Posted on 04/08/2018 3:39:59 PM PDT by iowamark
My post 100 shows that Federal expenditures from 1789-1860 were:
Free states $37,719,344
Slave states $36,983,300
Where’s the big difference? Which region benefited the most per capita?
I dispute those numbers. I’ve provided numerous sources that say otherwise including Charles Adams including newspapers and political leaders on both sides.
But after declaring secession, Confederates had no "real complaint" to address, and took no serious notice of any efforts in Congress to "compromise" them back into the Union.
At that point, they simply weren't going to return, period.
What about before secession?
There was no "before secession" except in this sense: leading up to the November 6, 1860 election, Deep South Fire Eaters announced, in effect: if "Ape" Lincoln and his Black Republicans are elected, the South will secede.
That's it!
They didn't say: "we want a new amendment protecting slavery, or we'll secede."
They didn't say: "we want lower tariffs, or we'll secede".
They didn't say: "we want more Federal spending in the South, or we'll secede."
And certainly they didn't say: "we want more industry & shipping in the South, or we'll secede", none of it!
None of the nonsense reasons they concocted after the fact were revealed in the fall of 1860, only the one threat: "Ape" Lincoln will drive the South to secede.
And when the first secession states wrote up their "reasons for secession", it was the perceived threat to slavery which drove their reasons.
All that other stuff & nonsense came later, some of it much later.
Can somebody please explain how this works? Tariffs were on imports, not exports!!!
The exporters were also the importers. Exporters contracted with shipping companies which either did not offer one way shipping or if they did, offered it at uneconomical prices. So those exporters needed to find something to fill the holds of the cargo ships on their return voyages. Naturally, they used the money from selling their cash crops to buy manufactured goods to put in the ships’ holds. Those manufactured goods were then to be hit with very steep tariffs once the Morrill Tariff came into effect. Since Southerners produced and owned the cash crops, they also owned the manufactured goods those cash crops had been effectively exchanged for.
The data from that 1928 book comes from the Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, Executive Documents, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session, No. 89, Senate Documents, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, No. 254. Data for the years 1838-1860 come from appropriation bills.
So if the Southerners owned the cash crops, how did those damned Yankess in New York make all those profits I’ve heard were skimmed off the top?
So I am to understand that you claim that Southern plantation owners arranged to have their crops exported to England directly, including all shipping arrangements, without the need for third party brokers? That shippers filled their vessels with only one customer’s goods? That shippers could not find other goods from other customers say in England to return profitably? Or carry on to another port in Europe or elsewhere?
I am to take your word for all this?
Generic terms for such economics are "fascism" or some say "statism" terms which don't grab the gut like "Nazism", but are far more accurate.
"Nazi" implies something more wicked that mere ownership or control of the means of production.
The term "Nazi" should not be used as a general metaphor for "something bad" except when it is historically what we really mean.
DiogenesLamp: "I think this is pretty good evidence that no one was motivated by "social justice" in that conflict. "
Some were:
x"Slavery wasn't an interest so large that it could set government policy?"
DiogenesLamp: "Obviously not.
And even if it were in control of the Government, what would it have done?
How would you advance the interests of slave holders if they controlled the government?"
Obviously, slavery was in control of Government until secession in 1861, and even after, witness the Corwin Amendment!
What slavery would do is just what they did do to advance the cause of slavery, beginning with the US Constitution, recognizing slaves as 3/5 and requiring return of fugitive slaves.
Slavery was recognized in the Union by, among other things, effectively requiring 50% of new states to be slave states, drawing lines on maps reserved for slavery, the 1850 Compromise which made Federal government responsible for Fugitive Slaves, and biggest of all, the Dred Scott ruling.
I could go on -- i.e., no President before Lincoln was openly anti-slavery -- but is this point even debatable?
DiogenesLamp: "I think those who control the news are a lot more dangerous than those who do not.
There is a reason all the dictators first gain control of the propaganda apparatus.
There is a reason they allow no other messages to compete with their own."
I think we're all on the same side of that issue, but the rest of us have no special animus towards New York or New Yorkers.
Sure, it's a big city, but one of many and lots of good people come from it, our President, for example.
Some of my daughters lived there for years, and the city treated them well.
Of course that was back when Rudi ran the place...
Your false conclusions are built on false assumptions, such as: people claim Northerners "...suddenly started caring so much about slaves that they decided to start a war on their behalf".
If you'd free yourself from lies, then the truth is more apparent.
The truth is the Union didn't need war and didn't start it, but Jefferson Davis did and did.
That's because Davis' little seven-state confederacy (outnumbered 10 to 1) could not long survive without more soldiers and territory, and Upper South states would not, could not secede without a war, so Davis gave them a war and they soon enough seceded.
Union motives are more-or-less irrelevant, since the Union was first split up, then attacked and so could do nothing but respond.
And what drove Union response was just what they said: first to restore the Union then, while we're at it, let's free the slaves and end this nonsense forever.
But since DiogenesLamp just can't wrap your mind around mere mundane facts of history, you must, must concoct endless cockamamie nonsense to keep yourself entertained and the rest of us busy...
DiogenesLamp: "No, it's about the money.
It's always about the money."
Of course, money is always important, can't do anything without it.
But money alone won't start wars, or WWII would have begun with the great depression in, say, 1929.
It didn't and that's because other factors are required, and those are the ones which make the difference between war & peace, not money.
But the “desperation” and “tap dancing” are all yours, FRiend.
Sure, there’s no disputing that Rhett discussed economic issues and unlike other “Reasons for secession” documents, he put them first.
But with economics mentioned, Rhett went back to the main issue, spending twice the effort on slavery that he did on all other issues combined.
No that is clearly what is being done by you. Rhett made the economic case quite clear in his address and he had been doing so for years. He had said he would favor secession on the economic grounds alone.
Hardly. It is tap dancing and desperation to try to inflate the numbers as much as possible which is what you are doing.
This is patently false. Dividing slave ownership among family members was quite common in families that owned many slaves. They were given as manservants upon reaching adulthood or as domestic help as wedding gifts or inherited when a parent died, etc etc.
There is no evidence nearly half the white families in those states owned slaves. What can be proven is that less than 10% of the white population in even those states did. IF slavery and concern for its preservation was such a big concern to these states then why pray tell did they not accept the Corwin Amendment which would have protected slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment as sufficient to warrant their return? Don’t try to tapdance by saying something like “they had decided to leave and weren’t coming back”. Well duh they did not come back. We all know that. Why? IF their main concern is what you claim and they were offered something that would address exactly that then why would that not do the trick?
So slavery explains everything, and all your hocus pocus about tariffs and “unequal spending” explains nothing.
If slavery explains everything then they would have gladly accepted the Corwin amendment. Yet we know they did not. Talk about hocus pocus.
But most important, Benton was that rarest of political animals: a Southern Democrat abolitionist!
This tells me the tone & tenor of the alleged quote are... well, off.
And since this is at least the second of your posted quotes I have reason to question, I’ll put you on notice now that if I find another, I’ll discount all of your alleged quotes as being nothing more than your own personal opinion gussied up to look like historical “fact”.
So, take a little time to confirm them before posting nonsense.
Tell us the source and link.
I already responded and provided a source to the first quote. I could have provided more as it has been cited several times in more than one book.
I don’t really care if you try to claim the quotes I’ve provided which I have also provided sources for somehow do not meet your standards. I will just take that as proof of your denial of reality if it is inconvenient for you.
As for alleged unequal Federal spending, the only real data we have says otherwise.
Wrong. The BS is yours. I’ve already provided tons of evidence as to the unequal federal spending. Like with the quotes provided with sources, you simply choose to claim that they’re not credible if they’re perfectly credible but simply inconvenient for you.
That even the “compromise” tariff was almost twice the maximum the Southern states would allow under their own constitution tells us all we need to know about the South’s supposed domination of the federal government.
I provided the quotes and the sources. You choose to question them because they are inconvenient for you. What is incredible is your claim that Southerners controlled the federal government despite being in the minority. What is obscene is for people whose wealth was built on selling slaves and servicing good produced at least in part by slaves they sold to then claim they were fighting some war for freedom of those same slaves. Hey, if they had been so concerned, maybe they could have used some of that blood money in their pockets to buy the slaves’ freedom. Oh but they were not about to do that nor were they even to consider giving up any of their ill gotten gains.....it was so much easier to point an accusatory finger at the South while trying to sweep their own complicity under the rug.
Some border states were occupied like Maryland. Others did secede like Missouri. Kentucky was torn.
You try to break this down by political party and somehow think that explains everything. It doesn’t. Not even close. Northern Democrats were Northerners and represented Northern interests - not Southern ones. Nor were they pawns of Southern Democrats just because they happened to be in the same party.
You’ve got to be kidding. The Democrats of that time were generally though not always the party of limited government. The Republicans were in bed with big corporations which were almost exclusively in the North. Blacks then were likely to be Republicans. Farmers and rural people in the North were more likely to be Democrats. It bears no relation to the parties today. Democrats today are the party of big government while Republicans are or at least claim to be the party of limited government.
And as the 1856 Sumner-Brooks affair demonstrated, when Southern majority votes were not enough, well then, the Slavepower had other...ah, methods to achieve their goals.
This is too funny. You just claim with no evidence that Northern Democrats back then were nothing more than pawns or mere shills of Southern Democrats. Of course it would be rather inconvenient for you to admit anything else.
As previously discussed Sumner-Brooks was a personal affair that came about because Sumner was such a jerk personally.
In the 1850 Compromise, the South agreed to pass on jurisdiction over fugitive slaves from states to Federal government, meaning state actions were irrelevant to Constitutional obligations.
By Constitutional requirement, Federal law took precedence over state laws meaning Federal authorities could overrule whatever state impediments they encountered.
Repsonsiblity for Federal government since 1800 had been almost continuously in the hands of Southern Democrats and their Doughfaced Northern Democrat allies.
We must therefore assume those Democrats enforced their own fugitive slave laws as vigorously as such laws needed.
And if not, then they could blame nobody but themselves.
Deep South states like South Carolina had no legal standing whatever to complain about Federal fugitive slave law enforcement, since there were no known fugitive slaves from the Deep South being protected by Northern states.
And even if some were known, no legal actions were taken by Deep South states to redress their grievances.
But your denial is nonsense for several reasons: Southerners did not control the federal government. They were in the minority. The federal government then had less power than it has usurped now. Various Northern states enacted laws and took “extra legal” measures like mob violence to prevent federal slave catchers from catching and returning slaves. They have bragged about it ever since as proof of their supposed moral superiority.
South Carolina had every legal basis for saying those various Northern states had violated the compact. They did. They deliberately obstructed the federal government in its efforts to do what they had agreed to when they ratified the Constitution.
No such conditions existed in 1860.
So 1860 Fire Eaters declared their secessions at pleasure.
Wrong. It was not drawn by Madison before ratification of the Constitution and was not agreed to by the states. Jefferson supported unilateral secession anytime a state wanted to do so. So did several other presidents including John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, even US Grant.
You say there was no such injury or oppression in 1860. It is not for you to decide that. It is for each state to decide that. Virginia obviously believed there was. That’s all that was necessary. Nowhere in their express proviso did they say they needed anybody else’s permission to secede.
But Jefferson never drew any distinction between pleasure or necessity - only that states had the right to secede. Several other presidents said the same. The bottom line is that it is the right of each state to determine necessity for itself. They are sovereign.
LOL! What???? Mutual consent? You’ve constructed castles in the air here. Nowhere did any state agree that they required “mutual consent” in order to secede. As for the Articles, they did not all secede at once. Some states seceded and then others followed later. The ones who seceded did not hold that they required permission from the remainers before they be allowed to leave. 3 states had express provisos reserving their own individual right of secession. None of them said they required others’ permission to secede. Every state understood itself to have that right. Nobody at the time said they did not.
So Jefferson well understood the real distinction between mutual consent and at pleasure disunion.
This is your default setting isn’t it? Any time a quote is inconvenient for you you claim it to be a false quote. Well once again its not a false quote.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0101
Jefferson draws no distinction between “at pleasure” or “by necessity”. Only if a state wishes it. That is all.
Rawle was not a Founder, though he was a district attorney who prosecuted members of the Whiskey Rebellion.
So Rawle clearly knew the differences between mutual consent and necessity versus rebellion at pleasure.
Rawle in 1829 does allow that, “The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state.”, but even Rawle now decades into the secession debate, does not support unilateral unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.
So I’d consider Rawle second generation and as such an unreliable purveyor of our Founders’ original intentions.
Rawle was not a Founder. He was one of the pre-eminent legal scholars in early America. He was appointed by Washington as district attorney for Philadelphia and he was president of the Pennsylvania abolition society.
In any event, what the Founders thought is nice and all but what matters is what the states agreed to when they ratified the constitution. No state agreed that it required the consent of other states to secede. Every state guarded its sovereignty jealously.
Yes Yes, we know. Any quote you don’t like is “fake” even when properly sourced. (rolleyes) Withdrawal is the same as secession. It lead to war because Lincoln chose to start a war over it. Jefferson never drew any distinction about the conditions under which a state may secede. More importantly, no state ever agreed that it must satisfy others that certain conditions had been met before it could exercise its sovereign right to secede. States were actual parties to the Constitution.
President Tyler was a Southern slave-holder whose opinions corresponded to those of other slave-holders.
The claim that President Adams tried to organize secession in the 1820s is unsupported by any facts I’ve ever seen and contradicts his life-long devotion to the Union.
Ah so Tyler’s view doesn’t count because he was a slave holder - nevermind that Washington, Madison, Henry, Mason, Monroe and Jefferson among others were all slaveholders as was Andrew Jackson.
As for John Quincy Adams and Secession....read it and weep.
http://discerninghistory.com/2013/07/john-quincy-adams-on-secession/
Not a bit! They never said WHO DETERMINES necessity. Obviously it is each state....as NY, VA and RI had expressly reserved that right for themselves and all others understood themselves to have that right.
It is not for you or anyone else to say when absolute necessity existed for each state. That is for them to determine for themselves. A right you can exercise only with others’ permission is no right at all.
LOL! Fred Astaire has got nothing on you when it comes to tapdancing. It was 1848. That was the year of revolutions in Europe. Texas’ Independence was won in 1836. Lincoln was obviously not talking about Texas independence. He said secession was a noble principle we hope “to liberate the world”. It was just fine and a natural right in his mind. This was hardly radical. The colonies had seceded from the British Empire. Recognizing and even celebrating the right of secession was the norm in America prior to 1860. He only reversed himself once his corporate fatcat supporters made it clear that they could not afford to see their cash cow leave.....
Diogenes believes that every dollar that cotton planters got from exports and spent on US goods was still somehow their money and still somehow in their wallets and pockets.
I tell him over and over again that the plantation owners used the money they earned from exports to buy goods and services from other Americans who could then use that money to buy foreign goods if they wished.
Indeed, the money received for exports would have been pounds or francs or some other currency and would have stayed in banks in London, Paris, New York or New Orleans which would have given dollars to the planters and given the foreign currency to other people who wanted to exchange their dollars for foreign currency in order to buy imports with the foreign money.
I have explained this to Diogenes many times, but he doesn't get it or won't acknowledge it. His idea is that cotton planters snagged the money and they have a moral right to continual possession, even if they spend it, because it was their cotton that first brought the pounds, francs, marks, kroner, or pesetas to the US. Therefore, whoever buys imported goods, it's really the slave-owning planter who bought them.
I believe that's called having your cake and eating it too. Diogenes won't admit that the US had other exports than could just as well bring foreign currency into the country.
There are economic details involved here that I don't entirely understand. Neither does Diogenes. The difference is that I'm aware of my incomplete understanding and freely admit it. Diogenes isn't aware of his own incomplete understanding and won't admit it.
So I am to understand that you claim that Southern plantation owners arranged to have their crops exported to England directly, including all shipping arrangements, without the need for third party brokers? That shippers filled their vessels with only one customer’s goods? That shippers could not find other goods from other customers say in England to return profitably? Or carry on to another port in Europe or elsewhere?
I am to take your word for all this?
Why would you assume they did not use 3rd party brokers (they were called “Factors” at the time)?
That shippers could not find other goods from other customers in England to return profitably....at the time the Factors would arrange shipping. (Northern bankers and insurance companies also serviced this trade and made a profit doing so and shipbuilders were indirectly employed as were shipping companies).
The only thing that could be used to help fill the holds of the ships to help defray the cost of transport was manufactured goods. They even tried taking transatlantic passengers for a time but manufactured goods were the most profitable. The owners of the cash crops on those ships would convert the money from sales to buy those manufactured goods. They then owned the manufactured goods. Those manufactured goods were then hit with the tariff upon arrival in the US.
Don’t take my word for it. There are numerous comments from Southerners and Northerners and the English at the time which all attest to this.
So if the Southerners owned the cash crops, how did those damned Yankess in New York make all those profits I’ve heard were skimmed off the top?
By servicing the trade.
Banking
Insurance
Factors
Shipping companies
Ship builders
In their NY Times Best seller written by 3 New England Journalists called “Complicity: how the North promoted, prolonged and profited from slavery”
Their comment as to this trade and the servicing of it was “this was slavery the way the North liked it - most of the profits and none of the screams”.
The data from that 1928 book comes from the Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, Executive Documents, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session, No. 89, Senate Documents, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, No. 254. Data for the years 1838-1860 come from appropriation bills.
and I’ve cited two of Charles Adams books who got his data from the official sources at the time.
I’ve also provided numerous quotes from political leaders and Newspapers on both sides which I have sourced, which run directly contrary to what the author of the 1928 book said.
Yeah but no sources, just statements. So accusations trumps accounting huh?
Yeah but no sources, just statements. So accusations trumps accounting huh?
You think the people on all sides at the time did not know what was going on?
I quoted that as well, maybe on this very thread. You should realize, though, that you have a major disagreement with Diogenes, who really does believe that the Confederacy would rapidly industrialize, if only they could free themselves of their commercial ties with New York City. That doesn't make much sense to me, but you guys might want to hash it out among yourselves.
Your claim that somehow Northern Democrats were just shills for the South because they happened to be in the same party as Southerners is ridiculous. Northern business interests wanted sky high protectionist tariffs to gain market share while being able to jack up prices to fatten their wallets. Both they and the working class wanted federal government handouts for corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects which would be paid by those tariffs they knew Southerners would be paying as owners of the imported manufactured goods. Many of these same corporate interests got the government to use the very same generals to commit ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Plains Indians...because those Indians were in the way of their choo choos.....
Northern businessmen never spoke with one voice. Pennsylvania iron and steel men really wanted tariffs to protect themselves from foreign competition.
New York businessmen were often involved in shipping, and those who were had no great love for tariffs. They also had no love for war with the cotton growers who gave them so much business.
New England mill owners were conflicted. Protective tariffs may have sounded like a good idea to some of them, but they got their cotton from the South and didn't want to antagonize Southern interests.
Political views cut across these categories, though. Some capitalists and industrialists were ardent abolitionists. Others had no use at all for abolition, and only wanted to keep the country together on almost any terms.
I really doubt any of these groups was the main driver of western expansion. Some capitalists, industrialists, and railroad men benefited from settling the frontier, but the main impulse for expansion was always the land hunger of agricultural interests -- very much including Southern planters.
Northern businessmen never spoke with one voice. Pennsylvania iron and steel men really wanted tariffs to protect themselves from foreign competition.
New York businessmen were often involved in shipping, and those who were had no great love for tariffs. They also had no love for war with the cotton growers who gave them so much business.
New England mill owners were conflicted. Protective tariffs may have sounded like a good idea to some of them, but they got their cotton from the South and didn’t want to antagonize Southern interests.
Political views cut across these categories, though. Some capitalists and industrialists were ardent abolitionists. Others had no use at all for abolition, and only wanted to keep the country together on almost any terms.
I really doubt any of these groups was the main driver of western expansion. Some capitalists, industrialists, and railroad men benefited from settling the frontier, but the main impulse for expansion was always the land hunger of agricultural interests — very much including Southern planters.
I will agree with you that NYC especially was much more willing to strike deals with the South and was much less interested in antagonizing Southerners. The two were business partners. NYC knew full well which side its bread was buttered on.
New England Mill owners generally supported high tariffs. They found it extremely difficult to compete against Lancashire. The British Textile industry was huge. They were worried about what would happen if they were cut off from Southern Cotton.
Support for abolition in the North was quite small. Abolitionist candidates got very small shares of the vote when the ran for office as a general rule. There was practically zero support for compensated emancipation if it meant they were going to have to pay any part of it. Even though New England had sold the slaves in the first place and the proceeds of that provided much of the start up capital for their manufacturers as well as universities.
They were against the spread of slavery for a variety of reasons ranging from wanting to diminish the political power of the Southern states which stood in the way of them being able to get economic policies that would favor them even more, to plain old fashioned racism (they were as against free blacks as they were slaves) to self interest. Since they did not have the economies of scale and could not compete on price with established manufacturers in Britain, they also could not offer wages that were as good. One of the big hooks they had to offer immigrant laborers was the prospect of obtaining their own land out west via homesteading. That was something European manufacturers could not offer their workforce. Thus it helped them obtain and retain for a few years at least, a workforce with which to compete against the European manufacturers.
The regions had highly specialized economies and diametrically opposing policy needs. That agriculture was saddled with paying for industrialization was not unusual. What was unusual was that it was so highly regionalized in the US. Add those different economic interests to cultural differences and different political cultures and you have a cocktail that makes separation of subjugation of one by the other inevitable.
Almost all wars boil down to money and economic interests. This one was no different.
Now here’s where logic seems to break down. You and DiogenesLamp seem to believe that every dollar exported in Southern goods was returned penny for penny with imported goods one hundred percent paid by Southerners. This seems dubious at best.
For this to be true, every ship headed overseas would have carry only Southern produced goods, mostly cotton. There could be no mix of cotton and Northern grain or other foodstuffs in the holds. Since exports would be based on orders placed from foreign agents, then foreign needs would dictate the shipment. XYZ Company needing so much of this and so much of that might reasonably order different items at one times just as a retail store does today.
The image of segregation by region suggests the memory of “colored” drinking fountains during Jim Crow. One could imagine port signage reading Northern goods this way, Southern to the other.
Now, even if shipping WAS conducted this way, your assertion assumes that every plantation owner was in the import/export business. And IF they were, that every good they brought back home was destined for Southern markets. By simple mathematics then the demand for foreign goods in the South would have to about three times that of Northern residents. Since on average Southerners were richer, but the population was more stratified, this simply could not be.
The plain fact is you have no numbers for who paid tariffs, and as has been shown many times before, tariffs were in 1860. The Morell Tariff was passed AFTER the Southerners pulled out of Congress.
Why do you suppose they felt high tariffs were needed on imported manufactured goods brought in from England, and not needed on agricultural goods (mostly cotton) produced in the South?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.