The Republican Party Was In Favor [!] of Slavery Because They Feared Emancipated Slaves Residing in Northern States

Lincoln did not launch a military invasion of the South to free the slaves. No serious student of history could deny this fact. In 1861 Lincoln’s position—and the position of the Republican Party—was that Southern slavery was secure: He had no intention of disturbing it; and even if he did, it would be unconstitutional to do so. This is what he said in his First Inaugural Address. The Republican Party, led by Lincoln, was in favor of Southern slavery because its leaders feared the spectacle of emancipated slaves residing in their own Northern states. Lincoln’s own state of Illinois had recently amended its constitution to prohibit the emigration of black people into the state, as had several other Northern states. Most Northern states had adopted Black Codes that discriminated in the most inhumane ways against freed blacks. Such discriminatory laws existed in the North decades before they were adopted in the South. There were very few blacks in the North in 1861, and most Northern voters wanted it to remain that way.

As of 1861 Lincoln and the Republicans were opposed only to the extension of slavery into the new territories. One reason they gave for this opposition was that they wanted to preserve the territories as the exclusive domain of the white race. A second reason articulated by Lincoln was the desire to avoid the further artificial inflation of Southern (i.e., Democratic Party) representation in Congress that was created by the three-fifths clause of the Constitution. The few abolitionists in the party undoubtedly believed that prohibiting slavery in the territories would quicken its overall demise.

—Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 257-258.

Let the South Adopt the Free-Trade System and the North’s Commerce Must Be Reduced to Less Than Half What It Now Is

In the mid-nineteenth century, newspapers were openly associated with one political party or another, and numerous Republican newspapers in the North had been calling for the bombardment of the Southern ports in order to destroy the South’s free-trade policy long before Fort Sumter.

On December 10, 1860, the Daily Chicago Times candidly admitted that the tariff was indeed a tool used by Northerners for the purpose of plundering the South. The editor of the newspaper warned that the benefits of this political plunder would be threatened by the existence of free trade in the South:

The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually. 

 “Let the South adopt the free-trade system,” the Chicago paper ominously warned, and the North’s “commerce must be reduced to less than half what it now is.” In addition “[o]ur labor could not compete . . . with the labor of Europe” and “a large portion of our shipping interest would pass into the hands of the South,” leading to “very general bankruptcy and ruin.” . . .

The Newark Daily Advertiser was clearly aware that the free-trade doctrines of Adam Smith had taken a strong hold in England, France, and the Southern states. On April 2, 1861, the paper warned that Southerners had apparently “taken to their bosoms the liberal and popular doctrine of free trade” and that they “might be willing to go . . . toward free trade with the European powers,” which “must operate to the serious disadvantage of the North,” as “commerce will be largely diverted to the Southern cities.” “We apprehend,” the New Jersey editorialists wrote, that “the chief instigator of the present troubles—South Carolina—have all along for years been preparing the way for the adoption of free trade,” and must be stopped by “the closing of the ports” by military force.

—Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 242-243.