'Tariffs'

By Ed Piper

We had an interesting exchange with a 30's-something young professional in the Taco Bell in Natchez, Mississippi, about the Southern cause.

My wife and I were "hail-fellow-well-met"-ing everybody on our vacation to the Deep South, saying hi, chatting it up, and really enjoying ourselves and the time in visiting Civil War sites and soaking in some of the fabled Southern hospitality.

A young gentleman from Greenville, North Carolina, overheard that we were from San Diego and invited us over friendly-like, so he commenced to recommend locations to see on our stay in the bastion of preserved antebellum mansions, situated on the eastern side of the Mississippi River.

"The Confederate states didn't secede from the Union due to slavery," the earnest and friendly man told us when we moved on to this subject. "The North had begun to impose tariffs on Southern cotton and so forth, and that's why the South pulled out."

Dianna and I listened to this and explored this, but I had read this line before and we had had interaction with another white Southerner previously on the trip who carried the same argument. I just wasn't buying. It wasn't a matter of misunderstanding Confederate intentions.

As a ranger at the counter at Vicksburg National Military Park had pointed out, the very words of leaders of secession stated that their reasons included the preservation of slavery. She pulled out a binder that had statements from the secession conventions of states. Right there was the argument that the races are different and they can't be combined in society. It just won't work. That was the Southerner's argument.

Being a little drained and lacking some sleep on our trip to this point, I shortly had enough with the
Greenville's argument claims, got frustrated, and left the table to go to the counter in Taco Bell to order another taco or something. Dianna, having better social skills, hung in there and stayed at the table to converse with the gentleman.

Just to make sure I wasn't taking things only from my reading, and wanting to hear from real live people, I did ask other people on our trip about their view of secession and slavery. An African-American woman who donated her time at Vicksburg acknowledged that some whites in the South still argue the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but gave her own very different view. Hopefully, I can relate my conversation with her in a separate blog entry.