Southerners played an important role in the founding of the U.S., in creating the Constitution, and in formulating our political ideology
The First 12 Presidents:
Washington, George, Virginia
Adams, John, Massachusetts
Jefferson, Thomas, Virginia
Madison, James, Virginia
Monroe, James, Virginia
Adams, John Quincy, Massachusetts
Jackson, Andrew, South Carolina
Harrison, William Henry, Virginia
Van Buren, Martin, New York
Tyler, John, Virginia
Polk, James K., North Carolina
Taylor, Zachary, Virginia
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President and the last of the Southern Presidents of the 19th century. Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) was from North Carolina, but he was Abraham Lincoln's vice-president, and did not represent the Southern political tradition.
Of the first twelve presidents nine were from the Southern states. The Three presidents of the first 12 who were not Southerners were John Adams, from Massachusetts, Martin Van Buren from New York and John Quincy Adams from Massachusetts.
Zachery Taylor was President from 1849 until 1850. Following Zachery Taylor was Millard Fillmore from New York.
The Southern domination of the Executive Office ended in 1850. So, eleven years before the beginning of the 1861-65 war the political power and rule of the South ended and the North took over the political rule of the nation.
It was not until 1913 that another man from the South was elected President, Woodrow Wilson, and he was not in the political tradition of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe nor of that of Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, the Scotch-Irish Presidents from the South.
The South in the 1850's and 1860's produced raw materials, such as cotton, rice, sugar, indigo and tobacco. But the North more and more in the 19th century was producing stuff made in factories.. The North had an elite money power in New England. The South also had an elite, which owned and ran large plantations and owned Black slaves. Except in South Carolina and Mississippi where there was a much larger number of slave owning families, most small land owners in the Old South did not have slaves. You can find out if your ancestors owned slaves because they are shown on the census data, not by name but the number is listed.
As the balance of political - and economic - power shifted from the South to the North, the two elites - the Northern New England money power versus the Southern plantation large scale slave owning elite - came into conflict with one another.
By the 1850's the North controlled Congress and the Executive office which had earlier been largely Southern. The northern members of Congress passed Tariffs on imported goods which favored the northern manufactured goods, and there were no or very small Tariffs on raw goods like cotton, tobacco, rice or sugar. The South either had to have northern manufactured goods shipped south from the north at high prices, or they had to pay high Tariffs on stuff bought from overseas.
.According to http://powderedwigsociety.com/true-cause-of-the-civil.../..........."Lincoln said he supported the Corwin Amendment and said if the southern states rejoined the Union that the Corwin Amendment would pass and be ratified. The Corwin Amendment would have kept slavery legal in the south forever under the Constitution
The South had to pay high prices to get manufactured goods which for the North were protected from foreign competition, and the raw materials sold by the South to England, etc were not protected by Tariffs.
Later in the war, January 1863, Lincoln issued his Executive Order freeing black slaves only in territories controlled by the Confederacy, and not in states of the Union then or in parts of the South taken by the federals. Lincoln did this as a military move hoping it would cause an uprising of the slaves in the Confederacy, not necessarily to free slaves since Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware were Union states that still had slaves even as late as 1865. The Confederacy had a population disadvantage relative to the North and had to rely on slaves to grow food, while so many able bodied men were in the Army.
The issue of the unfair Tariffs the Northern controlled Congress and President imposed on the South was one reason why the South withdraw from the Union. The reason for the war and bloodshed was the invasion of the South by the federal government.
