THE CONVENIENT LIE: War Was A Choice
Part Three-B of Mindy Esposito's Awesome series
Part Three-B of Mindy Esposito’s Awesome series
(Mindy Esposito) - The South did not want war.
That cannot be said often enough or plainly enough. They wanted independence. Lincoln could not afford to give it to them. Not because of slavery. Because of money.
Part Three-A established why the first seven states left. They left because the compact was broken. They formed a government and asked to negotiate. They were refused. This essay covers what Lincoln did next. And what it cost the Southern people.
THE MONEY LINCOLN COULD NOT LOSE
Southern ports generated the majority of federal customs revenue. New Orleans. Charleston. Savannah. Mobile. In 1860 the South produced roughly sixty percent of American exports. Cotton alone dominated global trade. The federal government ran primarily on tariff revenue collected at ports. Southern ports were the engine of that revenue.
The Morrill Tariff had just passed in February 1861, raising import duties back to the levels of the Tariff of Abominations. As covered in Part Two-B, it passed only because Southern senators had vacated their seats.
Now consider what a free Confederate nation meant to the North. The Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibited protective tariffs. The Confederate South would have been a free trade zone on America’s southern border. European manufactured goods would…
According to historian Mike King, behind the Confederacy the Rothschild bankers were manipulating events to install a centralized bank. Lincoln resisted this and lost his life.