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.
When I asked the following concerning your assertion that the majority of federal tariffs were being spent in the North.
You replied in your post #248:
Battalion's post 243 showed the voting results in the House of Representatives on the Morrill Tariff vote of 1860.
It does not provide any proof that the majority of the tariff revenues were being spent in the North nor does it give any figures on such spending.
In other words, you don't have any proof.
Unionblue
Master Henry Jackson will see to you! From one of his posts, worthy of reprint, I should think!
(EMBOLDENED EMPHASIS MINE).
"The consolidation of the Government of Great Britain over the Colonies, was attempted to be carried out by the taxes. The British Parliament undertook to tax the Colonies, to promote British interests. Our fathers resisted this pretension. They claimed the right of self-taxation through their Colonial Legislatures. They were not represented in the British Parliament, and, therefore, could not rightly be taxed by its Legislation. The British Government, however, offered them a representation in Parliament; but it was not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves from the majority, and they refused it. Between taxation without any representation, and taxation without a representation adequate to protection, there was no difference. In neither case would the Colonies tax themselves. Hence, they refused to pay the taxes laid by the British Parliament."
"And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States, have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue - to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures."
"There is another evil, in the condition of the Southern towards the Northern States, which our ancestors refused to bear towards Great Britain. Our ancestors not only taxed themselves, but all the taxes collected from them, were expended amongst them. Had they submitted to the pretensions of the British Government, the taxes collected from them would have been expended in other parts of the British Empire. They were fully aware of the effect of such a policy in impoverishing the people from whom taxes are collected, and in enriching those who receive the benefit of their expenditure. To prevent the evils of such a policy was one of the motives which drove them on to revolution. Yet this British policy has been fully realized towards the Southern States by the Northern States. The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, THREE FOURTHS OF THEM ARE EXPENDED AT THE NORTH . This cause, with others, connected with the operation of the General Government, has made the cities of the South provincial. Their growth is paralyzed; they are mere suburbs of Northern cities".....South Carolina Secession Declaration
__________________
Henry
Thank you, Mr. Henry Jackson, for your timely input from the THEOLOGICAL postings...
Beowulf seems to take a perverse satisfaction in being always wrong. (he must think there is a record to be broken)
Not every Afro-American in America were slaves Beowulf. Some were citizens of Northern states, but the Slave Act specifically denys anyone arrested as an escaped slave to speak in their own defense.
in any of the courts or commissions that were to decide whether they were in fact escaped slaves or not.
Plus, citizens in militia could be dragooned into enforcing Slave Law against their families, friends and neighbors.
Beowulf seems to take a perverse satisfaction in being always wrong. (he must think there is a record to be broken)
Not every Afro-American in America were slaves Beowulf. Some were citizens of Northern states, but the Slave Act specifically denys anyone arrested as an escaped slave to speak in their own defense.
in any of the courts or commissions that were to decide whether they were in fact escaped slaves or not.
Plus, citizens in militia could be dragooned into enforcing Slave Law against their families, friends and neighbors.
In the South, freed blacks had papers of manumission. Slaves had passes, when they went from place to place.
The patrollers could readily identify who was supposed to be where.
I did not say that I agreed with the law, as written. But at the North, freed blacks were apparently not full citizens, either, else, they could speak as they liked... I understand that many Northern states did not allow freed black to reside among the Northern whites. Which is why they went to Canada.
I take you that you have information on this, and would like to share with us? I am here to learn, if there is anything of which I might find useful.
You seem to know a great deal. I hope you decide to share, and to forgive my defending the South. In the interest of impartiality, I think someone should do it!
secession was a unilateral act of the Confederate States, a power not given by the U.S. Constitution to a state or states, that was unilaterally treated as insurrection by the U.S. Congress and President Lincoln, a right given to the Congress -
Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power to ...suppress Insurrections.
Dyers lists 732 organizations raised from states of the South. I consider: Alabama (6), Arkansas (17), Florida (2), Georgia (1), Kentucky (80), Louisiana (23),Maryland (35), Missouri (447), Mississippi (10), North Carolina ( 8 ), South Carolina (5), Tennessee (56), Texas (4), Virginia (1), West Virginia (37) & I also add the USCT (186) which brings the total to 918. Now I know some of those never completed being raised and some are invariably counted twice as units sometimes had two seperate designations (which is why I fail to mention the 30 organizations of the Corps de Afrique.) 732 batteries, Regiments and assorted Battalions denied the CS. And add 186 organizations of the USCT bringing the total to well over 900. Hardly insignificant no matter how you want to spin it. 900 units unavailable to the CS that were available to the US.
So lets be generous and say only 200,000 (though the number was likely closer to twice that) served in the US military...
A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion by Frederick H. Dyer
Here are the actual numbers-
11 Confederate States................
......................White..........Black
Alabama...........2,578..........4,969
Arkansas..........8,289..........5,526
Florida.............1,290..........1,044
Georgia..............195...........3,486
Louisiana..........5,224.........24,052
Mississippi...........545.........17,869
N. Carolina........3,156..........5,035
S. Carolina..............0..........5,462
Tennessee.......31,092........20,133
Texas...............1,965..............47
Virginia.............2,597..........5,723
Totals.............56,931*........93,346**
* 55% from one state.
** Many forced to serve.
In Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina (6 states) were raised 6 regiments and 2 battalions of white troops for the North.
The equivalent of one brigade.
White............56,931
Black.............93,346
Recruits...........5,052 (from the South credited to Northern states)
Total............155,329
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
secession was a unilateral act of the Confederate States, a power not given by the U.S. Constitution to a state or states, that was unilaterally treated as insurrection by the U.S. Congress and President Lincoln, a right given to the Congress -
Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power to ...suppress Insurrections.
insurrection |ˌinsəˈrek sh ən|
noun
a violent uprising against an authority or government : the insurrection was savagely put down | opposition to the new regime led to armed insurrection. See note at uprising
CONGRESS. Interesting...
Secession was such an uprising?
Perhaps - to an empire - dependent upon its tribute!
Each state did not have to be voted in, nor could they be voted out! And, they came of their own free will, and
many specified they would leave when they got ready...
And some left.
The Invasion of Sumter not withstanding, the CSA peacefully withdrew, and was denied all diplomatic status
by a hostile government intent upon spiking the cannons it left, in some forts, and childishly clinging to Sumter, thus trespassing (against the wishes of Lincoln's cabinet).
The North did not start a war; it commenced an invasion of the South, without one constitutional leg upon which to stand.
The South defended itself, but was destroyed.
Secession was no reason for an invasion, unless to acquire land, as in Mexico.
Which it did do. Just like Mexico.
Thus, the North treated the South like a foreign country too close to its borders. Like the South looked at the North at Sumter!
Thus, the South successfully seceded, and would rather be destroyed than be forced.
But don't involve the Constitution! It was never invoked!
secession was a unilateral act of the Confederate States, a power not given by the U.S. Constitution to a state or states, that was unilaterally treated as insurrection by the U.S. Congress and President Lincoln, a right given to the Congress -
Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have Power to ...suppress Insurrections.
Take a look at SC's Causes of Secession. They obviously can't rely on the text of the Constitution itself to justify secession; though many times they make reference to the 9th & 10th Amendments. SC's argument posits that ratification of the US Constitution was the equivalent of SC and the Federal Government entering into a compact (contract if you will) which SC is justified to terminate/cancel if the Federal government breaches the contract.
Federal position is that SC never ratifies anything, its the people of the United States, meeting in state conventions of course, that ratify the US Constituion, delegating a certain portion of their collective sovereignity to the US Constitution and THEN delegating what remained to the state governments. Furthermore, the Federal position sees no Federal breach of the compact.
Dear Beowulf,
As per your post 283, one of the several objections to the fugitive slave law, was that it denied trial by jury to people who were, according to law, innocent until proven guilty. Therefore free blacks living in the North could be arrested, go before a kangeroo federal commission and be shipped South. No trial by jury, no legal counsel, which free blacks, as other citizens, would be entitled to, in any other legal proceeding. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a raw act of federal tyranny. Unfortunately those keen on states' rights had rather a blind spot when it came to slavery, where they thought the more federal power the better.
Per your reply with Mr. HenryJackson's post from another thread above, your post #281, I must inform you that relying on another's wrong assumption does not provide actual proof.
You really should do some of your own research before making such claims and thanking others for their wrong conclusions. I admit, it does seem easier to simply go to partisan websites or scoop up others research and endlessly repeat same mistakes over and over again, but it begins to make one lazy and far too dependent on others.
The following is from a speech by the Hon. E.K. Smart of Maine in the House of Representative, 32nd Congress, 1st session, April 23, 1852. The speech is entitled, Defense of the North Against the Charge of Aggression Upon the South. All of his figures were prepared by the Treasury Department.
Costs of maintaining Washington for 70 years born by Tariffs: an average of 2 million per year, given an offset for starting smaller, some 100 million. Given that over 95% of this was paid from Tariffs and that 90% of all Tariffs come from the north, the benefit to the South was over 40 million.
The Government early on collected 12 million in direct taxes. This was dropped because the numbers of slaves counted in the enumeration for Congressional representation was several million, while miraculously the numbers counted in the process of collected taxes was only 393, 219. The North let it go as they realized the South was hopelessly accustomed to depending on the kindness of strangers. Under the tariff of 'Abomination' period, 27,000,000 was collected in surplus. The tax again was derived by Tariff income per state, but distributed by representation. The kindness of the North again.
The cost of collecting tariffs in southern states from 1791 to 1850 was always twice as much per dollar as in northern states. Due to the fact that the South started out stronger in 1791 financially than she was in 1850, excepting on crop - cotton, the total average collection of taxes from the south was about 23 percent of the total outlay of the Federal government.
Sample returns from plantations showed that slave consumption of goods (not necessarily imported) equaled about 4 dollars per slave per year, including Christmas presents. Given the large proportion of blacks in the South, it is clear why so little money was raised in the South from tariffs.
Post offices: Post offices in the Northern states typically ran a profit, those in the south a loss on average of 600,000 per year on a consistent basis. The profit from the north covered this loss. The kindness of strangers.
Acquisition of Territory: Total Federal payments to France, Spain, and Texas for land acquisition was 39 million, 80% paid from the Northern states. Accrued value to the Southern states (non-taxable) of this territory was 435 millions (Louisiana, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas). To the North, on 40 millions (Iowa and California [in 1852]). Of these lands, sales of land in the North brought in 30 million more than sales of land in the South. Again, the kindness of strangers.
Of lands acquired by Federal funds, a percentage was given out to railroads and other usage. The south received 54,000 more acres of free land than the north. In the 1852 session, the southern controlled government had scheduled handouts of public lands to the south at a rate of five times that of the north.
Mint operations: One mint in the North, three in the south. The cost of minting coins in the north per coin was 1/3 the cost of minting coins in the South.
Lighthouses: More money spent on them in the south than the North. The majority of the money from the northto the south.
Fortifications: The north has longer borders and coastline. Expenditures for the South including current projects 19,215,266. Expenditures for the North - 8,749,897. Eighty percent of the money from the North.
Before concluding, I must briefly allude to one other cause of uneasiness. It has been said that the people of the North make money out of the commerce of the country. It is put down among the list of grievances. But are the North to blame for that? The question is briefly answered by a writer in DeBow's commercial Review, a work of high authority and standing at the South. Hear him:
"The ships of the North come to our shores laden with rich stores from all quarters of the globe - silk and teas from China, coffee from Brazil, the manufactures of England, France, the spice of Sumatra, the gold of California. For almost every article of necessity and luxury we use from foreign countries we are indebted to Northern enterprise, to which we annually pay a large tribute, the immense profits of which might secure to ourselves had we the enterprise and energy to enter the field. Will any man of sense pretend to say that there is any action of the General Government to prevent a merchant of Charleston, Savannah, or New Orleans, from fitting out ships for the whaling business, importing teas from Canton, or coffee from Brazil? Are the duties on foreign goods any higher in Charleston than that of New York? No."
Sir, the case is well put, and I have only to add that, for the 'tribute' they pay, they receive from the North a valuable consideration, in the services described in this extract. And if they do not think so, they have the same right enjoyed by the citizen of my own State, to become carriers for themselves and the world, to enter into both foreign and coast wise trade. And the remark will apply with equal force to every branch of business known to civilization.
From a speech by Alexander H. Stephens, delivered to the Georgia Secession Convention, January 1861:
...Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a great a vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting government. From official documents, we learn that a fraction over thre-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government has uniformly been raised from the North. Pause, now, while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we now enjoy under the general government, as it has been for years past. The expense for the transportation of the mail in the Free States was, by the report of the Postmaster General for the year 1860, a little over $13,000,004, while the income was $19,000,000. But in the Slave States, the transportation of the mail was $14,716,000, while the revenue from the same was $8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $6,115,735, to be supplied by the North for our accommodation, and without it we must have been entirely cut off from this most essential branch of government...
Now, if you can, please provide proof, actual proof, that three fourths of the federal revenue from tariffs are expended at the North. Period sources and documents would be appreciated.
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,
As per your post 283, one of the several objections to the fugitive slave law, was that it denied trial by jury to people who were, according to law, innocent until proven guilty. Therefore free blacks living in the North could be arrested, go before a kangeroo federal commission and be shipped South. No trial by jury, no legal counsel, which free blacks, as other citizens, would be entitled to, in any other legal proceeding. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a raw act of federal tyranny. Unfortunately those keen on states' rights had rather a blind spot when it came to slavery, where they thought the more federal power the better.
I'd like to introduce you to the concept of Cotton Whigs.
Think about it. Federal power-mad Fire Eating Southern UNIONISTS who are LIBERALS in word and deed. It was the separation of these two parties which cost Lincoln, originally, in the 1850's.
Cotton Whigs and Conscience Whigs split; the Conscience Whigs became Abolitionist-minded Radical Republican Liberals in the North, and Cotton Whigs had to become Southern Conservative Democrats (which they really weren't, and never were...)
Confused? You should be. That is by design, of the Second Party, the Liberals... That cord of discontent which has separated Adams from Jefferson since the Genesis.
But it is these Cotton Whig Liberals who make the rest of the slave-owning South look so awful.
After the Surrender, and before his murder, Lincoln wanted to reunite these two Whig parties, and "let the South up easy" (translation: get the Yankee Army out of the South as quickly as possible, patronize the Southern Liberals therein with jobs and money, and act like nothing had ever been wrong, at all!) , and leave the Radical Republican Liberals out to dry! And the rest of the Conservative South could go to blazes!
But would the Union president or the Union Congress control (and benefit from) the control of Reconstruction?
The RRL's wanted to get rid of Lincoln (ahem!) (and even Lincoln himself had renamed his bunch the Union Party as an affront to them)! By claiming the Southern states as conquered provinces, or territories, they could deny the vote to the South for ten years or so while they cemented their nefarious party in permanently. (Military occupation and political Reconstruction to control the vote).
"The RRL's... only real long term issue... was a national industrialization program which would create vast fortunes for the Northern capitalists. But the Republicans had to soft-pedal that issue. They could drop broad hints to the electorate...pave the way for the capitalists and there would be enough trickle-down to provide prosperity for the middle and working class voters. That was what the euphemism "preserving the Union" was really all about for the Northern public. But the Republican (Liberals) could not come right out and say, "Vote for us, and then put on a military uniform so you can fight to win this war to enrich our capitalists."
SOURCE: THE SOUTH UNDER SIEGE 1830-2000 Frank Conner. (Amazon.com)
"Lincoln believed that by treating the conquered Southern states magnanimously, and by using his "war powers" to install in them new state governments run by Cotton Whigs
(Scalawags), he would then gain the numbers of Southern voters (Liberals) needed to beat the (Conservatives - Northern Democrats and Southern defeated Secessionist Rebel Voters; (much of today's progeny who are the so called RED STATE VOTERS)) nationally, and make his party paramount (under whatever name).
The conspiracy of Lincoln's murder points to the RRL's as the murderers of Lincoln, according to Conner, in the choice of victims. William Seward was hated by the RRL's for his relatively unenthusiastic attitude toward the war.
Yet Secy of War Edwin M. Stanton, an infamous radical hated by the South, was not even a target of the assassination plot!
"Thus, it was clearly the RRL's worst enemies in the administration who were the assassin's targets, not the Southerners' worst enemies!"
In sum, the RRL's and Lincoln were fighting over who would control Reconstruction after the war. With Lincoln about to lose his "war powers" (ahem), at the end of the war, they saw a chance. But Lincoln had other ideas. He wanted to resurrect full-blown Whiggery as the collectivist Liberal platform, North and South.
(The Wade-Davis bill had been shepherded through both houses of Congress on 2 July, 1864, and then, Lincoln kills it over the mandatory-emancipation, which the Radicals knew was not his real reason, at all!
And that may have been the real reason for the assassination, according to Conner)...
But one thing the CONSERVATIVE SOUTH, either the slave-owning miniscule percentage of them, or the more than 90% of them who did not own slaves...
The one thing that cannot be placed upon them... is ever wanting more Federal power! They always wanted less of it, as Jefferson had insisted.
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