ive seen different versions.wonder if some you more well read guys could give me the cliff notes version of the consensus.or even what you think

More than Indian depredations on the Texas frontier, way less than slavery or racial matters.

I've had a hard time finding what items were specifically taxed and what percentage of total tariffs were paid by state. The only resource I've been able to look at is the Annual Reports of the Chamber of Commerce of New York State. The percentage of imports from 1821 to 1857 within NY State ranged from 37% to 65% of the national total. Exports from NY State ranged anywhere from 19% to 39% within the same time period. I just need to find what exactly was taxed by the federal government during those time periods.

Much of the NY paid tariffs were for goods headed south.

BQ78 said:

---

Much of the NY paid tariffs were for goods headed south.

---

Are we talking about finished goods coming in from Europe?

Europe and any other foreign country.

BQ78 said:

---

Europe and any other foreign country.

---

It was always my understanding that southerners were upset with tariffs because they were responsible for paying them directly. Since they shipped their cotton to Europe and because they were paid in European goods, they were paying the bulk of the tariffs when they got back to America. Why the stop in New York if the goods were headed primarily to the South anyways. If I'm mistaken, then we would assume that NY businesses would be hurt by the tariffs more than the South.

I can be too black and white on issues like this and look forward to any feedback. Thanks for taking the time to educate me on this. Any reading recs are appreciated if you want to tell me to look it up myself as well.

Most were paid in NY but with any tax you pass it along to the consumer.

NYC was not in favor of the war and the mayor Fernando Wood actually spoke of the city seceding and becoming a neutral party so they could continue to trade with both the north and the south. The south was a better customer for NYC as they bought more internationally than the north.

Smokedraw01 said:

---

BQ78 said:

---

Europe and any other foreign country.

---

It was always my understanding that southerners were upset with tariffs because they were responsible for paying them directly. Since they shipped their cotton to Europe and because they were paid in European goods, they were paying the bulk of the tariffs when they got back to America. Why the stop in New York if the goods were headed primarily to the South anyways. If I'm mistaken, then we would assume that NY businesses would be hurt by the tariffs more than the South.

I can be too black and white on issues like this and look forward to any feedback. Thanks for taking the time to educate me on this. Any reading recs are appreciated if you want to tell me to look it up myself as well.

---

Southerners didn't pay the tariff directly, and they didn't trade cotton for manufactured goods.

Cotton growers sold their cotton to middlemen called factors. The factors would then resell the cotton to textile manufacturers, both in the North and in Europe. Whether the factors would use the profits to purchase goods for resale at the return end, I can't say.

The tariff served two purposes: it was one of the federal government's two main sources of revenue (the other being the sale of federal lands), and it protected American manufacturers by making competing imports more expensive.

Northerners, especially Northern Whigs (and later Republicans) supported higher tariffs for both reasons - to fund what were then called 'internal improvements' - subsidies for railroad construction, harbor improvements, canals, and the like - and to protect manufacturers. The South had few manufacturers to protect, and Southern Democrats disapproved of federal spending on internal improvements. (This is why the Morrill Land Grant College Act didn't pass Congress until after the Southern states seceded. Without Secession, there might be no Texas A&M.)

But, as BQ78 said, slavery and racial issues were the dominant factor. As one of my instructors at the Army War College (whose family was from Virginia many, many generations back, and who had his great-great-something-grandfather's Civil War Virginia militia uniform in a case in his den) put it, "The Civil War was about states' rights. The states' rights to own slaves."

I will note that the slave states had no problem with the federal government overriding state authority when it came to things like the Fugitive Slave Act or the Dred Scott decision (which held, among other things, that free states could not bar slave owners from bringing slaves into a free state and keeping them as slaves.)

I highly recommend the book Apostles of Disunion by Charles Dew, along with any accounts of the secession conventions, especially those of the states that seceded before Fort Sumter. IMO, while slavery was still the most important factor for the states that seceded after Sumter(NC, VA, TN, and AR), what those states saw as federal coercion of the already seceded states (even though the Confederates fired the first shot) was the tipping factor.

I appreciate it. Apostles of Disunion is great book.

good stuff.appreciate the respnses

responses

Apostles of Disunion is a good read, there is only one problem IMHO. If you read it, you would think that only southerners were "racist" (a term I don't even think existed then) and that the North actually fought the war for the cause of ending slavery, neither of which could be further from the truth, the latter of which not just being a leading cause, it was not a cause at all.

Jarrin' Jay said:

---

Apostles of Disunion is a good read, there is only one problem IMHO. If you read it, you would think that only southerners were "racist" (a term I don't even think existed then) and that the North actually fought the war for the cause of ending slavery, neither of which could be further from the truth, the latter of which not just being a leading cause, it was not a cause at all.

---

I don't remember the book discussing much about the motives for fighting the war. Instead, it focused on the motives for secession but I could be wrong.

Thanks for the Dew book recommend. It sounds extremely informative.

Correct it was more inference than anything else. I may be too stone-hearted but I just don't feel the need to feel sorry about or guilty about the actions and beliefs of my GG GF or his father, etc.

Jarrin' Jay said:

---

Correct it was more inference than anything else. I may be too stone-hearted but I just don't feel the need to feel sorry about or guilty about the actions and beliefs of my GG GF or his father, etc.

---

I can understand that but I don't think that is the discussion we are having.

Slavery was the motive for secession. There were plenty of "states rights" issues that got people riled up, but none of them were big enough to get people to pull the trigger by themselves. Slavery caused secession, and secession (and Lincoln's determination to preserve the union) caused the war.

If you doubt it, read the secession proclamations. Texas' I can tell you is very clear.

Can anyone recommend a book on the CSA government?

William C. Davis A Government of Our Own.