A Relentless Crusade for Tribute

You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers.  You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals.  You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us.  You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions....

We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition.  But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do.  It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been.  It will compel us to assert and maintain our separate independence.  It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to none of them.---Rep. John H. Reagan of Texas (who would later become postmaster general of the Confederate government), addressing the Republican members of the House of Representatives  on January 15, 1861