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.
Racism: defined as an attitude of superiority to people of another race, and white supremacy, the belief that full citizenship should be restricted to members of the white race, and restricted from members of other races, was the basis of slavery as practiced in this country. Slavery was practiced in many cultures, and many cultures also have a racial or ethnic component to the practice of slavery(I'm thinkng of Afganistan).
In the United States, slavery could NOT be a transition to anything else. Because the slaveowners, and the culture at large, believed that black people were not, and could never be, fit for anything but slavery. Slavery was based on racism and racism was based on slavery. Most nonslaveowning whites may have been racist--but they really didn't NEED to be. Every slaveowner HAD to be racist to justify holding human beings in bondage. They HAD to belief there was no alternative.
To believe racism was a consequence of Reconstruction, or later policies, instead of the most common attitude among white Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, is to fly in the face of reality.
In order to get this thread back on track, I would like to ask Battalion and Beowulf a question.
So where does this legend begin that the South was so put upon by tariffs as to bring on the war?
I await your replies, gentlemen.
Unionblue
UnionBlue;
I shall start the proceedings herein, despite the fact that you have not answered me in relation to what you thought of Jefferson Davis' Chapter X of his RISE AND FALL, wherein he claims that slavery was not the cause of the war, nor why the South seceded, despite all the propaganda-sounding sentiments in the ordinances of secession...
I shall assume that you have done with that, and I accept your silence as a submission in the matter. It was fairly damaging to the case, (although Cash and his usual lack of confidence in anything not stamped APPROVED BY THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION gets a bit tedious, at times!)
I cannot speak for Battalion, but I shall begin my campaign accordingly, here. I am still looking at the document you posted by that New England gentleman... and have as yet no answer for it, save what follows:
This is from AMERICA'S CAESAR - by Greg Durand, Volume One, pages 335 -347
The South's Traditional Opposition to Protectionism
[The] contrast between the Northern and Southern minds is vividly illustrated in the different ideas and styles of their worship of that great American idol — the Union. In the North there never was any lack of rhetorical fervor for the Union; its praises were sounded in every note of tumid literature, and it was familiarly entitled "the glorious." But the North worshipped the Union in a very low, commercial sense; it was a source of boundless profit; it was productive of tariffs and bounties; and it had been used for years as the means of sectional aggrandizement.
The South regarded the Union in a very different light. It estimated it at its real value, and although quiet and precise in its appreciation, and not given to transports, there is this remarkable assertion to be made: that the moral veneration of the Union was peculiarly a sentiment of the South and entirely foreign to the Northern mind. It could not be otherwise, looking to the different political schools of the two sections [emphasis in original].(10)
Before we proceed with the Fort Sumter narrative, the historical background requires explanation. As most wars have been throughout modern history, the War of 1861 was at bottom a financial conflict.(11) More precisely, it was, as Matthew Josephson noted, a "fatal clash of the two economic nations within the republic" which resulted from a gradual departure on the part of the North "from the old ways toward large-scale industry, toward giant capitalism, [and] toward a centralized, national economy...." and a firm resistance to such change on the part of the South.(12) In a speech delivered in the Virginia Convention of 1788, Patrick Henry had predicted that the South would eventually find itself economically subjugated to the North once the latter had secured to itself a majority in the new federal Government: "This government subjects every thing to the Northern majority. Is there not, then, a settled purpose to check the Southern interest?... How can the Southern members prevent the adoption of the most oppressive mode of taxation in the Southern States, as there is a majority in favor of the Northern States?"(13) Henry's prediction was not long in being realized. As early as 1789, the first impost bill was introduced in Congress which protected the New England fishing industry and its production of molasses, and exhibited, in the opinion of William Grayson, "a great disposition... for the advancement of commerce and manufactures in preference to agriculture." Thus, when the Union under the Constitution was but two months old, many Southerners felt that their States were already being obliged to serve the North as "the milch cow out of whom the substance would be extracted."(14) In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.(15)
From the days of the illustrious Henry onwards, the South had generally stood in the way of the Northern goal to make such an unjust system of taxation permanent.(16) According to John Taylor of Virginia, a high protective tariff system, like that which existed in Great Britain, was "undoubtedly the best which has ever appeared for extracting money from the people; and commercial restrictions, both upon foreign and domestick commerce, are its most effectual means for accomplishing this object. No equal mode of enriching the party of government, and impoverishing the party of people, has ever been discovered."(17) Nevertheless, the North clung tenaciously to its protectionist policy and managed to push through the tariff legislation of 1828 which provoked South Carolina to resistance to the general Government and nearly to secession from the Union during the Administration of Andrew Jackson.(18) It should be noted that, by 1828, the public debt was near to extinction and, at the current rate of taxation on imported goods, a twelve to thirteen million dollar annual surplus would have been created in the Treasury.(19) Thus, the excuse for a high tariff system as a source of Government revenue was a flimsy one at best; the so-called "Tariff of Abomination" really served no other purpose than to "rob and plunder nearly one half of the Union, for the benefit of the residue."(20) James Spence of London explained the effects of such a high tariff on the Southern economy:
This system of protecting Northern manufactures, has an injurious influence, beyond the effect immediately apparent. It is doubly injurious to the Southern States, in raising what they have to buy, and lowering what they have to sell. They are the exporters of the Union, and require that other countries shall take their productions. But other countries will have difficulty in taking them, unless permitted to pay for them in the commodities which are their only means of payment. They are willing to receive cotton, and to pay for it in iron, earthenware, woollens. But if by extravagant duties, these be prohibited from entering the Union, or greatly restricted, the effect must needs be, to restrict the power to buy the products of the South. Our imports of Southern productions, have nearly reached thirty millions sterling a year. Suppose the North to succeed in the object of its desire, and to exclude our manufactures altogether, with what are we to pay? It is plainly impossible for any country to export largely, unless it be willing also, to import largely. Should the Union be restored, and its commerce be conducted under the present tariff, the balance of trade against us must become so great, as either to derange our monetary system, or compel us to restrict our purchases from those, who practically exclude other payment than gold. With the rate of exchange constantly depressed, the South would receive an actual money payment, much below the current value of its products. We should be driven to other markets for our supplies, and thus the exclusion of our manufactures by the North, would result in a compulsory exclusion, on our part, of the products of the South.
This is a consideration of no importance to the Northern manufacturer, whose only thought is the immediate profit he may obtain, by shutting out competition. It may be, however, of very extreme importance to others — to those who have products they are anxious to sell to us, who are desirous to receive in payment, the very goods we wish to dispose of, and yet are debarred from this. Is there not something of the nature of commercial slavery, in the fetters of a system that prevents it? If we consider the terms of the compact, and the gigantic magnitude of Southern trade, it becomes amazing, that even the attempt should be made, to deal with it in such a manner as this.(21)
George McDuffie of South Carolina stated in the House of Representatives, "If the union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, historians who record these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation."(22) While the Northern manufacturer enjoyed free trade with the South, the Southern planter was not allowed to enjoy free trade with those countries to which he could market his goods at the most benefit to himself. Furthermore, while the six cotton States — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — had less than one-eighth of the representation in Congress, they furnished two-thirds of the exports of the country, much of which was exchanged for imported necessities.(23) Thus, McDuffie noted that because the import tariff effectively hindered Southern commerce, the relation which the Cotton States bore to the protected manufacturing States of the North was now the same as that which the colonies had once borne to Great Britain; under the current system, they had merely changed masters.(24)
Such was the consistent argument of South Carolinian politicians and editorialists right up to the moment of secession in late 1860. Robert Barnwell Rhett, who served in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, said in 1850: "The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives."(25) Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:
The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city.(26)
In a letter to the Carolina Times in 1857, Representative Laurence Keitt wrote, "I believe that the safety of the South is only in herself."(27) James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, "I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy."(28)
The Protectionist Roots of the Republican Party
When the tariff was temporarily lowered in 1833, Henry Clay, the Kentuckian Whig who "courted Northern popularity,"(29) vowed to "defy the South, the president, and the devil" in order to have it raised again.(30) With the demise of the old Whig party in 1856, "eastern manufacturing interests saw in the Republican party their only hope of capturing the Federal government for the cause of protection.... [P]owerful economic factors were working in the direction of an alliance between diverse partners: antislavery agitators and 'big business' in the North, though for very different purposes, were desiring the same things in terms of governmental control and party supremacy."(31) Supported by "business interests which were now weaning the Northwest away from its Southern alliance,"(32) former Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln held to the Hamiltonian principles of a strong centralized government and a corresponding weakening of the States, the desirability of a central banking system and a perpetual national debt, and taxpayer-funded internal improvements and Government subsidies which would mainly benefit corporations in the manufacturing North at the expense of the agricultural South. In particular, they supported the reinstitution of a high protective import tariff.
10. Pollard LOST CAUSE P. 52
11. Hamilton Federalist No. VI
12. Matthew Josephson ROBBER BARONS; THE GREAT AMERICAN CAPITALISTS 1861-1901 Harcourt Brace 1934 Page 3-4
13. Patrick Henry DEBATES IN THE SEVERAL STATE CONVENTIONS (ELLIOT) VOL II PAGE 325
14. William Grayson - Letters to Patrick Henry 12 June 1789
15. Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett - the Union, Past and Future (1850) page 12
16. John C. Calhoun 19 December 1828 - S. Carolina Exposition and Protest
17. John Taylor TYRANNY UNMASKED
18. John G. Van Deusen ECONOMIC BASIS OF DISUNION IN S. CAROLINA (1928) pages 19-20,1 59-103, 328
19. POLLARD - LOST CAUSE Page 61
20. John Randolph - 22 April 1828 Register of Debates in Congress 20th Congress 1st Session Page 2472
21. Spence - American Union - 178-179
22. George McDuffie Register of Debates 20th Congress 1st Session page 2470
23. John G. Van Deusen Page 63
24. McDuffie (R of D 20th 1st) page 859
25. Robert Barnwell Rhett - 20 July 1850 Van Deusen Page 98
26. John Cunningham Charleston Mercury 18 August 1851 Van Deusen (ibid) page 218
27. Laurence Keittt - 16 July 1857 Carolina Times (Van Deusen p 102)
28. James H. Hammond - speech 29 October 1858 in Charleston
29. Pollard LOST CAUSE p. 61
30. Henry Clay, quoted by Maurice Baxter, HENRY CLAY AND THE AMERICAN SYSTEM 1995
31. Randall CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION - page 145
So where does this legend begin that the South was so put upon by tariffs as to bring on the war?
I await your replies, gentlemen.
Unionblue[/quote]
(I have to type in all footnotes by hand... ask for which numbers you want, and I'll supply them for you...)
In a letter to the Carolina Times in 1857, Representative Laurence Keitt wrote, "I believe that the safety of the South is only in herself."(27) James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, "I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy."(28)
The Protectionist Roots of the Republican Party
When the tariff was temporarily lowered in 1833, Henry Clay, the Kentuckian Whig who "courted Northern popularity,"(29) vowed to "defy the South, the president, and the devil" in order to have it raised again.(30) With the demise of the old Whig party in 1856, "eastern manufacturing interests saw in the Republican party their only hope of capturing the Federal government for the cause of protection.... [P]owerful economic factors were working in the direction of an alliance between diverse partners: antislavery agitators and 'big business' in the North, though for very different purposes, were desiring the same things in terms of governmental control and party supremacy."(31) Supported by "business interests which were now weaning the Northwest away from its Southern alliance,"(32) former Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln held to the Hamiltonian principles of a strong centralized government and a corresponding weakening of the States, the desirability of a central banking system and a perpetual national debt, and taxpayer-funded internal improvements and Government subsidies which would mainly benefit corporations in the manufacturing North at the expense of the agricultural South. In particular, they supported the reinstitution of a high protective import tariff.
Just as John C. Calhoun had predicted in 1828, agitation of the slavery issue was thereafter seized upon by the Northern protectionists as a means to remove this persistent Southern obstacle.(33) Those of a more moderate stripe sought to accomplish this by excluding slavery from the Territories and thereby confining and minimizing the political influence of the South, while those who adopted a more radical approach sought to drive the Southern States from the Union entirely. That slavery was merely a pretext in this sectional struggle is beyond dispute. We have already seen how former big-government Whigs were naturally attracted to the new Republican party, which Wendell Phillips admitted was a purely sectional faction "organized against the South." According to the 3 November 1860 edition of the Charleston Mercury, "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government, from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism."(34) According to Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, "[T]he exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.... Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government." He stated that, as a result of unfair legislation, wealth flowed from the South to the North in "one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream."(35) This economic tug-of-war had been going on between the North and South for decades and finally the sectional party which had openly avowed hostility to the South had gained control of both Congress and the White House. It should be remembered that throughout his political career, Lincoln had always identified himself as a disciple of Henry Clay in fiscal matters, and the whole country knew that upon his nomination, he had committed himself to a high tariff policy if elected President. This state of affairs sheds valuable light on why the Gulf States reacted to Lincoln's victory as they did. The complaints of the South were sometimes couched in terms of slavery and other times in terms of finances, but it is clear that self-preservation alone drove the Southern States out of the Union. In a statement issued on 25 December 1860, the South Carolina Convention summarized the South's complaint against the North as follows:
Discontent and contention have moved in the bosom of the Confederacy for the last thirty-five years. During this time, South Carolina has twice called her people together in solemn convention, to take into consideration the aggressions and unconstitutional wrongs perpetrated by the people of the North on the people of the South. These wrongs were submitted to by the people of the South, under the hope and expectation that they would be final. But these hopes and expectations have proved to be void.
The one great evil, from which all the other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution. The Government is no longer the government of a Confederate Republic, but of a consolidated democracy. It is no longer a free government, but a despotism. The Revolution of 1776 turned upon one great principle — self-government and self-taxation — the criterion of self-government.
The Southern States now stand in the same relation towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors, in the British Parliament, for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States, have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue — to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the people of the Northern States, but, after the taxes are collected, three-fourths of them are expended in the North.(36)
John H. Reagan of Texas, who would later become Postmaster-General of the Confederate Government, expressed similar sentiments when addressing the Republican members of the House of Representatives on 15 January 1861:
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 that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. 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 own 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.(37)
Less than a week later, on 21 January 1861, an editorial appeared in the New Orleans Daily Crescent which made the same observations:
They know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it.(38)
The Beginning of the Tariff War
Justifying the fears of the South, one of the first acts of the Republican-dominated Thirty-Seventh Congress upon the departure of the Gulf States was to pass the so-called Morrill Tariff into law on 2 March 1861. Under this tariff, which one British observer described as "a very masterpiece of folly and injustice,"(39) duties began at an average of 37% and by June of 1864 were raised to 47%,(40) making it the highest in the history of the country. True to Republican campaign promises, special preference was given to the steel industry of Pennsylvania. At the same time, the Confederate Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, in accordance with the South's traditional aversion to protective tariffs and general acceptance of the free trade doctrines of Adam Smith(41) and Thomas Jefferson,(42) and in compliance with the provisions of the C.S. Constitution,(43) instituted a low tariff with duties averaging 10%, the natural result of which would have been to divert most, if not all, foreign trade away from the principle Northern ports in New York and Boston to the Southern ports, particularly Charleston and New Orleans. The Boston Transcript of 18 March 1861 stated in this regard:
[T]he mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed of the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade.... The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.(44)
In the words of the New York Times:
The nations of Europe with whom we have the most intimate commercial relations are earnest advocates of free trade. Yet at the very moment that we most desire their sympathy and co-operation, we insult their conviction and strike the severest blow in our power at their interests. The seceding states will take instant advantage of our blunder, and will make every effort to secure their will, if not an actual recognition, by adopting a commercial policy in harmony with their own....
At home and abroad, we are already feeling the effects of our gratuitous folly. Both English and French journals are teeming with ill-natured and unfavorable remarks; with contrasts either openly stated or implied in favor of the seceding states.(45)
The New York Evening Post of 12 March 1861 likewise stated:
That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.(46)
This result was also clearly seen by most of the business and financial men in the North. In their eyes, the question was no longer one of the morality of slavery or the constitutionality of secession; it was now, in the words of New York banker August Belmont, a "question of national existence and commercial prosperity."(47) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were watching the events in America from Europe with keen interest, observed, "The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for sovereignty."(48) This was essentially the same conclusion drawn by Philip Foner in his book, Business and Slavery, in which he demonstrated how financially dependent Northern businessmen were upon the South being forced to remain in the Union in a subordinated condition.(49) Consequently, the Daily Advertiser of Newark, New Jersey boldly insisted on 2 April 1861 that Southern ports, beginning at Charleston, must be closed by military force.(50)
It is therefore easy to see what an important role Fort Sumter thereafter played in the unfolding drama. Should the secession of the South go unchallenged, and the U.S. troops be withdrawn from the fort, the tariff in the North would either have to be lowered to at least match that of the South, or the Northern States would be left to suffer financial ruin. Neither of these options was acceptable to Lincoln, who had already vowed in his Inaugural Address to enforce the Morrill Tariff at Charleston and other Southern ports. While his own Cabinet had almost unanimously advised against reinforcing the fort, Lincoln's ears were captivated by other advisors, who had assured him that "all the resolutions and speeches and declarations [of independence]... from the South were but a 'game of brag,' intended to intimidate the administrative party," and that, at the first show of force by the U.S. Government, "there would 'be nothing in it but talk.'"(51)
On 4 April 1861, Colonel John B. Baldwin of Virginia arrived in Washington, D.C. at Lincoln's behest to discuss the Peace Conference then in session in that State. According to Baldwin's sworn testimony in 1866, Lincoln's words to him during the ensuing meeting were as follows: "Mr. Baldwin, I am afraid you have come too late.... I wish you could have been here three or four days ago.... Why do you not all adjourn the Virginia convention?... [i]t is a standing menace to me, which embarrasses me very much."(52) The question which immediately comes to mind is: Why would a man who had pledged a pacific policy in his Inaugural Address view as a standing menace and a source of embarrassment a conference of States which had been convened to promote that very same policy? Robert Lewis Dabney provided the obvious answer:
The action of the seven States... perplexed the Lincoln faction excessively. On the other hand, the greed and spite of the hungry crew, who were now grasping the power and spoils so long passionately craved, could not endure the thought that the prize should thus collapse in their hands. Hence, when the administration assembled at Washington, it probably had no very definite policy.... Colonel Baldwin supposed it was the visit, and the terrorizing of the "radical Governors," which had just decided Lincoln to adopt the violent policy. They had successfully asserted that the secession of the seven States, and the convening and solemn admonitions of State conventions in the others, formed but a system of bluster...; that the Southern States were neither willing nor able to fight for their own cause, being paralyzed by their fear of servile insurrection. Thus they had urged upon Lincoln, that the best way to secure his party triumph was to precipitate a collision. Lincoln had probably committed himself to this policy, without Seward's privity, within the last four days; and the very men whom Colonel Baldwin found in conclave with him were probably intent upon this conspiracy at the time. But when Colonel Baldwin solemnly assured Lincoln that this violent policy would infallibly precipitate the border States into an obstinate war, the natural shrewdness of the latter was sufficient to open his eyes, at least partially, and he saw that his factious counsellors, blinded by hatred and contempt of the South, had reasoned falsely; yet, having just committed himself to them, he had not manliness enough to recede. And above all, the policy urged by Colonel Baldwin would have disappointed the hopes of legislative plunder, by means of inflated tariffs, which were the real aims for which free-soil was the mask.(53)
Such was the essence of Colonel Baldwin's testimony in 1866: when it was urged upon Lincoln to issue an "appeal to the American people to settle the question in the spirit in which the Constitution was made" and to relinquish both Forts Sumter and Pickens as "a concession of an asserted right in the interest of peace," Lincoln's response was to refer "with some apprehension to the idea that his friends would not be pleased with such a step."(54) Finally, when it was suggested that the provisional Government at Montgomery be allowed to continue unmolested until the seceded States could be brought back peaceably, Lincoln replied, "And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten per cent tariff? What then, would become of my tariff?" [emphasis in original](55) With that remark, Lincoln terminated the conversation and dismissed Baldwin.
To believe racism was a consequence of Reconstruction, or later policies, instead of the most common attitude among white Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, is to fly in the face of reality.[/quote]
So, 60,000 freed blacks living in Virginia (at the beginning of the Civil War), and other places in the South didn't cause any racial problems so long as some of the blacks were in slavery? This somehow kept racial tensions, for the most part, virtually unheard of, save for insurrections elsewhere in the world... (or idiots like John Brown)?
But, once the yanks destroyed 'every blessed thing' and destroyed the settled order with no thought to its constructive end... and racial tensions soared and
Negro Rule was instituted by the Republican Liberal Reconstructionists Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner Freak Show in Washington City...
and Racial Tensions became, for the first time, paramount problems...
... this racism was somehow the fault of African Servitude before its demise? Or because there had ever BEEN African servitude, especially at the South... this racism and strife was the result of that activity?
And the pure and flawless collectivist-period government was in no way at fault?
You still can't see your way clear to point at these blessed sainted Radical Republican Liberals for anything, can you?!
They are historically as insulated as Lincoln, and for the same reasons!
Very good. You caught that subtle distinction with Joseph. I am... gratified that you knew the difference! (I have been to Israel, and to Rachel's Tomb and the Church of the Nativity, et cetera). You pass. There.
However, the "South Inventing Slavery" line was as much of an exaggeration as what passes for American History today!
Dear Beowulf,
The distinction between pharoah and non pharoah is not particularly subtle, but thank you for the compliment. You helpfully quoted my post, in which I state, accurately, that I am not saying that the South invented racism. I referred to the idea of a strawman argument. Yet you repeat the line in the next post that I quote above. Why?
facetious |fəˈsē sh əs|
adjective
treating serious issues with deliberately non-serious humor; flippant.
Okay. Let me try this...
In all of the North's vast opinions upon the South, one stands out like Rushmore. SLAVERY. It is so harped upon by the North that one would think the South INVENTED
slavery. (Of course it didn't, nor did I seriously mean you thought so). But as the Southern Confederacy has to bear the brunt for the Union South originally having bought into the Yankee Slave Trade, and had to deal with EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW, the attacks against the Confederate South, especially using our 2008 standards, are AS UNFAIR as claiming... the South invented Slavery.
(It loses a lot when you have to explain it.)
One thing I can never accuse the North of possessing, collectively, is a sense of humor!
Dear Beowulf,
Thank you for replying to my post.
"...a sense of humor" Well, everyone thinks they have a sense of humor. But not everyone is funny.
Since you haven't answered it yet, I'll make the point again. Slavery, as practiced in the United States, was not a transition to anything. It was unchanging, indeed, unchangeable. Generations were born slaves, lived as slaves, died as slaves. And their children. Generations of engineers, scientists, scholars, generals, poets, doctors, teachers, all condemned to a lifetime of farm labor. And their children. That could only change when you remove slavery. When the slave had the rare opportunity to runaway, or the Yankees won the war. What have I just written in this post do you disagree with?
"Yankee Slave Trade"
From 1776-1808 how many Northern ships were part of the Atlantic Slave Trade? How many ships from Southern ports were involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade? Both Britain and the US passed laws prohibiting the importation and trading in slaves in 1807. It is my understanding that the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and later Americans took part in the Atlantic Slave Trade which began in the 16th century and ended in the 19th century.
__________________ "Those who forget to remember the past are condemned to repeat it", George Santayana.
In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.(15)
So a propaganda pamphlet is pointed to as a source document? LOL
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
Nevertheless, the North clung tenaciously to its protectionist policy and managed to push through the tariff legislation of 1828 which provoked South Carolina to resistance to the general Government and nearly to secession from the Union during the Administration of Andrew Jackson.(18)
Poor history, as reference to Taussig and Freehling shows. His Satanic Majesty, John C. Calhoun, was behind the 1828 tariff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
It should be noted that, by 1828, the public debt was near to extinction
In 1828 the public debt was $58,421,000. That's hardly "near to extinction" for the time. [Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2, p. 1104]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
and, at the current rate of taxation on imported goods, a twelve to thirteen million dollar annual surplus would have been created in the Treasury.(19)
Oh, Edward Pollard, what an objective source--NOT.
The complete story is that the national debt was high, but the government was running a surplus so the debt was slowly being paid down.
In 1827 the debt was $67,475,000 and the surplus was $6,827,000.
In 1828 the debt was $58,421,000 and the surplus was $8,369,000.
In 1829 the debt was $48,565,000 and the surplus was $9,624,000.
In 1830 the debt was $39,123,000 and the surplus was $9,701,000
In 1831 the debt was $24,322,000 and the surplus was $13,279,000.
[Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2, p. 1104]
So 1831 was the first time there was the surplus Pollard claimed would have occurred in his propaganda piece, and this was AFTER the duties had been raised.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
Thus, the excuse for a high tariff system as a source of Government revenue was a flimsy one at best;
Actually, the case being built so far is less than flimsy at best. It's built on nothing but historical lies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
the so-called "Tariff of Abomination" really served no other purpose than to "rob and plunder nearly one half of the Union, for the benefit of the residue."(20)
Wrong as usual, since the so-called "Tariff of Abominations" was designed by South Carolinians.
"On January 31st, the committee [this is the House Committee on Manufactures, which is the committee that originated all tariff bills] presented a report and a draft of a tariff bill, which showed that they had determined on a new plan, and an ingenious one. What that plan was, Calhoun explained very frankly nine years later, in a speech reviewing the events of 1828 and defending the course taken by himself and his Southern fellow-members. A high-tariff bill was to be laid before the House. It was to contain not only a high general range of duties, but duties especially high on those raw materials on which New England wanted the duties to be low. It was to satisfy the protective demands of the Western and Middle States, and at the same time to be obnoxious to the New England members. The [Andrew] Jackson men of all shades, the protectionists from the North and the free-traders from the South, were to united in preventing any amendments; that bill, and no other, was to be voted on. When the final vote came, the Southern men were to turn around and vote against their own measure. The New England men, and the [John Quincy] Adams men in general, would be unable to swallow it, and would also vote against it. Combined, they would prevent its passage, even though the Jackson men from the North voted for it. The result expected was that no tariff bill at all would be passed during the session, which was the object of the Southern wing of the opposition. On the other hand, the obloquy of defeating it would be cast on the Adams party, which was the object of the Jacksonians of the North. The tariff bill would be defeated, and yet the Jackson men would be able to parade as the true 'friends of domestic industry.'
"The bill by which this ingenious solution of the difficulties of the opposition was to be reached, was reported to the House on January 31st by the committee on manufactures. To the surprise of its authors, it was eventually passed by both House and Senate, and became, with a few unessential changes, the tariff act of 1828." [F. W. Taussig, _The Tariff History of the United States,_ pp. 88-89]
So the so-called "Tariff of Abominations" was actually cowritten by His Satanic Majesty, John C. Calhoun, and his southern henchmen. A majority of New Englanders did vote against it, but not enough to prevent its passage, and the rest of the Adams party men were able to vote for it because their constituents supported it.
"The tariff of 1828 was the law of the land, and South Carolinians were the authors of its worst abominations." [William W. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836,_ p. 137]
His Satanic Majesty was playing both sides against the middle. He was involved in crafting the tariff from the beginning, then he opposed it. He manufactured the crisis in order to give slaveholding states a weapon they could use against some future move to abolish slavery--nullification.
"Many clauses of the Constitution, if interpreted with the slightest latitude, gave Congress at least the power to debate slavery. If Congress can appropriate money for anything it deems in the general welfare, William Smith liked to ask, why can't a northern majority appropriate funds to abolish slavery?" [William W. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina 1816-1836,_ p. 111]
"In 1827 the American Colonization Society dispatched a petition to Congress which inaugurated its campaign for a federal appropriation. . . . to tidewater aristocrats, the colonization petition seemed teh fatal 'entering wedge' which, if not met at the 'threshold,' would clear the way for abolition. A colonization appropraition would set the vital constitutional precedent, for if Congress could promote the general welfare by colonizing free Negroes, it could also promote the general welfare by freeing Negro slaves. 'The only safety of the Southern States,' Hayne argued, 'is to be found in the want of power on the part of the Federal Government to touch the subject at all.' " [Ibid., p. 122]
Robert J. Turnbull, a South Carolina low country planter and pamphleteer, wrote a series of essays called _The Crisis._ Turnbull believed tariffs and internal improvements were dangerous because "acquiescence in these measures, on the part of the State sovereignties, sanctions . . . the constitutional right to legislate on the local concerns of the States." "... these words 'general welfare' are becoming every day more and more important to the folks, who are now so peacably raising their cotton and rice, between the Little Pedee and the Savannah. The question, it must be recollected, is not simply, whether we are to have a foreign commerce. It is not whether we are to have splendid national works, in which we have no interest, executed chiefly at our cost. . . . It is not whether we are to be taxed without end. . . . But the still more interesting question is, whether the institutions of our forefathers . . . are to be preserved . . . free from the rude hands of innovators and enthusiasts, and from the molestation or interference of any legislative power on earth but our own?" [Robert J. Turnbull, "The Crisis," pp. 12-14, 64, 139 quoted in William J. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836,_ p. 127]
The attack on the tariff was in reality, then, an indirect defense of the institution of slavery.
Calhoun himself discounted the tariff as the real cause of the Nullification Crisis:
"I consider the Tariff, but as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institutions of the Southern States, and the consequent direction which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriation in opposite relation to the majority of the Union; against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have . . . their domestick [sic] institutions exhausted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness." [John C. Calhoun to Virgil Maxcy, 11 Sep 1830]
The Nullification Controversy was more about protecting slavery than anything else:
"The same doctrines 'of the general welfare' which enable the general government to tax our industry for the benefit of the industries of other sections of this Union, and to appropriate the common treasure to make roads and canals for them, would authorize the federal government to erect the peaceful standard of servile revolt, by establishing colonization offices in
our State, to give the bounties for emancipation here, and transportation to Liberia afterwards. The last question follows our giving up the battle on the other two, as inevitably as light flows from the sun." [James Hamilton to John Taylor, 14 Sep 1830]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
James Spence of London explained the effects of such a high tariff on the Southern economy:
And as we've seen, this is completely bogus, since the south only consisted of 29% of the population of the United States, and of that, 40% were slaves. So they didn't pay most of the tariff. They didn't use imported goods, so the tariff had no effect on what they bought. There was no effect on exports, so it didn't affect their sales of cotton.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
George McDuffie of South Carolina
McDuffie, of course, being the author of the "40-bale" propaganda piece. Freehling takes it apart completely, showing it's based on poor economics and unsupported by actual trade practices.
Freehling especially contradicts past statements by DiLiarenzo and Adams when he explains McDuffie's "forty-bale theory."
"The forty-bale theory was based on the notion that all the confusion about protective tariffs stemmed from one misleading fallacy. Southern producers assumed that the cash they received for their crop was derived from the sale of cotton in England. But in reality, claimed McDuffie, England shipped manufactured goods, rather than cash across the Atlantic to pay for cotton. As a result, the money dispatched to southern cotton planters was the proceeds of the sale of English manufactured goods in America. To take a hypothetical example, the planter exchanged his one hundred bales of cotton for one hundred pieces of cloth in Europe, and exchanged the European cloth for cash in America. The process was obscured by the intervention of merchants. But the merchants were merely agents who traded the raw cotton in Europe, sold the manufactured cloth in America, and forwarded the proceeds to the planter.
"Since foreign trade essentially involved an exchange of raw cotton for manufactured cloth, continued McDuffie, a protective tariff cut the exchangeable value of the southern staple. If no tariff was in effect, the planter could send his one hundred bales abroad and sell his one hundred pieces of cloth at home. But if a 40-percent tariff was enacted, the planter would have to pay forty pieces of cloth at the customhouse and would have only sixty pieces left to sell.
"The planter could not pass the tax on to consumers by charging higher prices for the surviving sixty pieces. McDuffie believed that the price of a commodity was dependent on the iron laws of supply and demand. Prices went up if the amount of goods available declined or if the amount of money in the economy increased. Tariffs did not change the domestic price because they had no effect on either the supply of cloth or the amount of money. Imagine an economy with one hundred dollars available to purchase cloth and one hundred pieces imported. A 40-percent tariff would neither augment nor decrease the one hundred dollars purchasers would use. Since the government would sell the forty pieces and the planter his sixty pieces, one hundred pieces of cloth would remain on the market. Thus the planter would receive sixty dollars for his sixty pieces. The intervention of merchants again obscured the process. But the merchants remained no more than agents who sold the one hundred pieces of cloth for one hundred dollars, handed forty dollars to the customs collector, and passed the loss on to the cotton planter by dispatching only sixty dollars. Therefore, McDuffie triumphantly concluded, a 40-percent tariff robbed the planter of forty bales per hundred!" [William J. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836,_ pp. 194-195]
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