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.
You say that Mr. Kettell's stats were the basis for Mr. Curry's pamphlet that claimed the South was paying 80% of the tariff.
Viewing Mr. Kettell's stats seems to give the indication that a lot of money was going North at the expense of the South.
So why is it in Mr. Curry's imagination to claim 80% of the tariff was paid by the South with such stats as Mr. Kettell shows?
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
At least we have an idea where the "hundreds of millions going north" comes from. As for the numbers, some would appear to be SWAGs -- how on earth to you place a number on what is spent by travelling in the north? Bounties to fishermen I can understand, but "profits of teachers and others ... sent north"? And who is Mr. Kettell?
This is not so much a complaint about southern money ending up in northern pockets as it is a warning: "We could be be spending this money in the south IF we got on the ball and developed our own industries."
DeBow makes a case involving the non-slaveowner's involvement in the institution. Can't say as I buy it, but he does paint the picture.
Thanks for the link, UB. You too, Cedar -- although I haven't been able to convert the pages to word processing.
A lot of this looks like the sort of analysis given to prove a political position. For example, "Profits of teachers and others at the South, sent North.......5,000,000" means (my guess) that Southerners are paying Northerners to teach their children because Southerners do not have sufficient people who are a) qualified to teach the subjects and b) willing to do so. This is a benefit to Southerners, who are thus able to make use of the more advanced educational infrastructure of the North without having to recreate it from scratch. The money would be paid to the teachers in any case, no matter where they came from, North, South, East, or West, presumably in the same salaries and benefits.
As long as the South wishes to educate their young (not all of them thought it necessary to provide a basic education to poor farmers, for example), they would have to pay someone to teach. This $5 million is not a burden imposed upon the South by Northerners, and could easily be argued to be Northern assistance/charity to Southerners in the form of trained teachers.
Or look at "Profits of shipping, imports and exports...........................40,000,000". Same sort of thing: someone will make these profits. Northerners are not imposing this on Southerners. Southerners could easily have taken advantage of the very same conditions to make this money. But to do so they have to become "grubby merchants", greasy mechanics", etc. and be willing to become employees. Southern society looked down its' collective nose at men who did that.
I don't think these statistics prove much if any of what Battalion wants to say.
I don't think these statistics prove much if any of what Battalion wants to say.
You're absotively right -- no proof at all. Not one of those 200 millions of dollars, if they are the subject funds, was coerced out of the south.
I think Battalion's original contention was that the North went to war to keep this cash flowing. It is inconceivable that anyone thought they could keep this money by force. It is equally inconceivable that the South figured it could secede and immediately assume the services they were receiving.
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
In searching for an answer to the question about the US Money Supply I asked Battalion and the members of this board, I found some interesting web sites that tend to show how difficult it was to do business in the era right before and the early part of the Civil War.
Scroll down to the Northern section and see the difficulty the North was having financing the war and ask yourself, where were all those 100s of millions of dollars available to finance the Northern war effort?
A Brief History of Central Banking in the United States.
Again, going through this site, I wonder where all this money that was collected by these shippers, importers, etc., had went, as it has been shown by the 1860 census that the majority of the nation's wealthy men live in the South.
I'm game, if anyone can show me where's the money and why the federal government only had two hundred thousand dollars in its coffers at the start of the Civil War (source: The book, Greenback, The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America, by Jason Goodwin.) Where is all that tariff money, those 100s of millions?
When the Buchanan administration entered office in March of 1857, the US government had an annual budget surplus, a substantial amount of cash on hand, and a national debt of about $20 million.
The Buchanan/Democratic administration then reduced the Tariff to satisfy campaign pledges (largely to Southerners). To say the least, their timing was poor. The 1850s had seen a great economic boom, not only in the US but also in Europe (particularly in England). The expansion of the world's gold supply following the great strikes in California and Australia had fed inflation, and the expansion into new territory and industries fed an unwise over-expansion of industrial capacity -- particularly in iron and steel, railroads, and shipbuilding.
This was already working out in difficult times when the Panic of 1857 struck. The British, for example, had been dumping excess iron and steel capacity on the US market in the early 1850s, a situation that continued up through the Crimean War (when the Russian market was closed to the British & French, and US flag ships picked up a lot of Russian goods). But that was ended by 1857, the British/French went after the trade. This is when the US market discovered there were too many ships built in the boom, many now obsolete because of steam. New ships coming off the ways found few, if any buyers. Worldwide shiping rates dropped like a stone, ships were laid up, crews laid off. Shippers went belly-up, or scraped by hoping for a brighter future. (In part, this accounts for the revival of the illegal Atlantic slave trade in the Buchanan administration -- which made no move to interfere until 1860.)
The real financial crisis started in August with the sinking in a storm of a ship from California laden with some 30,000 pounds of gold. This caused the first major failure, the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. in August. At the same time, grain prices were falling with the end of the Crimean War and the re-entry of Russian grain supplies to the world market with the end of the blockade. The American West was swept by cascading financial failures in financial and railroad institutions, which reached Philadelphia and New York in October. European investors began withdrawing funds, exacerbating the financial crisis.
Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb of Georgia was a man who believed the government should not hold onto money. He instituted deficit spending, and at the same time the government's income was falling because of a) the lower Tariff of 1857 and b) the slump in the economy.
With the Federal government needing cash, short on income, and also spending more, disaster loomed. By late 1860 the Federals were now paying 10-12% interest where they had formerly paid 6-7%. As the secession crisis loomed, American banks began refusing to make loans to the government unless concessions on fiscal management could be made. One of them was the removal of Howell Cobb in December of 1860.
Where the US government had an annual budget surplus in 1857 and a debt of about $20 million, it now had a large annual budget deficit and a debt of about $79 million. Where there was once a tidy sum in cash and securities, there was now only pocket change. It was this disastrous financial management, combined with the Panic of 1857, that led to the strong support for the Morrill Tariff in 1860-61: the government desperately needed more income to pay its' bills and work its' way out of this Buchanan administration mess.
After SC seceded in December, things got worse for the Federal government. Government debt service still had to be paid, but Southerners were seizing funds and assets. While only a few percent of Customs duties were paid in the South, the loss of even that was crucial when government revenue was already insufficient. The loss of the $500,000 in specie at the New Orleans Customs House and the $500,000 in gold & silver at the New Orleans Mint may not sound like much today; in 1861 it was more than 1% of the entire US debt. In today's terms, it would be equivalent to many tens of billions of dollars.
It is also worth noting that the amounts involved in Secretary of War John B. Floyd's scandals that year (which hit the fan the week SC seceded and before Anderson moved to Ft. Sumter) also amounted to more than 1% of the entire Federal debt. Northerners faced with what seemed increasing evidence of Southern financial mismanagement and fraud began to suspect plots to ruin them or prepare for secession by treacherously weakening the nation. Wouldn't you?
As the date of Lincoln's inauguration approached, there was the equivalent of a "run" on the Federal Treasury. People being people (and politicians being politicians), anyone who could seems to have found a way to get cash before Buchanan left office. Some of this was legitimate; some was quasi-legitimate (such as advance payments for work yet to be done, and maybe never to be accomplished) and undoubtedly some out-and-out fraud. Little of this can be laid at the doors of the Deep South congressmen and Senators who were already leaving, but a lot of it can be laid at the feet of Buchanan appointees, primarily Democrats, and insiders taking care of their friends, North or South.
By the time Lincoln actually arrived in Washington, the government was essentially broke: little cash on hand, virtually no available credit, and a financial community that was very leery of loaning more money to the Federals.
At the same time, the seceding states were threatening and attempting to pressure the US by stopping payments on legitimate debts both public and private.
Still and all, despite the grave financial crisis, it must be noted the nation DID NOT go to war over any of this. There is no evidence there was even serious discussion of such an issue within the government. Only Southern aggression culminating in the attack on Ft. Sumter and the internment of over 1000 Federal troops in Texas (peacefully withdrawing as agreed to under duress in February) as well as other acts led to war.
The firing on Ft. Sumter, that actually precipitated the war, was a political act of the southern leadership(starting a war to shake the border states from their fences). But the reason states seceded in the first place was because the 'interest'(s) of the slaveholders were percieved as Not being protected by the Federal Gov't nor by the majority of citizens of the nation.
The Only 'interest' slaveholders had in their slaves was monetary. Southerners were fighting to preserve their slaves, because of what slaves represented; Money.
The firing on Ft. Sumter, that actually precipitated the war, was a political act of the southern leadership(starting a war to shake the border states from their fences). But the reason states seceded in the first place was because the 'interest'(s) of the slaveholders were percieved as Not being protected by the Federal Gov't nor by the majority of citizens of the nation.
The Only 'interest' slaveholders had in their slaves was monetary. Southerners were fighting to preserve their slaves, because of what slaves represented; Money.
Yes, I think that is as good a summary as any other. The "way of life" being threatened was a society built on slavery. The "states' right" being claimed was the right to protection of slave property. Every issue being discussed comes down to a split over slavery, or no one would have ever seceded over it because it was not important enough. Since slaves=property=money in the seceding states
The only state that seems to have any real issue outside of that was Texas with their additional claim that the US had not done enough to protect them from Indians and bandits, as provided for in the annexation of Texas. Even that seems highly debatable, given that the 1 out of every 8 US soldiers was in Texas trying to protect them in 1860. There seems to be no doubt the US tried to protect the people. The question seems to be how much was enough. Even then, given the strength of the South in Congress throughout the 1850s and the Buchanan administration, it doesn't seem to have been a charge that could be fairly laid at the door of "Yankees".
30) "The value of imports into the port of New York, for the first nine months of the year, have been $97,920,820, against $181,411,187 for 1860, and $192,988,691 for 1859. The falling off from 1860 has been equal to 46%...from 1859, 49%....The imports into this port for July, August and September, have been $19,971,820, against $41,319,774 for 1860, showing a falling off, so far, for the last half of the year, equal to 55%..."
The link between the moneyed interests in the north with the act of secesstion Or the firing on Ft. Sumter is not nearly so obvious as it is to the moneyed interests of south.
30) "The value of imports into the port of New York, for the first nine months of the year, have been $97,920,820, against $181,411,187 for 1860, and $192,988,691 for 1859. The falling off from 1860 has been equal to 46%...from 1859, 49%....The imports into this port for July, August and September, have been $19,971,820, against $41,319,774 for 1860, showing a falling off, so far, for the last half of the year, equal to 55%..." -- New York Times, 2 October 1861
Once again we have to guess what you are trying to say?
I suppose your intention in showing the falling off of imports is clear proof of the absence of the Southern market, but that would be a guess. Why not make your post the backup to your expressed point?
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
30) "The value of imports into the port of New York, for the first nine months of the year, have been $97,920,820, against $181,411,187 for 1860, and $192,988,691 for 1859. The falling off from 1860 has been equal to 46%...from 1859, 49%....The imports into this port for July, August and September, have been $19,971,820, against $41,319,774 for 1860, showing a falling off, so far, for the last half of the year, equal to 55%..."
New York Times, 2 October 1861
Battalion,
What do you believe to have been the reason for the change?
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