Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[78] on the part of those who brought her, together with their wealth, the means of fertilizing her soil; and when the day of secession came, all the debts contracted by the merchants and planters of the South toward Northern creditors, amounting, it is said, to one billion of dollars, were repudiated, after the Confederate government had tried in vain to confiscate them to its own benefit. But this complaint, which is that of all countries in arrears against their more prosperous neighbors, cannot affect any serious mind. The complaints of Southern planters against the Northern States in regard to the protective tariffs, which favored the manufactures of the latter, were more plausible; but, in point of fact, they had no better foundation, for the Morrill tariff, the highest that the United States ever had, became a law under the administration of Mr. Buchanan, when the President and Congress were devoted to the interests of the South; and if they allowed that measure to pass, which they could have prevented, it is because they did not consider it dangerous to those interests. If the commercial question had had anything to do with the political struggle which brought on the civil war, the Western States would have had as much cause as those of the South to separate themselves from the manufacturing districts of New York, Pennsylvania, and New England, whose foundries and mills dread English competition, and they would have joined the South in defence of the system of free trade. The landholders of the West, in fact, also derived their wealth from the cultivation of the soil, the products of which were yearly exported in increasing quantities. In spite of the scarcity of labor, the absence of land taxes, together with the cheapness and fertility of the land, afforded an outlet for their wheat to all the markets of the world. Commercial protection, therefore, which raised the price of all European commodities for the benefit of their associates of the North—eastern States, was only a burden to them; and if, while complaining of this protection, they made common cause with those States, it is because they fully understood the sole motive of the war, and did not in any way deceive themselves as to the only social difference which divided America into two hostile factions-North and South.

This difference was not occasioned either by diversity of origin or by antagonistic commercial interests. It had a much deeper