What is the Sum of Good Government?

A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)

The War Between the States was an inevitable outcome. For over seventy years, the principles of central and limited government were argued between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians. Abraham Lincoln would carry forth the Hamilton agenda with his election to the presidency. The South, who supported limited government and Jeffersonian principles, had no choice but to leave the Union, if they hoped to keep their republican form of government. Lincoln could not allow these wealthy cotton producing states to leave the Union; he needed their taxes to fund his “internal improvements” and promote what was being called the “American System” of government. Hamilton’s disciple needed an excuse to justify to the world his right for invading the South; he was just waiting for the South to “throw the first punch” in a fight that his political party had already started in the congressional halls of Washington.

When the colonies declared their independence from Great Britain, it was motivated for economic reasons. The British economic system of mercantilism led to tyrannical taxation of the colonists and their enterprises in the New World. Oppressed Americans would criticize, ignore, and rebel against the various laws passed by Parliament. Taxation without representation, their war cry, would lead to the Revolutionary War. The colonies would form their own independent States—or countries—and would become united under the Articles of Confederation.

Not long after the final shots of the War of Independence, financial war debts and concerns over national defense of the States from foreign powers would lead some politicians to push for centralized government. A new constitution would be suggested as an economic solution to these problems, but many feared that this resolution was being devised by men who would be interested in reestablishing the British economic system of mercantilism.

Alexander Hamilton would be the champion of this economic system that would later be relabeled as the American System.¹ The American System or mercantilism would be defined by economist Murray Rothbard as “a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state.”² Intelligent men who had fought against Britain and this economic system would protest the centralization of governmental powers for this exact reason. Thomas Jefferson would be recognized by the people and the press as Hamilton’s greatest opponent to this plan.

Jefferson and many like-minded citizens were leery of the suggested Constitution and the proposed direction of the Federal government. The States would not ratify the Constitution without a guarantee that individual liberties would be protected through a series of amendments, which would come to be known as the Bill of Rights.³ Even with the inclusion of these amendments, the Constitution was ratified by a slim majority in many of the states; Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island would also declare “in their ordinances of ratification that, being sovereign states, they reserved the right to secede from the Union.”⁴ The Constitution was supposed to define federal powers and limit what the national government could do, but many States knew that power corrupts and declared that they would leave the Union if this would happen.

In Charles A. Beard’s book, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, he writes that it is highly doubtful that there was a majority at all among the people in the states that ratified the Constitution; “and that everywhere the voters of the states were sharply divided into two well-marked political parties.”⁵ The two political parties were debating more than just abstract political ideals, like central government or state’s rights, “but over concrete economic issues.”⁶ The Hamiltonian’s were supported by “financiers, public creditors, traders, commercial men, [and] manufacturers.”⁷ The Jeffersonians were the farmers and the debtors, who would be pitted against them. The seeds of opposition that would lead to war had already been planted. Men like Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln would water them and help them grow.

Henry Clay would follow in Alexander Hamilton’s footsteps when he entered politics in 1811. As a member of the Whig Party, he would support government subsidies for corporations (“internal improvements”), protectionist tariffs, central banking, and a strong central government. His unconstitutional bills to support corporate subsidies would be vetoed by both President Madison and Monroe. President Jackson would bring down Clay’s national bank during his term in office. Clay’s American System and agenda could be defined thusly:

Clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises….He was the beloved son [figuratively speaking] of Alexander Hamilton with his corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone. His example and his doctrines led to the creation of a party that had no platforms to announce, because its principles were plunder and nothing else.⁸

Those who followed Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy felt that the government should be a frugal and simple organization. Public money was not meant to be used as a means to increase the size of government or to inflate the national debt; it was supposed to pay it off. The Federal government was meant to be a liaison between the states and the foreign nations of the world, “except as to commerce.”⁹ Jefferson wrote that American merchants would “manage…better the more they [were] left free to manage for themselves.”¹⁰ By keeping the government small and limited in their powers, it would remain simple, inexpensive, and could be run by a few public servants.

These drastic differences in political opinions created a quasi-cold war during the antebellum period. With Lincoln’s election to the presidency of the United States, this cold war between these two political parties would heat up. No longer was there a president in office, who favored Jeffersonian principles. Now there was Hamiltonian running the Federal government, who would stop at nothing to destroy the Bill of Rights, ignore the Constitution and re-establish mercantilism in America. Lincoln would take upon him the mantel of Henry Clay. “During my whole political life I have loved and revered [Henry Clay] as a teacher and leader,” Lincoln would say.¹¹

Southerners knew that with the election of Lincoln to the highest office in the Federal government, it would lead to monarchist rule; a man who would destroy the constitutional republic that had been established by the founding generation. These Jeffersonians remembered what Hamilton had said about the British constitution and government: “As it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government that ever existed.”¹² Hamilton’s disciple would push his agenda forward. This is why the South had to secede and why they called Lincoln’s invasion of the South, the “Second War of American Independence.”

Due to high protectionist tariffs, “the keystone of the Republican Party platform of 1860,”¹³ the South knew that they would become “slaves” to the American System of government. The Republican Party would use the economic recession of 1857 to their advantage to gain the highest office in the land. As unemployment and financial uncertainty threatened the American people, the Republicans promised them a “cure” to their sudden hardships, protectionism. With acts like the Morrill Tariff, the North would raise prices that would restrict trade in America to “alleviate” the economic pains felt by the common citizen. The Morrill Tariff (signed into law in 1861 by President James Buchanan) would raise the tax on specific goods, products particularly purchased by Southerners, by two hundred and fifty percent. Before the war, the South would generate and be responsible for ninety-five percent of the federal revenue through high protectionist tariffs, which were meant to further the American System.¹⁵ This new trade law would more than double the tariff duties, a tax that the South could not bear.

Not all Northerners were oblivious to the economic situation being forced upon the Southern States. On December 10, 1860, the Daily Chicago Times published an article that would expose the true motives of the Morrill Tariff:

The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole…we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.¹⁶

The “gullible and largely economically illiterate Northern public apparently fell for”¹⁴ the Republican Party promises to fix the financial crisis by raising prices and restricting trade, but the South did not. Rather than be enslaved by an emerging imperialistic empire created by the Republican Party, the South opted to leave the Union. The South did not start the war; they did not seek to overthrow the Federal government, which was now being controlled by Hamiltonian policies. The South’s desire was summed up by President Jefferson Davis, in his first message to the Confederate Congress: “All we ask is to be let alone.”¹⁷  

Just like King George III, Lincoln could not afford to let his wealthy cotton producing “colonies” to leave the empire. In Lincoln’s first inaugural address he said: “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts.”¹⁸ By musket and bayonet, President Lincoln would force the South back into the “Union” to maintain his empire and collect his taxes from his subjects. However, the North could not just invade the South without just cause; Lincoln had to wait for the South to throw the first punch to be justified in his actions.

As each state in the South seceded, it was expected that Federal agents would abandon their posts and turn over their property back to their rightful owner, the sovereign States. “In exchange, the South offered not only to pay for the properties, but to pay the South’s portion of the federal debt of the United States.”¹⁹ Soon the last two remaining holdouts of the Federal military in Southern lands were Fort Pickens at Pensacola, Florida, and Fort Sumter at Charlestown, South Carolina. The citizens of Charlestown were becoming uneasy with federal actions in Fort Sumter. Governor Pickens of South Carolina wrote President Buchanan on December 17, 1860 about his countrymen’s concerns: “I am authentically informed that the forts in Charleston harbor are now being thoroughly prepared to turn, with effect, their guns upon the interior and the city. Jurisdiction was ceded by this State expressly for the purpose of external defense from foreign invasion, and not with any view that they should be turned upon the State.”²⁰ Pickens would go on to ask the president to relinquish the Fort Sumter back over to the State.

Union Major Robert Anderson had abandoned his post at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island and took his command of eighty-two men to the unfinished Fort Sumter in December 1860. Without support from the Federal government, his men would not be able to maintain their control of the Southern fort for long. Not long after Anderson had slipped into the fort with his men, Buchanan had already attempted to resupply the trespassers when he sent the Star of the West with 250 men and supplies. On January 9, 1861, when the Star of the West entered Charleston harbor, it was fired upon by Citadel cadets located at Morris Island.²¹ After sustaining three hits out of seven shots, with no support from Major Anderson’s guns at Fort Sumter, the Star of the West, turned and left the harbor without reinforcing the Union forces. As a result of this event, Charleston armed its forts and harbor with guns pointed at Sumter and the approach from the sea. Anderson would no longer be able to purchase food and supplies from the city. As Buchanan left office, this would become Lincoln’s problem.

Just one day after Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, he would receive word from Anderson that “he had not food enough to last six weeks.”²² Lincoln would ask: “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, under all the circumstances is it wise to attempt it?”²³ Secretary of State William H. Seward, Lincoln’s top military advisors, and most of his cabinet would warn Lincoln that if he attempted to resupply Fort Sumter, it would lead to open war with the South. His cabinet members would vote five-to-one to abandon the fort altogether.²⁴ Seward particularly wanted to find a peaceful resolution to their current crisis. Many thought that even if the South was to leave the Union, they would eventually rejoin it.  

Lincoln on the other hand, had the answer he was looking for, a way to force the South’s hand to start the war. He promised South Carolina that he would not be sending more troops, arms or ammunition to support Major Anderson at Fort Sumter; he promised it would be just provisions. He lied.

The South was already suspicious of Northern actions regarding the fort after the Star of the West incident. The historian Bruce Catton explains how Lincoln forced the South’s hand to start the war:

Lincoln had been plainly warned by [his military advisers] that a ship taking provisions to Fort Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending war ships and soldiers as well….If there was going to be a war it would begin over a boat load of salt pork and crackers….Not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina “should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread.”²⁵

Northern newspapers criticized the Lincoln administration for their aggressive behavior and saw through their actions that started the War Between the States. On April 13, 1861, the Providence Daily Post wrote: “For three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Fort Sumter would be abandoned…but Mr Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor.”²⁶ The Jersey City American Standard would chime in with similar sentiments, when they wrote that “this unarmed vessel…is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the government is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war.”²⁷

Despite the truth of Lincoln’s agenda being published in some Northern newspapers, many men in the North were awakened to a patriotic zeal after the firing on Fort Sumter, much like that among American citizens after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This “Star-Spangled Fever” would be felt throughout the North from the halls of urban colleges to the rural farms.²⁸ Northern patriots unaware of the true motivations behind the war, joined the ranks simply because, “they fired on us.” On the contrary, many of the Southern men would join the ranks because, “they are down here.”

 

The Hamiltonian president, Abraham Lincoln—bent of pushing forward the American System of government—secured his war upon the South and all Jeffersonians, who attempted to maintain a limited government based on republican principles. The Cold War had been building for over seventy years and was inevitable. When the Federal government was strong enough to force their will and settle the argument between the two parties, they invaded the South. The Hamiltonians were willing to sacrifice over 800,000 men, women, and children for the American System of government. They would prove that their system was abusive and destructive to the pursuits of industry and improvement. Their ideals of government would take from the mouth of labor its bread. Their principles would prove to be the sum of bad government.  

Notes

1.       Baxter, Maurice G. "Henry Clay and the American System." 27. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995.

2.       DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "The Real Lincoln." 56. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002.

3.       Schmidt, Steffen W. "American Government and Politics Today." 50. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2013.

4.       DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 91.

5.       Beard, Charles A. "Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy." 2. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915.

6.       Ibid, p. 3.

7.       Ibid.

8.       DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, pg. 58-59.

9.       Maxfield, M. Richard. "The Real Thomas Jefferson." 71. Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1983.

10.   Ibid, p. 432.

11.   DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 14.

12.   Kennedy, James Ronald. "The South Was Right!" 222. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 1994.

13.   DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "Lincoln Unmasked." 123. New York: Crown Forum, 2006.

14.   DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked, p. 122.

15.   Crocker III, H. W. "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War." 31. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008.

16.   DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 242.

17.   Crocker, p. 29.

18.   Lincoln, Abraham. The Avalon Project: Documents in Lay, Histoy and Diplomacy. First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. 2008. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp (accessed November 12, 2013).

19.   Crocker, p. 31.

20.   "The Record of Fort Sumter from its Occupation by Major Anderson, to its Reduction by South Carolina Troops During the Administration of Governor Pickens." By W. A. Harris, 7. Columbia: South Carolinian Steam Job Printing Office, 1862.

21.   Bostick, Douglas W. "The Union is Dissolved!: Charleston and Fort Sumter in the Civil War." 63. Charleston: The History Press, 2009.

22.   Foote, Shelby. "The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville." 44. New York: Random House, 1958.

23.   Ibid, p. 45.

24.   Ibid.

25.   DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 119.

26.   Ibid, p. 120.

27.   Ibid.

28.   Wiley, Bill Irvin. "The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union." 18-19. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952.