Today, I will continue my analysis of the similarities between the US and the EU with a brief discussion (intended for a British audience, of course) of some economic tension that erupted between the states and the federal government in the decades prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. To this day, Civil War history remains an incredibly sensitive and divisive issue in the United States, mainly because there is little consensus in the academic community regarding a single, specific cause of the conflict. But contrary to popular belief, it is generally agreed that most of the main underlying tensions were instigated by unpopular economic policies in the decades prior to the war, and not necessarily by the institution of slavery.

My hope in writing this article is that the European reader see many similarities between economic regulations that have been imposed on member states by unelected EU bureaucrats, and the unpopular economic regulations that were imposed by the US Congress on the states prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.

On May 19, 1828, a mere 52 years after the American states declared their independence from British rule, Congress passed a trade tariff aimed at protecting northern industry from British imports. Because of the French blockade of continental Europe, British manufacturers had increased their exports of goods to the United States and greatly cut their prices to make them competitive with American goods. American manufacturers in the north were unable to compete with the cheaper British goods and were subsequently forced out of business.

The so-called “Tariff of Abominations” was hailed as a solution to the problem of cheap British goods and imposed one of the highest import taxes in the history of the United States. Unfortunately, the tariff was clearly intended to favor the northern states at the expense of southern farmers. The southern states had economies based not on the production of manufactured goods, but on production of raw agricultural goods such as tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton. As predicted, the tariff resulted in an exponential increase in the cost of manufactured products, which the southern states had to import regardless of the increases in asking prices. Furthermore, British manufacturers responded to the tariff by greatly slashing their imports of American cotton, which greatly harmed southern farmers, but not northern manufacturers.

Farmers in South Carolina were the first to respond to this tariff by forming the Nullifier Party and the States Rights and Free Trade Association, both of which successfully lobbied for a bill of nullification in the statewide constituent assembly. The 1832 Act of Nullifcation was based on the legal defenses of compact theory as proposed by Presidents James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. South Carolina argued that since the federal government was created by independent and sovereign states, each individual state had the power to review and “nullify” (or ignore) laws that it deemed to be unconstitutional reaches of the federal government’s authority.

In December, with federal troops awaiting the invasion orders, President Andrew Jackson responded to the act with a threatening Proclamation to the People of South Carolina:

“Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences; on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours will fall the punishment. On your unhappy state will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon this. It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you will be the first victims.”

Now, if I may break from the history, take a look at President Herman Van Rompuy’s comments from November of last year:

“We have together to fight the danger of a new Euroscepticism. This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries. In every member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world. It is more than an illusion: it is a lie.”

The President continued:

“The biggest enemy of Europe today is fear. Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war. Today’s nationalism is often not a positive feeling of pride of one’s own identity, but a negative feeling of apprehension of the others. Our Union is born out of a will to co-operate, to reconcile and to act in solidarity.”

While Herman Van Rompuy certainly does not have the testicular fortitude to be nearly as aggressive as President Jackson was, the message is quite similar. There is no place for the sovereignty of the European states in a unified European community.

Robert Hayne, who was elected Governor of South Carolina as candidate of the short-lived Nullifier Party, implored the people of South Carolina to stand strong against the oppression of the federal government:

“If the sacred soil of South Carolina should be polluted by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her citizens, I trust in Almighty God, that even should she stand alone in this great struggle for constitutional liberty, there will not be found, in the wider limits of the state, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue, and be ready to lay down his life in her defense.”

Unfortunately, South Carolina conceded and the inevitable Civil War was forestalled for another thirty years until 1861. Some of the tariff restrictions were eased as a part of a compromise, although the “Nullification Crisis” and the disproportionate use of federal military forces would later be used to justify secession.

Just as Governor Hayne encouraged the people of South Carolina to stand strong against tyranny, I would encourage the people of the United Kingdom to do likewise and stand against the tyranny of unfair economic regulations and unelected bureaucrats.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a small group of lovely, independent nations. These nations were incredibly special. Each of them had its own history, culture, and languages. Each had its own democratic government and military. In short, each nation had its own identity. Life was good.

Then one day, the nations decided to form a perpetual union of peace and friendship with each other. You see, the states had just suffered a long and brutal war, but had emerged victorious and had a determination not to make the same mistakes that had led to the war. So in order to decrease the likelihood that they would ever become the victims of foreign aggression again, they chose to sign a treaty. The nations bound themselves under this treaty to assist one another against any and all attacks made against them. This treaty also established a court system for resolving conflict and a single supranational assembly in which all the nations could come and voice their concerns to one another. In order to make life easier for everyone, the treaty also established freedom of movement among the nations, a single currency, and a uniform system of weights and measurements.

Sadly, this treaty did not last more than a few years. The supranational assembly’s inability to raise an army and levy taxes against its member states had denied it the very power it so desperately needed to enforce its own laws. Agreeing upon a single unified foreign policy was also a nightmare, since the treaty had not established a chief executive to represent the central government. Due to these perceived weaknesses and others, the leaders of the assembly proposed that a new treaty be drafted to replace the supranational assembly with a much more powerful government.

This odd proposal to invest more power in a centralized government was met with extreme hesitation from the sovereign member states. In the end, the states only agreed to give up their sovereignty and participate in this new government if certain protections against the encroachment on their rights were included in the new treaty. So, the protections were added and the states hesitantly signed the compact.

Sadly, despite the protections enumerated in the treaty, the sovereignty of these states continued to decline for decades to come as more and more powers were seized by the central government. Less than 80 years after the new central government was formed, a single member state decided to press its luck and withdraw from the treaty. The central government declared that the state’s withdrawal from the treaty was illegal. A month later, more of the member states responded in support by also withdrawing from the treaty.

Thus, the American Civil War began on April 12, 1861. It was the deadliest war in the history of the United States with nearly 700,000 casualties. In the end, the federal government of the United States emerged victorious. The renegade states which seceded from the union were reorganized into military districts through a decades-long process of forced cultural and political re-assimilation known in our American history textbooks as the enigmatic “Era of Reconstruction.”

The evolution of the European Union shares shocking similarities with the evolution of the United States of America. I intended this piece not necessarily to defend a political stance, but rather to merely provoke thought about the matter. The 50 member states that now constitute the United States of America have already been down this road of forced integration and solidarity that EU member states are now facing.  I can only hope that the people of the United Kingdom choose to learn from history and apply its lessons to the present.