Post by RS Davis on May 8, 2004 3:44:18 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Gail Jarvis Wrote:[/glow]
Today, with an all-powerful federal government, it is difficult to imagine the concept of individual states that existed in the 1800s. At that time, each state was viewed, in essence, as a nation. A citizen’s loyalty was first to his state and second to the federal government.
But, by the mid 1800s, sectional conflicts between the North and South had been festering for decades. The most serious problem was the abnormally high and unfair tariffs assessed on the South. Remarkably, in the decades before the Civil War, the South paid approximately 87% of the nation’s total tariffs. To illustrate how grossly unfair this was consider that the South consisted of 11 states with a population of 5 million, whereas the rest of the nation consisted of 23 states, 7 federal territories and a population of 22 million. Is it any wonder Southern states wanted to secede?
A November 1860 editorial in the Charleston Mercury urged South Carolina to secede, stating: " The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government, from a confederated republic (a voluntary union of states) to a national sectional despotism." In the1830s, tariffs were so high that South Carolina nullified them and only the Compromise of 1833, that lowered tariffs, prevented an invasion of South Carolina that was being prepared by President Andrew Jackson.
Social critic H.L. Mencken held that had the South won the war, slavery would still have been substantially ended by the late 1880s. Also, he pointed out that a Southern victory would have negated the harsh Reconstruction measures that created the Ku Klux Klan. Mencken‘s theories appear reasonable because the practice of slavery in the South was being phased out in the decades before the war. The 1860 U.S. Census indicated that the slave states had 259,078 free Negroes while the "free states" had 222,745. Thousands of property owning free persons of color flourished throughout the South. Charleston, in 1861, had approximately 3,500 free persons of color – almost 8% of the city’s population.
Today, with an all-powerful federal government, it is difficult to imagine the concept of individual states that existed in the 1800s. At that time, each state was viewed, in essence, as a nation. A citizen’s loyalty was first to his state and second to the federal government.
But, by the mid 1800s, sectional conflicts between the North and South had been festering for decades. The most serious problem was the abnormally high and unfair tariffs assessed on the South. Remarkably, in the decades before the Civil War, the South paid approximately 87% of the nation’s total tariffs. To illustrate how grossly unfair this was consider that the South consisted of 11 states with a population of 5 million, whereas the rest of the nation consisted of 23 states, 7 federal territories and a population of 22 million. Is it any wonder Southern states wanted to secede?
A November 1860 editorial in the Charleston Mercury urged South Carolina to secede, stating: " The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government, from a confederated republic (a voluntary union of states) to a national sectional despotism." In the1830s, tariffs were so high that South Carolina nullified them and only the Compromise of 1833, that lowered tariffs, prevented an invasion of South Carolina that was being prepared by President Andrew Jackson.
Social critic H.L. Mencken held that had the South won the war, slavery would still have been substantially ended by the late 1880s. Also, he pointed out that a Southern victory would have negated the harsh Reconstruction measures that created the Ku Klux Klan. Mencken‘s theories appear reasonable because the practice of slavery in the South was being phased out in the decades before the war. The 1860 U.S. Census indicated that the slave states had 259,078 free Negroes while the "free states" had 222,745. Thousands of property owning free persons of color flourished throughout the South. Charleston, in 1861, had approximately 3,500 free persons of color – almost 8% of the city’s population.
