American Civil War

The American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865 after the Confederate States withdrew from the United States of America. It is sold these days as a war about slavery. My view is that it had far more to do with commerce. The Wikipedia goes for the slave issue albeit there is mention of Protectionism.

The northern states were industrial as well as agricultural. The South was agricultural. It was not just growing food. Cotton was a cash crop, one that went to factories making cloth. It became a major growth industry due to the invention, in 1793 of the Cotton gin, a machine for separating cotton lint from the seeds. There were exports to England, to Lancashire as well as American factories. Slavery was also about farming, about producing cotton. It became another growth area as the demand for cotton grew. 

The aftermath of the was the Reconstruction Era of the United States  which turned the South into a rural, poverty stricken backwater where blacks were worse off. Propagandists skate over details like this. See e.g. American Civil War ex Wiki. A good source is Gone with the Wind. The book reads as good history, from a European perspective. The film was made in 1939. It is likely to be censored now.

#Understanding The American Civil War does precisely what its title says. Paul Craig Roberts, the well known economist explains that it was caused by commercial rivalry between the North, the South and England; the manufacturers versus the agricultural South, the supplier of raw Cotton. Northern manufacturers were more expensive than England's Whence the  #Morrill Tariff, which caused Southern States to secede. The Northern response was the #Corwin Amendment to the American Constitution, which would have made freeing slaves an issue for States, not the Federal Government.

Damage done in the South by Lincoln's scorched earth policy, his attacks on innocent civilians and other war crimes made it important to counteract sympathy in the North. That is why Abraham Lincoln was marketed as soft hearted, generous fellow who was rescuing blacks from their oppressors in the South. It is s monstrous lie marketed by corrupt historians and corrupt Mainstream Media. Someone who disagrees in a big way is Dr. Marc-William Palen. See e.g. Debunking the Civil War Tariff Myth. You are entitled to believe him. I do not.

 

American Civil War - ex Wiki
QUOTE
The American Civil War (1861–1865), in the United States often referred to as simply the Civil War and sometimes called the "War Between the States", was a civil war fought over the secession of the Confederate States. Eleven southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ("the Confederacy"); the other 25 states supported the federal government ("the Union"). After four years of warfare, mostly within the Southern states, the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was abolished everywhere in the nation. Issues that led to war were partially resolved in the Reconstruction Era that followed, though others remained unresolved.

In the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, had campaigned against expanding slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. The Republicans strongly advocated nationalism, and in their 1860 platform they denounced threats of disunion as avowals of treason. After a Republican victory, but before the new administration took office on March 4, 1861, seven cotton states declared their secession and joined to form the Confederate States of America. Both the outgoing administration of President James Buchanan and the incoming administration rejected the legality of secession, considering it rebellion. The other eight slave states rejected calls for secession at this point. No foreign governments recognized the Confederacy.

Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state to recapture federal property, which led to declarations of secession by four more slave states. Both sides raised armies as the Union seized control of the border states early in the war and established a naval blockade. Land warfare in the East was inconclusive in 1861–62, as the Confederacy beat back Union efforts to capture its capital, Richmond, Virginia, notably during the Peninsular Campaign. In September 1862, the Confederate campaign in Maryland ended in defeat at the Battle of Antietam, which dissuaded the British from intervening.[3] Days after that battle, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal.[4]

In 1863, Confederate general Robert E. Lee's northward advance ended in defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. To the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River after the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862) and Siege of Vicksburg, splitting the Confederacy in two and destroying much of their western army. Due to his western successes, Ulysses S. Grant was given command of all Union armies in 1864, and organized the armies of William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade and others to attack the Confederacy from all directions, increasing the North's advantage in manpower. Grant restructured the union army, and put other generals in command of divisions of the army that were to support his push into Virginia. He fought several battles of attrition against Lee through the Overland Campaign to seize Richmond, though in the face of fierce resistance he altered his plans and led the Siege of Petersburg which nearly finished off the rest of Lee's army. Meanwhile, Sherman captured Atlanta and marched to the sea, destroying Confederate infrastructure along the way. When the Confederate attempt to defend Petersburg failed, the Confederate army retreated but was pursued and defeated, which resulted in Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The practices of total war, developed by Sherman in Georgia, the experimental use of the first usable predecessor of the machine gun and of trench warfare around Petersburg, all foreshadowed World War I in Europe. It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers[5] and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Historian John Huddleston estimates the death toll at ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40.[6] Victory for the North meant the end of the Confederacy and of slavery in the United States, and strengthened the role of the federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the reconstruction era that lasted to 1877........

Despite compromises in 1820 and 1850, the slavery issues exploded in the 1850s. Causes include controversy over admitting Missouri as a slave state in 1820, the acquisition of Texas as a slave state in 1845 and the status of slavery in western territories won as a result of the Mexican–American War and the resulting Compromise of 1850.[13] Irreconcilable disagreements over slavery ended the Whig and Know Nothing parties, and split the Democratic Party between North and South, while the new Republican Party angered slavery interests by demanding an end to its expansion. Most observers believed that without expansion slavery would eventually die out; Lincoln argued this in 1845 and 1858.[14] With victory over Mexico Northerners attempted in the Wilmot Proviso to exclude slavery from conquered territories; it never passed. Northern (and British) readers recoiled in anger at the horrors of slavery through the novel and play Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.[15] [ Propaganda is powerful - Editor ].
UNQUOTE
Wars are dangerous and expensive but more interesting than plague or famine.

 

General Order No. 11 (1862)
QUOTE
General Order No. 11 was the title of an order issued by Major-General Ulysses S. Grant on December 17, 1862, during the American Civil War. It ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his military district, comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a Union campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders."[1] While permitting some trade, the United States licensed traders through the United States Army, which created a market for unlicensed one. Union military commanders in the South were responsible for administering the trade licenses and trying to control the black market in Southern cotton, as well as for conducting the war. Grant issued the order in an effort to reduce corruption.

Following protests from Jewish community leaders and an outcry by members of Congress and the press, President Abraham Lincoln ordered this revoked a few weeks later. During his campaign for the presidency in 1868, Grant repudiated the order, saying that it had been drafted by a subordinate and that he had signed it without reading in the pres [ sic ] of warfare.
UNQUOTE
The Wiki reads as honest on this one. It is not something to take for granted.

 

Protectionism
QUOTE
Protectionism

Main articles: King Cotton, Protectionism in the United States, and Infant industry
 
New Orleans the largest cotton exporting port for New England and Great Britain textile mills, shipping Mississippi River Valley goods from North, South and Border states.

Historically, southern slave-holding states, because of their low cost manual labor, had little perceived need for mechanization, and supported having the right to sell the cotton and purchase manufactured goods from any nation. Northern states, who invested into the manufacturing, which still remained infant, could not offer high prices for the southern cotton and low for their goods, losing the competition to the fully-fledged industries in Britain. For this reason, they demanded state protection, whereas South, controlled by planters, stood for the free trade.

The Democrats in Congress, controlled by Southerners, wrote the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and kept reducing rates, so that the 1857 rates were the lowest since 1816. The South had no complaints but the low rates angered Northern industrialists and factory workers, especially in Pennsylvania, who demanded protection for their growing iron industry. The Whigs and Republicans complained because they favored high tariffs to stimulate industrial growth, and Republicans called for an increase in tariffs in the 1860 election. The increases were finally enacted in 1861 after Southerners resigned their seats in Congress.[43][44]

Historians in the 1920s emphasized the tariff issue but since the 1950s they have minimized it, noting that few Southerners in 1860–61 said it was of central importance to them. Some secessionist documents do mention the tariff issue, though not nearly as often as the preservation of slavery.

 

Understanding The American Civil War
Mike Whitney Interviews Paul Craig Roberts
and • September 23, 2023
Paul Craig Roberts– Before I answer the questions it needs to be clearly stated that my answers are not merely my opinion, but hard facts supported in the historical record. Like John Maynard Keynes, I like to keep my views in accordance with the facts. In the case of what is called “the Civil War,” the facts are clear enough.

Lincoln and the Republicans understood that the 2 March 1861 Morrill Tariff would result in secession of Southern states from the Union. On the same day in an effort to prevent secession, the Republicans passed and Lincoln endorsed the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment would have made it impossible for slavery to be abolished.

“On 2 March 1861, in a futile attempt to prevent the secession of the slaveholding states, Congress proposed, and sent to the states for ratification, a constitutional amendment designed to protect slavery in the states where it existed.”

If the Republicans invaded the South to overthrow slavery, why did they pass a constitutional amendment that would have preserved slavery forever? If the South went to war in defense of slavery, why did the South not ratify the Corwin Amendment and remain in the Union?

These questions have been evaded by dishonest historians ever since the end of the war.

The war was a bloody business. The Union generals Sherman and Sheridan targeted not only Southern armies but civilians and their shelter and food supplies. As the war came to an end the devastated condition of the South was creating northern sympathy, something the extreme Republicans pushing more punishment and humiliation under their Reconstruction policy did not want. The Republicans saw the need to turn the explanation of the war into a moral project to free the slaves from the iniquity of white Southerners. Reconstruction went beyond the South’s defeat and inflicted brutal humiliation. This required creation of an immoral image of the South fighting to keep people in slavery.

As the victors write the histories, the reconstructed account prevailed. The creation of black studies as university departments and the civil rights disturbances in the 1960s served to renew the positioning of white Southerners as reprehensible and in need of a second Reconstruction via busing and coerced racial integration.


Mike Whitney– Help me understand the origins of the Civil War. I was taught that the Union went to war to end slavery and that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War? Is that true?

Paul Craig Roberts– As all historical documentation shows, slavery had little to do with the so-called Civil War. Let’s get this straight at the beginning. IT WAS NOT A CIVIL WAR. A civil war is when two sides fight over the control of the government. The South made no fight to take over the government. The South merely used its Constitutional right to secede from the US.

Secession resulted in war because Lincoln was determined to “preserve the Union.” He proclaimed repeatedly that he invaded the South to “preserve the Union,” not to free the slaves. He said that he had no power to free the slaves because the US Constitution made slavery a states’ rights issue.

In his inaugural address Lincoln said: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” The North had no intention of going to war over slavery. The same day that the Republican Congress passed the tariff, the Republican Congress passed the Corwin Amendment that added more constitutional protection to slavery.

Lincoln said that the South could have all the slavery that it wanted as long as the Southern states paid the tariff. The North would not go to war over slavery, but it would to collect the tariff. Lincoln said that “there needs to be no bloodshed or violence” over collecting the tariff, but that he will use the government’s power “to collect the duties and imposts.”

The South did not invade the North. The North invaded the South. President Lincoln made the reason clear time after time. The War of Northern Aggression was to preserve the Union and to make the Southern states pay the tariff to finance Northern industrialization. The South fought because the South was invaded.

Until modern times serious historians, such as Charles Beard, who were not fighting ideological battles explained the conflict between the Northern and Southern states as being economic. The North wanted a tariff against British imports that would raise the cost of British imports above what the same goods could be produced for in northern factories.

The Southern states objected to being forced to pay in order to subsidize higher priced Northern manufactures. The Southern states were also concerned that the British in retaliation would impose tariffs on the Southern export of cotton and tobacco.

As territories were taken from native Americans and became incorporated as states, the difference between North and South, resulting, for example, in the Missouri Compromise, was not over the expansion of slavery, but over keeping the balance in Congress between North and South equal so that the North could not impose tariffs on the South.

President Lincoln said repeatedly that slavery was a state’s rights issue for which there was no federal authority to abolish, and that he did not intend to exceed his powers by abolishing slavery. In the North only the abolitionists who did not have much of Lincoln’s ear saw the war as a campaign to end slavery.

As Southern states were seceding because of the tariff that had passed, the Northern Republicans on the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration as president passed the Corwin Amendment which made it impossible for the United States to ever abolish slavery. Lincoln endorsed the Corwin Amendment. Today historians have to obscure this fact in order to protect their explanation of the war. They say that Lincoln neither opposed nor supported the Corwin Amendment, but here are Lincoln’s direct words accepting the Amendment in his inaugural address: “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

President Lincoln made the deal clear to the South: Stay in the Union and slavery is guaranteed by the government of the United States of America for ever.

If the war was over slavery, why did the South not avoid the war by accepting Lincoln’ guarantee? Indeed, why was the guarantee even necessary as Lincoln admitted that slavery was a state’s right issue, not a federal one. So here is the South with two guarantees against the abolishment of slavery and the South still wants to fight for slavery?!

If the Union invaded the South to free the slaves, why did the Union pass the Corwin Amendment guaranteeing the permanent existence of slavery?

Clearly, slavery was not the issue.

The war was caused by the passage of the tariff and by the South’s refusal to pay the tariff by seceding. When the South could not be bribed by the Corwin Amendment to remain in the Union, Lincoln invaded.

Historians of the slavery explanation of the war find their support in Southern arguments for secession. The South in order to avoid war wanted to leave the Union on Constitutional grounds, thinking naively that the North would respect the Constitution.

In the US Constitution tariffs are a FEDERAL issue, not a STATES RIGHTS ISSUE. The South could not make a Constitutional case for secession on the basis of opposition to the Tariff. But the South could make a case for secession on slavery grounds, because the Constitution required northern states to return runaway slaves, and some northern states, in defiance of the US Constitution, refused to return the runaway property. Thus northern states were violating the US Constitution. This gave constitutional grounds to the Southern states for secession. They argued that Northern states had broken the Constitutional pact by violating it.

In order to show that they were acting in accordance with the Constitution and not committing treason or an act of rebellion by seceding, some of the states’ secession documents made the argument that Northern states that did not return slaves had voided the constitutional pact. This is the basis for the historians’ claim that the war was fought over slavery. I have written at length about this. See, (here) and (here)

Mike Whitney– On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared “that all persons held as slaves” …”henceforward shall be free.” What do Americans need to know about the Emancipation Proclamation that they weren’t taught in school? Was Lincoln really the “great American hero” he’s made-out to be?

Paul Craig Roberts– The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure. Not a freedom of the slaves measure. As President Lincoln’s own Secretary of State said, “We have just freed slaves in territories that we do not control and left them in slavery in territories we do control.”

During the first two years of war Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson with far fewer soldiers had consistently inflicted defeats on Lincoln’s large armies. Lincoln ran through general after general, all defeated by the small Army of Northern Virginia.

Lincoln and his advisors decided that a Union proclamation freeing slaves in Southern territories would produce a slave rebellion and that Lee’s invincible army would run home to protect their wives and children.

But no such slave rebellion occurred. However oppressed the abolitionists imagined the blacks were, the blacks didn’t agree. There was no rebellion.

The misrepresentation of the War of Northern Aggression as Lincoln’s war to free slaves is impossible to reconcile with Lincoln’s view of blacks. Here is “the Great Emancipator” in his own words:

“I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation [of the white and black races] . . . Such separation . . . must be affected by colonization” [sending blacks to Liberia or Central America]. (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol. II, p. 409).

“Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime.” (Collected Works, vol. II, p. 409).

(Lincoln) “I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people” (Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 145-146).

How was the real Lincoln turned into “the Great Emancipator”?

Mike Whitney– In your book Empire Of Lies you refer to the Civil War as The War of Northern Aggression. I admit, I had never heard that term before, but it really helped me to realize that one’s interpretation of what took place depends largely on where one was born and raised. What are the most glaring errors that Northerners make about the Civil War?

Paul Craig Roberts– It was the North that invaded the South. The South fought only because it was invaded. Lincoln rejected the South’s constitutional argument for secession, declared the South to be in rebellion and invaded to preserve the Union.

The Union Armies under Sherman and Sheridan committed war crimes. They attacked civilians and left them starving with slaughtered livestock and burned down homes. In contrast, when Lee took the Army of Northern Virginia into Union territory in an effort to conclude the conflict, he admonished his soldiers prior to Gettysburg to remember that their purpose is to defeat the enemy’s army, not to take revenge on Union civilians for what Union armies did to the South’s civilians.

The misrepresentation that the Union Army was fighting for black freedom becomes obviously absurd when we realize that at war’s end this same Union army and its generals Sherman and Sheridan were unleashed on the Plans Indians to exterminate the buffalo, the Indians’ food supply, and to massacre their women and children. Books have been written and movies have been made about this. The question always in my mind is: if saving blacks on Southern plantations is a great moral cause, what happened to the moral cause when the same army was unleashed against the Plains Indians? Why save one “people of color” and destroy another?

Mike Whitney– The monuments of Confederate Generals have recently become a source of controversy and deepening polarization. A number of these statues have been either torn-down or desecrated by radical leftists who believe that they are fighting racism. What is wrong with this line-of-reasoning?

Paul Craig Roberts– Everything. The South fought because it was invaded by Lincoln. The South fought to repel an invader, not for slavery. The Southern army was not composed of plantation owners. It was composed of ordinary people, most of whom were poor. They were fighting because they were invaded.

 

 

Mike Whitney– Here’s a quote from your book that I found particularly interesting:

“Before history became politicized, historians understood that the North intended for the South to bear costs of the North’s development of industry and manufacturing. The agricultural South preferred the lower priced goods from England. The South understood that a tariff on British goods would push import prices above the high northern prices and lower the South’s living standards in the interest of raising living standards in the North. The conflict was entirely economic and had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery, which also had existed in the North….”

This is a remarkable statement that suggests that our fundamental understanding of the Civil War is wrong. The official version of events implies that the war was launched for humanitarian reasons (ending slavery) by a benevolent leader (Lincoln) whose actions were guided by his unflinching commitment to principle. Your comment suggests that this version of history is wrong, and that the conflict had more to do with tariffs, industry and living standards than with slavery.

Can you expand on your statement and comment on whether –in your opinion– the US would have been better-off had Lincoln allowed the South to secede from the Union splitting the country into two separate parts forever?

Paul Craig Roberts– The “official version” is not official. It is a revisionist version entirely devoid of any support in historical documents. The purposes of the “official version” are to cover up Northern war crimes and justify Reconstruction, to set up reparations for blacks, to reduce whites to second class citizens and to legitimize racial preferences for blacks in university admissions, employment, promotion and exemption from criminal punishment for crimes, such as San Francisco’s law that blacks can steal up to $950 each time from stores without it being a criminal offense and the California legislature’s recent passage of a bill requiring less punishment for blacks than for white people for identical criminal acts.

If the South had prevailed, today the US would be a smaller country. In order to protect itself from the North, the South would have competed for expansion into western territories. Mexico might have been able to hold on to parts stolen from itself.

As a smaller entity, the US would be unable to claim hegemony over the world. We would not face the prospect of nuclear destruction from an aggressive foreign policy.

 

 

 

Mike Whitney– In many parts of the United States, discrimination and bigotry are considered the highest moral crimes. Unfortunately, there is one exception to this rule. Americans are still free to disparage Southern whites as ignorant, racist ‘crackers’ who are fully-deserving of their condescension and contempt. How do you explain this flagrant prejudice against southerners that still thrives in many parts of the country today?

Paul Craig Roberts– The prejudice against Southerners is prejudice against all whites.

Discrimination and bigotry are artificial issues created for the sole reason of demonizing all white Americans, not just Southerners. All whites, even the white liberals insisting on the demonization, are included. The doctrines of “aversive racism” and “critical race theory” do not exclude the white liberals who promote these doctrines. The white liberals have brought demonization on all white people, themselves included.

If the so-called “Civil War” was fought at great expense in white lives for the sake of black freedom, how can whites be said to be racists responsible for the oppression of blacks? As whites did so much for blacks, why are blacks taught to hate whites? How could “aversive racists” have gone to their deaths in war for the sake of blacks? Why did blacks turn on their liberators?

Critical race theory doesn’t just apply to southerners. It is taught in northern schools, Midwestern schools, west coast schools, southwest schools. Clearly the official narrative of the “Civil War” is at odds with the demonization of white people as oppressors of blacks.

I don’t know of one, but possibly there is an example of a white southerner traveling to Africa and capturing and enslaving a black. But what we do know, or once did, is that slave wars conducted by the black kingdom of Dahomey were the source of the enslaved blacks brought to the Americas.

 

 

 

Mike Whitney– Are Lee and Jackson still honored as heroes in the South?

Paul Craig Roberts– For what remains of the South, yes. But Lee’s statues have been removed from the Virginia that he defended. Jackson’s statue has been removed from VMI. The South’s heroes have been deep-sixed. Southerners have been indoctrinated for many years that southerners are evil because they are white and thereby racists.

Robert E. Lee spent his life in service to the US military. He fought for Washington in the conflicts with Mexico. He was offered Union command when the North made the decision to invade the South. Lee refused the offer on the grounds that he could not invade his own state of Virginia.

Americans, being propagandized instead of educated, aren’t aware that in those days of states’ rights people saw themselves as citizens of states, not of the United States.

Lee owned no plantations. He was a US military officer forced by the War of Northern Aggression to defend his state of Virginia.

Stonewall Jackson was a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, which provided as good or better officers to the US Army as West Point. Jackson owned no plantations. He was a professor forced into war by Lincoln’s invasion of the South.

How do southerners today view Lee and Jackson? The real question is: Does the South still exist? The federal government controls its schools. Its universities are staffed by northern professors, because the Southern universities seeking approval abandoned their own and try to raise their standing by hiring northern Ivy league Ph.Ds.

Southern literature has been discredited as racist and cast down the memory hole, as has great movies such as “Gone with the Wind.”

Southern cities have been over-run by northerners escaping from the north, or by blacks, as Atlanta has been. Southerners no longer have a voice. They have been de-platformed. They don’t even have their own universities. There is no Southern media.

Whatever remains of the South stood aside as Southern cities removed the monuments of heroes, now described as racists, who defended the south from invasion.

The destruction of monuments destroys history. The destruction of history destroys memory. Thus the South disappears day by day.


Corwin Amendment ex Wiki
The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could still be adopted by the state legislatures. It would shield slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the word slavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. The outgoing 36th United States Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, with the intent of preventing that war and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.
.

Several Southern states attempted to secede after the 1860 presidential election, eventually forming the Confederate States of America. Several federal legislative measures, including the Corwin Amendment, were proposed during this period in the hope of either reconciling the sections of the United States or avoiding the secession of the border states.[1] Senator William H. Seward and Representative Thomas Corwin, Republicans and allies of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, introduced the Corwin Amendment, which was endorsed by the outgoing president, James Buchanan. Because it was only ratified in a handful of Northern states and Kentucky, the amendment failed to achieve its goal of preventing civil war and preserving the Union. Ultimately, it fell out of favor during the Civil War.

Text

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.[2][3]

The text refers to slavery with terms such as "domestic institutions" and "persons held to labor or service" and avoids using the word "slavery", following the example set at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which referred to slavery in its draft of the Constitution with comparable descriptions of legal status: "Person held to Service", "the whole Number of free Persons ..., three fifths of all other Persons", "The Migration and Importation of such Persons".[4] ................................

In December 1860, when the second session of the 36th Congress was convened, the deepening rift between slave states and free states was erupting into a secession crisis. The Senate quickly formed a "Committee of Thirteen" to investigate possible legislative measures that might solve the slavery predicament. The House formed a "Committee of Thirty-three" with the same objective. More than 200 resolutions with respect to slavery,[5] including 57 resolutions proposing constitutional amendments,[6] were introduced in Congress. Most represented compromises designed to avert military conflict. Senator Jefferson Davis proposed one that explicitly protected property rights in slaves.[6] A group of House members proposed a national convention to accomplish secession as a "dignified, peaceful, and fair separation" that could settle questions like the equitable distribution of the federal government's assets and rights to navigate the Mississippi River.[7] Senator John J. Crittenden proposed a compromise consisting of six constitutional amendments and four Congressional resolutions,[8] which were ultimately tabled on December 31.

On January 14, 1861, the House committee submitted a plan calling for an amendment to protect slavery, enforce fugitive slave laws, and repeal state personal liberty laws.[9] The proposed constitutional amendment declared:

No amendment of this Constitution, having for its object any interference within the States with the relations between their citizens and those described in second section of the first article of the Constitution as "all other persons", shall originate with any State that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the States composing the Union.[10]

While the House debated the measure over the ensuing weeks, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had joined South Carolina in seceding from the Union. The contentious atmosphere in the House during the debate was relieved by abolitionist Republican Owen Lovejoy of Illinois, who questioned the amendment's reach: "Does that include polygamy, the other twin relic of barbarism?" Missouri Democrat John S. Phelps answered: "Does the gentleman desire to know whether he shall be prohibited from committing that crime?"[6]

On February 26, Congressman Thomas Corwin, who had chaired the earlier House committee, introduced his own text as a substitute, but it was not adopted. The following day, after a series of preliminary votes, the House voted 123 to 71 in favor of the original resolution, but as this was below the required two-thirds majority, the measure was not passed.[10][11] On February 28, however, the House returned to and approved Corwin's version—House (Joint) Resolution No. 80—by a vote of 133 to 65, just barely above the two-thirds threshold.[12][13]

The Senate took up the proposed amendment on March 2, 1861, debating its merits without a recess through the pre-dawn hours on March 4. When the final vote was taken, the amendment passed with exactly the needed two-thirds majority – 24–12.[13]

Soon afterward, it was sent to the state legislatures for ratification. The joint resolution containing the Corwin Amendment called for the amendment to be submitted to the state legislatures,[14] as it was believed that the amendment had a greater chance of success in the legislatures of the Southern states than would have been the case in state ratifying conventions, given that state conventions were being conducted at that time throughout the South at which votes to secede from the Union were successful.

The Corwin Amendment was the second proposed "Thirteenth Amendment" submitted to the states by Congress. The first was the similarly ill-fated Titles of Nobility Amendment in 1810.

Presidential responses

Outgoing President James Buchanan endorsed the Corwin Amendment by taking the unprecedented step of signing it.[15] His signature on the Congressional joint resolution was unnecessary, as the President has no formal role in the constitutional amendment process.[16]

Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address on March 4, said of the Corwin Amendment:[17]

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service ... holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln sent a letter to each state's governor transmitting the proposed amendment,[18] noting that Buchanan had approved it. His letter did not say anything opposing or supporting the amendment itself.[19]

 

Morrill Tariff ex Wiki
QUOTE
The Morrill Tariff was an increased import tariff in the United States that was adopted on March 2, 1861, during the administration of US President James Buchanan, a Democrat. It was the twelfth of the seventeen planks in the platform of the incoming Republican Party, which had not yet been inaugurated, and the tariff appealed to industrialists and factory workers as a way to foster rapid industrial growth.[1] 

It was named for its sponsor, Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, who drafted it with the advice of the Pennsylvania economist Henry Charles Carey. The eventual passage of the tariff in the US Senate was assisted by multiple opponent senators from the South resigning from Congress after their states declared their secession from the Union. The tariff rates were raised to both make up for a federal deficit that had led to increased government debt in recent years and to encourage domestic industry and foster high wages for industrial workers.[2]
UNQUOTE
Making the South pay for the North's industrialization was the game.