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.
* includes data from 1854-1860 only. From data compiled in John van Deusen’s book, Economic bases of Disunion in South Carolina
This is intended as a point of departure for further discussion. Were ante-bellum Federal expenditures imbalanced in favor of the North?
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
Last edited by JohnTaylor; 02-24-2006 at 01:04 PM.
There's something wrong with the "fortifications" figure. The "Slave" figures you have down add up to about $22MM, but the total is only $2MM. Either the total or one or more of the components is bad.
I'd be happy to pursue this, but is there some way I can get some comfort about the figures? I'll check around on online to see what I can find, but are you aware of any online sources? Is the author simply excluding some expenditures as unallocable and, if so, is that fair? If miliary expenditures are not allocated, for example, a Notherner might argue, that expenditures attributable to the Seminole Wars, the Mexican-American war or SE Indian removal should be put in the "slave" column, or at least noted with an asterisk. For that matter, how about the expenses attributable to the War of 1812 (which, as you Southerners like to keep reminding us, had the Hartford Convention muttering about the Union)?
Assuming the figures are accurate, it strikes me the figures don't seem to give great offense. Do you think they do? When looking for a way to evaluate them, what's reasonable? Population (and if so free? free plus slave? free plus 3/5?)? And even assuming some were unfair, it seems to me there are great difficulties attributing any discrepancies to anti-South bias (or pro-North bias) on both a macro and a micro level. On a macro level, the White House was inhabited by southerners or doughface Democrats (Pierce, Buchanan) for virtually the entire period until 1861, and the Southern states held ample power in Congress. Why would there be a gross imbalance? On a micro level, don't you really have to bore down to a much finer level to understand why funds were or were not spent on projects? One example off the top of my head: Andrew Jackson's famous veto of Henry Clay's Maysville Road project in Kentucky obviously had nothing to do with anti-southern bias and everything to do with Jackson's hatred of Clay.
I checked quickly and the annual Federal budget rose from circa $10MM to circa $60MM between 1800 and 1860. This suggests -- although correct me if I'm wrong -- that the author is allocating a very small portion of the total expenditures. Even assuming the allocations are correct and that no other expenditures can reasonably be allocated, doesn't this create a potentially misleading picture?
I tend to like to think about simple hypotheticals. Assume total expenditures of $100, $10 of which can be allocated $7 to the North and $3 to the South. Looking at the 7-to-3 ratio alone might suggest one thing. But if you looked at the overall figures and allocated the $90 remainder 50-50 (or in accordance with whatever ratio you think is "fair", bearing in mind that you then have to consider the resulting figures bearing the fairness of that ratio in mind), you'd wind up with total figures of $52 to the North ($7 plus $45) and $48 ($3 plus $45) to the South, which may suggest something different. At the very least, you'd want to look at the figures both ways in order to understand the total picture.
I'm writing quickly, so excuse the half-baked nature of this. Hopefully you get what I'm driving at.
This is intended as a point of departure for further discussion. Were ante-bellum Federal expenditures imbalanced in favor of the North?
Let me echo elektratig's remarks. There are so many ways to consider these amounts, it will be interesting to put them all in a fair analysis as to whether they are disproportionately allocated and if that allocation is sectionally discriminative.
If we look at population, my first impression is that too much was spent in slave states. But on some types of expenditures, population and even political power may have little to nothing to do with it. Improvement and maintenance costs on transportation routes of a national character should have been expended in areas that showed the greatest demand at the time, and this would change depending on developing areas, traffic, and causes of nature. In my reading, one of the most common federal expenditure that would fall in an improvement category was for surveying. I would think as the decades passed, we would expect this activity to mostly shift from the East Coast and South to the Great Lakes and Midwest to the West Coast.
I would also think, although I have no idea if it is the case, that expenditures on coastal fortifications might somewhat match the importance of the port being defended, but the grand scale of the Fort Sumter project seems to contradict that notion.
I will post an excel breakdown I have of expenditures for 1856 if it will add to the discussion, but its too long to add to this post.
Compensation and mileage of Senators. ....$108,872.00
Compensation and mileage of Representatives and Delegates ...$365,048.00
Additional, allowed under increased compensation .....$773,500.00
Compensation of officers and employees of Senate. ....$69,484.00
Contingent expenses of the Senate.. ....$168,460.00
Compensation of officers and employees of House of Representatives ....$76,646.00
Contingent expenses of House of Representatives, viz:
Binding Documents. ....$125,000.00
Furniture, repairs, and stationery. ....$15,000.00
Horses, carriages, fuel, and lights. ....$6,900.00
Newspapers for members.. ....$12,500.00
Engraving and lithographing ....$125,000.00
Police and miscellaneous items. ....$40,700.00
Pages, laborers, folders, &c ...$26,632.00
For Congressional Globe and appendix ....$34,704.00
Binding same… ....$16,657.00
Reporting debates, first session.. ....$21,000.00
....$424,093.00
For Library Congress and Superintendent of Printing.. ....$30,750.00
Paper required for Printing during second session. ....$156,408.00
Printing for the second session, Thirty-Fourth Congress.. ....$115,000.00
Compensation of the President of the United States. ....$25,000.00
Compensation of the Vice President-balance. ....$2,622.00
Compensation of Secretary to sign patents. ...$1,500.00
Compensation of Secretary of State and employees.. ....$51,000.00
Publishing the laws of Congress… ....$47,301.00
Contingent expenses of State Department. ....$34,500.00
Compensation of the Secretary of the Treasury, assistants and em ployees. ....$615,340.00
Contingent expenses of Treasury Department ....$78,409.00
Compensation of the Secretary of the Interior, commissioners and em ployees. ....$314,390.00
Contingent expenses of Interior Department ....$133,230.00
Surveyors of Public Lands and their clerks. ....$130,151.00
Compensation of the Secretary of War, clerks and employees ....$106,300.00
Contingent expense of the War Department.. ...$26,160.00
Compensation of the Secretary of the Navy, clerks and employees. ....$97,540.00
Contingent expenses of the lNavy Department.. ...$12,565.00
Compensation of the Postmaster-General, clerks and employees ....$158,840.00
Contingent expenses of Post Office Department.. ....$159,000.00
Expenses of Mint at Philadelphia… ....$177,200.00
Expenses of Mint at New Orleans. .....$63,200.00
Expenses of Mint at Charlotte, North Carolina.. ....$11,600.00
Expenses of Mint at Dahlonega, Georgia ....$10,880.00
Expenses of Mint at San Francisco.. ....$277,300.00
Expenses of Mint at New York Assay Office ....$62,200.00
For Territorial Government-Oregon ....$34,000.00
For Territorial Government-Minnessota .....$30,300.00
APPROPRIATIONS BY CONGRESS.
For Territorial Government-New Mexico. ....$3,400.00
For Territorial Government-Utah. ....$8,300.00
For Territorial Government-Washington. ....$34,000.00
For Territorial Government-Nebraska.. .....$31,500.00
For Territorial Government-Kansas. ....$32,000.00
Compensation of Supreme Court and District Judges. ....$167,000.00
Compensation of Attorney General and D)istrict Attorneys. ....$54,000.00
Support of the Court of Claims.. ....$30,000.00
Support of the Independent Treasury… ....$151,000.00
Support of the present land system… ...$253,000.00
Support of the District Peuitentiary...… ....$23,316.00
For defraying the expenses of the United States Courts. ....$800,000.00
Contingent expenses of Surveyors General.… ...$7,000.00
Contingent expenses of Public Grounds ill Washington. ...$41,226.00
For the support of the Army Army proper. ....$10,568,249.00
Armories, Arsenals, and Munitions of War. ...$985,049.00
Military Academy ....$173,891.00
Fortifications and other works of defence.. ...$1,746,400.00
Surveys, &c. ...$135,000.00
Miscellaneous objects. ....$1,400,000.00
Arrearages. ...$2,000.00
For the support of the Navy Navy proper ...$9,142,418.00
Marine corps. ...$851,113.00
Special objects. ...$4,530,974.00
Surveys of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. ...$250,000.00
Survey of the Western Coasts of the United States ....$130,000.00
Support of the Light House establishment... ..$1,300,959.00
To supply a deficiency in Post Office Department. ....$2,250,000.00
Intercourse with foreign nations. ...$936,862.00
For the payment of pensions. ..$1,458,947.00
For lighting the President's house and public grounds. ....$27,000.00
Continuation of public buildings in Washington. ....$450,000.00
For Indian annuities ...$1,385,276.00
To collect agricultural seeds and statistics ...$75,000.00
For the payment of certain per centage to States. ...$256,000.00
Repayment for land erroneously sold… ....$63,000.00
Marine Hospital fund.. ....$150,000.00
For the payment of debentures, drawbacks, and bounties ....$500,000.00
Repayment to importers the excess of duties collecte ....$1,050,000.00
Expenses of collecting revenue from customs. ....$2,450,000.00
Expenses of Smithsonian Institute. .....$30,910.00
Expenses of mail transportation for the several departments.. ...$200,000.00
Expenses of mail transportation for the two Houses of Congress. ....$500,000.00
For arming and equipping the militia. ....$200,000.00
For civilising Indians under the act of March 3, 1849. ....$10,000.00
For interest on the public debt. ...$2,230,000.00
For ocean mail steamer service. ....$2,113,500.00
For general mail transportations. ....$6,140,000.00
Compensation of postmasters. ....$2,150,000.00
For ship, steamboat, and way letters.. ....$20,000.00
Compensation of clerks in post offices, and contingencies. ....$1,329,300.00
For Capitol extensions until 4th March next. 750,000.00
For new dome on Capitol.. ....$100,000.00
Total. ......$$63,640,023.00
There's something wrong with the "fortifications" figure. The "Slave" figures you have down add up to about $22MM, but the total is only $2MM. Either the total or one or more of the components is bad.
I'd be happy to pursue this, but is there some way I can get some comfort about the figures? I'll check around on online to see what I can find, but are you aware of any online sources? Is the author simply excluding some expenditures as unallocable and, if so, is that fair? If miliary expenditures are not allocated, for example, a Notherner might argue, that expenditures attributable to the Seminole Wars, the Mexican-American war or SE Indian removal should be put in the "slave" column, or at least noted with an asterisk. For that matter, how about the expenses attributable to the War of 1812 (which, as you Southerners like to keep reminding us, had the Hartford Convention muttering about the Union)?
Assuming the figures are accurate, it strikes me the figures don't seem to give great offense. Do you think they do? When looking for a way to evaluate them, what's reasonable? Population (and if so free? free plus slave? free plus 3/5?)? And even assuming some were unfair, it seems to me there are great difficulties attributing any discrepancies to anti-South bias (or pro-North bias) on both a macro and a micro level. On a macro level, the White House was inhabited by southerners or doughface Democrats (Pierce, Buchanan) for virtually the entire period until 1861, and the Southern states held ample power in Congress. Why would there be a gross imbalance? On a micro level, don't you really have to bore down to a much finer level to understand why funds were or were not spent on projects? One example off the top of my head: Andrew Jackson's famous veto of Henry Clay's Maysville Road project in Kentucky obviously had nothing to do with anti-southern bias and everything to do with Jackson's hatred of Clay.
What are the pension figures? Military?
Thanks.
Apologies about the error. I had scanned the document and sometimes my Optical Character Recognition program sees doubled characters, thinks it is seeing double and interprets the doubles as singles. The mistake was significant. (“$20 million here, $20 million there, pretty soon, you’re talking about some real money.”) Apologies to all. The rest of the data are accurate.
Some explanation is also in order.
Hospitalization accounts for navy hospitals and “marine hospitals.” Pensions were military pensions from the Rev War, 1812, and Mexico. Massachusetts put some impressive numbers in the field in the Rev War, especially early on. Only in 1781 did Virginia surpass the number Bay Staters had in the field.
Van Deusen did break down the categories by State, and compiled by region. For the sake of simplicity and space, I presented only the sectional compilation, not the State-by-State data.
I excluded internal improvements data for the four Federal territories (Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, & New Mexico) because they were pretty evenly balanced and the Territories were "shared."
In all cases, I rounded down to the nearest dollar for simplicity. This may mean the totals are a couple of dollars off, but the percentage difference will be small.
The data come from the Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, Executive Documents, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session, No. 89, Senate Documents, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, No. 254. Data for the years 1838-1860 come from appropriation bills.
In addition, there were appropriations of $740,000 in 1838-1850 and $995,000 in 1860-1860 on improvements that van Deusen calls “common rivers.” I take these to be the Mississippi and Ohio, and the like, not within the boundaries of any one section. Within the sectional totals, van Deusen includes categories he labels “Northern rivers” and “Southern rivers.” In the text, he says that these are inter-State rivers within one section (e.g. Wabash or Chattahoochee). John C. Calhoun actually proposed differentiating rivers based on this distinction. Rivers solely within one State (e.g. the Cape Fear) should be improved by the State Government only. Rivers between two States (Wabash, Potomac) should be improved by agreement between the two States involved (with Congress’ consent). Rivers lying within three or more States (e.g. the Ohio, or the Mississippi) could be improved by the Federal Government. (Calhoun Works, vol. V, pg. 246-310) It must be noted that Calhoun suggested this at a time (1846) when he may have been nursing presidential ambitions, and was courting the Northwest, who would have benefited from such a categorization.
How does one allocate the benefit derived? One way around this is to consider only where the money was spent, ignoring for the moment who benefited from the resulting fortification or improvement. Another way, was to look at who benefited from the service provided. A fort at the mouth of the Chesapeake benefited more than just Virginia, but everyone upstream from Cape Henry: Md, Penn., and including the national capital. A fort at the mouth of the Mississippi benefited Louisiana, but also all the people upstream from N’Ahlins (although admittedly to a lesser extent). On the other hand, regardless of who got the salaries for building a lighthouse in Boston, it was of limited benefit to Charleston merchants (and vice-versa).
Southerners did not control Congress for most of the antebellum period, Democrats did for the bulk of that time. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it is, I believe important. Whigs, including Southern Whigs, tended to favor greater Federal expenditures, and higher tariffs. Democrats, including Northern Democrats, tended to favor limited Federal expenditures, and lower tariffs. But neither categorization however was absolute. Douglas became a pro-tariff Northern Democrat and Tyler deeply angered Whigs by vetoing Whig economic bills.
I would suggest that, if an imbalance existed, it was because of the different philosophies of the two regions or the two parties. Democrats, generally opposed to Federal expenditures, did not propose as many as Whigs. Thus in the debate over whether to have a particular Federal expenditure, the playing field was not level; it was slanted in favor of whatever party wished to have greater expenditures (still is, really). The party opposed to Federal expenditures has to play tactical defense, with all the disadvantages of that maneuver. A proposal to have the Federal Government do something would seem to have an advantage over a opposing proposal that the Federal Government do nothing. In 1840, when Whigs proposed giving each State a portion of the proceeds from Federal land sales, South Carolina went so far as to refuse to take her share. SC was afraid that the money grant would increase the Federal deficit and thus would be used as an excuse to increase tariffs, which turned out to be an accurate prediction. At any rate, I would suggest that this difference in philosophy explains a lot of any imbalance that exists.
For a counterpoint, however, one should read Southern Whig papers in 1859 and 1860 (The Greenville Ala. Southern Messenger, or Vicksburg Daily Whig), savagely attacking profligate Federal spending under a Democrat, and the graft and the corruption (e.g. Covode) of the current Democrat Administration.
What strikes me, whoever, is that, generally, there is balance between the two sections. In some cases, the South gets more money, in others the North does. I would only suggest that to be equitable, money should be apportioned by the Federal ratio (free citizens, plus 3/5 of “others.”) Of course, using this ratio (instead of free population) would increase the apparent size of the imbalance, but that ratio was used in apportioning representatives, so I believe this is the best yardstick.
Anyway, I don’t think the South was getting screwed nearly as bad as Southern Democrats would have us believe.
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
The problem with federal expenditures wasn't what happened before 1860, it was the unforeseen expenditures, the Southern Oligarchy never anticipated, after the Civil War started.
I must take exception to your well researched post above and 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. Even Southerners of the time boasted of this fact. 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
__________________ "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
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