Did the South Control the Federal Government Until 1860?

Did the South Control the Federal Government Until 1860

Michael T. Griffith

2004

@All Rights Reserved

The claim is frequently made that the South controlled the federal government until the 1860 election, and that therefore the South showed a lack of tolerance and fairness when it seceded in response to Lincoln’s victory.  However, anyone who is familiar with American history knows that the South did not control the federal government until 1860.  Many Northern politicians and writers trumpeted this myth for political and propaganda purposes.  A major component of this myth was that the alleged “Slave Power” in the South was behind the South’s supposed domination of the federal government.  Some Northern leaders even claimed there was a “Slave Power conspiracy” to impose slavery on the entire country.  When the war ended, Radical Republicans issued dire warnings about the need to crush this supposed “Slave Power” in order to justify their subjugation and looting of the defeated South. 

For one thing, wealthy Southern plantation owners, i.e., the men who allegedly comprised the supposed “Slave Power,” did not dictate Southern politics.  Moreover, they were by no means uniform in their political beliefs.  In fact, many affluent planters were Whigs (Frank Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South, LSU Press Edition, LSU Press, 1982, pp. 141-142; Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 453; McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 242).  And, as mentioned earlier, some of the wealthiest slaveholders opposed secession.  In Georgia, for example, many counties with heavy concentrations of Whig slaveholders voted against secession (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 242).  Randall and Donald pointed out that the plantation aristocracy did not control the South’s political destinies:

Nor is it to be inferred that a plantation “aristocracy” somehow controlled the political destinies of the region, for the current of democracy had eroded the powers of the gentry until “whatever influence the planters exercised over the political action of the common people was of a personal and local nature” [quoting Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South, p. 139]. (The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 40-41)

If the South truly “controlled” the federal government until 1860, one can only wonder why the federal tariff was never as low as the South wanted it to be, why Congress gave the Northern states a legal monopoly in the lucrative shipbuilding business and why this monopoly was never repealed, why it took ten years for Texas to be admitted as a state, why Cuba was never annexed, how the Missouri Compromise became law in 1820, how the Tariff of Abominations passed Congress in 1828, how the Force Bill passed Congress in 1833, how the tariff act of 1842 passed Congress, how the John Calhoun resolutions of 1847-1848 were all defeated, how the Wilmot Proviso passed the House of Representatives twice, how the Compromise of 1850 was enacted, why Kansas wasn’t admitted as a slave state, why the Missouri Compromise line wasn’t extended to the west coast, and how the draconian Morrill Tariff passed the House in 1860.  (Some critics claim that Southern congressmen supported the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, but in point of fact most Southern congressmen voted against it [Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910, pp. 61-62].)

It’s true that there were periods when the South had more influence on federal policy than did the North, but there were also periods when this was not the case.  At no time did the South “control” the federal government.  Cooper notes that “after mid-1854 no chance remained for a congressional majority on any initiative marked as a southern measure” (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 284).  The South was usually able to block or modify unwanted bills in the Senate, but not always, and the South was frequently unable to defeat unwanted bills in the House.  As early as 1819 “the North had built up a decisive majority in the House of Representatives” (Divine et al, editors, America Past and Present, p. 281).  

As for the presidency, Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Harrison, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan were all Northern politicians.  And who were the Southern presidents?  They were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor.  So the South by no means enjoyed exclusive control of the White House prior to the war.  Furthermore, the “Southern” presidents didn’t automatically take the South’s side on all issues, just as the “Northern” presidents didn’t automatically take the North’s side on all issues.  For example, President Taylor sided with Northern politicians on crucial aspects of the Compromise of 1850 and also supported  the Wilmot Proviso, even though he himself was a slaveholder.

When the South did exercise considerable influence on federal policy, it used that influence in efforts to reduce taxes, to limit the growth of the federal government, to curb or eliminate harmful protectionist trade policies, to impose fiscal responsibility on federal spending, to abolish the corrupt United States Bank, to preserve our free banking system, to prohibit the use of tax dollars for wasteful corporate welfare schemes, to expand the land area of the United States by acquiring new territory, to preserve the sovereignty of the states, and to enforce a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  Under Southern leadership, Texas was finally admitted to the Union and the gigantic land area of the Mexican Cession became American territory.  And if Southern leaders had been able to persuade the federal government to acquire Cuba, that beautiful island would have become an American state, there would have been no Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Cuban people wouldn’t be suffering under Fidel Castro’s oppressive Marxist regime (which has been in power for over forty years now).

I’m not saying that Southern politicians did no wrong.  For example, the Southern-inspired 1836-1844 gag rule in the House of Representatives, which prevented debate on petitions to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, was unfortunate, though many Northern congressmen supported the rule as well.  The largely Southern-backed Lecompton Constitution for Kansas was admittedly unfair, and fortunately the people of Kansas were eventually able to vote it down.  But such cases were the exception, not the rule.  Most of the time Southern politicians used their influence to pursue good, sound policies that benefited all citizens.