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.
"We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched..."
"Any story sounds true until someone tells the other side and sets the record straight."
Proverbs 18:17 (Living Bible)
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"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow"
Chicago Daily Times, 10 December 1860
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"The government cannot well avoid collecting the federal revenues at all Southern ports, even after the passage of secession ordinances; and if this duty is discharged, any State which assumes a rebellious attitude will still be obliged to contribute revenue to support the Federal Government or have her commerce entirely destroyed"
Philadelphia Press, 21 December 1860
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"It is the enforcement of the revenue laws, not the coercion of the State that is the question of the hour. If those laws cannot be enforced, the Union is clearly gone; if they can, it is safe"
Philadelphia Press, 15 January 1861
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"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more ships than all other trade. It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No-we MUST NOT let the South go!"
Union Democrat (Manchester, New Hampshire) 19 Feb 1861
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"Blockade Southern Ports. With no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls"
Philadelphia Press, 18 March 1861
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"The predicament in which both the Government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood....If the manufacturer at Manchester [England] can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....If the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own ports by the millions of tons, to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers....Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free....
...We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched..."
An article from the Greenville (Ala.) Southern Messenger, quoting the New York Evening Post in April 1861:
“Collecting the Revenues – The New York Post on the Difficulty”
The untried difficulties of administering the government are now beginning to be felt by the Republican party. Their theories are one by one laid bare, and politics adopted, which but a short month ago would have smelt of treason in their patriotic nostrils. The revenue question is the last bull they have taken by the horns. How to get rid of it, or round it, with safety, is a question of distressing moment. All the difficulties that surround this matter seem to have been lately burst on the vision of our cotemporaries (sic), which lately had no other note but – “the public property must be held – if in the hands of the secessionists it must be re-taken; the revenue must be collected; the laws must be executed.” The New York Evening Post has taken the alarm, and points out, with a considerable amount of sagacity, the difficulties which are involved. – After stating that duties must either be collected in the ports of the seceding States or these ports must be closed to importation, or else the revenue laws will to all intents be rendered null and void, it proceeds:
"The government, without special authorization from Congress, will have no power to create a line of custom houses along the North Carolina and Tennessee frontier to cover the Arkansas border with stations or revenue officers to intercept the contrabandists. The whole country will be given up to an immense system of smuggling which, on near two thousand miles of coast, would meet with no obstacle or interruption, or discouragement. What would Mr. Woodscrew Simmons, the Rhode Island Senator who caused a prohibition duty on wood screws to be inserted in the tariff which has just passed the Congress, in order that a single screw-mill night make all the wooden screws used in the United States, and that its fortunate owners might grow rich 'beyond the dreams of avarice' – what would this patriotic and most disinterested legislator say, if cargoes of untaxed wood screws were to be brought from the southern coast by our rivers and railways and on board our coasting vessels, and dispersed over all the country, and his hopes of gain disappointed? Mr. Simmons would weep tears of hickory.
To protect the interests of Mr. Simmons in the first place, and those of the Federal treasury in the next, something must be done. The general expectation seems to be that the duties will be collected on board of armed vessels at the different ports of entry in the seceding States. Are our readers aware of what a fleet this would require? There are seven collection districts in the little State of Florida alone. There are four in Alabama. At every port there must be a collector, with his army of appraisers, clerks, examiners, inspectors, weighers, gaugers, measurers, &c.; there must be a naval officer and his staff of entry clerks. The Morrill tariff law, which we have just enacted, will make a larger number of these necessary than would have been required a month ago. Where twenty men would have then answered the purpose, thirty will now be needed. If we collect the revenue in this manner, with a fleet at every port, and a corps of customs officers on board, it will cost us a great deal more than we shall get.
But can the revenue be thus collected? The importers arriving at the Southern harbors will know how to address the customs house officers. ‘We have a cargo,’ they will naturally say, ‘on which we do not care to pay duties on just at present; we must deposit it in the warehouses for the term during which we are permitted to do so by law.’ What will the officers if the customs do in that case? – The government has no longer any warehouses in the seceding ports. The hold of an armed vessel would neither be a proper nor a spacious depository for the goods. If the duties in that case cannot be collected, and the collector will be puzzled to know whether to let the ship proceed to her port or to detain her.
We happen to know that there are importing houses at this moment preparing to take advantage of this opening for an unencumbered trade. They are getting ready to convey their cargoes to Charleston or Savannah; the goods will be landed there, and then brought coastwise to New York, where, being importations from a port within the Union, they will be subject to no duty.
The new tariff, with its strange formalities and ingenuously devised delays, forms and additional inducement with them to take this course.
What, then is left for our Government to do? – Shall we let the seceding States repeal the revenue laws for the whole Union in this manner? Or will the government choose to consider all foreign commerce destined for those parts where we have no customs houses and no collectors, as contraband, and stop it, when offering to enter the collection districts from which our authorities have been expelled? Or will the President call a special session of Congress to do what the last unwisely failed to do – to abolish all ports of entry in the seceding States?”
Greenville (Ala.) Southern Messenger, 10 April 1861, pg. 2, col. 2.
The Southern Messenger had been a Whig, anti-secession paper until January 1861. The New York Post had noticed the difficulty for the collection of US tariffs if the South were allowed to go. A line of customs agents along the southern borders of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas would be necessary. The opportunities for smuggling along that border would be too great to prevent smuggling, and, not preventing it, the Union tariff law would become a dead letter. Secession had to be prevented, or US finances were in trouble. The New York Post acknowledged this in early April 1861.
Respectfully,
John Taylor
__________________ "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
An article from the Greenville (Ala.) Southern Messenger, quoting the New York Evening Post in April 1861:
...
Greenville (Ala.) Southern Messenger, 10 April 1861, pg. 2, col. 2.
The Southern Messenger had been a Whig, anti-secession paper until January 1861. The New York Post had noticed the difficulty for the collection of US tariffs if the South were allowed to go. A line of customs agents along the southern borders of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas would be necessary. The opportunities for smuggling along that border would be too great to prevent smuggling, and, not preventing it, the Union tariff law would become a dead letter. Secession had to be prevented, or US finances were in trouble. The New York Post acknowledged this in early April 1861.
Yes, the paper is writing about the difficulties involved in collecting tariffs and enforcing the laws after seven seceding Southern states had seized the Federal facilites (and revenue) they could lay hands on, using force and the threat of force against some Federal troops who were doing nothing but attempting to protect them. Such actions would be illegal even under the laws of the states themselves, let alone Federal law.
While I am sure they enjoyed taking shots at the Republicans over this (as all minority parties seem to enjoy taking shots at those in power), what do you think is the point here? That the Republicans are in a pickle because of secessionist actions?
Much of this hoohah was not so much a matter of whose revenue goes where as it was a disruption of what had become a settled pattern. The government functioned on the revenues from tariffs on imports. That some portion of those tariffs were protectionist in nature is politically understandable and worthy of resentment. But without those tariffs, there is no federal function. The secessionists had no reason outside of creating their own feifdom, to make a separation over such trivia. But it made good sound-bites.
It remains, to me, that the secessionists would grab any opportunity to promote their cause. Kinda like Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina. They meant to secede. The money angle was just that, an angle on which some people could hang their hats.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Much of this hoohah was not so much a matter of whose revenue goes where as it was a disruption of what had become a settled pattern. The government functioned on the revenues from tariffs on imports. That some portion of those tariffs were protectionist in nature is politically understandable and worthy of resentment. But without those tariffs, there is no federal function. The secessionists had no reason outside of creating their own feifdom, to make a separation over such trivia. But it made good sound-bites.
It remains, to me, that the secessionists would grab any opportunity to promote their cause. Kinda like Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina. They meant to secede. The money angle was just that, an angle on which some people could hang their hats.
Ole
Ole, that may well be. Two problems with the thesis. Not everyone in the South was a secessionist per se (men like Rhett being the obvious exceptions). Most Southerners liked the Union and had to be convinced it was disadvantageous, or dangerous, or both. It wasn't until this case was made in the minds of the majority of Southerners, that secession became the majority position in the Southern States. Southerners weren't just a bloc of rabid secessionists waiting for an excuse to secede. If they were, secession would have happened at some earlier point in time.
Two, the article I posted was mostly from the New York Post. Everything after the words, "The government, without special authorization from Congress,..." is a word-for-word lift from a previous New York Post article. That article says, we have to prevent secession, or our Federal finances and northern industry are ruined. The clear implication is that some in the North felt that they had to prevent secession to protect their financial interests. This article is not suggesting that the Union is not a blessing per se (I am sure the author thought the Union was a good thing, per se), but that preventing a loss of profits in the North was a prime motivation for preventing Southern secession, at least in this author's mind at this time.
Respectfully,
John Taylor
__________________ "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
Much of this hoohah was not so much a matter of whose revenue goes where as it was a disruption of what had become a settled pattern. The government functioned on the revenues from tariffs on imports. That some portion of those tariffs were protectionist in nature is politically understandable and worthy of resentment. But without those tariffs, there is no federal function. The secessionists had no reason outside of creating their own feifdom, to make a separation over such trivia. But it made good sound-bites.
It remains, to me, that the secessionists would grab any opportunity to promote their cause. Kinda like Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina. They meant to secede. The money angle was just that, an angle on which some people could hang their hats.
Ole
Rarely mentioned is that one of the first actions of the Confederate Congress in Montgomery was to impose tariffs, well before Ft. Sumter and before the article John Taylor is quoting, IIRR. Those tariffs applied to the United States as well as other nations. All those arguments about the impossibility of preventing smuggling through the Arkansas-Tennsessee-North Carolina border actually applied to the Confederacy when the article was written.
Why did the Confederacy create tariff laws so early and easily? Because they needed the money. The Confederate government was being paid for almost entirely by revenue supplied from LA -- which was giving them a large cut of the funds from the Federal Customs revenue they seized in New Orleans.
No one had actually "touched the pocket book" of the South when they seceded. Practically the first thing the seceding states did was to "touch the pocketbook" of the rest of the United States, by adding new taxes, by seizing facilities and revenues, by threatening to repudiate debts to northern merchants, by threatening the inter-state slave trade of the non-seceding slave states that existed, be seizing forts, barracks, equipment, Customs boats, etc. Anyone upriver in the Mississippi Basin from Louisiana and Mississippi should have been outraged and worried about the future. Their outlet to the sea had just been taken from them, and there was now a toll both with a gate across it.
Two, the article I posted was mostly from the New York Post. Everything after the words, "The government, without special authorization from Congress,..." is a word-for-word lift from a previous New York Post article. That article says, we have to prevent secession, or our Federal finances and northern industry are ruined. The clear implication is that some in the North felt that they had to prevent secession to protect their financial interests. This article is not suggesting that the Union is not a blessing per se (I am sure the author thought the Union was a good thing, per se), but that preventing a loss of profits in the North was a prime motivation for preventing Southern secession, at least in this author's mind at this time.
I don't see anything in the quote that argues such a point.
This editorial is making fun of the Republican position, and the difficulties involved in putting their policies into practice. As Whigs/Democrats, that is not surprising. The task was difficult.
Clearly it is a problem to have your revenue cut off while you still have to service all the expenses and debt: this was caused by secessionist action whether "constitutional" or not. The secessionists knew this and were deliberately creating problems for the Union on many issues. I assume they figured they would make the rest of the country cry uncle economically. After all, that is part and parcel of the "King Cotton" theory and these tactics seem related.
But at this moment in time, it would actually be the Confederacy, for example, that would have to worry about smuggling on the NC-TN-AR line. The US considered the seceding states to still be inside the US and had no tariff to collect there; the Confederacy considered themselves independent and had already created tariffs to be applied on goods moving south across that line.
Rarely mentioned is that one of the first actions of the Confederate Congress in Montgomery was to impose tariffs, well before Ft. Sumter and before the article John Taylor is quoting, IIRR. Those tariffs applied to the United States as well as other nations. All those arguments about the impossibility of preventing smuggling through the Arkansas-Tennsessee (sic)-North Carolina border actually applied to the Confederacy when the article was written.
Why would one would smuggle from the area of higher prices (the US) to the area of lower prices (the Confederacy)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Why did the Confederacy create tariff laws so early and easily? Because they needed the money. The Confederate government was being paid for almost entirely by revenue supplied from LA -- which was giving them a large cut of the funds from the Federal Customs revenue they seized in New Orleans.
The Confederate Convention, on February 18th, 1861, passed a resolution to keep the existing (i.e. US 1857) tariff laws for the time being, then promptly exempted from duty “Bacon, pork, hams, lard, beef, fish of all kinds, wheat, and flour of wheat, and flour of all other grains; Indian corn and meal; barley and barley flour; rye and rye flour; oats and oat meal; gunpowder, and all the materials of which it is made; lead in all forms; arms of every description, and munitions of war and military accoutrements; percussion caps; living animals of all kinds; also, all agricultural products in their natural state.” (Acts and Resolutions of the First Session of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, pg. 41) Southerners were not against tariffs per se, just protective ones. It is a matter of degree. The Confederate tariff of May 21, 1861, had a maximum rate of 25% (Schedule A), which was a reduction from the max rate of the US tariff of 1857 (30%), and a massive cut from the max rate in the previous US Tariff (that of 1846) which was 100%.
As an example, the tariff on woolen yarns worth more than $1/pound was
1857 – 24% ad valorem
Confederate – 15% ad valorem
Morrill – 12˘/lb and 25% ad valorem
So, if English high grade woolen yarn cost $2.00/pound in England, under the 1857 tariff, it would cost $2.48 in the US. In the Confederacy, it would cost $2.30. Under the Morrill tariff, it would cost $2.62.
If English high grade wool cost $1.01 in England, under the 1857 tariff, it would cost $1.25 in the US. In the Confederacy, the same woolen yarn would cost $1.16. In the US under the Morrill tariff, it would cost $1.37. Here is the relationship between the three seen quite clearly. The North generally thought the 1857 tariff was too low, the South thought it was too high. Once on their own, the South lowered tariffs, and the North raised them.
As for smuggling, an unscrupulous Southern merchant could import woolen yarn into the CSA through New Orleans, transport it to the US-CS border, and sell it for less than the same wool would cost if imported through New York. On the other hand, a clever Yankee merchant could import his wool through New York, paying the Morrill tariff there, transport it to the US-CS border, and smuggle it across and sell it for $1.37, in a country where the same product legally sells for $1.16. Which direction do you think that smuggling is going to go?
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
No one had actually "touched the pocket book" of the South when they seceded. Practically the first thing the seceding states did was to "touch the pocketbook" of the rest of the United States, by adding new taxes,
“Adding” taxes by reducing them, interesting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
…by seizing facilities and revenues,
I’m sure that the people of Charleston SC would have been happy if they could simply move Ft. Sumter out of the harbor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
…by threatening to repudiate debts to northern merchants,
…I guess sending money to a people waging war on you is your idea of good policy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
…by threatening the inter-state slave trade of the non-seceding slave states that existed,
I would think you would applaud restrictions on the slave trade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
…be seizing forts, barracks, equipment, Customs boats, etc.
Excerpts from the Address of Louisiana Governor Thomas O. Moore, January 24th, 1861. “The common cry throughout the North is for coercion into submission, by force of arms, if need be, of every State, and of all the States of the South, which claim the right of separation, for cause, from a Government which they deem fatal to their safety. … The hostile occupation of Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, for the purpose of overawing the State of South Carolina, subduing her to the will of the Federal authorities, and collecting taxes from her people by force, is one glaring example of the modes by which a Southern State may be subjected to duress. … I determined that the State of Louisiana should not be left unprepared for the emergency. … I decided to take possession of the military posts and munitions of war within the State, as soon as necessity of such action should be developed in my mind. … Receipts were given in all cases for the property found, I order to protect the officers who were dispossessed and to facilitate future settlement.” (Emphasis added)
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
Anyone upriver in the Mississippi Basin from Louisiana and Mississippi should have been outraged and worried about the future. Their outlet to the sea had just been taken from them, and there was now a toll both with a gate across it.
That is just plum wrong.
On January 26th, 1861, immediately after passing the ordinance of secession, “the people of the State of Louisiana recognized the right of free navigation of the Mississippi river and its tributaries by all friendly States bordering thereon. And we also recognize the right of egress and ingress of the mouth of the Mississippi by all friendly States and powers; and we do hereby declare our willingness to enter into any stipulation to guarantee the exercise of said rights.” (Official Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention of the State of Louisiana, (New Orleans, J. G. Nixon, 1861), pg. 18.)
On February 22nd Congress passed, and on the 25th, President Davis signed a law granting free navigation on the Mississippi. (Journals of the Confederate Congress, vol. 1, pg. 76) Illinois merchants could transport their imports up and exports down the Mississippi without paying the Confederate tariff at all.
Respectfully,
John Taylor
__________________ "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
Originally Posted by trice
Anyone upriver in the Mississippi Basin from Louisiana and Mississippi should have been outraged and worried about the future. Their outlet to the sea had just been taken from them, and there was now a toll both with a gate across it.
That is just plum wrong.
On January 26th, 1861, immediately after passing the ordinance of secession, “the people of the State of Louisiana recognized the right of free navigation of the Mississippi river and its tributaries by all friendly States bordering thereon. And we also recognize the right of egress and ingress of the mouth of the Mississippi by all friendly States and powers; and we do hereby declare our willingness to enter into any stipulation to guarantee the exercise of said rights.” (Official Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention of the State of Louisiana, (New Orleans, J. G. Nixon, 1861), pg. 18.)
On February 22nd Congress passed, and on the 25th, President Davis signed a law granting free navigation on the Mississippi. (Journals of the Confederate Congress, vol. 1, pg. 76) Illinois merchants could transport their imports up and exports down the Mississippi without paying the Confederate tariff at all.
Respectfully,
John Taylor
I agree with trice on this one.
It's true the South was going to allow free access all along the Mississippi...
...but these assurances weren't enough for the North-
"The free navigation of the Mississippi will never become the subject of treaty between the people of the Northwest and any other people whatsoever. It will never be accepted as a gratuity. It is their right, and they will assert it to the extremity of blotting Louisiana out of the map....This overrunning and exterminating may be a shocking thing, but if it becomes necessary to put an entirely new race of men in possession of Louisiana, to secure the great national right...the thing will be done. Call it by what name you choose it will be done...."
Chicago Daily Tribune, 25 February 1861
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"The States of Mississippi and Louisiana, and the Montgomery Convention, have deemed it worth while to assure the commercial world that they guarantee the freedom of the Mississippi, "in times of peace." This reservation implies a right of the rebel Confederacy over that river--an assumption as unfounded as it is impudent, and one which will not be conceded for a moment, either by the General Government, or by anyone of the half dozen States directly interested in its uninterupted navigation....
....since the promulgation of this guarantee...Louisiana has declared her purpose to ignore it. She assumes the right to exact tribute from all comers, and has given public notice that, after the 4th of March, no goods shall pass over the waters of the Mississippi, through her territory, without the payment of such duties as she, in her generosity, may levy.
This is more than an act of war against the Government of the United States. It is a blow struck at every State and Territory bordering on that river and its tributaries. Even should the General Government submit to this indignity, the millions of People to be directly affected by it, will not. Upon the free navigation of the Mississippi depends every material interest of those States and Territories."
Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 4 March 1861
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"...after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing war on this country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making the blood flow as it has.
You called for war until we had it....
Go home and raise your six thousand extra men. And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men!"
....- Abraham Lincoln to a delegation from Chicago (sent to Washington to protest a call for more troops). The delegation included Joseph Medill, editor of the Tribune.
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