Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
"Uniform taxation"? Of all the types of taxation, tariffs are possibly the closest to "uniform" that you can get (depending how you define "uniform"). Just what is uniform about assessing taxes on property, income, luxury purchases, or how many kids you have? The Constitution required that tariff rates be the same in every port, and that was what was carried out.
If you want to claim that southerners paid heavier tariffs than those outside the South, then give us some examples of what dutiable articles they bought in great quantity that those outside the South did not. Show us that they bought more iron, or sugar, or fine worsteds, or hemp rope, or nails, or tobacco, or printed fabrics. Show us some articles that disproportionately burdened the South and then you can start to make a claim that tariffs were sectionally non-uniform.
Certainly if they were as numerous and egregious as they must have been to stir talk of secession, this should be an easy task, and your examples will be many.
Cedarstripper
Or, since the states who mentioned theseTariff issues, as part of the reasons for seceded in their secesion ordinances, i can simply point out i makes no differnce what you or i think of their reasoning, i for instance do not belive the constition or anything else gives me the right to overide thier free will, when they felt the issue to enough to indiuce them to secede over it.
Nothing you or i post is of any material benifit, those subject to it, said it was an issue, its only there view that has weight, and then they acted to redresse that grievence. Since there view is also well know and easly opbtainable on the net without effort, im disclined to provide anything at all for you, since i dont need to do so to support my poistion.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Hanny, US Presidents took office in early March in those days. Picking figures from a July 1 date will not match up with their administrations.
When Buchanan took office in March 1857, the US was in a boom year, the Federal deficit was below the figure you are showing here, and there was a large cash surplus in the Treasury. By March 7, Cobb was Secretary of the Treasury.
Cobb did not believe the Federal government should have large sums of money on hand. He immediately spent it. When the Panic of 1857 struck a few months later, the government was short on cash and responded by resorting to deficit financing -- which the Democrats had opposed for the last two decades. They began issuing short-term T-bills to cover it -- with predictable results. Cobb borrowed $40 million dollars in January 1858, and had to borrow another $40 million in June of 1858 to roll the debt over. This is a fiscal policy disaster.
The new Tariff of 1857 was immediately passed by the new Democratic-controlled Congress and took effect, IIRR, by July 1. In the previous fiscal year, the Walker Tariff on imports produced 86% of the Federal government's revenue. The remaining 14% of Federal income came almost entirely from land sales.
The Tariff of 1857 was based on the assumption that the boom times of the mid-1850s would continue, which in hindsight was clearly a bad idea. Much of that was due to American exploitation of opportunities arising from the Crimean War. When that was over, European commerce and food production returned to normal, US share of shipping dropped, and exports of US food crops dropped. Combined with the loss of a shipload of California gold to a storm and the embezlement scandal at the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, the Panic of 1857 erupted. Most of the nation suffered severely as a result.
The Tariff of 1857 failed in a major way. With the economy essentially in the toilet, imports dropped. With a lower rate on imports, Federal revenues dropped even faster. Yet the Buchanan administration did not cut spending, so naturally debt increased rapidly. At the same time, some financial scandals happened: the two frauds involving Secretary Floyd of Virginia amounted to about 1% of the entire Federal budget for a year in those days, all by themselves.
To top all that, the Panic of 1857 caused a major drop in Federal land sales: in the two years from 1856 to 1858, they dropped by half. Most of that was in the North ('King Cotton" and the South were laughing about how they weren't affected, remember?), but land values in the North were roughly three times what they were in the South, so Federal revenues really got whacked again.
The US was starting to recover from this by 1860 when the secession agitation shook everything up. By late that year, bankers were demanding higher rates of interest for loans to the Federal government -- or refusing to loan the money at all without concessions (such as the removal of the people responsible for this disaster). The Treasury as Lincoln arrived was essentially empty -- not looted, but rather drained by years of the Buchanan administration's policies.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Hanny, US Presidents took office in early March in those days. Picking figures from a July 1 date will not match up with their administrations.
When Buchanan took office in March 1857, the US was in a boom year, the Federal deficit was below the figure you are showing here, and there was a large cash surplus in the Treasury. By March 7, Cobb was Secretary of the Treasury.
Cobb did not believe the Federal government should have large sums of money on hand. He immediately spent it. When the Panic of 1857 struck a few months later, the government was short on cash and responded by resorting to deficit financing -- which the Democrats had opposed for the last two decades. They began issuing short-term T-bills to cover it -- with predictable results. Cobb borrowed $40 million dollars in January 1858, and had to borrow another $40 million in June of 1858 to roll the debt over. This is a fiscal policy disaster.
The new Tariff of 1857 was immediately passed by the new Democratic-controlled Congress and took effect, IIRR, by July 1. In the previous fiscal year, the Walker Tariff on imports produced 86% of the Federal government's revenue. The remaining 14% of Federal income came almost entirely from land sales.
The Tariff of 1857 was based on the assumption that the boom times of the mid-1850s would continue, which in hindsight was clearly a bad idea. Much of that was due to American exploitation of opportunities arising from the Crimean War. When that was over, European commerce and food production returned to normal, US share of shipping dropped, and exports of US food crops dropped. Combined with the loss of a shipload of California gold to a storm and the embezlement scandal at the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, the Panic of 1857 erupted. Most of the nation suffered severely as a result.
The Tariff of 1857 failed in a major way. With the economy essentially in the toilet, imports dropped. With a lower rate on imports, Federal revenues dropped even faster. Yet the Buchanan administration did not cut spending, so naturally debt increased rapidly. At the same time, some financial scandals happened: the two frauds involving Secretary Floyd of Virginia amounted to about 1% of the entire Federal budget for a year in those days, all by themselves.
To top all that, the Panic of 1857 caused a major drop in Federal land sales: in the two years from 1856 to 1858, they dropped by half. Most of that was in the North ('King Cotton" and the South were laughing about how they weren't affected, remember?), but land values in the North were roughly three times what they were in the South, so Federal revenues really got whacked again.
The US was starting to recover from this by 1860 when the secession agitation shook everything up. By late that year, bankers were demanding higher rates of interest for loans to the Federal government -- or refusing to loan the money at all without concessions (such as the removal of the people responsible for this disaster). The Treasury as Lincoln arrived was essentially empty -- not looted, but rather drained by years of the Buchanan administration's policies.
Tim
Er, its still a math question. Despite your nice ramble, which is not based on the numbers. Lincoln on his own, ie without authoroisation, borowed more intrest bearing debt in the first 6 months than the last adminstarion in its full term.
How much is the debt in the year they take office, and how much when they leave, and what manner of maths
is used to show they "had quadrupled the national debt."
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
I'll note that the previous administration wasn't gearing up for a war. And that there wasn't enough money in the treasury to fund the government let alone an army.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Rep party maninifesto, any use of secesion is treason.
First, to call it a "manifesto" is to use a loaded term for what the actual title is, the Republican Party Platform of 1860.
Second, what it actually says is:
3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population; its surprising development of material resources; its rapid augmentation of wealth; its happiness at home and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may; and we congratulate the country that no republican member of congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion so often made by democratic members, without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Er, its still a math question. Despite your nice ramble, which is not based on the numbers. Lincoln on his own, ie without authoroisation, borowed more intrest bearing debt in the first 6 months than the last adminstarion in its full term.
How much is the debt in the year they take office, and how much when they leave, and what manner of maths
is used to show they "had quadrupled the national debt."
Hanny,
If we restrict ourselves to your numbers -- which we know do not match with the terms of the Presidents -- the Federal debt increased from some 28 million on July 1, 1757 to some 90 million on July 1, 1861. This is an increase of some 62 million, or about 220%, meaning the debt more than tripled during the Buchanan administration. If it makes you happy to see it this way, that's fine.
In addition to this, as of July 1, 1757 the US Tresury had $17,710,114.27 cash on hand (see Buchanan's first State of the Union address). But if you look at Secretary of the Tresury Howell Cobb's December 1860 report to Congress (which shows the end of Fiscal year 1860, the first quarter of FY 1861 results, and the projection for June 30, 1861 end-of-year status), you'll find that Cobb is projecting a cash on hand amount of roughly 250 thousand dollars. Somewhere along the way, the Buchanan administration drained about 17.5 million out of the Federal Treasury.
Lincoln arrived to find no cash available and a much larger debt than Buchanan -- whether you want to call it tripled or quadrupled matters not to me. Have fun with your quibbles.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
To its everlasting credit, the Congress sitting during Buchanan's last months saw the problem and bumped up the tariff bill some. (Not all that much, but some.) Nevermind the useless bureacrats, an administrative body the size of the Federal government (even then) cannot long survive with only $250,000 in the coffers. That was barely a month's worth of salaries.
This sort of up and down, in and out, political football had been going on for a long time. (Still is, if I'm not mistaken.) How much money do we need and from whom do we get it?
Bottom line, tariff arguments were propaganda based -- giving the voter another bugaboo to vote against.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
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