Why Push So Hard To Preserve The Union?

[subdjoe]

We hear it over and over, the War was to "Preserve the Union."  Let's take a look at that.

When the seven states of the deep south issued their bills of secession what happened?

Did the federal government grind to a halt? 

Did the US Navy suddenly sink to the seafloor?

Did the rail roads stop running?

Did the posts stop moving?

Was commerce to and from NY, PA, OH, New England, et al disrupted?

No to all of those. 

Hmmm....maybe it was minerals.

Iron ore?  Lots of that in the north

Coal? I seem to recall that there is still lots of coal in PA and VA (remember, VA was one of the last states to leave the Union, and only after Lincoln pushed to use VA troops to invade the deep south).

No petroleum industry, or only the bare start of it, in PA. 

Cotton would still have been sold to northern mills, although northern industrialists would have to pay tariffs on it, thereby cutting into their huge profits.

So, since the government kept working, the relationships among the states in the Union still working as they always had, no loss of minerals or other raw materials, no loss of trade,  ships - including slavers - sailing from northern ports unhindered, and foreign trade flooding into northern ports unobstructed, what was so important that the federal government would wage a war of aggression to force seven states back into what had been a voluntary union?

Don't do the fifth grade textbook "SLAVERY!" finger pointing and bleating about abolition - the Corwin Amendment had been passed, and that without the votes in Congress of the seven states that had left the Union, and just awaited ratification, which was a lock if the deep south ratified it.  It guaranteed perpetual slavery, and Lincoln had promised to support it.  So abolition is out as a reason for the north to wage war.

That leaves only one reason for the federal government to wage war on the south - revenue. The only significant change was flow of gold into the federal treasury.  Almost all federal revenue came from tariffs, which is one of the reasons members of Congress from the north kept raising them.  And the South paid between 70% and 80% of all tariffs. 

[BUGEYE]

Joe, good question.  I'm wondering, these tariffs, was that just on goods from the southern states TO the north? what about goods from one northern state to another.  was tariffs based on distance to market?  I'm really curious about how tariffs were levied, but too lazy to research it.

[subdjoe]

Joe, good question.  I'm wondering, these tariffs, was that just on goods from the southern states TO the north? what about goods from one northern state to another.  was tariffs based on distance to market?  I'm really curious about how tariffs were levied, but too lazy to research it.

Tariffs were on imports from other countries.   A lot of protectionism was built into them making goods of European manufacture much more expensive than often lesser quality goods from northern states.

(Yes, I know Billy, Deere made the best stainless steel(per your claim) plough in the world with steel imported from England)

[williamlayton]

The blades were northen steel by the 1840's and a superior quality to the stuff they got from England. That, according to Deere.
No the tariffs were not one sided, they were aimed at all trade to the U.S..
75% of all imports came thru northern ports.
We would all like to get away from 5th grade history if you could just grasp it.
Blessings

[subdjoe]

The blades were northen steel by the 1840's and a superior quality to the stuff they got from England. That, according to Deere.
No the tariffs were not one sided, they were aimed at all trade to the U.S..
75% of all imports came thru northern ports.
We would all like to get away from 5th grade history if you could just grasp it.
Blessings

True, most goods moved through northern ports.  But most of those goods had low or no tariffs placed on them.  Most of the manufactured goods that were brought in through southern ports did have high protective tariffs placed on them.  That is why, even though only 25% of goods came in through southern ports, over 70% of all tariff revenue came from the customs houses in the south.

[williamlayton]

They were buying things that Americans could make. Manufacturing causes jobs, jobs create wealth and they do not support a foreign nation that has been trying, since the Revoltion, to exert its influece and control over us.
Blessings

[missouri dave]

As strange as this opinion, and it is just my opinion, is for a southerner, I think Lincoln really did want to preserve the union. If looked at in a certain light, if the union had split then this great experiment of a democratic republic left to us by the likes of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and so on would have been a grand failure. The war was a terrible tragedy with much evil done on both sides for a variety of reasons but what would our lives as Americans be like now had the nation not made it through that trying period in one piece. We like to glorify what things would be like now but fantasies are dangerous things. They have no flaws. If the nation had failed, we might not be free today.

[Graybeard]

Give it a rest William, your slavery BS is getting old.

The reason was to expand the power of the federal government. Citizens, ALL citizens lost a huge pile of their freedoms in that war. The illegal amendments they forced the south to ratify to return to the union Lincoln claimed they never left was the beginning of the end for this nation. That they got by with it is what has allowed them to just keep on taking.

[williamlayton]

It is only old because it is the truth.
Certainly you can look at it as control--because in a way it was.
We had fought two wars with England--three, actually--because the English wanted this nation to be British.
The Union because united we are strong. The  Union because we want no foreigh nation to invade us.
It is as clear as a fall mountain morning that the Confederacy was not a nation--it was a treaty amongst small nations who could go their own way on a whim.
It is very clear--from SC having sent envoys to Britain and France before the war--that they wanted to have very close ties to Europe---england in particular.
The Federal governments job is to protect America from foreign invasion.
My whole thought pattern is that the Union is why we are what we are---you may not like what the Dixiecrats did to this nation to turn it to a socialist state--the strongest nation (union) in the world.
IMO--The South would have shortly become a dominion of GB as is Canada.
Blessings

[missouri dave]

The union was at least initially nothing more than a confederacy of even smaller "nations" than the one's that seceded in 1860. Originally we didn't have the constitution but rather the articles of confederation. It took 11 years for these individual colonies to become a constitutional republic. Who knows what the south might have become? It is a nation that was aborted before it was given the chance to live.

[littlecanoe]

I don't have a lot of facts to back things up so I don't post here much.

I observe that the preserving of the union did not work.
What had existed before this tragic event was never to be seen again.
So the union wasn't preserved but was changed.  It could never go back to the way it had been after secession.
The end result of the war, as I see it, was that a hostile change of government was carried out.
The framework of that government was the same but the mentality and power shift was forever changed for the worse. 
The new-and-improved union has spiraled downward ever since, this spiral being the perpetual shift of power away from the state where it is much more readily controlled.

lc

[williamlayton]

Who led that spiral down?
Blessings

[littlecanoe]

Well my friend!  You know that I'm gonna say something like "Lincoln started it"!   

It was multifaceted. 
The point is this.  It could never have been the same no matter the catalyst.

The point that I make is that the self-righteous cry that "THE UNION WAS SAVED" is really quite hollow.
The Union was CHANGED, forever and for the worse.  This is my point.

We had reached critical mass.  Something had to happen.  The worst thing that could have happen did happen.  War.
Hundreds of thousands of men lost their lives.  Our nation was disrupted, a disruption that is still felt today and the degree of freedoms and liberty that were enjoyed before this tragedy have been slowly and steadily reduced from then to now.

The push to preserve did not preserve.

lc

[williamlayton]

I disagree.
The Union seems to have worked good until the dixicrats got power based on reconstruction.
Worse socialist movement we could have created & WE created it.
Blessings

[Ga.windbreak]

Give it a rest William, your slavery BS is getting old.

The reason was to expand the power of the federal government. Citizens, ALL citizens lost a huge pile of their freedoms in that war. The illegal amendments they forced the south to ratify to return to the union Lincoln claimed they never left was the beginning of the end for this nation. That they got by with it is what has allowed them to just keep on taking.

Thank you Sir. What a nice burst of fresh air. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
 

I disagree.
The Union seems to have worked good until the dixicrats got power based on reconstruction.
Worse socialist movement we could have created & WE created it.
Blessings

First real truth I've seen from you Bill but you forgot to include the KKK, hatred, and many other social ills brought about by your Union that sprang from reconstruction!
 
BTW Happy Thanksgiving to you.
 
 

[williamlayton]

I cannot see that the Union brought about these ills---I think these ills existed because of slavery, they are highlighted because of the desire to remain in existence creating the need for a heavy hand during reconstruction.
There were many acts of travesty during reconstruction by carpetbaggers---there were equally many acts of travesty by Southerners towards, what they considered outsiders, during and after this war.
Blessings

[wncchester]

"That leaves only one reason for the federal government to wage war on the south - revenue. ...Almost all federal revenue came from tariffs, which is one of the reasons members of Congress from the north kept raising them.  And the South paid between 70% and 80% of all tariffs."
 
Very true.  What's missing is that it was export tariffs on goods the South was shipping out.   Northern politicians, bought by the North's big industralist rich guys, imposed the export tariffs in order to gain the taxes AND to force the South to sell stuff - cheap - to the North.   The South sorta resented that; the heavy Fed taxes were keeping their economy beat down, you know?
 
Well, there was ONE more reason the North wanted desperately to hang onto Federal control of the South; where would all them weird Yankees go on vacation and then retire to if the South was gone; the Jersey Shore?  Naw ... not THAT!  No wonder they fought so long and hard; what's the loss of a few hundert thousand blue-belly boys compaired to having to vacation there!

[williamlayton]

I don't see it that way.
I think that protective tariff's are good for the economy.
The south did not pay any tariff's---they collected tariff's from foreign industry who wanted to do business in America and they offered their products at a lower cost to compete.
Now the question has been breached.
How could they produce, ship & sell these goods at such low cost?
Slave labor in the nation producing (I am saying slave labor in the same sense that we in America experienced into the 20th century and created the need for collective bargaining). There is ample evidence that England subsidized these goods in order to maintain a foothold in a nation that it had not given up on. There was cosiderable support by loyalist in SC to see this.
American thought of the time had great distrust of England--and for very good reason.
America was a growing nation with more potential than any nation on this earth. To go into why this was so would take volumns---there is enough already written by honerable historians to make this unnecessary. America had no need to fight a war on two fronts---which would have been necessary if the South had suceeded--and expand to the limits of sea to shing sea.
Blessings

[wncchester]

"I don't see it that way.   I think that protective tariff's are good for the economy. The south did not pay any tariff's---"
 
 
Your disagreement is meaningless on the facts. 
 
Your myotic focus on slavery as if it were a stand-alone issue ignores that the South had an insufficent labor force to do the labor intensive agricultral work needed to sustain and expand production and, from that, they would have served to expand the national economy.  Some taxes are necessary but taxing the production of selected businesses to the exclusion of others warps the market and that NEVER makes the broad economic foundation of a nation stronger!   Thus, tariffs indeed "protect" the favored parts of a national economy our politicians have been paid to protect but they don't help the overall economy. 
 
The North's Federally mandated agricultrial export tariffs in the first half of the 1,800s - which the South was indeed paying, even if indirectly, and I don't see how you could be ignorant of it - made sure there would never be enough loose cash in the South to pay wages that would attract sufficent workers, even if there had been enough such workers available, which there was not.  So, the mean ol' South was caught in a trap that was specifically designed by the Northern industialists to keep us under their commercial thumbs AND insured slavery would remain the only viable solution for large agriculture until mechanical devices to do the work became available at a sustainable cost.   
 
The Southern states finally had enough of it and seperated, as they clearly had a right to do.   The bloody war to beat the South into submission brought the Northern fat cats more profit than they ever expected to see so they won what they wanted anyway.  And then their minor accolates picked up their carpet bags and moved south to further rape the defeated "enemy nation" under a martial law occupation force.  That worked too.
 
Unhappily, the Union's victory accellerated the process towards an imperial DC that the whole nation continues to suffer under as politicians slave to protect special industries and groups at the expense of all others.   All 'others' being those that don't directy contribute to some fat politician's campaign chests.
 
I only write all this for the benefit of people who may seriously want to better understand what brought about the war of sepration and it's aftermath; no amount of truth can be sufficent to change anyone blindly commited to remaining blind.

[williamlayton]

Myoptic is better than blind.
Tariff's are on imports taxes are on goods sold---finished goods.
Since Cotton and Tobacco are not finished goods they were not taxed.
The South did not pay any taxes on imports--other than state taxes.
Are you saying that you disagree that we should let imported cars come in to compete with American business without making a level playing field?
It is good that you are so concerned to parlay this stufffor the benefit of the folks here you consider too dumb to know.
The opinions between us are outstandingly different. There was a unique few who were very wealthy in America during this time but they were VERY wealthy. All were wealthy on the backs of labor. The only problem was the South's labor was slavery which they did not want to let go of. The poor white trash were not much better off than the slaves but they did have the claim to being white---didn't pay much better though.
 
Blessings
 

[wncchester]

"The opinions between us are outstandingly different."
 
Ah, at last, something we can fully agree on!
 
Blessings.  ??

[williamlayton]

I recognized that long ago--it matters not, they are just opinions.
Thank you for the ?? Blessings.
Blessings

[ironfoot]

Before the Civil War proslavery and antislavery forces fought over whether territories would be added as free or slave states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
Kansas was admitted to the Union as the 34th state in January 1861, a few months before war broke out.
West Virginia was admitted in 1863 and Nevada in 1864.
So there were 34 states at the beginning of the war and 36 at the end.
If the Union hadn't been restored, wouldn't the North and South have fought in the West over who got the territories?

[Bernie1]

     I wrote a brief paper on this when I was in college, don't forget that a hunnert years ago we did not have computers. I was not able to find any documation of slave ships being manafested into Southern ports, ( the only one that would not give me information at that time was Charleston. But was able to find hundreds manafested into Northern Ports.
     You may disagree, but I got a pretty good grade at that time!  Bernie1