“Internal Republican Struggle for Postwar Economic Dominance,” read more at: ncwbts150/TariffOriginsoftheWar.php “Under Lincoln’s leadership the national government had won military control over the manpower of the States. A national economic system based on new national banks, the nation-made financial centers, government-subsidized railroads, and a protective tariff had grown strong during the war…..State politics [now] revolved in the national orbit. For both political and economic reasons the radicals were determined to circumvent Lincoln’s program of reconstruction. Essentially Lincoln’s ten-per-cent governments – announced in his proclamation of December 1863 and already in embryo in Tennessee and Louisiana – would be no better to the radicals than the border States. In Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware the President’s handling of politics had prevented the success of the radical program. These States had passed from Presidential pocket-boroughs, controlled by the army, into conservative – almost Democratic hands. The extension of a conciliatory border-State policy into the conquered area might well ensure the dominance of the moderate wing of the Republican party. Moreover, such an outcome would effectively prevent Northern economic penetration of the South. Railroads would not bring profits to Northern capitalists, cotton would not seek Northern looms, and banks would not beg Northern credit. Instead, a moderate [postwar] South, its politics controlled by ten per cent dependent on Lincoln’s patronage and directed by his army, might well combine with the border States to overthrow the [radical sponsored] national banks, reduce the wartime tariff, and pay the war-born national debt in greenbacks. The terrifying prospect of having the “results of the war” torn from their grasp impelled the radicals to a battle that, beginning early in 1865, was to rage with increasing intensity against President Andrew Johnson.” (Lincoln and the War Governors, William B. Hesseltine, Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, pp. 385, 392-393)
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:36:15 +0000
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