Clash of Civilizations

Charles Adams ( Those Dirty Rotten taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America ) notes that the clash between North and South was exacerbated by the Confederate decision to lower tariffs and create a free trade zone. Northern interests recognized that this would ruin their trade and manufacturing, as cheap European goods were redirected to Southern ports. The North reacted with ferocity, claiming that Southern trade policy was an attack on northern civilization.

This, Adams thinks, accounts for the savagery of the war, which is summarizes in a sobering paragraph: “It has been difficult for many Civil War students to fathom why the northern states would sacrifice so much money and blood to conquer the South and force them to remain in the federal Union. It seems especially strange for a people who believed in government by consent to want to force on another people a government against their consent. And force they used, of monstrous proportions that shocked the civilized world. This was no minor military encounter. To take away from the southern people their right of self-determination, there had to be a massive destruction of life, of cities, of towns and villages, of farms and private homes – almost a total annihilation of the social order. Europeans looked upon this aghast, and reasoned that the Americans must have learned this kind of warfare from the native Indians, certainly not from their European roots. Napoleon was a kindly gentleman compared to Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan.”