As early as the Revolutionary War, the South primarily produced cotton, rice, sugar, indigo and tobacco. The North purchased these raw materials and turned them into manufactured goods. By 1828, foreign manufactured goods faced high import taxes. Foreign raw materials, however, were free of tariffs.

Thus the domestic manufacturing industries of the North benefited twice, once as the producers enjoying the protection of high manufacturing tariffs and once as consumers with a free raw materials market. The raw materials industries of the South were left to struggle against foreign competition.

Because manufactured goods were not produced in the South, they had to either be imported or shipped down from the North. Either way, a large expense, be it shipping fees or the federal tariff, was added to the price of manufactured goods only for Southerners. Because importation was often cheaper than shipping from the North, the South paid most of the federal tariffs.

Much of the tariff revenue collected from Southern consumers was used to build railroads and canals in the North. Between 1830 and 1850, 30,000 miles of track was laid. At its best, these tracks benefited the North. Much of it had no economic effect at all. Many of the schemes to lay track were simply a way to get government subsidies. Fraud and corruption were rampant.

With most of the tariff revenue collected in the South and then spent in the North, the South rightly felt exploited. At the time, 90% of the federal government’s annual revenue came from these taxes on imports.

Historians Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffer found that a few common factors increase the likelihood of secession in a region: lower wages, an economy based on raw materials and external exploitation. Although popular movies emphasize slavery as a cause of the Civil War, the war best fits a psycho-historical model of the South rebelling against Northern exploitation.

Many Americans do not understand this fact. A non-slave-owning Southern merchant angered over yet another proposed tariff act does not make a compelling scene in a movie. However, that would be closer to the original cause of the Civil War than any scene of slaves picking cotton.
(source)

Take a look at the title of the original Declaration of Independence shown in the image at the top of this post. You will see that the Founding Fathers used a lower case “u” in united – and even made the letters much smaller than “States”. This is because we were declaring our independence as 13 individual sovereign states, not as a monolithic new country. We were commonly referred to as “these united States” until Lincoln made his case that we were not a union of sovereign states, but a single sovereign nation (“United”). That was the backbone of Lincoln’s argument that secession was illegal, and it was at the very core of the Southern Cause. It wasn’t until about the 1860’s that “The United States” (“The” instead of “these”, and “U” instead of “u”) became the accepted way to refer to this country.

Here is another example of the correct usage:

This is from the University of Indiana School of Law (note that even though they are using modern typesetting, they also recognize that the lower case “u” is the proper usage).

Those who claim that our ancestors were “rebels” and criminals and traitors, try to make the case that using a lower case “u” is being disrespectful. In fact, by using the original form, we show respect to the country that the Founding Fathers gave us. Abraham Lincoln’s version of the way things are has been wrongly accepted because that is how the history books now show it (remember the words of Winston Churchill – “History is written by the victors”). It is our duty to point to things like this to demonstrate that truth is easily covered up and is waiting for us to uncover it. Seemingly insignificant things like the typographic case of a single letter can help educate people about why The South was right and why honoring the nation of the Founding Fathers is more respectful than fraudulently changing the name to agree with Lincoln’s arguments for making war on our ancestors.

For the third year in a row, our family will be celebrating this occasion by having a group of friends and family over for a Confederate Independence Day dinner. A portrait of Robert E. Lee overlooks the dining table where nine of us – mostly friends from the Sons of Confederate Veterans – will enjoy a dinner of pork roast prepared by my wife. We always have our dinner on the Saturday closest to February 22.

It is important to remember and commemorate the events that make up our Southern heritage. Our Confederate Independence Day dinners are something that we look forward to every year. If you haven’t already made plans, there is still time to put something together. Make your Southern heritage a part of your daily life and share it with friends and family.

From the perspective of Southerners defending slavery, what does the issue of slavery in the antebellum years have to do with the Boston Tea Party and “Health Care”? It was the symbol of Northern domination of the country. It was an example of those in the North trying to dictate how Southerners must live. It was the perfect illustration of Northerners who profited from the importation of slaves, who profited from the ready supply of cotton for their textile mills, and who profited when they shipped their slaves south when it proved cheaper and more efficient to import poor Whites to work in their factories for starvation wages once they arrived in America. Having already made their profits from slavery, it became politically expedient to ride the wave of popular outrage against what those people in The South were doing.

Slavery most likely was not all that popular in The South, in that people understood that there was something fundamentally wrong with it. It was a problem, but it was The South’s problem to solve – not to be dictated to by The North. It was the right of the states to make decisions and to solve problems; it was not the proper role of the federal government to tell the states what to do.

Slavery was emblematic of the great divide between North and South. It was NOT the cause for the War for Southern Independence any more than the price of tea was the cause for the first War for Independence. If the issue of slavery suddenly disappeared overnight in late 1860, that would have done nothing to prevent the secession of the Southern states. The only difference would be that the North would no longer have the issue of slavery to piously claim the moral high ground. When we read the accounts of Southern leaders defending slavery, they are using it as a rhetorical device to illustrate the great divide that had split the North and South long before the first shots were ever fired in the war. Was slavery a factor? Yes, of course it was – but not in the way that revisionist history presents it. Slavery was being used as a symbol – just as their grandfathers had used a tax on tea as a symbol of another oppressive government.