Quote:
Originally Posted by dellinger63
But the numerous tariffs imposed by Washington a few decades before the war on things like cotton, meant solely to benefit the industrial north to the detriment of the south certainly played a part leading to the conflict as the tariffs all but ended the ability for the south to export to Britain, etc. and instead forced selling solely to the north at artificially low prices.
|
Those tariffs had been cut back drastically by the 1850s and the South had a huge hand in the shaping of the very reduced 1857 tariff law, which was then followed by an economic panic. Slavery was the #1 reason for the South's decision to secede. Certainly, other issues contributed (including Lincoln's election), but the central cause was about whether the nation would continue to allow a portion of that nation to create wealth on the backs of enslaved human beings.
Trivia- one of my ancestors, Abraham Op den Graef, was a signatory on the first public petition against slavery in the colonies, in 1680 (in Pennsylvania).
05-22-2015, 02:26 PM
Threaded Mode