What about the attitudes?
Recently we have seen much dealing with the origins of the Civil War, the influence of the Morill Tariff Act and the concept of slavery. I suspect that too little attention is paid to the attitudes of the people themselves.
In the South, slavery was an accepted fact, as in most of the world at that time, and the average Southerner had little-to-no idea of the non-agricultural culture of the North. Prior to the tariff the South was able to buy manufactured goods from abroad at prices lower that the same items from the U.S. North and that it had the right to secede if it was to its benefit. The protectionist North felt that there was need to protect its industries and relatively higher wages.
In the rural North, people probably never knew of the tariff because it did not affect them, nor did the concept of slavery bother them. Most had probably never even seen a black person, let alone a slave, although many of the Northerners were descended from indentured servants, a form of neo-slavery.
I am old enough to have met two great-great grandfathers who were wounded in the Civil War; one with Chamberlain in the 20th Maine. I can remember being fascinated by an old man with only one leg, but was too young to ask questions. I was fortunate that family culture did pass down some of their information and feelings. They were peeved that the South had seceded and split the U.S. and then had, they felt, started the war by firing on Fort Sumter. They fought to restore their country and to punish the South for seceding. If there was a slavery issue, it certainly was not paramount and if it was thought about it was from an ideological standpoint not a social concern.
Much of the actions and reactions during the reconstruction period were viewed as punishing the “bad guys,” not in terms of massive social readjustments. Nor were they affected by the Tariff that the South felt was designed to push it around.
Guthrie “Guff ” Worth
Lakeport
