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.
Those who have read DiLiarenzo's writings about the tariff will recognize he's bought into McDuffie hook, line, and sinker. Interesting that an economics professor would buy into what Freehling identifies as "poor economics." Well, of course he knows it's poor economics. He just doesn't care.
As Freehling writes, "McDuffie tried to establish the absurd position that the tariff was ultimately paid by southern producers in the form of plunging cotton prices no matter what happened to foreign tariffs or American imports." [p. 194]
"The forty-bale theory was poor economics--but superb propaganda--because it grossly simplified both foreign trade and the domestic market. First, Anglo-American commerce involved more than a simple bartering of raw cotton for manufactured goods." [William J. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836,_ p. 195]
Freehling also tells us, "American merchants could--and did--import items not subject to American tariffs, or accept bills of exchange, useful in buying nonprotected goods in the Indies and the Orient, or take cash credits, needed to pay back debts owed Europeans, or import specie, desperately needed by American banks.
"Second, the price structure of the American domestic economy was more flexible than the iron law of supply and demand indicated. To borrow McDuffie's own example, the one hundred dollars chasing the cloth was not the only money in the economy. Since cloth and other protected manufactured goods were often necessities or desirable luxuries, consumers bought them at higher prices, employing dollars they would otherwise have spent on other items. The notion that manufactured goods were imported at a 40-percent loss, in short, was as absurd as the notion that manufactured goods alone could be imported." [pp. 195-196]
McDuffie, then, is a specious as the rest of the propagandists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
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)
[begin quote]
Mr. KEITT. I agree with the gentleman from Richland, that the power of taxation is the central power of all governments. Put that power into my hands, and I care very little what the form of government it is; I will control your people through it. That is the question in this address. We have instructed the Committee to present a summary of the reasons which influenced us in the action we have now taken. My friend from Richland said that the violation of the Fugitive Slave Laws are not sufficient, and he calls up the Tariff. Is that one of the causes at this time? What is that cause? Your late Senators, and every one of your members of the House of Representatives, voted for the present tariff. [Mr. Miles. I did not.] Well, those who were there at the time voted for it, and I have no doubt you would, if you were in it. The question of the tariff did agitate us in 1832, and it did array this State against the Federal Government.
I maintain, and do always maintain, that this State triumphed then. Mr. Clay said, before nullification, that the protective tariff system had been established for all time. After the Nullification Ordinance, Mr. Clay did say that the State had accomplished the destruction of that system, and that the State had triumphed. The history of that time has never been written. It is true, we were cheated in the compromise; and really, sir, in what single compromise have we not been cheated? My opinion is, that the State of South Carolina and every other Southern State have been dealing with faithless confederates.
But the Tariff is not the question which brought the people up to their present attitude. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we must not make a fight on the Tariff question.
The Whig party, thoughout all the States, have been protective Tariff men, and they cling to that old issue with all the passion incident to the pride of human opinions. Are we to go off now, when other Southern States are bringing their people up to the true mark? Are we to go off on debateable and doctrinal points? Are we to go back to the consideration of this question, of this great controversy; go back to that party's politics, around which so many passions cluster? Names are much -- associations and passions cluster around names.
I can give no better illustration than to relate an anecdote given me by a member from Louisiana. He said, after the election of Lincoln, he went to an old Whig party friend and said to him: We have been beaten -- our honor requires a dissolution of the Union. Let us see if we cannot agree together, and offered him a resolution to this effect --Resolved, That the honor of Louisiana requires her to disrupt every tie that binds her to the Federal Government. [Laughter.]
It is name, and when we come to more practicability we must consult names. Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it. I believe the address, in this respect, cannot. The gentlemen from Chesterfield (Mr. Inglis) says that certain constructions of the Act of Pennsylvania are denied. He might have gone further and have said that certain constructions of the Personal Liberty Bills are denied. I have never seen any Abolitionist yet who did not say that these Acts had no reference to fugitive slaves.
I, myself, have very great doubts about the propriety of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Constitution was, in the first place, a compact between the several States, and in the second, a treaty between sections, and, I believe, the Fugitive Slave Law was a treaty between sections. It was the act of sovereign States as a section; and I believe therefore, and have very great doubts whether it ought not have been left to the execution of the several States, and failing of enforcement , I believe it should have been regarded as a causi belli.
[end quote] [Lawrence Keitt, South Carolina Secession Debate, 22 Dec 1860]
Lawrence Keitt clearly claimed slavery, not the tariff, was the reason for secession.
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.
Ahh! A Touch, sir! A distinct and a decided Touch! (I fear I breathe my last!) Good one! Your humor is dry. I like that in a fine wine!
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?
Okay. Seriously. What do I disagree with?
There was more than one brand of 'slavery' practiced in the United States. Accounts vary widely concerning this:
Imagine if you were sold into Africa as a slave, by your own people. A family buys you, and you reside with them.
You don't speak their language, nor do you understand their ways. You do know you are no longer with the Middle
Passage group, many of whom were begging to be bought, and pleading with the buyers, so they could get off the ship!
The ship is death.
You didn't beg, but you were chosen, and purchased.
You spend a long time with these people. You choose a wife from among the other white servants. You have
children with her. You think of home, but also of those who sold you 'down the river' ...
(... which is actually an old term for yankees selling their slaves off down South instead of emancipating them when the North 'abolished' slavery!)
In this case, your white people (government) sold you off 'down the river' to black slavers instead of killing you, outright. so, there is that. But, as your children would have been doomed at your death, so they are doomed to your slavery... The 'sins of the fathers' bit.
Now, you get 'institutionalized' after awhile. Pro-Northern historians see this as a bad thing, but it happens in prisons, (where I have worked as a guard, by the way!),
and in hospitals (worked in those as well). But these slaves did get that way...
Like convicts and patients. Institutionalized. It is a form of
the Patty Hearst Syndrome. But it is also deeper than that.
Now, you are 'set'. You have been taught their religion, and their god. You are 'used to' doing what it takes to get along. If they make enough money, your children don't get sold off... You don't get sold off... The farm is now your interest as well...
In fact, it becomes the closest thing to home you have really ever known...
Suddenly, one day, an army of blacks show up with guns and bayonets and tell you that you are FREE! (They sound very much like the ones who were talking when your people originally sold you off, years ago. At any rate, you know they don't " 'longs here! "... (belong here).
You see your master's house on fire, (or not) and your house on fire (or not). You see all the food any of you has ever had being taken by this army, and everything of value being destroyed 'just because'. All the animals are
either taken or slaughtered. The army says it is so the Rebel Army can't use these things. And now, neither can you.
You haven't seen 'friendly' (local) soldiers in months... Anywhere.
You'd like to see some now. It would give these guys something to do!
You may be forced into a refugee line. Or you may try to follow (because they have all the food) and be turned back by the pontoon bridges being pulled up before you can cross.
Your family is separated, maybe forever.
All you have worked for with the first black family is forever gone.
But the soldiers seem like you should be grateful to them because now you can go anywhere you want to! (Anywhere they won't run you off, or scalp you, or try and
reuse you. The army is taking some of you and putting you into the army either as slaves, or soldiers...which is worse. Why are we shooting at our own people's people?
Because they held you as a slave!
And what are you making me do any different from what they did?
Because you are earning your keep in the 'yankee' army!
Now, get out there and (fight/Wash/Dig/All the above).
But, what about my family?
Well, what about them? Come on, move it! We don't have time for this! You are 'free', aren't you?
No. No, I am not. Not free.
Well, you soon will be! Now stop complaining!
Now, I don't ask if this ever happened, but how many times it actually did happen, in the natural reverse, of which was black slavery...
Now, to answer your question. You are wrong. Things were not always as you depicted them. 60,000 at least were freed in Virginia by this time, manumitted and legal to live in the South. Owing no one anything. It was possible to buy one's own freedom, or else have it given to them as a gift, and they all had the by-law retirement plans that many of us free people don't have today.
Today, your job has the freedom to fire you at will, and the only real difference a lot of times between employment and slavery is you get to pick your own plantation. Or get to choose from a couple. Some plantations don't want you, even if you are willing!
Corporal punishment was used on free employees in those days, as well. Again, you could leave if you 'got enough'... or, could you? Where would you go? Security and Freedom go hand in hand, sir. What good is giving one without assuring the other? If you give one, and yet take the other, how much better was the Yankee invader than the Southern slave owner?
Well, at least the slave owner fed you, and your family, that night!
The child labor violations in the North are never discussed, but slavery was a much better institution, many times, than that. It is the self-righteousness of the modern-day 'historians' who paint such a lousy scenario of slavery, because it is still being used an an invasion excuse for the North. They themselves can't stomach invading and destroying the South because of Secession, alone! It eats at them. It should.
So, when you think about the whole of slavery, it was an institution. It allowed blacks to live legally in the USA. It gave them (at least at Avenel House) a status in the community, health care, and a retirement plan unexcelled anywhere.
The Yankee invasion did not better these people's lives at all, save for the fact that they were now FREE. That was not always a FREE exchange. You get your freedom at the price of your security...
The slaves as a group deserved much better than the invading yankees and the 'freedman's bureau'. Much better.
So, no, you are not talking about modern-day terrorism-slavery, but Southern slavery. I disagree because of the reasons I mentioned.
__________________ 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
Dear Beowulf,
I'm afraid I'm not understanding your post completely. If you're suggesting in a round about way that being a slave sucked, then I agree.
If the dialogue at the end suggests the dislocation and hardships during wartime is either the same or worse than the perpetual night of slavery, the doom of yourselves and all future generations, I disagree. The folks at the time disagreed as well, since tens of thousands deserted their plantations to enter Union lines.
American slavery was a jail without parole, and it was that way for a couple of centuries. Some jails are more comfortable than others, but there was no release, unless:
a. You had an unusual master with a conscience(like Lee's father in law)
b. You ran away(like Frederick Douglass)
c. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Union army arrives to enforce it.
"Selling down the river was a Yankee term"
Don't you wish.
The issue is not North/South, but slaveowner and nonslaveowner. For example, when northern states began to outlaw slavery, some masters wanted to sell their property south. In Virginia and Kentucky, masters wanted to sell their property south as well. When Thomas Chaplin in South Carolina ran into financial difficulties, he sold several of his slaves, (much to his chargrin. He wrote in his diary that it saddened him that these "blameless people" would bear the brunt of Chaplin's mistakes. He still cashed the check.)
The problem is that masters could do that, not that they lived in the north or south.
There was more than one brand of 'slavery' practiced in the United States. Accounts vary widely concerning this:
Imagine if you were sold into Africa as a slave, by your own people.
Not slavery practiced in the United States.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beowulf
You think of home, but also of those who sold you 'down the river' ...
(... which is actually an old term for yankees selling their slaves off down South instead of emancipating them when the North 'abolished' slavery!)
Wrong as usual. There are no rivers that flow from those Northern states to the south, so it's impossible for the phrase "down the river" to come from that. The term comes from slaveowners in the upper south selling their slaves to owners on southern Mississippi plantations. The river in question was the Mississippi River.
The rest of your post is equally meaningless and wrong. It's amazing how one person can post so many wrong things in succession.
Thank you again for your excellent posts on the tariff and the sources you have shown to be historically false.
I appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Dear Beowulf,
I'm afraid I'm not understanding your post completely. If you're suggesting in a round about way that being a slave sucked, then I agree.
If the dialogue at the end suggests the dislocation and hardships during wartime is either the same or worse than the perpetual night of slavery, the doom of yourselves and all future generations, I disagree. The folks at the time disagreed as well, since tens of thousands deserted their plantations to enter Union lines.
American slavery was a jail without parole, and it was that way for a couple of centuries. Some jails are more comfortable than others, but there was no release, unless:
a. You had an unusual master with a conscience(like Lee's father in law)
b. You ran away(like Frederick Douglass)
c. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Union army arrives to enforce it.
"Selling down the river was a Yankee term"
Don't you wish.
The issue is not North/South, but slaveowner and nonslaveowner. For example, when northern states began to outlaw slavery, some masters wanted to sell their property south. In Virginia and Kentucky, masters wanted to sell their property south as well. When Thomas Chaplin in South Carolina ran into financial difficulties, he sold several of his slaves, (much to his chargrin. He wrote in his diary that it saddened him that these "blameless people" would bear the brunt of Chaplin's mistakes. He still cashed the check.)
The problem is that masters could do that, not that they lived in the north or south.
Again, sir, you compare the way we live today with the way they lived back then...
There was NOTHING ELSE. Much of the country was inhabited by tribes of indians who weren't always so
welcoming to white people, nor anyone else. Wild animals at night. No shelter... The world was different; there was no WALMART, nor civilization. There were no guarantees! No real medical help! Most people, black or white, in the South, never ventured more than fifty miles beyond where they were, in their entire lives. Many masters worked side by side with the slaves...
No, you can't anachronize your 2008 attitudes, (superior though they may be!) to the 1860's. The self-righteousness in those views is speculative, at best.
It would have been bad for YOU, or ME... but we are
modern people, who would die without air conditioning and daily showers!
In Germany, I visited the castles of kings, and was shocked at the barbarity in which they lived, as rulers!
We have no idea what we are talking about!
I doubt any of us would last a week under such a system of life, let along forced servitude!
They not only lived, they thrived.
Why not try one of Lincoln's empty promises? Let the South up easy!
"You get your freedom at the price of your security."
"They who can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Ben Franklin, Feb. 17, 1775.
The 'security' of slavery vs. the uncertainty that freedom brings in your everyday life?
You're kidding, right?
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impluse to see it tried on him personally."
Get back to me once you have experienced it, personally.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
"They who can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Ben Franklin, Feb. 17, 1775.
The 'security' of slavery vs. the uncertainty that freedom brings in your everyday life?
You're kidding, right?
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impluse to see it tried on him personally."
Get back to me once you have experienced it, personally.
Unionblue
UnionBlue;
Well, since you like to quote Uncle Billy...
from AMERICA'S CAESAR, Chapter 15 - THE SEIZURE AND CONSCRIPTION OF SOUTHERN SLAVES
(The following account has been sanitized for your protection, in places. The original reads much better, but as I am a gentleman, I cannot quote all the action of the noble yankee army and their glorious Sherman in mixed company!). All of this is available ON LINE at www.americascaesar.com
Am I kidding? Was security not a factor in their 'freedom?"
Why don't you tell me...
I think I can strongly recommend being allowed to remain in servitude indefinitely... over being 'emancipated' by Uncle Billy...
In a letter that was discovered in the streets of Columbia after Sherman's "bummers" passed through, Lieutenant Thomas J. Myers wrote the following words to his wife in Boston: "The DARNED SLAVES, as a general rule, prefer to stay at home, particularly after they found out that we only wanted the able-bodied men, (and, to tell you the truth, (EDITED).) Sometimes we took off whole families and plantations of SLAVES, by way of repaying secessionists. But the useless part of them we soon manage to lose; sometimes in crossing rivers, sometimes in other ways."(29)
Dr. John Bachman, pastor of the Lutheran Church at Charleston, described the brutal treatment of the Blacks by the Northern invaders as follows:
When Sherman's army came sweeping through Carolina, leaving a broad track of destruction for hundreds of miles, whose steps were accompanied with fire, and sword, and blood, reminding us of the tender mercies of the Duke of Alva, I happened to be at Cash's Depot, six miles from Cheraw.... A system of torture was practiced toward the weak, unarmed, and defenseless, which, as far as I know and believe, was universal throughout the whole course of that invading army. Before they arrived at a plantation, they inquired the names of the most faithful and trustworthy family servants; these were immediately seized, pistols were presented at their heads; with the most terrific curses, they were threatened to be shot if they did not assist them in finding buried treasures. If this did not succeed, they were tied up and cruelly beaten. Several poor creatures died under the infliction. The last resort was that of hanging, and the officers and men of the triumphant army of General Sherman were engaged in erecting gallows and hanging up these faithful and devoted servants. They were strung up until life was nearly extinct, when they were let down, suffered to rest awhile, then threatened and hung up again. It is not surprising that some should have been left hanging so long that they were taken down dead. Cooly and deliberately these hardened men proceeded on their way, as if they had perpetrated no crime, and as if the God of heaven would not pursue them with his vengeance....
On Sunday, the SLAVES were dressed in their best suits. They were kicked, and knocked down and robbed of all their clothing, and they came to us in their shirt-sleeves, having lost their hats, clothes, and shoes. Most of our own clothes had been hid in the woods. The negroes who had assisted in removing them were beaten and threatened with death, and compelled to show them where they were concealed. They cut open the trunks, threw my manuscripts and devotional books into a mud-hole, stole the ladies' jewelry, hair ornaments, etc., tore many garments into tatters, or gave the rest to the negro women.. (EDITED). These women afterward returned to us those articles that, after the mutilations, were scarcely worth preserving. The plantation, of one hundred and sixty SLAVES, was some distance from the house, and to this place successive parties of fifty at a time resorted for three long days and nights, the husbands and fathers being fired at and compelled to fly to the woods.
Even more shocking is the following account given by William Gilmore Simms of Columbia:
Something should be said in respect to the manner in which the negroes were treated by the Federals while in Columbia.... [The soldiers] were adverse to a connection with them; but few SLAVES were to be seen among them, and they were simply used as drudges, grooming horses, bearing burdens, humble of demeanor and rewarded with kicks, cuffs and curses, frequently without provocation. They despised and disliked the SLAVES; openly professed their scorn or hatred, declared their unwillingness to have them as companions in arms or in company at all.
Several instances have been given us of their modes of repelling the association of the SLAVE, usually with blow of the fist, butt of the musket, slash of the sword or ***** of the bayonet.
Sherman himself looked on these things indifferently, if we are to reason from a single fact afforded us by Mayor Goodwyn. This gentleman, while walking with the general, heard the report of a gun. Both heard it, and immediately proceeded to the spot. There they found a group of soldiers, with a stalwart young negro fellow lying dead before them on the street, the body yet warm and bleeding. Pushing it with his feet, Sherman said, in his quick, hasty manner:
"What does this mean, boys?"
The reply was sufficiently cool and careless. "The SLAVE gave us his impudence, and we shot him."
"Well, bury him at once! Get him out of sight!"
As they passed on, one of the party remarked:
"Is that the way, General, you treat such a case?"
"Oh!" said he, "we have no time now for courts martial and things of that sort!"
...The treatment of the negroes in their houses was, in the larger proportion of cases, quite as harsh as that which was shown to the whites. They were robbed in like manner, frequently of every article of clothing and provisions, and where the wigwam was not destroyed, it was effectually gutted. Few negroes having a good hat, good pair of shoes, good overcoat, but were incontinently deprived of them, and roughly handled when they remonstrated....
The soldiers, in several cases which have been reported to us, pursued the slaves with the tenacity of blood-hounds; were at their elbows when they went forth, and hunted them up, at all hours, on the premises of the owner. Very frequent are instances where the SLAVE, thus hotly pursued, besought protection of his master or mistress, sometimes voluntarily seeking a hiding place along the swamps of the river; at other times, finding it under the bed of the owner; and not leaving these places of refuge till long after the troops had departed.
For fully a month after they had gone, the negroes, singly or in squads, were daily making their way back to Columbia, having escaped from the Federals by dint of great perseverance and cunning, generally in wretched plight, half-starved and with little clothing. They represented the difficulties in the way of their escape to be very great, and the officers placing them finally under guards at night, and that they could only succeed in flight at the peril of life or limb. Many of these were negroes of Columbia, but the larger proportion seemed to hail from Barnwell. They all sought passports to return to their owners and plantations.(31)
Even many honorable men in the North saw through the thin philanthropic mask of the Abolitionist invasion of the South. According to R.G. Horton of New York, "The driving off negroes from the plantations was no uncommon occurrence throughout the South. The negro is naturally very much attached to his home, and when the abolition officers came among them and told them they were free to leave their masters and they did not do so, they often became very angry with them, and compelled them to enjoy what they called 'the blessings of freedom.' These 'blessings,' it has been proved, consisted mainly of 'disease and death'" [emphasis in original].(32) It was estimated by Senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, himself an ardent Abolitionist, that one million Negroes had perished from disease, neglect, and other factors associated with the invasion of the South and a disruption of its institutions.(33) According to Robert Lewis Dabney's 21 October 1865 letter to Major-General Oliver O. Howard, half the Black population of Louisiana were lying in their graves by the end of the war.(34)
Such accounts, which would literally fill volumes and sicken the soul of any civilized man or woman, are rarely brought to light by those who propagate the myth that the war was fought by the Northern armies with the welfare of the Black race in mind. We will conclude this chapter with the following words of Dennis A. Mahony, editor of the Dubuque (Iowa) Herald, written in the Old Capitol Prison at Washington, D.C. where he was imprisoned in 1862 by the Lincoln Administration for his Democratic sentiments. In his journal entry for the ninth of September, Mahoney recorded the entrance into the prison of several Confederate prisoners of war, captured at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia:
Several prisoners have been brought here to-day from the neighborhood of Fredericksburgh. Among them were some negroes, one of them, a large, intelligent spoken fellow, was very anxious to see his master, who, having been paroled, was not brought to the prison. I asked this slave whether he would go back to his master.
"Yes, sir," said he, "I don't want to stay here; my master always treated me well, and I don't want to leave him."
"But," said I, "they will keep you here, or send you north."
"Well, massa," said he, "if they won't let me go home, I can't help it; but, if they will let me away, I will go with my master."
In connection with this, I may say, from conversations I have had with nearly every one of the male contrabands around the premises, that every one of them desires, and designs, if he should have an opportunity, to go back to his master. Most of them were brought here against their will, and, if left free to choose, they will go back to their old masters, in preference to remaining here or going north.(35)
Further comment on the "freedom" given to the Southern Blacks by the Northern invaders is not necessary.
So a propaganda pamphlet is pointed to as a source document? LOL
Is it wrong? Can you show where it is wrong?
- Beowulf
Poor history, as reference to Taussig and Freehling shows. His Satanic Majesty, John C. Calhoun, was behind the 1828 tariff.
Would you care to explain, or simply bloviate? I read the part where you claim Calhoun was playing both sides...
It does not prove, however, that the tariff was not a problem in and of itself! - Beowulf
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]
Is this your learned opinion? Did anyone else concur with you on that, or are you just 'decreeing', again?
- Beowulf
Oh, Edward Pollard, what an objective source--NOT.
Care to explain? What have you against this person?
- Beowulf
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.
Does this in any way disprove anything?
- Beowulf
Actually, the case being built so far is less than flimsy at best. It's built on nothing but historical lies.
I always enjoy how sure you are of presenting sources you enjoy! I have found that, to the extent one is prejudiced against a thing, he is willing to be completely taken in by its polar opposite!
- Beowulf
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]
Sounds like he is tired of yankee arrogances and forcings in politics, as an art form! - Beowulf
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]
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.
Did they not complain of a disproportionate tariff?
And of being deprived of the benefits of such tariff?
- Beowulf
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? Who is he, when he is at home?
- Beowulf
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]
I missed something here... At what point does Freehling dismantle McDuffie, is it?
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
