Posted on 06/19/2018 5:30:41 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
Captain Raphael Semmes of CSS Alabama struck his colors to the USS Kearsarge. Captain John Winslow's Kearsarge had pounded the Alabama into a smoldering, sinking wreck in a one hour battle off the coast of Cherbourg France. As she sunk, about 70 of her crew were rescued by the Kearsarge and about 30 by other ships in the area. Alabama had lost about 40 men killed during the battle. Captain Semmes escaped aboard a British ship. During her career as a commerce raider, CSS Alabama had captured or destroyed 65 U.S. flagged ships, and captured about 2000 of their crews. Captain Semmes accomplished this without the loss of a single life, either on Alabama or any of the ships he seized.
You mean the loot stolen from federal facilities by southern insurrectionists? That loot?
The evil people who rule us now were put into permanent power by the actions of Lincoln during the Civil War. Finally their power is starting to erode, and the people of America are waking up to who their real rulers are.
The media is losing it's power to lie convincingly because people are recognizing they are a tool for the ruling class.
As they paid for it, you can hardly call it "loot" when they got what they paid for back. They also paid for most of those railroads built in the North under government subsidies.
So who will they choose as their real rulers?
Before 1863. What Federal legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President paid direct subsidies to railroads in the North or anywhere in the United States. Be specific.
Alabama vs Kearsarge published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye (Burlington, Iowa) newspaper
I think the last time you asked me for specific proof of something, after I gave it, I don't recall you ever mentioning the topic again.
I recall asking at the time that if I went through all the trouble to look it up, would it change your mind about anything?
I'm getting the impression that your answer is "no it would not." Which makes me wonder why I even bothered doing it the first time.
What do I get out of finding the specific proof for which you have asked? What is the up side for me doing that work?
You are the one claiming that the Federal Government subsidized Northern railroads at the expense of Southern railroads. To do this there had to be law in place, passed by Congress and signed by the President. Unless you can support your claim with the laws that allocated Federal resources to Northern railroads, you are just spouting off.
Making claims that you cannot substantiate.
Good to see you again! Thanks for the articles.
Suffice it to say, the North has long run on Protectionism, subsidies, borrowing and spending, cheap labor immigration, and Union Labor anger at "scabs" taking away their jobs for lower wages.
Same then as today, except labor Unions didn't quite exist in that period, but their precursors had the same mindsets as the later labor Unions manifested.
So what you are saying is that you have absolutely zero proof that would substantiate your claim that the Federal government subsidized Northern railroads over Southern railroads. Got it. That is what I figured would happen.
I also see you trying to "spin" my statement to mean something else.
Frankly I don't think you want me digging into this because you have enough objectivity to recognize this is a threat to what you wish to believe.
You don't go silent on my David Porter information because it agrees with what you want to believe, you go silent on it because it doesn't.
You made the claim, support it if you can. I doubt that you have any iota of support for your claim.
Frankly I don’t think you want me digging into this because you have enough objectivity to recognize this is a threat to what you wish to believe
you are the one wishing to believe that the Federal Government directly subsidized Northern railroads to the disadvantage of Southern railroads. That is all it is,or will ever be, is you wish. Show me the law that allowed this.
They didn’t “pay for it” fool.
Hey Rusty! Long time no see! Thanks for the links.
"The task before us is to assess in largely material terms the political-economic system arising during and after the American Civil War. Ideological issues existed, certainly, but much evidence suggests that pure idealism had a rather limited run. Antislavery was one of many themes generally serving as the stalking horse for more practical causes. Slavery itself was a colossal background fact constituting, as historian James L. Huston states, the biggest single capital investment in the United States—an enormous material interest uniting millions of people (not just in the South) through ties of interest, commerce, and sentiment. This interest stood athwart the political-economic ambitions of powerful interests in the Northeast."
"Powerful interests in the Northeast." Where have I heard that idea before?
"We may think here of large “forces” at work, each with limits and counter-tendencies. Where slavery is concerned, Americans shirked the job of finding a reasonable solution. Offered one—disunion—some rejected it, after which the blunt instrument of war permitted another solution of sorts. As historian Howard Zinn writes: It was not the moral enormity of slavery but “the antitariff, antibank, anticapitalist aspect of slavery which aroused the united opposition of the only groups in the country with power to make war: the national political leaders and the controllers of the national economy.”
Wow. That sounds suspiciously like what I have been saying.
Here's a bit about railroads.
"Political scientist Thomas Ferguson believes that the goals of money-driven coalitions explain the greater part of American political history. During the mid-nineteenth century, railroads represented the biggest new business opportunity, provided large-scale government subsidies (state and federal) were available. Northern railroad promoters and land speculators, many based in New England, worked both to get subsidies and remove obstacles. On the removal side, some of them, like John Murray Forbes, donated money to John Brown’s good works in Kansas apparently to put pressure on southern opponents of internal improvements."
This article seems to be firing on all cylinders.
"The Republican Party platform of May 1860 stated the minimal program of a historical bloc of northeastern financial and manufacturing interests and Midwestern and western farmers. It began on a high note of egalitarian and republican ideology, aired some Free Soil, antislavery grievances, and thudded to rest with some practical matters: protective tariffs, homesteads (good for votes but rather ambiguous), federally funded improvements of rivers and harbors (Great Lakes subsidies), and a Pacific railroad. In addition, the party’s friendliness to central (national) banking was no secret. The Hamiltonian mercantilism of the platform was its central theme, if not quite its only one. Alas for its adherents, they soon found a large bloc of their recent opponents (and potential taxpayers) leaving the Union, beginning with South Carolina in December 1860."
And where was the Federal government getting 74-83% of all it's money?
"It seems clear that key leaders of the northern “developmental coalition” represented by the Republican Party were ready enough for war, provided other people bore most of the costs. As tax historian Charles Adams writes, “The Wall Street boys and the men of commerce and business were determined to preserve the Union for their economic gains”—a calculation made easier for them after the contrasting U.S. and Confederate tariff schedules were released in early 1861.
I swear to God, i've never seen this article before today, and yet it is detailing exactly what i've been saying and what I derived independently from diverse information gleaned from many sources.
"With the highest tariff rates at 47 percent (North) and 12 percent (South), a massive shift of English and European trade to Norfolk, Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans seemed likely. U.S. revenues would plummet, and northern business imagined short-run (or longer) catastrophe. A good many more northern businessmen began to calculate the possible benefits of a war. On cue, hesitating newspapers changed their line. Of course access to the Mississippi River (quite unthreatened in reality), the reluctance of any State apparatus to lose territory, and ideological nationalism played their parts."Aw H3ll, just read the whole thing.
Because manufactured goods were not produced in the South, they had to either be imported or shipped down from the North. Either way, a large expense, be it shipping fees or the federal tariff, was added to the price of manufactured goods only for Southerners. Because importation was often cheaper than shipping from the North, the South paid most of the federal tariffs.Much of the tariff revenue collected from Southern consumers was used to build railroads and canals in the North. Between 1830 and 1850, 30,000 miles of track was laid. At its best, these tracks benefited the North. Much of it had no economic effect at all. Many of the schemes to lay track were simply a way to get government subsidies. Fraud and corruption were rampant.
With most of the tariff revenue collected in the South and then spent in the North, the South rightly felt exploited. At the time, 90% of the federal government’s annual revenue came from these taxes on imports.
http://www.marottaonmoney.com/protective-tariffs-the-primary-cause-of-the-civil-war/
Work on the first transcontinental railroad began after President Abraham Lincoln approved the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, a landmark law that authorized the federal government to financially back the construction of a transcontinental railroad.
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/railroads.html
Gee, I wonder where the railroad companies were headquartered that received this bonanza. Could it be Lincoln's old friends and former employers?
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