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Thread: Secession did not start the "Civil War"

  1. #1

    Secession did not start the "Civil War"

    The War of Northern Aggression started when the North refused to withdraw from Ft. Sumter.

    The War of Northern Aggression was NOT about slavery, for the North it was about economics:
    The North wanted to destroy the South (including the Blacks)

    For the South it was about independence, Secession had already happened no matter what you THINK the cause of Secession was.
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  3. #2
    To find the causes of the civil war many look to why the south succeeded, and you usually end up with two camps one that says states rights and tariffs, the other says slavery. But no matter what the reasons the south left the union, [future thread] they are irrelevant to what caused the American civil war. The north would not recognize the south as an independent country, and would not allow them to self govern. The south wanted peace. It did not seek to invade the north and with France, tried to settle through diplomacy without conflict.It was the north that invaded the south. So to find the causes of the civil war, we must look to the north. We are told the war was fought over slavery. The south wanted slavery and separated for that reason. Lincoln invaded the southern states to free the slaves. This is one of the myths about Abraham Lincoln. Historically this is not so, there were multiple reasons why the north would not allow the south to go, not one was because of slavery.



    From Union to Empire


    I would argue the most important cause of the war was Lincolns successful transformation of the union into a modern nation/state.

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?511837-From-Union-to-Empire-The-Political-Effects-of-the-Civil-war



    Lincolns Tariff War/ Dilorenzo



    “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states... the love of money is the root of this...the quarrel between the north and south is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel”
    -Charles Dickens, 1862

    "The southern confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing..it is very clear that the south gains by this process and we lose. No .. we must not tlet the south go".
    -Union Democrat Manchester, New Hampshire 19 February 1861


    In 1860 America tariffs were the main source of income of the federal government. The south largely being agrarian and import/export, payed as much as 75% of federal revenue. The vast majority of this in come was used in the north and to help northern industry.


    "The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe . This operates to compel the South to pay anin direct bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually."
    -Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860



    “They(the South) know that it is their import trade that draws from the people’s pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars [$1.5 to $1.7 billion in 2012 dollars] per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the union.”
    -NewOrleans Daily Crescent, 1861


    Not only that, but the south and the confederate constitution allowed for free trade. So not only would the federal government lose up to 80%of its income, southern ports would dominate trade with Europe [no tax on imports/exports] and the north would be further be pushed into poverty. Across the north northern newspapers started calling for war saying the loos of revenue and the fact the southern ports would dominate, the south could not be allowed to leave. A northern democrat from Ohio plainly stated what the war was over when he said


    “The passage of an obscure, ill-considered, ill-digested, and unstatesman like high protectionist tariff act, commonly known as the‘ Morrill Tariff. The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade are inexorable. Trade and commerce . . . began to look South . . . .Threatened thus with the loss of both political power and wealth, or the repeal of the tariff, and, at last, of both, New England –and Pennsylvania . . . demanded, now coercion and civil war, with all its horrors . . .”
    -Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham D-Ohio 1863



    The Confederate States of America would have diverted a great deal of commerce away from the north unless the Union, too, reduced its tariff rates. That reduction, however, was unacceptable to Lincoln and the Republicans, who considered the tariff the “centerpiece”of their ambitious program for a greatly expanded central government.So Lincoln could not let them go.In Lincoln inaugural address he said[and other times] he would not go to war over slavery, but would over “properties” [referring to fort Sumner were tariffs were collected.]. He said the only thing that could cause bloodshed was over the tax collection. Lincoln was ok with slavery in the south, but if you did not pay to the federal government, war would come. When the blockade of the south was announced Lincoln gave a speech saying the cause of the blockade was over the tariffs.


    In the book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal said“Economics more than high moral concerns produced the civil war”.The heart of the war was economical differences growing between the protectionist, manufacturing northeast and the free trade agrarian south. The republican party had strong anti slavery sentiments, but they did not overshadow republicans wants of the homestead act,internal improvements and economic nationalism.

    Preserving the Union

    “The war now prosecuted on part of the federal government is a war for the union”
    -Secretary of war Simon Cameron August 8 1861


    "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."
    -Abraham Lincoln The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Letter to Horace Greeley August 22, 1862

    One reason the north went to war was simply to preserve the union.Lincoln and the north wanted to preserve the nation and wanted to create a all powerful empire/nation controlled by Washington. An America that was split, was less powerful. Lincoln also did not want to be remembered as the president who allowed the nation to separate.


    Did Lincoln go to war to end Slavery?


    “The condition of slavery in the several states would remain just the same weather it [the rebellion] succeeds or fails”
    -Secretary Seward to US Ambassador to France

    “I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all.”
    -Abraham Lincoln 1858


    “The pretense that the “abolition of slavery” was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud... undertaken for maintains and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery to which they have subjected the great body of people, both white and black”
    -Northern Abolitionist Lysander Spooner



    Lincoln and the north did not invade the south to end slavery. The north maintained slavery in states such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri, during and after the civil war. Lincoln had no problem with the upper south slave states in the union such as Virginia as he called for volunteers to attack the deep south to repress the rebellion. The 1860 the republican platform plank 4 said slavery was a state issue and they would not interfere. Lincoln said the states had the right to chose on slavery and he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed.

    “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere Untitled with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”
    -Abraham Lincoln Inaugural address


    Lincoln in his inaugural address said he supported the Corwin amendment.This amendment was first proposed in Dec 1860 and passed both the house and senate. It would have made slavery a constitutional right to states and permanently untouched by congress. Lincoln also said he supported the Fugitive slave act. During the war after the south left the union, the north controlled congress yet they did not end slavery. After the south succeeded the federal government decided it would not end slavery in the house on Feb 1861 and senate march 2 1861. On July 221861 congress declared “This war is not waged , nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions [slavery] of those states.” October 8th 1861 the newspaper Washington D.C National Intelligence said “The existing war had no direct relation to slavery.”

    “ I think as much of a rebel as I do an abolitionist”
    -Union General Phil Kerney



    In the early parts of the war Union soldiers and generals returned any runaway slaves back to their southern masters. General McClellan ordered runaway slaves back to masters in Virginia. When union general John Fremont emancipated slaves in union occupied Missouri, Lincoln recalled the orders and relived Fremont of his command. When union general David Hunter ordered general order number 11, declaring all slaves in SC/GA/FL to be “forever free” Lincoln revoked the proclamation and also ordered Hunter to disband the 1st South Carolina regiment made up of blacks hunter had enlisted. Late in 62 Lincoln supported in union held territory in VA and LA to continue slavery and allow the slave owners peacefully back into the union. Slavery led many especially in the old Whig party to “cling more tightly tthe union.”


    “Howard county [MO] is true to the union” “our slaveholders think it is the sure bulwark of our slave property”
    -Abeil Lenord a Whig party leader at onset of war


    Had the war ended earlier, slavery would have not been touched.


    Did the war Become about slavery After the Emancipation Proclamation

    “My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am president . It shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the union”
    -Abraham Lincoln Aug 15 1864


    The emancipation proclamation was a war measure and did not touch on slavery as an institution at all. Any southern state that wished to keep slavery, only had to rejoin the union with slavery intact. It actually did not free a single slave. After the emancipation proclamation northern troop desertion skyrocketed, and recruitment plummeted, indicating the average union solider was not fighting for slavery.

    “Great pains have been taken, by the North, to make it appear to the world, that the war was a sort of moral, and religious crusade against slavery. Such was not the fact. The people of the North were,indeed, opposed to slavery, but merely because they thought it stood in the way of their struggle for empire”
    -RaphaelSemmes 1868



    Another reason for the proclamation was to make sure Europe did not enter the was for the south. If they could make the war look like it was over slavery, than Europe could not enter. In 1864 legislature in Texas said the Yankees were “lying to themselves and pretending to the rest of the world” that they were “fighting for the freedom of 4 millions happy and content slaves” but were really intent on“enslaving 8 million free-men.”


    “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting fort their Independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.”
    -Woodrow Wilson, “A History of The American People”,page 231







    Last edited by 1stvermont; 08-27-2017 at 08:26 AM.

  4. #3
    I look at the firing on Ft Sumter as an unwise action .

  5. #4
    Secession did not start the war, it started when federal troops refused to vacate a federal fort in a state that seceded. But, of course, no one thought any entity but the Army had legitimate claim to the fort until the state it was in seceded. So, secession started the war.

    This topic deserves its own thread, even though all the OP does is advertise another thread.

    The South had no good reason to secede, they just got a wild hair, and no matter what we THINK the cause of secession was, it happened.

    Got it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by 1stvermont View Post

    In 1860 America tariffs were the main source of income of the federal government. The south largely being agrarian and import/export, payed as much as 75% of federal revenue. The vast majority of this in come was used in the north and to help northern industry.




    HAHAHAH!!! The South paid 75% of the federal revenue?? What a load of BS. You folks need to get a grip on reality as this claim has been obliterated many times over: https://deadconfederates.com/2013/02...urd-on-tariffs The North had far more commerce and most international trade for the United States went through New York. In fact, 65.9% of ALL US imports came into New York in the 4 years preceding the Civil War, so how one can conclude the South paid all these tariffs is laughably ignorant. 2/3rds of all the US imports entered into the United States via New York!! https://cenantua.wordpress.com/2011/...l-about-taxes/

    The South was dominated in the Civil War due to their lack of population, their inferior industry, fewer railroads, and were easily blockaded as a result---the war only lasted as long as it did because the Union commanders in the East were so incompetent--McClellan had the upper hand on so many occasions to squash the Confederacy, but didn't. That's why the war dragged on as long as it did. The Union easily handled the Western Theater. The South couldn't invade the North--they tried and failed in epic fashion. The North systematically dismantled the South with its military and it wasn't even close. The one hope the South had was holding out long enough for the war-weary North to withdraw due to political pressure.

    Militarily, it wasn't even close. The Union was easily superior. The South was blockaded quickly. Like I said, if Lincoln had a competent commander in the East through the first two years of the war, there would have been no Gettysburg. The Union had the resources and the numbers, and the gross incompetence by McClellan.
    Last edited by Gaddafi Duck; 08-27-2017 at 03:05 PM.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by oyarde View Post
    I look at the firing on Ft Sumter as an unwise action .
    Exactly. Catastrophic strategic error by the South. But, the Neo-Confederate revisionists here would have you think otherwise and that American troops in a federal fort were the aggressors, even though the South fired the shots.

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Exactly. Catastrophic strategic error by the South. But, the Neo-Confederate revisionists here would have you think otherwise and that American troops in a federal fort were the aggressors, even though the South fired the shots.
    After secession it was no longer Fed. property. It was a sea fort which controlled access to Charleston harbor. Been awhile since we heard form you. Hope it's a good while before we hear again.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    The South had no good reason to secede,
    Yes, if secession ever does happen, there should at least be a good reason for it

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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    Secession did not start the war, it started when federal troops refused to vacate a federal fort in a state that seceded.
    That state never did actually secede though. The whole state remained federal property, for the duration of the civil war.

    Source: Abraham Lincoln
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  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    After secession it was no longer Fed. property. It was a sea fort which controlled access to Charleston harbor. Been awhile since we heard form you. Hope it's a good while before we hear again.
    Pathetic. Fort Sumter was federal property ceded decades earlier by South Carolina in 1836:

    "Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.

    “Also resolved: That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded."
    - "United States Military Reservations, National Cemeteries, and Military Parks" published 1910, page 359 https://books.google.com/books?id=vU...0ceded&f=false
    Last edited by Gaddafi Duck; 08-27-2017 at 04:21 PM.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Pathetic. Fort Sumter was federal property ceded decades earlier by South Carolina in 1836:



    - "United States Military Reservations, National Cemeteries, and Military Parks" published 1910, page 359 https://books.google.com/books?id=vU...0ceded&f=false
    All fine and good while being a part of the Union. A bit different after secession. Brush up on your history, boy.

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    All fine and good while being a part of the Union. A bit different after secession. Brush up on your history, boy.
    LOL!! Uhhmm..brush up on the law, boy. When you cede land to another party, it's no longer yours. You can't, decades later, then lay claim to it. Except, of course, if it's an act of war, and that's exactly what the South did: fired the first shots of the Civil War.

    "Resolved That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory"
    What about this is difficult for you Neo-Confederates to understand? South Carolina gave up the territory. There's no "do-over".

    Some more sour grapes from the Neo-Confederates still whining about stuff 150 years ago. I only enjoy correcting the record, because the Neo-Confederates live in some alternate reality where federal land with a federal fort is no longer federal property because South Carolina seceded. It wasn't South Carolina's, so it didn't "leave with them" when they left.

    I do love how the Neo-Confederates ignore the bulk of my post---where the South clearly didn't pay 75% of the federal budget with tariffs. That's laughably false as 2/3rds of the entire imports of the US in the 1850s went to New York, with the second largest importer being Massachusetts. New Orleans imported one-tenth what NYC did.
    Last edited by Gaddafi Duck; 08-27-2017 at 04:37 PM.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    LOL!! Uhhmm..brush up on the law, boy. When you cede land to another party, it's no longer yours. You can't, decades later, then lay claim to it. Except, of course, if it's an act of war, and that's exactly what the South did: fired the first shots of the Civil War.



    What about this is difficult for you Neo-Confederates to understand? South Carolina gave up the territory. There's no "do-over".

    Some more sour grapes from the Neo-Confederates still whining about stuff 150 years ago. I only enjoy correcting the record, because the Neo-Confederates live in some alternate reality where federal land with a federal fort is no longer federal property because South Carolina seceded. It wasn't South Carolina's, so it didn't "leave with them" when they left.

    I do love how the Neo-Confederates ignore the bulk of my post---where the South clearly didn't pay 75% of the federal budget with tariffs. That's laughably false as 2/3rds of the entire imports of the US in the 1850s went to New York, with the second largest importer being Massachusetts. New Orleans imported one-tenth what NYC did.
    Lol, boy. Your driv by agitation sure smells of dead fish.

    Care to tell us why the CSA demanded that the fort be turned over to them. Care to extrapolate why this Union held territory held a strategical advantage over one of the Souths largest harbor? Through which trade to all parts the world flowed? Care to extrapolate why the Fed. Gov. left Ft. Moultrie and choose this location to re-fortify and dig in? Why the North didn't accept the terms for handing the fort over?
    As for the rest of your diatribe, care to explain how the higher tariffs imposed, brought through northern ports, did not adversely affect those in the south that bought and traded for these products. Couldn't they have simply allowed these traders into their ports without the up charge? No, of course not. Just because trade goods come through a formerly slave trading northern port doesn't mean the southern states didn't pay the up charge.
    Where were the tariffs being allocated? Do you economics?

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Pathetic. Fort Sumter was federal property ceded decades earlier by South Carolina in 1836:



    - "United States Military Reservations, National Cemeteries, and Military Parks" published 1910, page 359 https://books.google.com/books?id=vU...0ceded&f=false
    I would think it is now on a foreign country's land. Just like we have bases all over the world, where foreign governments can and have kick us out of.
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  17. #15
    “if an intelligent angel would drop down in one corner of this room and sit there for two weeks hearing all that is said to me, I think that he would come to the conclusion that this war is being prosecuted for the purpose of obtaining cotton from the South for the Northern cotton mills. So General Banks has to go to Louisiana to get the cotton. My situation is such that I am not free to resist this demand. I am so dependent on New England, and those using cotton, for money, men and supplies, that I cannot do as I wish under the circumstances.”

    More at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/b...ar-for-cotton/

    In the decades prior to the Civil War, the south was constantly hampered by protectionist tariffs. In 1828, the Whigs employed the Tariff of Abominations, which destroyed the agrarian economy of the south. This was such a controversial issue that Andrew Jackson encouraged the passage of the Force Bill, which would allow him to invade South Carolina to enforce the tariff. When it came to the 1860s, the issue reared its ugly head again in the form of the Morrill Tariff, which raised the rates to a huge extent and caused additional controversy in an already fractured time. For many in the south, enough was enough. British sentiment at the time corroborated this, as the policy served to punish free trade with European powers as well.

    The South attempted to buy federal property from the Union peacefully, and for a time this seemed like a plausible course of reconciliation. The top ranking union military commander, Winfield Scott, urged Lincoln to allow the seceding states to “depart in peace.” Scott communicated informally to the southern states that Fort Sumter would be abandoned, and a peaceful solution could be achieved. Secretary of State William Seward pled with Lincoln to sell the union property to the south to avoid war and to avoid an incendiary action that would start war.

    https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/b...about-slavery/

    The official insistence that tariffs did not enrich the North at the expense of the South and that tariffs were irrelevant to why the South seceded and the North invaded is just factually untrue. Whether the experts are frauds or fools – and at least in McPherson’s case, both are impossible – the fact is that in the Congress, the newspapers, the party platforms, the secession conventions, and the Confederate Constitution, the issue of tariffs remained divisive. In short, plenty of ‘someones’ were thinking about tariffs at the time.
    Two of such ‘someones’ were Sydenham Moore and George S. Houston, two Representatives for the State of Alabama. Moore began his career with a law practice in Greensboro and eventually served as a judge for his local county and federal circuit as well as a captain in the Mexican War. Houston was a longtime Jacksonian (he had served in the Congress off and on since 1831) with a law practice and plantation in Athens.
    On 30 April 1860, Moore spoke against the Republican Party’s Morrill Tariff, a record-breaking tax increase which protected key industries in swing States from foreign competition – ‘scarcely less oppressive than did the memorable tariff act of 1828, known throughout the South as the bill of abominations.’ Moore admitted that the ongoing crisis of slavery – a ‘question of far more perilous import’ – was more absorbing at the moment, but held that so long as ‘selfishness or avarice finds a lodgment in the human breast,’ the issue of the tariff was ‘never to be at rest.’
    ‘Who introduces it here now, as it seems to me, so unnecessarily and so unseasonably?’ Moore asked of the Morrill Tariff. ‘Not those upon whom the taxes are most heavily imposed by the tariff laws, and who might be expected to be weary of bearing, like Issachar, their endless burden, but the manufacturers themselves, for whose support and profits nearly every individual and industrial interest in the country is not compelled to contribute,’ he answered, adding that these moneyed interests had long-lobbied for such privileges. Moore rejected the Republicans’ profession that they wished to raise taxes in order to pay down the national debt, pointing out that pushing taxes too high actually lowered revenue and that they were resistant to cutting spending on anything. ‘From the manner in which the Republicans usually vote on all questions involving the appropriation of money,’ observed Moore, ‘it really seems as if they designed to swell the expenditures of the government so highly as to create the necessity of higher duties.’
    Moore rebuked the Congressmen of the swing States – particularly Pennsylvania – for auctioning off their votes. ‘In the glowing pages of Gibbon we read that, when public and private virtue and true patriotism had become extinct at Rome, and liberty itself had sought a more congenial dwelling-place, far away from the corruptions of that imperial city, that Empire, the then-mistress of the world, was put up and sold to the highest bidder,’ explained Moore. ‘Have we so far degenerated that the chief honors of this great Republic, and the control of its destinies, are also to be offered to the highest bidder?’
    Responding to the Republicans’ call for ‘protection for protection’s sake,’ Moore refuted the old mercantilist theory of protection and defended the classical-liberal theory of free trade. ‘The honourable gentleman from Vermont endeavors to ridicule the doctrines of free trade,’ explained Moore, referring to the bill’s author, Vermont Republican Justin Morrill. ‘The principles of free trade have been approved by the ablest statesmen and public economists in the world; by such men as Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, and Sir Robert Peel.’ As an example, Moore cited the economic case of Great Britain, which had increased her prosperity and power by repealing her restrictive trade policy. ‘Though sternly opposed by those interested in maintaining the system of protection, and despite the forebodings of ruin and disaster which were to follow, these principles were partially adopted by England years ago, and their success has vindicated the wisdom of those who first incorporated them into her legislation,’ argued Moore. ‘The monarchies of the Old World are abandoning these antiquated notions of monopoly and restriction, and are now opening wide their ports to the commerce and free exchanges of the world.’ Free trade even cultivated peace between rival world powers such as Great Britain and France, noted Moore, replacing military conflict with economic cooperation. Moore cited the United States as another example, showing that the reduction of tariffs in 1846 was followed by an increase in imports and tax revenue – that is, as trade increased, so did the revenue collected from taxes on trade. Moore suspected, however, that the Republican Party’s official position on protective tariffs was a ‘sectional’ question rather than a ‘financial’ question – that is, a form of rent-seeking for its section. ‘The gentleman well knows that while the chief burdens will fall on the South, his constituents will be benefited by a high protective tariff,’ Moore remarked of Morrill. ‘No wonder, then, that self-interest has blinded his clear understanding, and made him so earnest an advocate of the protective policy.
    Hoisting the Republican Party (which called for higher internal improvements in addition to higher tariffs) on its own petard, Moore objected that protectionist tariffs, by increasing the price of coal and iron, in turn reduced the number of internal-improvements projects which could be undertaken – in particular, the railroads. ‘Is it not enough that for every mile of railroad which may be constructed, over one thousand dollars have now to be paid to the iron manufacturers of this country?’ asked Moore. ‘Can gentlemen be so blind as to believe that the mechanics and agriculturalists of this country will be content to pay to the manufacturers more than twenty-four dollars of their honest earnings out of every $100 expended in the purchase of iron?’
    Moore denounced the Morrill Tariff’s policy of levying ‘specific duties’ on particular items rather than a uniform duty, objecting that this concealed the tax burden from the people. ‘Specific duties do very well in those governments where every expedient is resorted to to procure money from the people,’ remarked Moore. ‘Where their expenditures are upon a gigantic scale, and a certain amount is absolutely necessary to preserve the public faith and credit. Moore believed, however, that American representatives should not deal with their constituents through ‘fraud,’ but in ‘an open and manly manner.’ According to Moore, ‘The laws ought to be so plain and simple that they may be comprehended by every individual, even of the commonest understanding.’ Moore then highlighted the difference between direct and indirect taxation, the latter of which he considered ‘at best a contrivance to tax the people, and, at the same time, keep them in ignorance of the amount that is levied on them.’ Imagine, suggested Moore, if instead of the tariffs’ ‘invisible tax-gatherer,’ a ‘common tax-gatherer’ demanded that each man pay to the industrialists a bounty of $24 for every $100 he spent. ‘Yet this is the amount of tribute now levied on the consumers for that favoured class,’ Moore pointed out, ‘and still they clamour for more.’
    ‘The people whom I have the honour to represent do not object to bear their full share of the taxation necessary to support this government,’ explained Moore. ‘They are also willing for the manufacturers to derive all the benefits which may accrue to them from the incidental protection afforded under a revenue tariff.’ Moore made clear, however, that his constituents ‘are not content to be taxed beyond what the wants of the government may require.’ As examples of such illegitimate wants, Moore listed ‘the ironmongers and manufacturers of the North,’ ‘the thousand and one cormorants who feed and fatten on public spoils,’ ‘marble palaces for custom-houses, court-houses, post offices, and light-houses,’ ‘New England seamen for catching codfish,’ ‘a large standing army in time of peace,’ and ‘printing and publishing costly books which few can get and none ever read.’
    When Morrill accused Southerners of an ‘ignorant impatience of taxation,’ Moore protested that ‘the taxing power has always been viewed with jealousy by every free people’ and that ‘no free people of the same intelligence and spirit ever submitted to such unjust and oppressive taxation.’ According to Moore, taxation in the United States had always been unequal. ‘While one section has contributed much the largest share of revenue, it has received back but little in the way of appropriations,’ explained Moore. ‘While it has been a heavy burden to one, it has been a bounty to the other.’ If the ‘onerous taxation’ of the tariffs of 1816, 1824, 1828, and 1842 had ‘been imposed by a monarch,’ suggested Moore, then ‘he would have shared the fate of Charles I of England: “the block would have drunk his gore and his head have saddened in the sun.”’ Moore traced the belief ‘that taxation without consent was tyranny’ from the Declaration of Independence to the Magna Carta, adding that ‘the doctrines of passive obedience and unconditional submission’ had fallen into disgrace after the Glorious Revolution rejected the despotic reigns of Charles II and James II. Moore denounced the ‘system of iniquitous legislation’ that produced the Morrill Tariff and lamented the South’s minority status within the Union. ‘Go on, then, gentlemen; pass this odious protective tariff bill; legalise the robbery of the South,’ exclaimed Moore. ‘We are in a small minority here, and therefore powerless to protect our constituents.’ Moore warned, however, that despite the South’s ‘past forbearance,’ the ‘old revolutionary fire’ may soon be rekindled. ‘God grant,’ prayed Moore, ‘that the example of Hampden, in resisting the illegal tax on ship money, and of our fathers is resisting the illegal though trifling tax of threepence per pound on tea, and of all those who have periled life and fortune in the cause of liberty and independence, may not be lost upon the South; but that every son of hers may so set in the future as to prove to the world that they “know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain them.”’
    The next week, on May 8th, Houston also spoke against the ‘exorbitant and unjust’ Morrill Tariff. ‘The taxing power of the government, and its duty growing out of the exercise of that power, in view of the constitutional grant, present questions which, in my judgment, are not surpassed in importance by any ever agitated in an American Congress,’ declared Houston. Although Houston admitted that the ‘fate of the government’ depended on the resolution of the ongoing slavery crisis, he avowed that ‘no question connected with the government can be of more interest or importance than those growing out of the bill under consideration.’
    With sarcasm, Houston complimented the Ohio Republican John Sherman (brother of the Yankee warlord W.T. Sherman) for conceding that ‘a duty levied upon imports is a tax upon those who consume such imports.’ This concession, remarked Houston, clarified the question before the people: ‘Whether they are willing to be thus taxed in their necessary consumption, not because the government needs to money, but to prosper and enrich the manufacturing interests.’
    ‘An effort is now being made to increase the duties to a point much higher than they were under the law of 1846, upon the alleged ground that our receipts in the Treasury are too small,’ claimed Houston. Specifically, Houston warned that the Republicans were facetiously arguing for a return to the tariff of 1846 over the tariff of 1857, the latter of which had reduced rates and been followed by a reduction in revenue. The reduction in revenue, however, resulted from the Panic of 1857. ‘Under such circumstances, how could we expect the usual amount of imports or the usual amount of receipts into the Treasury?’ asked Houston. ‘A prudent man in a case like this, and at a time like this, would reduce his expenses and husband his means so as to be able to weather the storm and pass safely through the crisis.’ Indeed, Houston found the idea of permanently raising taxes during a recovery from a recession in order to recoup a temporary shortfall in revenue to be perverse: the government should ‘bring its expenditures to a point where they could be met by its income’ and ‘avoid an increase of taxation.’
    Furthermore, continued Houston, revenue under the 1857 rates was growing each year and in 1860 was estimated to exceed the average revenue under the 1846 rates ($56 million and $50 million, respectively). By 1861, revenue was estimated to reach $60 million. ‘You can but discover,’ noted Houston, ‘that as the country recovers from the very disastrous effects of the crash of 1857, as confidence is restored, commerce and trade become more healthy and active, business of all kinds is becoming prosperous, and, of course, increasing largely the revenue from imports.’ Moreover, under the rates of the Morrill Tariff, 1859’s revenue would have totaled $72,113,135.25 – over $20 million the average revenue under the 1846 rates! ‘Let me ask gentlemen what they propose to do with $72,113,135.25 per annum?’ Houston asked the Republicans. ‘Why take it out of the pockets of the people?’ To Houston, the answer was clear: ‘Their object is not an increase of revenue, but protection.’
    Houston defended the classical-liberal theory of free trade, which had taken deep root in the South due to her trade-based economy. ‘The true policy of the United States is to have its commerce as free as possible and unshackled as may be consistent with a proper revenue tariff,’ maintained Houston. ‘The trade of nations consists in their interchange of products, and such trade should be encouraged instead of restrained by an unnecessary duty.’ Houston answered some of the most persistent objections to free trade. Trade deficits? ‘Who authorised Congress to say, by law, how much and what the people should wear or eat? That is their business to determine, not ours.’ Foreign debts? ‘I could wish the purchases could have been made at home, yet I have no right to controul them as to the market in which they trade, nor has Congress such power.’
    Houston welcomed protection from foreign competition which domestic industries naturally gained from tariffs – ‘I would gladly see them all prosper’ – but objected to tariffs which were erected to restrain trade rather than collect revenue. ‘We all know that any duty upon foreign goods imported into the United States affords an incidental benefit to the manufacturers of like goods here,’ explained Houston. ‘All I ask, as a representative of the consumers, is that, while the present policy prevails, you make a fair and proper assessment of the duties in the true sense of the Constitution; and let the incidents be as beneficial to other interests as they may, if the duty is a fair one, the incidents are legitimate. Yet according to Houston, the Morrill Tariff was the opposite of this compromise between free trade and protection. ‘The friends of this bill intend to compel the people to trade at home, at much higher prices, by driving away foreign competition,’ concluded Houston, ‘by fettering and restricting our trade.’

    Lincoln also balked at the prospect of losing Southern tariff revenue which accepting secession entailed. ‘But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on and open Charleston, etc. as ports of entry with their ten-percent tariff?’ Lincoln asked one of the Virginians sent to persuade him of peace. ‘What, then, would become of my tariff?’ When another Virginia commissioner recommended the abandonment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln exclaimed, ‘If I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!’ Accordingly, in his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln threatened ‘invasion,’ ‘force,’ and ‘bloodshed’ against any States which resisted federal laws – in particular, the Morrill Tariff.
    After provoking the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter – under the pretense of reinforcing federal forts and collecting federal taxes – Lincoln unilaterally declared war, driving the Upper South out of the Union and into the Confederacy. ‘It is impossible to doubt that it was Mr. Lincoln’s policy, under the name of reinforcing the laws, to retake the forts, to collect the revenue of the United States in our ports, and to reduce the seceded states to obedience to the behests of his party,’ warned the former Alabama Unionist Robert H. Smith. ‘His purpose, therefore, was war upon and subjugation of our people.’


    ‘Southern Congressmen were not being stupid or delusional in voting almost unanimously against protectionist tariffs in 1824, 1828, and 1860, or in outlawing protectionist tariffs altogether in the Confederate Constitution,’ argues DiLorenzo. ‘They were voting their economic self-interest, and the basic economics of international trade…bear this out.’
    Indeed, the great Southern statesman, John C. Calhoun, was often exasperated with Yankees who lectured Southerners on economics while themselves clinging to tariffs for protection:
    The case, then, fairly stated between us and the manufacturing States is, that the tariff gives them a protection against foreign competition in our own market, by diminishing, in the same proportion, our capacity to compete with our rivals, in the general market of the world. ‘They who say that they cannot compete with foreigners at their own doors, without an advantage of 45 percent, expect us to meet them abroad under disadvantage equal to their encouragement.
    We are told, by those who pretend to understand our interest better than we do, that the excess of production and not the tariff, is the evil which afflicts us […] We would feel more disposed to respect the spirit in which the advice is offered, if those from whom it comes accompanied it with the weight of their example. They also, occasionally, complain of low prices; but instead of diminishing the supply, as a remedy for the evil, demand an enlargement of the market, by the exclusion of all competition.
    The economic cost of tariffs was fairly straightforward: tariffs drove up the price of the European goods primarily imported by Southerners, which as a result drove down Southern exports to Europe and the exchange-value of Southern exporters’ foreign-currency holdings. Jeffrey R. Hummel, in his groundbreaking libertarian-revisionist history of the Civil War, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, concurs with Calhoun and describes the futile efforts of historians and economists to prove otherwise. ‘At least with respect to the tariff’s adverse impact, Southerners were not only absolutely correct but displayed a sophisticated understanding of economics,’ argues Hummel. ‘The tariff was inefficient; it not only redistributed wealth from farmers and planters to manufacturers and laborers but overall made the country poorer.’

    https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/r...-from-alabama/

    The tariff was mentioned in both Georgia and South Carolina by prominent leaders in 1860 as an important factor in their determination to secede from the Union. It had been so for years. George Mason proposed a prohibition on “Navigation Laws” in Philadelphia in 1787 precisely because he thought the North would eventually tax the South out of existence. His prophecy had finally came to fruition in 1860.

    1 May 1861, the Confederate Committee on Foreign Affairs produced a document designed to persuade foreign powers on the justness of the Confederate cause. The timing is important. This was only two weeks after the firing on Ft. Sumter and a shade under two months since Lincoln’s inauguration. The passage below was from the first full paragraph:
    On the fiscal operations of the government in the laying and the expenditure of the taxes, they were previously not sufficiently united, completely to rule the South. The party weight of the South, and the ability and skill of its public men, kept them at bay; whilst the people of the North-West, being like the people of the South, an agricultural people, were generally opposed to the protective tariff policy — the grand sectionalising instrumentality of the North. They were allies of the South, to defeat this policy. Hence it has been only partially, and occasionally successful. To make it complete, and to render the North omnipotent to rule the South, the division in the North must be healed. To accomplish this object, and to sectionalise the North, the agitation concerning African slavery in the South was commenced. This institution was purely sectional, belonging to the South. Antagonism to it in the North must also be sectional. The agitation would unite the South against the North, as much as it united the North against the South; but the North being the stronger section, would gain power by the agitation. Accordingly, after the overthrow of the tariff of 1828, by the resistance of South Carolina in 1833, the agitation concerning the institution of African slavery in the South was immediately commenced in the Congress of the United States. It was taken up by the Legislatures of the Northern States; and upon one pretext or another in and out of Congress, it has been pursued from that day to the fall of 1860, when it ended in the election of a President and Vice President of the United States, by a purely sectional support. The great end was at last obtained, of a united North to rule the South. The first fruit the sectional despotism thus elected produced, was the tariff lately passed by the Congress of the United States. By this tariff the protective policy is renewed in its most odious and oppressive forms, and the agricultural States are made tributaries to the manufacturing States. It has revived the system of specific duties, by which, the cheaper an article becomes, from the progress of art or the superior skill of foreign manufacturers — the higher is the relative tax it imposes. Specific duties, is the expedient of high taxation, to enforce its collection. This tariff illustrates the oppressive policy of the North towards the South, and abounds in high taxation by specific duties. It is a war on the foreign commerce of the country, in which the Southern people are chiefly interested. Exclusively an agricultural people, it is their policy, to purchase the manufactured commodities they need, in the cheapest markets. These are amongst the nations of Europe, who consume five-sixths of the agricultural productions of the South. The late tariff passed by the Congress of the United States, was designed to force the Southern people, by prohibitory duties to consume the dearer manufactured commodities of the North, instead of the cheaper commodities of European nations. What is this but robbery? Does it not take from one citizen or section and give to another? The foreign trade of the United States, has always been carried on, by our agricultural productions. Our exports, are the basis of the imports, of the United States. Upon what principle of justice or of the Constitution, have the people of the North intervened between us and our natural customers, and forced us by the use of the Federal Government — laying prohibitory duties on the production of foreign nations — to consume their productions? Shall we not have the right to deal directly with those who consume our agricultural productions and who in return can supply us with their cheaper manufactured commodities. If foreign nations can sell us freelv their manufactured commodities, in consequence of their greater cheapness — can they not afford to give us more for our cotton? And if we pay less for their manufactured commodities— are we not so much the richer by the trade? The tariff alone, would have been ample cause for a separation of the Southern from the Northern. The reign of sectional oppression and tyranny, anticipated by the seceding States, is fully inaugurated at Washington, by the passage of this act [emphasis added].
    https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/b...nd-the-tariff/
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

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  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    Lol, boy. Your driv by agitation sure smells of dead fish.

    Care to tell us why the CSA demanded that the fort be turned over to them. Care to extrapolate why this Union held territory held a strategical advantage over one of the Souths largest harbor? Through which trade to all parts the world flowed? Care to extrapolate why the Fed. Gov. left Ft. Moultrie and choose this location to re-fortify and dig in? Why the North didn't accept the terms for handing the fort over?
    As for the rest of your diatribe, care to explain how the higher tariffs imposed, brought through northern ports, did not adversely affect those in the south that bought and traded for these products. Couldn't they have simply allowed these traders into their ports without the up charge? No, of course not. Just because trade goods come through a formerly slave trading northern port doesn't mean the southern states didn't pay the up charge.
    Where were the tariffs being allocated? Do you economics?
    Hilarious. You're asking questions to divert from the reality that South Carolina passed a law in 1836 ceding territory to the United States, which means it was federal, not state, territory. South Carolina gave up all claims to the land, similar to how if you give or sell something to someone, you can't come back decades later and say, "Actually, I want it back." Doesn't work that way, kid.

    And then you want me to educate you about the tariff breakdown of the 1850s because obviously me pointing out South Carolina gave up land to the federal government back in 1836 worked out so well, eh? Something tells me if I come back with pointing out that wool cloth products ($29 million) were the largest tariff revenue in 1858-59 that you'd still debate me. Silk products were next at $22 million. Hilarious that the two largest revenue sources were of products that were competitive to Southern cotton---meaning the biggest beneficiaries of silk/wool tariffs would be the South! (Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Volume 2, published 1860) https://books.google.com/books?id=zn...gbs_navlinks_s .

    The North had 18.5 million people; the South, 5.5 million free/3.5 million slaves in 1860, which means (and I'm making the big assumption here that Northerners liked to wear clothes just as the Southerners did---I don't have a source, but trust me!! LOL! what source have you given on anything, by the way?) the North having a much larger population base also paid the bulk of the taxes https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm.

    Unless you can prove to me, with a source for once--that'd be nice, that the South loved clothing more than the North, then sit down and thank me for educating you. Because the bulk of the tariff revenue in the 1850s came from essentially textile tariffs (wool, silk, cotton, animal skins, flax cloth), which would drive up the costs of imported clothing materials, which would BENEFIT Southern cotton producers. Given we have about twice the number of people living in the North than the South in 1860, I'm just making the blind assumption that raising the cost of clothing would force the North to pay more given they have more people to clothe.

    Feel free to provide a source for once. I know you're emotionally tethered to Neo-Confederatism. And it's not like I'm a pro-Union guy..that's the funny part. I just hate $#@!ty history devoid of fact, and you're spewing it.
    Last edited by Gaddafi Duck; 08-27-2017 at 05:55 PM.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Danke View Post
    I would think it is now on a foreign country's land. Just like we have bases all over the world, where foreign governments can and have kick us out of.
    Yes, it was on a foreign country's land; it was on the USA's land. Therefore, South Carolina, by firing upon it, was attacking a foreign country. It wasn't South Carolina's land. Hadn't been since 1836.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Yes, it was on a foreign country's land; it was on the USA's land. Therefore, South Carolina, by firing upon it, was attacking a foreign country. It wasn't South Carolina's land. Hadn't been since 1836.
    So it wasn't a voluntary Union after all. No right to secede.
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  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Hilarious. You're asking questions to divert from the reality that South Carolina passed a law in 1836 ceding territory to the United States, which means it was federal, not state, territory. South Carolina gave up all claims to the land, similar to how if you give or sell something to someone, you can't come back decades later and say, "Actually, I want it back." Doesn't work that way, kid.
    Ceding property to the Federal government while part of the union was irrelevant, the south had a right to take it's share of the joint property of the member states held by the federal government when it left, an island dominating the entrance to a strategically vital port in their territory was obviously part of that share.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    And then you want me to educate you about the tariff breakdown of the 1850s because obviously me pointing out South Carolina gave up land to the federal government back in 1836 worked out so well, eh? Something tells me if I come back with pointing out that wool cloth products ($29 million) were the largest tariff revenue in 1858-59 that you'd still debate me. Silk products were next at $22 million. Hilarious that the two largest revenue sources were of products that were competitive to Southern cotton---meaning the biggest beneficiaries of silk/wool tariffs would be the South! (Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Volume 2, published 1860) https://books.google.com/books?id=zn...gbs_navlinks_s .

    The North had 18.5 million people; the South, 5.5 million free/3.5 million slaves in 1860, which means (and I'm making the big assumption here that Northerners liked to wear clothes just as the Southerners did---I don't have a source, but trust me!! LOL! what source have you given on anything, by the way?) the North having a much larger population base also paid the bulk of the taxes https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm.

    Unless you can prove to me, with a source for once--that'd be nice, that the South loved clothing more than the North, then sit down and thank me for educating you. Because the bulk of the tariff revenue in the 1850s came from essentially textile tariffs (wool, silk, cotton, animal skins, flax cloth), which would drive up the costs of imported clothing materials, which would BENEFIT Southern cotton producers. Given we have about twice the number of people living in the North than the South in 1860, I'm just making the blind assumption that raising the cost of clothing would force the North to pay more given they have more people to clothe.

    Feel free to provide a source for once. I know you're emotionally tethered to Neo-Confederatism. And it's not like I'm a pro-Union guy..that's the funny part. I just hate $#@!ty history devoid of fact, and you're spewing it.
    You are cherry picking a few items and ignoring what both sides said about the tariff and federal revenues at the time, you are also looking at the old tariff not the new one the north was passing.
    The south did not produce much cotton cloth, they produced raw cotton and sold it overseas, besides the direct tariff costs the trade war the north was starting would have killed their exports.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  23. #20
    Sorry, Swordsmyth, the facts are in: 2/3rds of ALL US imports came through New York ports in 1860. Massachusetts was next. Louisiana (New Orleans), the largest Southern port, imported 1/10th what New York did. The bulk of the tariff revenue in 1859 was from textile material and tobacco combined, which benefited Southern tobacco and cotton producers. Given the North had double the population of the South in 1860, the North paid most of these tariffs.

    Also, Neo-Confederates here seem to easily forget that tariffs are paid by the CONSUMER. So, even if we have a tariff that protected a Northern interest, are the Southern consumers any more unique than Northern consumers? Did both not eat sugar, use railroads, wear clothes, smoke tobacco? Of course they did! And, given the North had more than twice the population, they paid MORE given that's where the consumers were.

    So this nonsense that the South carried an unfair burden is horse manure. Sorry, but I'm ambivalent about "picking a side" on the Civil War, because the romanticism on both sides is ridiculous. It really is. The Neo-Confederate propaganda is quite entertaining, though. "The South wasn't so bad. They liked states'-rights!" Yeah, let's overlook HUMAN RIGHTS called SLAVERY--HAHAHAH!!

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Danke View Post
    So it wasn't a voluntary Union after all. No right to secede.
    Huh??? South Carolina ceded the land to the federal government. That means it was no longer South Carolina's from 1836 onwards. They then seceded decades later. The CSA considered themselves a separate government, meaning Fort Sumter was, in the South's eyes, a foreign country. So, they (the South) attacked a foreign country, unprovoked, and fired the first shots of the Civil War.

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Ceding property to the Federal government while part of the union was irrelevant, the south had a right to take it's share of the joint property of the member states held by the federal government when it left, an island dominating the entrance to a strategically vital port in their territory was obviously part of that share.
    Make it up as you go, I guess is the M.O. of Neo-Confederates. How little you people understand of the CSA--South Carolina didn't dissolve its state government, therefore this contract was still valid even by your own nonsensical arguments. Not to mention, it wasn't an "ongoing" contract. It was settled in 1836. You can't sell a house in 1995, and then knock on the door in 2017 and be like, "Hey, get out, I changed my mind." The deal was done in 1995. South Carolina gave up the land in 1836. Secession doesn't void that.

    You are cherry picking a few items and ignoring what both sides said about the tariff and federal revenues at the time, you are also looking at the old tariff not the new one the north was passing.
    The south did not produce much cotton cloth, they produced raw cotton and sold it overseas, besides the direct tariff costs the trade war the north was starting would have killed their exports.
    I'm cherry picking a few items??? Dude, I looked at the New York importation numbers (where 2/3rds of every US import entered)---the bulk of the tariffs came from tobacco, sugar, and (overwhelmingly) textiles. Let's see: all of those items benefit the South producers. Not to mention, consumers pay the tax (if you remember Austrian economics). Well, where were the consumers in the US? More than 2:1 in the North, so the North paid the most even on taxes that would benefit the North producers, because the North had the most consumers!!

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Sorry, Swordsmyth, the facts are in: 2/3rds of ALL US imports came through New York ports in 1860. Massachusetts was next. Louisiana (New Orleans), the largest Southern port, imported 1/10th what New York did. The bulk of the tariff revenue in 1859 was from textile material and tobacco combined, which benefited Southern tobacco and cotton producers. Given the North had double the population of the South in 1860, the North paid most of these tariffs.

    Also, Neo-Confederates here seem to easily forget that tariffs are paid by the CONSUMER. So, even if we have a tariff that protected a Northern interest, are the Southern consumers any more unique than Northern consumers? Did both not eat sugar, use railroads, wear clothes, smoke tobacco? Of course they did! And, given the North had more than twice the population, they paid MORE given that's where the consumers were.

    So this nonsense that the South carried an unfair burden is horse manure. Sorry, but I'm ambivalent about "picking a side" on the Civil War, because the romanticism on both sides is ridiculous. It really is. The Neo-Confederate propaganda is quite entertaining, though. "The South wasn't so bad. They liked states'-rights!" Yeah, let's overlook HUMAN RIGHTS called SLAVERY--HAHAHAH!!
    That's kinda my point and one you don't seem to grasp. Do you economics?

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Huh??? South Carolina ceded the land to the federal government. That means it was no longer South Carolina's from 1836 onwards. They then seceded decades later. The CSA considered themselves a separate government, meaning Fort Sumter was, in the South's eyes, a foreign country. So, they (the South) attacked a foreign country, unprovoked, and fired the first shots of the Civil War.
    So they can secede land to a foreign government, but can't secede themselves from that government...
    Last edited by Danke; 08-27-2017 at 10:40 PM.
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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Sorry, Swordsmyth, the facts are in: 2/3rds of ALL US imports came through New York ports in 1860. Massachusetts was next. Louisiana (New Orleans), the largest Southern port, imported 1/10th what New York did. The bulk of the tariff revenue in 1859 was from textile material and tobacco combined, which benefited Southern tobacco and cotton producers. Given the North had double the population of the South in 1860, the North paid most of these tariffs.

    Also, Neo-Confederates here seem to easily forget that tariffs are paid by the CONSUMER. So, even if we have a tariff that protected a Northern interest, are the Southern consumers any more unique than Northern consumers? Did both not eat sugar, use railroads, wear clothes, smoke tobacco? Of course they did! And, given the North had more than twice the population, they paid MORE given that's where the consumers were.
    So this nonsense that the South carried an unfair burden is horse manure.
    I do not care so much about the exact proportion of tariff fees paid, the South paid more per capita because the were more reliant on imports, they also lost even more money from protectionism when they were forced to buy more expensive Northern goods (while the North turned a profit), and they lost more money when their exports died from the trade wars the North started.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Sorry, but I'm ambivalent about "picking a side" on the Civil War, because the romanticism on both sides is ridiculous. It really is. The Neo-Confederate propaganda is quite entertaining, though. "The South wasn't so bad. They liked states'-rights!" Yeah, let's overlook HUMAN RIGHTS called SLAVERY--HAHAHAH!!
    Slavery was bad, but the North sought to reduce ALL men to slaves of the Federal government, they only cared about slavery as a line of attack in their economic war against the South.
    The North offered to preserve slavery rather than have the South leave, the South left even though doing so doomed slavery, there were plenty of people in the South who sought an end to slavery, they just wanted to do so in a slow peaceful manner that did not destroy their economy or kick the former slaves out on the street with no ability to fend for themselves.


    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Huh??? South Carolina ceded the land to the federal government. That means it was no longer South Carolina's from 1836 onwards. They then seceded decades later. The CSA considered themselves a separate government, meaning Fort Sumter was, in the South's eyes, a foreign country. So, they (the South) attacked a foreign country, unprovoked, and fired the first shots of the Civil War.
    Ceding property to the Federal government while part of the union was irrelevant, the south had a right to take it's share of the joint property of the member states held by the federal government when it left, an island dominating the entrance to a strategically vital port in their territory was obviously part of that share.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    Make it up as you go, I guess is the M.O. of Neo-Confederates. How little you people understand of the CSA--South Carolina didn't dissolve its state government, therefore this contract was still valid even by your own nonsensical arguments. Not to mention, it wasn't an "ongoing" contract. It was settled in 1836. You can't sell a house in 1995, and then knock on the door in 2017 and be like, "Hey, get out, I changed my mind." The deal was done in 1995. South Carolina gave up the land in 1836. Secession doesn't void that.
    You don't understand the nature of the pre-war union, it was a co-operative venture of the member states, they ceded the land because the Federation was in charge of defense against foreign powers, when they left the union they were once again responsible for their own defense and the property that had been granted to the union to defend them reverted to them.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaddafi Duck View Post
    HAHAHAH!!! The South paid 75% of the federal revenue?? What a load of BS. You folks need to get a grip on reality as this claim has been obliterated many times over: https://deadconfederates.com/2013/02...urd-on-tariffs The North had far more commerce and most international trade for the United States went through New York. In fact, 65.9% of ALL US imports came into New York in the 4 years preceding the Civil War, so how one can conclude the South paid all these tariffs is laughably ignorant. 2/3rds of all the US imports entered into the United States via New York!! https://cenantua.wordpress.com/2011/...l-about-taxes/

    The South was dominated in the Civil War due to their lack of population, their inferior industry, fewer railroads, and were easily blockaded as a result---the war only lasted as long as it did because the Union commanders in the East were so incompetent--McClellan had the upper hand on so many occasions to squash the Confederacy, but didn't. That's why the war dragged on as long as it did. The Union easily handled the Western Theater. The South couldn't invade the North--they tried and failed in epic fashion. The North systematically dismantled the South with its military and it wasn't even close. The one hope the South had was holding out long enough for the war-weary North to withdraw due to political pressure.

    Militarily, it wasn't even close. The Union was easily superior. The South was blockaded quickly. Like I said, if Lincoln had a competent commander in the East through the first two years of the war, there would have been no Gettysburg. The Union had the resources and the numbers, and the gross incompetence by McClellan.

    I see I was quoted. Before i respond i must point out two things. First, lets assume the south only paid 2% of tariffs, that still would not conclude Lincoln did not go to war because of tariffs, that would just conclude he did over a smaller amount of money. second you need to understand economics, yes NYC was the major exporter of goods [also why they almost left the union over tariffs] because the cotton textile factories were in the north, they were exsping southern goods. If the south was allowed to go, they would free trade dominate trade, the north could not allow this. But this should help you out sir. Ever wonder why the south always fought aginst northerns raising tearrifs?

    “The revenues of the General Government are almost entirely derived from duties on importations. It is time that the northern consumer pays his proportion of these duties, but the North as a section receiving back in the increased prices of the rival articles which it manufactures nearly or quite as much as the imposts which it pays thus in effect paying nothing or very little for the support of the government.”
    -Florida causes of Secession

    “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states... the love of money is the root of this...the quarrel between the north and south is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel”
    -Charles Dickens, 1862

    As so often is the case in wars, money, in this case tariffs, had long been a point of conflict between the two sides. In 1824 the government tariff doubled. The south voting against the tariff being raised and the north voted for it, dividing the country along the 1860 civil war lines in 1824 over tariffs. Tariffs supplied the government 90% of it income and even gave a surplus to what the government needed. The majority was paid by the south given its inport/export agrarian economy. This the south thought was unconstitutional for the government to aim at a section or industry of the economy specifically for a tax.

    “High protective tariffs reduced the price of cotton and effective imposed a tax between 10-20% while they raised the income of northern labor and the profits of northern manufacturers”
    -Robert William Fogel The Rise and fall of American Slavery

    "The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole"
    -Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860

    Tariffs would be Raised again in 1828. Congress passed what southerners called the tariff of abominations to help northern industry against southern agrarian lifestyle. only 1 out of 105 southerners voted positive, yet the north voted for it [as they received free southern money that was used largely in the north] and it passed. This led South Carolina to first use a threat of secession. South Carolina Senator John Callhoun in the 1820's said of conflict between the north and south over tariffs “The great central interest , around which all others revolved” South Carolina argued they had states rights to reject unconstitutional federal ruling as a sovereign state, something Thomas Jefferson recommended. Over the tariff Mary Chestnut said South Carolina "heated themselves into a fever that only bloodletting couldever cure." The tax had been 15% and the south had been complaining for decades.

    “It does not require extraordinary sagacity to precive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the union”
    -Boston Transcript March 18 1861

    “The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture, early perceived a tendency in the Northern States to render the common government subservient to their own purposes by imposing burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests. Long and angry controversies grew out of these attempts, often successful, to benefit one section of the country at the expense of the other....abuse of the powers they had delegated to the Congress, for the purpose of enriching the manufacturing and shipping classes of the North at the expense of the South.... ”
    -Jefferson Davis Message to confederate Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)

    The Morrill Tariff Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10, 1860, on a sectional vote, with nearly all northern representatives in support and nearly all southern representatives in opposition. With the election of Abraham Lincoln whose central campaign objective was to triple the tariff. Tariff was the “keystone” of the republican party “protection for home industry” was the campaign poster of the 1860 republican party. South Carolina did what it had done decades before, and seceded from the Union over the higher tariff rates soon to be imposed on the south by the north. It was not just the south, NYC mayor Fernando Wood wanted to make NYC a “free city” [free trade] and secede from the Union. The debate over tariffs and internal improvements was not just a debate over those items, but a debate over the nature of the federal government. Free trade was a vital aspect of southern agrarian interests. The CSA Constitution allowed for free trade. In Jefferson Davis inaugural speech in Montgomery Alabama he stated the following.

    “An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade, which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union.”

    “The south was being asked to pay to strengthen northern industry...the tariff would directly damage southern pocketbooks. This conflict played a important role in the division north vs south”
    -Brevin Alexander Professor of History at Longwood University

    “The tariff issue...exacerbated sectional tensions”
    -James McPherson Battle cry of Freedom

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Danke View Post
    So the can secede land to a foreign government, but can't secede themselves from that government...
    Yes I think prior to that it was an already established process that the govt would cede land to themselves that they did not own . Just because they did that I do not think they had any real intention of letting people secede .

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Danke View Post
    I would think it is now on a foreign country's land. Just like we have bases all over the world, where foreign governments can and have kick us out of.
    That is why it is important to have a great emissary like myself . No foreign land I was ever in threw us out while I was there . I did though escape from a few .

  34. #30
    Being a US state is like marrying a crazy woman . You may try to run later , but you will not escape in as good of condition as you started .

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