Lawrence Keitt - Denying Tariffs as Cause

But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question.

The Whig party, thoughout all the States, have been protective Tariff men, and they cling to that old issue with all the passion incident to the pride of human opinions. Are we to go off now, when other Southern States are bringing their people up to the true mark? Are we to go off on debateable and doctrinal points? Are we to go back to the consideration of this question, of this great controversy; go back to that party's politics, around which so many passions cluster? Names are much -- associations and passions cluster around names.

I can give no better illustration than to relate an anecdote given me by a member from Louisiana. He said, after the election of Lincoln, he went to an old Whig party friend and said to him: We have been beaten -- our honor requires a dissolution of the Union. Let us see if we cannot agree together, and offered him a resolution to this effect --Resolved, That the honor of Louisiana requires her to disrupt every tie that binds her to the Federal Government. [Laughter.]

It is name, and when we come to more practicability we must consult names. Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it.

In 1860, the total tariff collected in all U.S. ports was less than $2 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. When you consider that the tariff was the only tax revenue that the federal government collected (no income tax, no property tax), there's no way it can be considered being "taxed and tarriffed to death".   Those Americans that didn't import anything paid absolutely no revenue to the federal government at all.  The leaders of the South fully understood that.   They weren't about to divert attention away from the 4 billion dollar slavery elephant by drawing attention to the 60 million dollar tariff mouse.