Federal expenditures 1789-1860

[ole]

I see no reason in these numbers to believe the south was not getting its fair share of expenditures. Pensions would depend on the population of veterans, light houses would follow the shipping, fortifications would reflect the length of coast requiring protection, and internal improvements would follow the population expansion or, as John so ably pointed out, who wanted them.
Ole

[samgrant]

Any way we can ban accountants from this forum?

[MobileBoy]

Ole,
Good job summing up this issue fairly and accurately.

[elektratig]

JTC,

Thanks for the interesting analysis.

Were Southerners actually looking at expenditures in these ways and concluding that they were unfair? My understanding was that the principal southern financial complaint concerned protective tariffs, because the protected industries were largely or exclusively in the North. Since southern industry did not benefit, protective tariffs amounted simply to a tax on southern consumers with no offsetting benefits.

I don't recall reading about separate complaints that the resulting revenues were spent in a regionally unfair manner. The Democrats, of course, generally sought to keep expenditures low, both as a constitutional and philosophical matter an in order to eliminate the Federal debt, but again I didn't see that as based on a strictly sectional analysis of where the funds were being spent. Similarly, I recall SC's position on distribution of the proceeds of public land sales, but I thought they perceived that as related to the tariff -- if the proceeds are distributed, then Henry Clay and his ilk will simply have an excuse to raise (or at least not reduce) tariffs.

Your observation that Democrats may have been less adept at bringing in what we would now call pork barrel projects for their constituents makes logical sense. It would be a little awkward for a congressman, having taken the position that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to fund a Maysville Road-type project, to turn around and push a similar project in his own district. I wonder whether the data bears out the hypothesis?

[ole]

A minor observation, elektratig:

There were several, if not numerous, complaints about federal expenditures going primarily to the north. It was Georgia or SC that made mention in its declaration. The complaint was used occasionally in what I would call a "filler" -- when the speaker had railed on and on about the potential loss of the peculiar institution, he had to add one or two reasons to round out his screed and brought up a few other "facts."

Ole

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by unionblue

John Taylor,

I must … disagree with you that the South did NOT control the Congress in the antebellum period. They controlled the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and for a period, the House of Representatives.

Neil, I’m sorry, but this last bit is demonstrably false. The South never controlled the US House of Representatives. Ever. Look at the distribution of Representatives.

Originally Posted by unionblue

The Democratic Party was the vehicle the South rode in to have its political and economic agenda accomplished. With Northern doughface counterparts, the South pretty much ran the whole political US show for over seventy years.

Let's not confuse some excellent research with semantics, even if it was unintended.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

Neil, I’m sorry, but what you said is simply incorrect.
The South had parity in the number of senators until the sectional balance was broken in 1850. The South never controlled the House of Representatives, not even at the inauguration of the Congress under the Constitution in 1789. Check the original allocations of Representatives in the Constitution, and you’ll see that this is the case. As for the office of President, Jefferson, in the election of 1800, won most of the South, but also all of New York, and half of Pennsylvania’s 15 votes. In 1804. Jefferson won all the States except Conn., Del. and part of Maryland. In 1828, Andy Jackson won Ill., Ind., NY, Ohio, Penn, and even one vote in Maine. Polk (admittedly a Whig, but a Southern Whig) won Ill., Ind., Maine, Mich., NH, NY, & Penn,. In 1856, Buchanan won Cal., Ill., Ind., Penn.
Southerners could not win at the national level unless that had some buy in from the North. Which means that they had to modify their policies so that their policies weren’t completely sectional. Having a Southerner in the office does not mean he followed policies contrary to Northern interests. If the South controlled affairs at the National level, it was because they allied themselves with significant numbers of Northerners to earn that control.
The election of 1860 demonstrated that the South was such a hopeless minority that a man could get none of the electoral votes of the South and still win the White House. Thus, there would be no incentive to moderate policies to render them less sectional. No need to court a Southern vote. They didn’t need it.
Now, couple this fact with the assertion that the Federal Government was the sole judge of the powers delegated to it, the only entity that got to determine the limits of its own authority (a statement still made by unconditional unionists to this day, even on this board), and you have a volatile brew in 1860. That is why you hear fire-eaters speaking of the protection of the minority in the hustings in 1860. Yes, national parties, especially the Democratic party, were a big part of how the South maintained its influence at the Federal level. In 1860, both national parties were dead or split.
So, no, what I said was neither mistaken, nor was it unintended. Antebellum geographical sectional differences and party political differences are two separate things.
Respectfully,
JT

[ole]

The election of 1860 demonstrated that the South was such a hopeless minority that a man could get none of the electoral votes of the South and still win the White House. Thus, there would be no incentive to moderate policies to render them less sectional. No need to court a Southern vote. They didn’t need it.

This isn't the line Alexander Stephens took in his Millegeville Speech.

The south bit off its own nose when it walked out of the democratic convention. Although the balance of power was changing, the election of 1860 did not establish that the Republicans didn't need southern votes. How many northern votes the south lost because of its behavior cannot be known but I'll speculate that the electoral vote would have been closer.

Ole

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by ole

This isn't the line Alexander Stephens took in his Millegeville (sic) Speech.

And Little Alec wasn’t advocating secession at Milledgeville. Surely, you can see a relationship between one’s view of a situation and his recommended policy response to that situation. Stephens didn’t believe the South was a hopeless minority in 1860, so he didn’t advocate secession. Robert Toombs did see the South as a hopeless minority, so he did advocate secession.

Originally Posted by ole

The south bit off its own nose when it walked out of the democratic convention. Although the balance of power was changing, the election of 1860 did not establish that the Republicans didn't need southern votes. How many northern votes the south lost because of its behavior cannot be known but I'll speculate that the electoral vote would have been closer.

But then again, scraping the Southern wing of the Democracy off may have made Douglas a stronger candidate in the North (by distancing him from southern extremism). It also allowed him to embrace a protective tariff. He still got plastered, garnering Missouri and half of New Jersey (12 electoral votes).

[unionblue]

John Taylor,

With respect, you are incorrect when you state the South did not have control of the federal government. While we may disagree on the exact moment the South began to lose control of the federal government, there is much evidence the South did not agree with your own assesment.

From the book, The Slave Power; The Free North and Southern Domination 1780-1860, by Leonard L. Richards.

William H. Seward had predicted that the long domination of the Slave Power. The North, he told the Senate during the heated Lecompton debate, would "would take the Government" and end the rule of the South. (Congressional Glode, 35th Congress, 1st session, 1857-58, p. 943.) Hotspurs in the Lower South, longing for secession, now said that Seward's prediction had come to pass. To counter them, Alexander H. Stephens and other Unionists called on the South to consider its domination of the federal government since the founding of the Republic, to play democratic politics and try to retain power in the next election. There was no reason to panic, they said. Lincoln would have a rough time governing. He had come far short of winning a majority of the nation's vote. His party controlled neither Congress nor the Supreme Court, and it lacked the organizational means to distribute patronage and carry out routine services in the slave states.

Oddly enough, James Henry Hammond, the South Carolina firebrand, fully agreed with this position. He had carried the battle against Seward in 1858. In words that were repeated as far west as San Francisco, he had told northerners that they dared not make war on cotton, that no power on earth dared make war on cotton, that cotton was king, that every society had a "mud-sill" class to do the menial work, and that the South had found a people ideally suited to such work in its black slaves. But on one point he had agreed with his northern nemesis. He had agreed with Seward's claim that slaveholders ruled the Republic. He was proud of it. He regarded it as "the brightes page of human history." (Ibid., 962.)

Privately, however, Hammond dismissed as wishful thinking Seward's prediction that the North would take the government and end the rule of the South. He also dismissed the notion that Lincoln's election meant the end of Southern dominance. Lincoln's election was just a setback. The North, as Hammond saw it, lacked staying power, and thus the South, if united, would continue to dictate national policy. The notion that the South had only two choices--either secede or accept an inferior position in the national government--was nonsense. Secession was not only foolish but self-destructive. Indeed, it reminded him of "the Japanese who when insulted rip open their own bowels."

Yet, what did Hammond do in the winter of 1860-1861? He got swept away by the "epidemic." Upon learning of Lincoln's election, his South Carolina colleague James Chesnut resigned from the Senate. So too did Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia. And South Carolina's Andrew Gordon McGrath resigned from the Uniteds States District Court. Once Hammond heard of these resignations, he followed suit. It was implusive, he told his brother. Indeed, all of them had acted like "great *****." Yet once it was done, there was no turning back. So he hid his private thoughts and enthusiastically endorsed the crusade for southern independence.

In a sense, then, it was men like Hammond who finally destroyed the Slave Power. Thanks to their leading the South out of the Union, seventy-two years of slaveholder dominaton came to an end. Many think that it would have happened anyway, that Lincoln's victory marked a real change in the nation's politics, and that the South would have lsot its hold on the Democratic Party, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Maybe they are right. Maybe southern power in Washington was more precarious on the eve of the Civil War than Hammond recognized.

But the fact remains that Hammond had lived nearly sixty years in a republic in which slaveholders had exercised extraordinary power, and secession soon brought that to an end. The formation of the Confederacy by South Carolina and ten other slave states gave him a brief respite from Lincoln, Seward, and "Black Republicanism." It enabled him to live a few more years under a government in which slaveholders clearly ruled. But he dreaded the future. He had no desire "to look beyond the veil" and live under any other form of government. He never had to. He died before Sherman's "grand army of Mud-sills" reached South Carolina, demolished everything in their path, and destroyed forever the last vestiges of slaveholder rule.

John, it has been pretty much established that due to increases in population, the House of Representatives had more Congressmen from the North than the South, but this fails to take in the fact of which parties they represented. The House had many 'doughfaces' men who owed their support to the Democratic Party, which was the primary vehicle for the South and its political agenda. We should also take into account the 'three-fifths' rule, which gave Southern representation in federal government a huge leg up for some time in the House.

The Senate, the office of President, and the Supreme Court were under the sway of the South, right up until the time of the election of Lincoln. So no, I do not tend to accept any argument that the South did not have control of the federal government.

It was only with the split of the Democratic party at the convention of 1860 did anyone besides a Southerner have a shot at the White House. And it was only because of secession did the Republican party gain a clear majority in the Senate and House.

Just doesn't fly with me, John.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[MobileBoy]

Neil,
Sir you are the one who the record shows is incorrect.Wasn't Kansas admitted as a free state despite the strenuous efforts of the slave power to the contrary?What about California?We all know the South wanted Cuba?Look at the voting record for the tarrif of abominations.The quote slavepower voted against it yet it passed anyway.Why wasn't slavery legal in the territories gained from the Mexican War?These things all went against the quote slave power.The slave power also wanted additional Mexican territories but as in the above examples they didn't have the power to get what they wanted.Yet you would have us believe your position because of what facts?Sorry I've got to go with Mr. Taylor on this one as usual I'm afraid you've let your slavery obsession cloud your judgement.By the way the last 5 Presidential terms were served by Southerners in our lives and they are no slave power.The country used to be much smaller so of course they had some influence as did Northern politicians.I tempted to ask you if you've been to Mardi Gras to much lately but I know you live in Ohio.One can't rule or be in control of the government and have its plans defeated?It is impossible.