Kraig
06-19-2009, 04:41 PM
Suprisingly enough a couple guys at work were having a conversation about the true reasons for the civil war. One guy thought it was more or less slavery and the other thought it started from the North imposing an export tariff on cotton. The first guy didn't believe that because as he said export tariffs were unconstitutional. I didn't know either way but I raised the point that just because it was unconstitutional didn't mean much.
So we looked it up and were not able to find anything on an export tariff but I did find some information about the federal government raising import tarrifs over and over again to protect manacturing as they European manufactured goods were available much cheaper for whatever reason.
Well according to what I was reading, by far most of the manufacturing was in the North, while the majority of the South was making a living by exporting cotton (among other things) to Europe and buying cheap Europeon goods in return. Supposedly this was a big reason for the war as the South's cost of living went up for the sake of protecting northern manufacturing due to the tariffs.
I really do not know much about the "civil war" but I thought this was very interesting, even though we tried to find something about an export tarrif, we still found that just import tarrifs were a major source of aggression. I wanted to see what you guys though, I'm sure many here can correct or boost my historical understanding of the "civil war" and tariffs. I am also under the impression that most constutionalists believe that the federal government can be funded by tariffs while keeping taxes extremely low, and everything will be great. Protectionism in a nutshell, right? I am wondering if they have considered tariffs being used to unfairly benefit one group over another, the aggresion this could lead to, and if it is possible to prevent unfair tarrifs.
So we looked it up and were not able to find anything on an export tariff but I did find some information about the federal government raising import tarrifs over and over again to protect manacturing as they European manufactured goods were available much cheaper for whatever reason.
Well according to what I was reading, by far most of the manufacturing was in the North, while the majority of the South was making a living by exporting cotton (among other things) to Europe and buying cheap Europeon goods in return. Supposedly this was a big reason for the war as the South's cost of living went up for the sake of protecting northern manufacturing due to the tariffs.
I really do not know much about the "civil war" but I thought this was very interesting, even though we tried to find something about an export tarrif, we still found that just import tarrifs were a major source of aggression. I wanted to see what you guys though, I'm sure many here can correct or boost my historical understanding of the "civil war" and tariffs. I am also under the impression that most constutionalists believe that the federal government can be funded by tariffs while keeping taxes extremely low, and everything will be great. Protectionism in a nutshell, right? I am wondering if they have considered tariffs being used to unfairly benefit one group over another, the aggresion this could lead to, and if it is possible to prevent unfair tarrifs.