in the export industries. 177 00:18:36.640 --> 00:18:41.640 And the shift of employment to less productive uses will reduce total output overall. 178 00:18:41.640 --> 00:18:46.640 And this is exactly what was happening because textiles were booming in New England at the time 179 00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:52.140 and they were being protected. That was good. They were expanding. More employment, more jobs there. 180 00:18:52.140 --> 00:19:02.140 But at the expense of the export industries, because our foreign trading partners did not have as much money that they could use to buy American goods. 181 00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:07.140 And the big majority of American goods they were buying was coming from the South. 182 00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:11.140 And like I said, Southerners had recognized this for decades. 183 00:19:11.140 --> 00:19:16.140 That's what the tariff of abominations controversy was all about. 184 00:19:16.140 --> 00:19:27.140 One more example of this phenomenon to drill this into your heads, that export dependent regions are discriminated against with tariffs. 185 00:19:27.140 --> 00:19:33.140 I'll read one more quote from a book by Frank Choterov called The Income Tax, which I mentioned last night. 186 00:19:33.140 --> 00:19:41.140 And in one passage he's talking about how the Midwestern farmers in the late 1880s were opposed to tariffs. 187 00:19:41.140 --> 00:19:47.220 He says this, the plight of these farmers in the Midwest was made worse by the protective 188 00:19:47.220 --> 00:19:49.480 tariff policy of the government. 189 00:19:49.480 --> 00:19:54.140 The best they could get for their products was the competitive world price. 190 00:19:54.140 --> 00:19:59.260 While the manufacturers they bought from the East were loaded down with duties, next to 191 00:19:59.260 --> 00:20:03.620 their demand for more money, the populace clamored for lower tariffs. 192 00:20:03.620 --> 00:20:09.420 So whether it was southern farmers in 1860 or Midwestern farmers in 1880, they all understood 193 00:20:09.420 --> 00:20:17.180 that they were disproportionately burdened by tariffs and so how does this lead into Lincoln's 194 00:20:17.180 --> 00:20:25.020 tariff war? Well, as you see in the chart that I handed out here, there was a dramatic increase 195 00:20:25.020 --> 00:20:31.580 in the average tariff rate in 1861, beginning in 1861 on the chart and Lincoln was a lifelong 196 00:20:31.580 --> 00:20:39.180 protectionist in terms of his political career among other things and it turns out that he really 197 00:20:39.180 --> 00:20:45.620 And he owed his nomination by the Republican Party to the protectionists in Pennsylvania. 198 00:20:45.620 --> 00:20:50.620 Pennsylvania had the second largest number of delegates and electoral votes at the time 199 00:20:50.620 --> 00:20:56.860 next to New York. New Jersey was also a big protectionist state at the time. And there 200 00:20:56.860 --> 00:21:03.740 was an article that I dug up in the American Historical Review from 1944 by a historian 201 00:21:03.740 --> 00:21:09.140 by the name Reinhard Luthen called Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff that really outlines 202 00:21:09.140 --> 00:21:15.220 how Lincoln got the nomination and he owed it all to his record as a protectionist. 203 00:21:15.220 --> 00:21:22.580 And for example, what he did was, it was well known that Pennsylvania was probably the key 204 00:21:22.580 --> 00:21:26.860 to securing the Republican nomination in 1860. 205 00:21:26.860 --> 00:21:32.780 And so, some of Lincoln's friends and supporters in Illinois, especially Joseph Meadow who 206 00:21:32.780 --> 00:21:37.580 who was the editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, which is one of the most influential 207 00:21:37.580 --> 00:21:42.500 papers in the country at the time, recognized that their man was the perfect candidate to 208 00:21:42.500 --> 00:21:46.820 win Pennsylvania and therefore win the nomination. 209 00:21:46.820 --> 00:21:53.180 And so he editorialized this, he said, Lincoln was an old clay wig, that is a Henry Clay 210 00:21:53.180 --> 00:21:58.300 wig, he's right on the tariff and he's exactly right on all other issues, is there any man 211 00:21:58.300 --> 00:22:01.140 who could suit Pennsylvania better? 212 00:22:01.140 --> 00:22:07.020 And Lincoln himself went to work soliciting the support of the Pennsylvania political 213 00:22:07.020 --> 00:22:13.060 establishment by communicating through a distant relative of his, a Dr. Edward Wallace of Pennsylvania. 214 00:22:13.060 --> 00:22:15.720 He was actually a distant relative. 215 00:22:15.720 --> 00:22:16.720 And he wrote him a letter. 216 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:23.720 He said, my dear sir, your brother, Dr. William Wallace, who was also a big shot in the Republican 217 00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:28.420 Party in Pennsylvania, showed me a letter of yours in which you kindly mentioned my 218 00:22:28.420 --> 00:22:35.420 In my name, inquire for my tariff view and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter upon the subject. 219 00:22:35.420 --> 00:22:42.420 I was an old Henry Clay tariff wig. In the old times, I made more speeches on that subject than on any other subject. 220 00:22:42.420 --> 00:22:45.420 I have not changed my views since. 221 00:22:45.420 --> 00:22:50.420 And so Lincoln was establishing his bona fides as a protectionist. 222 00:22:50.420 --> 00:22:53.420 And it worked. They believed him. 223 00:22:53.420 --> 00:23:00.420 And another thing that he did, it's kind of interesting, the Lincoln scholars, who I refer to usually as the Lincoln cult, 224 00:23:00.420 --> 00:23:10.420 if you read my articles on lewrockwell.com, they point to the fact that Lincoln did not make a lot of speeches on the tariff at the time, 225 00:23:10.420 --> 00:23:16.420 you know, right before, in fact, he didn't make any speech on anything, as a matter of fact, from the time he was nominated, 226 00:23:16.420 --> 00:23:20.420 to the time he was president, he said nothing, the time he was inaugurated. 227 00:23:20.420 --> 00:23:25.500 If he wrote somebody a letter, he would actually ask them to not tell anyone that you received 228 00:23:25.500 --> 00:23:30.060 a letter from me because they might ask you what was in it, that I mentioned policy or 229 00:23:30.060 --> 00:23:31.060 anything like that. 230 00:23:31.060 --> 00:23:34.900 And it's true, he didn't say much publicly about the tariff, but privately he did a lot 231 00:23:34.900 --> 00:23:35.900 of things. 232 00:23:35.900 --> 00:23:40.740 There are letters in the collected papers of Abraham Lincoln that reveal what happened 233 00:23:40.740 --> 00:23:42.460 here, what went on here. 234 00:23:42.460 --> 00:23:47.280 And the delicate political problem that Lincoln faced in Pennsylvania is he wanted to win 235 00:23:47.280 --> 00:23:52.820 in the Pennsylvania support by bragging of what a protectionist he was, but then he would 236 00:23:52.820 --> 00:23:57.840 risk losing support in the Midwest among all the farmers. The farmers were dead set against 237 00:23:57.840 --> 00:24:04.240 high tariffs. And so the trick was to tell the Pennsylvanians, I'm a protectionist without 238 00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:09.280 the Midwesterners knowing about him. And so what he did, and I got this information, it 239 00:24:09.280 --> 00:24:21.920 was called by a friend of mine from the Lincoln papers and what he did was he got an emissary 240 00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:28.000 to take his old speeches, his old speeches, the originals, to Pennsylvania and show them 241 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:34.360 to Simon Cameron and Thaddeus Stevens and all the big shots in Pennsylvania politics documenting 242 00:24:34.360 --> 00:24:38.560 that for decades he had been an ardent protectionist, and they did that. 243 00:24:38.560 --> 00:24:44.760 They carried these, the Lincoln scholars call these the tariff scraps. 244 00:24:44.760 --> 00:24:50.640 So anything that disagrees with their version of history, it's all scrap. 245 00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:56.640 So they call these the tariff scraps, but these were Lincoln's speeches on tariffs. 246 00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:03.080 And so he took 11 of his pro-tariff speeches and apparently worked, and Simon Cameron informed 247 00:25:03.080 --> 00:25:09.600 from Lincoln that these speeches were, quote, entirely satisfactory for his purposes and 248 00:25:09.600 --> 00:25:15.600 he returned them to Lincoln in the mail. 249 00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:21.560 And so he did that to get the nomination and he got the nomination, he got the nomination. 250 00:25:21.560 --> 00:25:26.860 And this article I was, I alluded to from the American Historical Review talks about 251 00:25:26.860 --> 00:25:32.660 about how when the tariff plank was voted in at the Republican convention, 252 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:40.060 Professor Luthen says the Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations were terrific in their applause over the tariff resolution 253 00:25:40.060 --> 00:25:45.460 and their hilarity was contagious, finally pervading the whole vast auditorium. 254 00:25:45.460 --> 00:25:51.660 You can imagine, here's the Republican party, they pass the tariff plank and pandemonium breaks out. 255 00:25:51.660 --> 00:25:55.260 And then when Lincoln went home to Springfield, Illinois, 256 00:25:55.260 --> 00:26:00.260 Lutheran writes that at the entrance of the town there was, quote, 257 00:26:00.260 --> 00:26:05.260 an immense wagon bearing a gigantic sign reading, 258 00:26:05.260 --> 00:26:09.260 protection for home industry. So that's what met Abraham Lincoln 259 00:26:09.260 --> 00:26:14.260 when he went home to Springfield, Illinois after getting the nomination, protection for home industry. 260 00:26:14.260 --> 00:26:20.260 So from that I would conclude that protectionism was a reasonably important issue 261 00:26:20.260 --> 00:26:23.260 in the eyes of Abraham Lincoln at the time he took office. 262 00:26:23.260 --> 00:26:33.260 So that's what I mean when I said he really owed everything politically to the protectionists, especially in Pennsylvania. 263 00:26:33.260 --> 00:26:52.260 Okay, so what does this mean? Well, he takes office, and by the way, I think it's important to understand that both Lincoln and the United States Congress declared to the world the cause of the war in 1861. 264 00:26:52.260 --> 00:27:02.260 Lincoln reiterated his opinion of the cause of the war in a letter to Horace Greeley, the newspaper editor, in 1862. 265 00:27:02.260 --> 00:27:13.260 In the letter, he said, I could paraphrase it, that my ultimate purpose is to save the Union, and if I could do that without freeing a single slave, I would do that. 266 00:27:13.260 --> 00:27:20.260 He said, if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others in bondage, I would do that too, but my paramount objective is saving the Union. 267 00:27:20.260 --> 00:27:50.260 and the Congress issued a resolution saying that as well and also I think you should know if you never learned this in school that in Lincoln's first inaugural address he pledged his support for a constitutional amendment that had just passed the United States Senate two days earlier and had already passed the House of Representatives that would have forbidden the federal government from ever interfering in southern slavery and you can read the first inaugural address online anywhere if you want to and so the day he was inaugurated 268 00:27:50.260 --> 00:28:15.260 He was fully supportive of Southern slavery, he said it was constitutional, and he said in that speech he had no objection to making it express and irrevocable, that is, Southern slavery, putting it in black and white in the Constitution with his amendment, because his paramount objective, as he said, was saving the Union or destroying the secession movement. Same thing. 269 00:28:15.260 --> 00:28:23.060 In my book, I argue that the Union was destroyed, actually, because it was a voluntary Union. 270 00:28:23.060 --> 00:28:30.180 We did hold ratification elections by state, and it was a voluntary thing, but it was no 271 00:28:30.180 --> 00:28:35.700 longer voluntary after 1865, so that rhetoric is sort of off base, too. 272 00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:42.540 But the question is, where did this idea come from, that the Union is so sacrosanct, so 273 00:28:42.540 --> 00:28:49.540 So sacrosanct that it would justify 620,000 deaths which occurred in the war back when 274 00:28:50.300 --> 00:28:56.260 the population was 30 million. That would be the equivalent of roughly 6 million deaths 275 00:28:56.260 --> 00:29:01.340 today in four years or well over a hundred times the number of Americans who died in 276 00:29:01.340 --> 00:29:07.620 Vietnam. You know, where did this idea come from? Why? Why is the Union so sacrosanct 277 00:29:07.620 --> 00:29:13.780 When Virginia, for example, when Virginia ratified the Constitution, they explicitly 278 00:29:13.780 --> 00:29:18.680 reserved the right to resume the powers that they had delegated to the federal government 279 00:29:18.680 --> 00:29:23.080 in some future date if the federal government became oppressive of their liberties. Rhode 280 00:29:23.080 --> 00:29:27.060 Island and New York said the same thing. It was assumed by everyone. It was a voluntary 281 00:29:27.060 --> 00:29:35.740 union. So my argument is that the reason why Lincoln was so infatuated with the union is 282 00:29:35.740 --> 00:29:40.220 is that if the South left, it would take all this tax revenue with it, the tariff. 283 00:29:40.220 --> 00:29:44.060 The tariff accounted for 95% of all federal revenues. 284 00:29:44.060 --> 00:29:48.580 And if the Southern states seceded, well, that would have been the destruction of Abraham 285 00:29:48.580 --> 00:29:53.220 Lincoln's political career, for sure, and it certainly would have destroyed the Republican 286 00:29:53.220 --> 00:29:55.940 party that had gone the way of the Whigs. 287 00:29:55.940 --> 00:30:00.500 And my take on the whole thing is that's why all of a sudden the Union became so sacrosanct. 288 00:30:00.500 --> 00:30:08.180 And in my book I quote a book of, a very thick book called Northern Editorials on Secession 289 00:30:08.180 --> 00:30:13.060 that showed that the majority of newspapers in the North thought that the Union was voluntary 290 00:30:13.060 --> 00:30:18.260 and the right in the South had a right to secede peacefully and of course that opinion 291 00:30:18.260 --> 00:30:20.540 changed after Fort Sumter. 292 00:30:20.540 --> 00:30:25.900 But listen to what Lincoln said about tariffs in his first inaugural address, one passage 293 00:30:25.900 --> 00:30:33.900 where he says, the power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government. 294 00:30:33.900 --> 00:30:37.900 That's not about tariffs, that's property. Here's the tariff part. 295 00:30:37.900 --> 00:30:45.900 And to collect the duties and imposts, now listen to this, but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, 296 00:30:45.900 --> 00:30:51.900 there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere. 297 00:30:51.900 --> 00:31:05.900 So, now think about that. The president is inaugurated and he's saying, put it into context, the tariff tax had just been doubled, more than doubled, from about 15% to 32%. 298 00:31:05.900 --> 00:31:12.900 The South, for 30 years, have been complaining, we're being plundered by this tariff because we're exporters. 299 00:31:12.900 --> 00:31:18.900 The Republicans get rammed through the moral tariff that would double their tax rate, double. 300 00:31:18.900 --> 00:31:23.900 Lincoln says, collect this tax and there will be no invasion. 301 00:31:23.900 --> 00:31:27.900 To me that means don't collect the tax and there will be an invasion. 302 00:31:27.900 --> 00:31:32.900 So he literally threatened death and destruction over tax collection. 303 00:31:32.900 --> 00:31:36.900 It's right in there in the first inaugural address in black and white. 304 00:31:36.900 --> 00:31:39.900 Now Andrew Jackson backed down. 305 00:31:39.900 --> 00:31:45.900 Almost the exact same thing happened under Andrew Jackson with the terror of abominations. 306 00:31:45.900 --> 00:31:50.620 South Carolina nullified it and Virginia by the way joined in with South Carolina 307 00:31:50.620 --> 00:31:55.820 and supported South Carolina on this and but Andrew Jackson backed down but Abraham Lincoln 308 00:31:55.820 --> 00:32:01.500 wasn't backing down on the issue of slavery he was he said in the same speech he's willing to 309 00:32:01.500 --> 00:32:07.420 to support a constitutional amendment that would forbid him or any other American president from 310 00:32:07.420 --> 00:32:14.540 ever interfering with slavery but on the issue of tax collection pay up or die is essentially what 311 00:32:14.540 --> 00:32:32.540 This is what he said, and the northern newspapers before the war, you have to understand also what was happening is the Confederate government outlawed protectionist tariffs all together. 312 00:32:32.540 --> 00:32:40.540 And so here you have the north with a 50% tariff that they were on the road toward and the south with a minimal revenue tariff. 313 00:32:40.540 --> 00:32:43.540 Here's what the Confederate Constitution actually said about tariffs. 314 00:32:43.540 --> 00:32:49.540 It's almost exactly like the U.S. Constitution with some minor changes. 315 00:32:49.540 --> 00:32:53.540 Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Confederate Constitution said, 316 00:32:53.540 --> 00:33:00.540 Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, imposts, and excise taxes for revenue necessary to pay the debts, 317 00:33:00.540 --> 00:33:06.540 provide for the common defense, and carry on the government of the Confederate states. 318 00:33:06.540 --> 00:33:24.940 But no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury, nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry, no protectionism, and all duties, imposes and exercises shall be uniformed throughout the Confederate States. 319 00:33:24.940 --> 00:33:36.140 So it's very similar to the U.S. Constitution, but they explicitly said tariffs are not to be used for protectionism, only a revenue tariff to raise money for the government. 320 00:33:36.140 --> 00:33:42.840 There were northern newspapers around the outbreak of the war who were really fretting about this. 321 00:33:42.840 --> 00:33:47.840 They were very concerned about what would happen if the South moved in the direction of free trade 322 00:33:47.840 --> 00:33:50.840 and the North moved in the direction of more protectionism. 323 00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:57.040 Here's what the Daily Chicago Times said on December 10th, 1860. 324 00:33:57.040 --> 00:34:02.540 The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. 325 00:34:02.540 --> 00:34:21.540 Last year, she furnished 72% of all the exports. We, in Chicago, the North, have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from 30 to 50% and enables us to consume large quantities of southern cotton and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. 326 00:34:21.540 --> 00:34:31.540 This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor of millions annually, and they were saying, alright, good deal, we like this. 327 00:34:31.540 --> 00:34:41.540 And then they went on to say, let the South adopt the free trade system and the North's commerce must be reduced to less than half of what it now is. 328 00:34:41.540 --> 00:34:51.540 Our labor could not compete with the labor of Europe. A large portion of our shipping interest would pass into the hands of the South, leading to very general bankruptcy and ruin. 329 00:34:51.540 --> 00:34:55.540 So they were fearful of the move to free trade. 330 00:34:55.540 --> 00:35:07.040 And another newspaper, the New York Evening Post on March 12th, 1861, advocated that the Navy, the United States Navy, quote, 331 00:35:07.040 --> 00:35:15.540 abolish all ports of entry into the South. Now this was before Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was April 12th, 1861. 332 00:35:15.540 --> 00:35:23.540 This is March 12th, 1861, where Republican Party-associated newspapers in the North were advocating the bombardment 333 00:35:23.540 --> 00:35:53.540 The Newark, New Jersey Daily Advertiser said this on April 2nd, 1861 334 00:35:53.540 --> 00:36:08.540 In the end, that the chief instigator of the present troubles, South Carolina, have all along for years been preparing the way for the adoption of free trade and must be stopped by the closing of the ports by military force. 335 00:36:08.540 --> 00:36:12.540 And that's the Newark, New Jersey Daily Advertiser. 336 00:36:12.540 --> 00:36:17.540 There were other northern newspapers that the New Haven Daily Register said the same thing. 337 00:36:17.540 --> 00:36:26.540 And they said, at the end, they advocated, well, let's avoid all this by just lowering our tariff. 338 00:36:26.540 --> 00:36:33.540 Rather than bombing the southern ports, why don't we just lower our tariff and avoid this economic calamity? 339 00:36:33.540 --> 00:36:39.540 But of course that didn't happen. No one paid attention to them. It didn't happen. 340 00:36:39.540 --> 00:36:44.660 Fort Sumter takes place where, by the way, no one was hurt or killed. 341 00:36:44.660 --> 00:36:49.540 I think one horse made his end, one horse was killed in Fort Sumter. 342 00:36:49.540 --> 00:36:54.580 The response by the Lincoln administration was a full-scale invasion of all the southern states 343 00:36:54.580 --> 00:37:00.660 after Fort Sumter, and a naval blockade was announced two weeks after Fort Sumter. 344 00:37:00.660 --> 00:37:03.940 And again, this is one of the things that anybody can read on the internet, 345 00:37:03.940 --> 00:37:10.580 Lincoln's announcement regarding the reason for the naval blockade of the southern states and he 346 00:37:10.580 --> 00:37:15.700 gave one reason, just one reason is in there. What do you think, who would like to guess what the one 347 00:37:15.700 --> 00:37:23.700 reason is? Tariff collection. He explicitly said with the seceding states, I am unable to fulfill 348 00:37:23.700 --> 00:37:29.940 my, I'm paraphrasing, my duties as president in collecting the taxes and so that was the reason 349 00:37:29.940 --> 00:37:35.940 and the reason for the naval blockade, which of course was an act of war and for the war, and he said that. 350 00:37:35.940 --> 00:37:44.940 So that's basically the gist of my argument for how Lincoln turned a tariff war into a shooting war 351 00:37:44.940 --> 00:37:50.940 and how the tariff dispute that began in 1824 was a major cause for this war. 352 00:37:50.940 --> 00:37:56.940 And the final thing I'd like to mention here is that after my book came out, 353 00:37:56.940 --> 00:38:05.940 There's more and more people that I'm running across, scholars and others, that are agreeing with me, writing books about this. 354 00:38:05.940 --> 00:38:11.940 And one of them, honest to God, I'm not making this up, is an editorial writer from the New York Times. 355 00:38:11.940 --> 00:38:18.940 His name is Stephen Weisman. He wrote a book called The Great Tax Wars, Lincoln to Wilson. 356 00:38:18.940 --> 00:38:23.940 And of course it covers this tax war, the tariff tax war. 357 00:38:23.940 --> 00:38:28.220 Tax War, and here's what he, and this is a fairly new book, it's been out just a couple 358 00:38:28.220 --> 00:38:34.740 years, I think, if a couple years, he's talking about the secession of the southern states 359 00:38:34.740 --> 00:38:40.460 and so Stephen Weissman says this, South Carolina went first, the state's grievances had been 360 00:38:40.460 --> 00:38:47.100 long-standing and not simply focused on slavery, its major complaints went to the heart of 361 00:38:47.100 --> 00:38:53.620 the nation's finances, tariffs. A generation earlier, South Carolina had provoked a state's 362 00:38:53.620 --> 00:39:01.620 and the United States' rights crisis over its doctrine that states could nullify or override the national tariff system, which I just mentioned. 363 00:39:01.620 --> 00:39:06.620 The nullification fight in 1832 was actually a tax revolt. 364 00:39:06.620 --> 00:39:13.620 It pitted the state's spokesman, Vice President John C. Calhoun, against President Andrew Jackson. 365 00:39:13.620 --> 00:39:19.620 Because tariffs rewarded manufacturers but punished farmers with higher prices on everything they needed, 366 00:39:19.620 --> 00:39:24.380 Clothing, Farm Equipment, and even essential food products like salt and meat. 367 00:39:24.380 --> 00:39:28.580 Calhoun argued that the tariff system was discriminatory and unconstitutional. 368 00:39:28.580 --> 00:39:33.900 Calhoun's anti-tariff battle was a rebellion against a system seen throughout the South 369 00:39:33.900 --> 00:39:36.340 as protecting the producers of the North. 370 00:39:36.340 --> 00:39:40.780 And so I could hardly believe I was reading this from a New York Times editorial writer. 371 00:39:40.780 --> 00:39:46.020 And then Weissman, unlike a lot of the Lincoln scholars, he's actually read what Jefferson Davis 372 00:39:46.020 --> 00:39:52.580 had to say in his first inaugural address about the reasons for the secession and here's what he says. 373 00:39:54.580 --> 00:40:04.660 He basically says Jefferson Davis gave the tariff, the tariff dispute was the reason 374 00:40:04.660 --> 00:40:08.740 for the secession of the southern states and here's a quote. 375 00:40:08.740 --> 00:40:12.660 There can be no cause to doubt, this is Jefferson Davis's first inaugural, 376 00:40:12.660 --> 00:40:17.380 There can be no cause to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the Confederate 377 00:40:17.380 --> 00:40:23.380 states will be found equal to any measure of defense which may be required for their security. 378 00:40:23.380 --> 00:40:29.140 Devoted to agricultural pursuits, their chief interest is the export of a commodity required 379 00:40:29.140 --> 00:40:32.140 in every manufacturing country, cotton. 380 00:40:32.140 --> 00:40:37.780 Our policy is peace and the freest trade our necessities will permit. 381 00:40:37.780 --> 00:40:42.540 It is like our interest and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would 382 00:40:42.540 --> 00:40:46.940 by that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the 383 00:40:46.940 --> 00:40:51.660 interchange of commodities and the word slavery does not appear in Jefferson 384 00:40:51.660 --> 00:40:57.580 Davis's first inaugural address and weisman comments more on this he says 385 00:40:57.580 --> 00:41:04.380 he says Davis was quote a vigorous exponent of the view that the war was at 386 00:41:04.380 --> 00:41:09.060 its core and not a fight to preserve slavery but a struggle to overthrow and 387 00:41:09.060 --> 00:41:14.180 and an exploitative economic system headquartered in the North, 388 00:41:14.180 --> 00:41:16.900 the American system, in other words. 389 00:41:16.900 --> 00:41:18.980 And he also says there was a great deal of evidence 390 00:41:18.980 --> 00:41:21.940 to support Davis's view, this is Weissman writing, 391 00:41:21.940 --> 00:41:25.660 of the South as the nation's stepchild, he called it. 392 00:41:25.660 --> 00:41:28.340 And he says, quote, the South had to import 393 00:41:28.340 --> 00:41:30.060 at least two thirds of its clothing 394 00:41:30.060 --> 00:41:32.580 and manufactured goods from outside the region, 395 00:41:32.580 --> 00:41:34.980 and Southerners paid an artificially high prices 396 00:41:34.980 --> 00:41:36.500 because of the high tariffs. 397 00:41:36.500 --> 00:41:52.500 The South even had to import food. The North's economy was based on a kind of state capitalism of trade barriers, government-sponsored railroads, and public investment in canals, roads and other infrastructures, paid for in large part with Southern taxes. 398 00:41:52.500 --> 00:42:02.500 Southern resentment of the tariff system propelled the Democratic Party to define itself as the main challenger to this corrupt mercantilist system. 399 00:42:02.500 --> 00:42:09.180 Okay and so this was the American system and another person that the final thing 400 00:42:09.180 --> 00:42:14.380 I'll mention here that wrote a book this year that also supports the view that the 401 00:42:14.380 --> 00:42:19.060 tariff is a much more important cause of of this whole battle than most 402 00:42:19.060 --> 00:42:22.820 historians say is Professor Michael Holt from right here at the University of 403 00:42:22.820 --> 00:42:29.620 Virginia and and Professor Holt is probably the preeminent expert in 404 00:42:29.620 --> 00:42:34.320 in America Among American Historians on the Antebellum Period. 405 00:42:34.320 --> 00:42:37.660 He's a Princeton graduate, he's been here for many years. 406 00:42:37.660 --> 00:42:43.500 Among his books are The Fate of Their Country is his latest, The Rise and Fall of the American 407 00:42:43.500 --> 00:42:50.780 Whig Party, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, and The Civil War and Reconstruction. 408 00:42:50.780 --> 00:42:56.980 And what he writes about in this latest book of his is he focuses on, you know, the debate 409 00:42:56.980 --> 00:43:01.500 Food over slavery at the time was not about southern slavery. The Republicans and Lincoln 410 00:43:01.500 --> 00:43:06.860 only opposed the extension of slavery into the new territories, but they pledged their 411 00:43:06.860 --> 00:43:13.120 support for a constitutional amendment to support southern slavery. In fact, when that 412 00:43:13.120 --> 00:43:18.680 vote was taken in the Senate, two days before Lincoln's inauguration on this constitutional 413 00:43:18.680 --> 00:43:23.400 amendment, most of the southern senators were gone. These were all northern senators that 414 00:43:23.400 --> 00:43:30.400 voted in favor of this constitutional amendment to ban the federal government from ever interfering in slavery, southern slavery. 415 00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:34.400 Why the extension of slavery? Why was that important? 416 00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:40.400 Well, one theory that historians talk about is the theory that if you eliminate slavery in the new territories, 417 00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:44.400 then it will eventually wither on the vine everywhere else. 418 00:43:44.400 --> 00:43:48.400 And I've never understood how that exactly was supposed to happen. 419 00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:57.400 And Professor Holt says this, modern economic historians have demonstrated that this assumption was false, but that was never likely to happen. 420 00:43:57.400 --> 00:44:04.400 But Lincoln himself gave two reasons for the opposition to the extension of slavery, and as did other members of his party. 421 00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:11.400 One, they wanted to preserve the new territories for the white race. They explicitly said that. 422 00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:15.900 and particularly they wanted to promise jobs for white workers 423 00:44:15.900 --> 00:44:18.900 that would not be interfered with by competition 424 00:44:18.900 --> 00:44:21.400 from either slaves or free blacks. 425 00:44:21.400 --> 00:44:23.900 That's why they had laws in many of the new territories 426 00:44:23.900 --> 00:44:25.900 and states like Illinois. 427 00:44:25.900 --> 00:44:28.900 Illinois by the example had a constitutional amendment 428 00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:31.900 that made it illegal for black people to enter the state, 429 00:44:31.900 --> 00:44:33.400 to migrate into the state. 430 00:44:33.400 --> 00:44:35.900 Abraham Lincoln defended that. 431 00:44:35.900 --> 00:44:37.900 Why are they doing this? 432 00:44:37.900 --> 00:44:39.900 The second reason, the more important one, 433 00:44:39.900 --> 00:44:44.180 was the Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution, which existed at the time, 434 00:44:44.180 --> 00:44:49.900 artificially increased the congressional representation of the Democratic Party, 435 00:44:49.900 --> 00:44:54.300 because it said that for every five slaves, you could count them as three people 436 00:44:54.300 --> 00:44:59.100 for purposes of determining how many members of Congress there would be by state. 437 00:44:59.100 --> 00:45:03.500 So the argument that Lincoln made was if slavery goes into the new territories, 438 00:45:03.500 --> 00:45:07.300 that will further increase the representation of the Democratic Party. 439 00:45:07.300 --> 00:45:09.300 We can't have that. 440 00:45:09.300 --> 00:45:16.300 I'll support an amendment that will ban forever the ability of the government to do anything about southern slavery, 441 00:45:16.300 --> 00:45:21.300 but the extension of slavery will disadvantage my party, therefore I'm against it. 442 00:45:21.300 --> 00:45:26.300 That was his position. That was the position of all the big shot Republicans at the time. 443 00:45:26.300 --> 00:45:29.300 And what Holt says about this is this, 444 00:45:29.300 --> 00:45:35.300 many northern whites also wanted to keep slaves out of the West in order to keep blacks out. 445 00:45:35.300 --> 00:45:42.500 North was a pervasively racist society where free blacks suffered social, economic, and political discrimination. 446 00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:46.900 Bigots, they sought to bar African-American slaves from the West. 447 00:45:46.900 --> 00:45:52.500 Congressman David Wilmot himself proudly and repeatedly called his major the Wilmot Proviso. 448 00:45:52.500 --> 00:45:54.900 He called it the White Man's Proviso. 449 00:45:54.900 --> 00:45:57.300 So it's not just my theorizing here. 450 00:45:57.300 --> 00:46:02.500 Professor Holden has much more stature than I do on this whole topic. 451 00:46:02.500 --> 00:46:11.020 So politics was why the extension of slavery became an issue, not morality, not humanitarianism. 452 00:46:11.020 --> 00:46:13.260 And what was the end of this politics? 453 00:46:13.260 --> 00:46:14.260 Why politics? 454 00:46:14.260 --> 00:46:16.740 Why was this a big political issue to the Republicans? 455 00:46:16.740 --> 00:46:19.820 Well, I'll quote Holt one more time. 456 00:46:19.820 --> 00:46:25.400 He quotes Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings as explaining why the opposition to the extension 457 00:46:25.400 --> 00:46:26.400 of slavery. 458 00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:31.620 Here's what Giddings said, to give the South the preponderance of political power would 459 00:46:31.620 --> 00:46:39.620 would be itself a surrender of our tariff, our internal improvements, our distribution of proceeds of public lands. 460 00:46:39.620 --> 00:46:45.620 It is the most abominable proposition with which a free people were ever insulted. 461 00:46:45.620 --> 00:46:52.620 So if you stop protectionism, it's the most abominable proposition you could ever imagine in a free country, 462 00:46:52.620 --> 00:46:56.620 is what Joshua Giddings was saying. 463 00:46:56.620 --> 00:47:02.020 And so one final conclusion here from Professor Holt of what he says about this whole episode 464 00:47:02.020 --> 00:47:07.780 is, he says, short-sighted politicians of all parties use the emotionally charged and 465 00:47:07.780 --> 00:47:14.180 largely chimerical, and the word chimerical, I looked it up so it had a precise definition 466 00:47:14.180 --> 00:47:21.180 of it, means wildly fanciful and unrealistic, according to Webster's, the largely chimerical 467 00:47:21.180 --> 00:47:27.900 issue of slavery's extension westward to pursue the election of their candidates and settle 468 00:47:27.900 --> 00:47:33.820 political scores all the while inextricably dragging the nation down toward disunion. 469 00:47:33.820 --> 00:47:39.260 So I'm glad to see that he agrees with me that this was one big tax fight, one big tax 470 00:47:39.260 --> 00:47:46.260 revolt that was put down by killing 300,000 tax revolters, 300,000 southern citizens of 471 00:47:46.260 --> 00:47:54.060 and the bonding of the cities and all the rest, and so it's not a very enlightening thing to end with, 472 00:47:54.060 --> 00:48:01.060 but that was won, the state's rights check on the powers of the central government were abolished, 473 00:48:01.060 --> 00:48:06.060 central banking was initiated with the National Currency Acts, and the tariff, they got their tariff, 474 00:48:06.060 --> 00:48:13.060 they got their 50% tariff in the Republican Party that lasted until 1913, and it dipped for a few years after that, 475 00:48:13.060 --> 00:48:17.660 and we're right back up to 60% with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930. 476 00:48:17.660 --> 00:48:20.860 And maybe that's about all the time I'll take for now. 477 00:48:20.860 --> 00:48:24.660 Thanks for not pelting me with cabbages or anything like that. 478 00:48:24.660 --> 00:48:26.460 If there are any leap in supporting out there. 479 00:48:26.460 --> 00:48:28.460 Thank you very much.