US Civil War reading Recommendations?

Free Republic ^ | 11/23/2016 | Loud Mime

[Loud Mime]

I am studying our Civil War; anybody have any recommendations for reading?

[rockrr]

It doesn’t deserve denigration, but the con-fed’s bastardization of it does. The key phrase there is “That whenever any Form of Government become destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...”

The government of 1860-1861 hadn’t “become destructive of these ends”. The slavers tore the government apart because they had a tantrum over losing an election. Sound familiar?

[DiogenesLamp]

Just to be clear, when California attempts to leave, what is your position?

Can't speak for others, but as for me, I like to quote former Reagan official Charles M. Lichenstein, who said about the U.N.:

"The members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset."

The only issue of dispute is making them pay for their fair share of the National Debt and National debt obligations that their Liberal congressional team has racked up since FDR. Settle their monetary accounts with us and I shall be happy to see that cesspool of a state government excise themselves from this body politic.

[DiogenesLamp]

You'll have to find that one yourself, and when you do, I'll explain how you got it all wrong.

I have no doubt that you will, because as with everything else you post, your mind is already made up on the subject.

[DiogenesLamp]

The government of 1860-1861 hadn’t “become destructive of these ends”.

I think that is entirely in the eye of the beholder. George III thought he was perfectly reasonable with the colonists. The Colonists did not.

I think the Confederates probably didn't like the fact that their 1/4th of the citizens were paying 3/4ths the cost of the government, while at the same time New York Shipping, banking, warehousing and insurance industries were siphoning off about 40% of their profits.

In their eyes, the government had become contrary to their best interests and therefore "destructive of these ends."

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "The South’s attempt to defend its homestall was a defensive war.
Your attempt to draw moral equivalency is - well, to be expected."

Total rubbish, since the Confederacy's war was an absolute war of aggression against the United States.
There was nothing "defensive" about it.
That one battle -- Fort Sumter -- converted four Union states to the Confederacy, but it wasn't enough for Jefferson Davis & Co.
They immediately began assaults on Unionists in other states -- Missouri and Maryland notably, but eventually in more than a dozen Union states & territories, including: Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma & New Mexico, plus guerilla warfare in California, Colorado and even Vermont.

So, only their relative weaknesses kept Confederates "defensive", and whenever they had the opportunity to pick off or disrupt a Union state, they took it.
It's what made the Confederacy an existential threat, one that Lincoln (but not northern Democrats) was determined to defeat.

jeffersondem: "While you are at it, denigrate this: “That to secure these rights, Governemnts are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers..."

Sure, and nearly all 1861 Unionists (including Lincoln) believed that had the Deep South Fire Eaters contented themselves with declaring secession and setting up a Confederacy, the Union could not use force to stop them.
But "hands off" ended when Jefferson Davis ordered Civil War to begin at Fort Sumter.
Soon after, on May 6, 1861 the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States thus sealing their ultimate fate: Unconditional Surrender.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I have no doubt that you will, because as with everything else you post, your mind is already made up on the subject."

Truth has a way of settling the mind, you should try it sometime.

[jeffersondem]

“The key phrase there is “That whenever any Form of Government become destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...” “

That is no more important, no more “key”, than the phrase “as to them” shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

A state does not have to have permission to declare independence - that is the reason it is referred to as a Declaration of Independence.

A more logical argument, from your point of view, would be to say the Confederates didn't know what they were talking about because the Confederates were only the sons and grandsons of the founding fathers and never had the opportunity to learn history in public schools or watch television.

[jeffersondem]

“Sure, and nearly all 1861 Unionists (including Lincoln) believed that had the Deep South Fire Eaters contented themselves with declaring secession and setting up a Confederacy, the Union could not use force to stop them.”

So we all agree, and “nearly all of 1861 Unionists” agreed, states have the right to secede.

I did not know this.

[rockrr]

More strawmen from you. You’re not very good at this.

“A state does not have to have permission to declare independence...”

A state can do whatever it pleases. That does not free it from the consequence of poor choices. The con-fed slavers chose poorly and paid a horrendous price.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I think the Confederates probably didn't like the fact that their 1/4th of the citizens were paying 3/4ths the cost of the government, while at the same time New York Shipping, banking, warehousing and insurance industries were siphoning off about 40% of their profits."

Regardless of how often you repeat that, it's still rubbish, every word of it.
First of all none of the early seceding states complained about tariffs, shippers or New York bankers in their "Reasons for Secession" documents.
All focused instead on their real reason: fear that abolitionist "Ape" Lincoln and his Black Republicans would challenge their "peculiar institution", slavery.
They declared secession to protect slavery.

Second of all, your statistics are woefully wrong: 1/4 of US citizens did not produce any exports.
Virtually all of those cotton, sugar & rice exports were produced by 3.5 million non-citizens = slaves.

Third, those Deep South slaves produced about 1/2, not 3/4 of US exports.
The rest of "Southern Exports" actually came from Upper South and Border State regions which remained loyal to the Union.
So those were "Union Exports" not Confederate.

Fourth, those allegedly wicked New Yorkers who took "40% of their profits" transported only 20% of the entire cotton crop.
The rest, 80%, shipped from Gulf Coast ports like New Orleans directly to their European customers.
Which ships they used, and who owned those ships, were totally matters of the cotton producers' choices.

DiogenesLamp: "In their eyes, the government had become contrary to their best interests and therefore 'destructive of these ends.' "

In fact the US Federal government had been under iron grip control of the Southern Slave-Power since Day One of the Republic.
It happily did what the Slave-Power demanded in most matters.
And in November 1860 nothing changed except the election of abolitionist "Ape" Lincoln and his Black Republicans.
Republicans did not even take office -- Southern & Doughfaced Democrats like President Buchanan were still firmly in charge.
So Deep South Fire Eaters declared their secession "at pleasure", and that made it unconstitutional in the eyes of every unionist.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "So we all agree, and 'nearly all of 1861 Unionists' agreed, states have the right to secede.
I did not know this."

As a devoted pro-Confederate propagandist, you are not required or expected to know any real history, so naturally, you totally misunderstand what was happening.

In fact, our Founders were 100% clear and consistent about the subject of "disunion", as James Madison spelled out.
disunion was acceptable under two conditions:

1. "Mutual consent", such as the 1788 dissolution of the old Articles of Confederation and their replacement by the new US Constitution.

2. "Necessity", such as caused by oppression or usurpations like those the Founders experienced in 1776.

Absent either mutual consent or necessity, our Founders considered secession to be "at pleasure", which was not constitutional or lawful, but very close to rebellion, for which they gave no approval.

[jeffersondem]

“A state can do whatever it pleases. That does not free it from the consequence of poor choices.”

Bismark had views similar to yours but said it with more flourish: The most indifferent arguments are good when one has a majority of bayonets.

Later shortened to just “might makes right.”

[jeffersondem]

“Absent either mutual consent or necessity, our Founders considered secession to be “at pleasure”, which was not constitutional or lawful, but very close to rebellion, for which they gave no approval.”

But that was not the case in 1861. Read what a leading historian has found: “. . . nearly all 1861 Unionists (including Lincoln) believed that had the Deep South Fire Eaters contented themselves with declaring secession and setting up a Confederacy, the Union could not use force to stop them.”

[DiogenesLamp]

I wrote:
"It out and out says virtually all the contracts and shipping were controlled from New York. Do I need to hunt it up for you, or can you find it from what I have told you? It is the link about the flat bottom boats. Look it up."

You responded:

No link of mine discussed "flat bottom boats" or shipping controlled from New York.

This picture from one of your posts doesn't ring a bell?

This is one of those "flat bottomed boats" which you mentioned.

You'll have to find that one yourself, and when you do, I'll explain how you got it all wrong.

Well here's your chance. I believe this is the post to which I was referring.

This is what it said in the link you provided in that post. (See, I do sometimes read what you write and the links you provide.)

The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. But in addition to the new duties, it reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving in American craft. It also required domestic construction for American ship registry. Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.

This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States. The navigation act of 1817 made it official, providing "that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power."

The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels.American shipowners' annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.

New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, in part because the British had been feeding cargoes to Boston all through the war to encourage anti-war sentiment in New England. New York was the more starved, therefore it became the port of choice. And the dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. In the decades to come. New Yorkers made the most of the chance.

Four Northern and Mid-Atlantic ports still had the lion's share of the shipping. But Boston and Baltimore mainly served regional markets (though Boston sucked up a lot of Southern cotton and shipped out a lot of fish). Philadelphia's shipping interest had built up trade with the major seaports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially as Pennsylvania's coal regions opened up in the 1820s. But New York was king. Its merchants had the ready money, it had a superior harbor, it kept freight rates down, and by 1825 some 4,000 coastal trade vessels per year arrived there. In 1828 it was estimated that the clearances from New York to ports on the Delaware Bay alone were 16,508 tons, and to the Chesapeake Bay 51,000 tons.

Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on "packet lines" -- groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the pond.

The trick was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they sucked in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast didn't have enough volume of paying freight on its own. So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton (or occasionally naval stores or timber) for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.

Since this "triangle trade" involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it (under the 1817 law), except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. And since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be the only game in town.

Robert Greenhalgh Albion, in his laudatory history of the Port of New York, openly boasts of this selfish monopoly. "By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it. This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable."[2]

Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe didn't put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.

The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight couldn't keep up with the New York competition. Remember, this is a triangle trade. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England found little attraction in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.[3]

As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool. Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. Subsidized, it must be remembered, by the federal post office patronage boondogle.

U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It would triple again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York. Which meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping entered from foriegn countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. You'd find relatively little tariff money coming in from Charleston. According to a Treasury report, the net revenue of all the ports of South Carolina during 1859 was a mere $234,237; during 1860 it was $309,222.[4]

We noticed.

The war was launched against the South to get back that money. Not to free slaves, not because they gave a D@mn about a stupid fort they had no use for whatsoever, but because of MONEY!

[DiogenesLamp]

Sure, and nearly all 1861 Unionists (including Lincoln) believed that had the Deep South Fire Eaters contented themselves with declaring secession and setting up a Confederacy, the Union could not use force to stop them.

It would have cost the United States, 3/4ths of all export trade with Europe. It would have wrecked the shipping industry, the manufacturing industry, and would have left the Union Coastal states in serious economic distress.

And you think the Power Baron/Government coalition was too stupid to notice this?

If you think this war was about anything other than lots and lots of money, you are naive.

[DiogenesLamp]

Virtually all of those cotton, sugar & rice exports were produced by 3.5 million non-citizens = slaves.

Yes, the 300 million or so dollars that funneled annually through the port of New York was produced by slaves. New York didn't care. They just wanted the money. So did the US government. That's why they were willing to write slavery permanently into the US Constitution in an effort to keep that sweet sweet slave revenue flowing into their pockets.

And Lincoln supported this amendment. Apparently slave money was more important to him than slave freedom, but what else could you expect from a "Globalist" I mean "Mercantilist" President?

[DiogenesLamp]

Oh, and while we're on the subject, Here is a thread about what Rutherford B. Hayes said back in 1888, you know about 23 years after the Civil War.

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. -- How is this?

Corporations concentrated in the Washington/Boston corridor of power, and which were a direct consequence of the Civil War.

[rockrr]

That was exactly what the con-feds believed - well, that and “strike first and leave a bloody corpse”.

Unfortunately they couldn’t cash the check their mouths had written.

[jeffersondem]

“That was exactly what the con-feds believed (majority of bayonets) - well, that and “strike first and leave a bloody corpse”.

The South anticipated having 13 states in the Confederacy and to be opposed by 21 or more. I’m not sure why you state the South believed they had the majority of bayonets.

[rockrr]

You have this nasty habit of trying to put words in other’s mouths - you really should try to control that.