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.
But it was neither all white men nor all capitalists who brutalized the American Indians. The dispossession of the Indians—culminating in the late 1880s with the surviving tribes of the West being herded onto reservations—was the result of a corrupt and immoral relationship between certain Northern industrialists, particularly government-subsidized railroads, and the federal politicians whose careers they financed and promoted.
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Sherman’s (and Lincoln’s) close friend and former business associate, Grenville Dodge, was in charge of building the government-subsidized transcontinental railroads that were “protected” by Sherman’s armies, and he did so in a thoroughly corrupt and inefficient manner.Per-mile subsidies provided incentives for bilking the taxpayers by building winding, circuitous routes. Dodge even laid track on top of several feet of snow in the winter months, and then rebuilt them after the spring thaw, collecting twice the subsidies. The entire enterprise was so marred by corruption, inefficiency, and fraud that at one point (1893) all of the government-subsidized railroads were bankrupt.
Thank you both.
I’ve been in the hospital twice in the last two months. The last time was with an E. Coli infection in my blood. How I got that I do not know. Probably something I ate. I went from feeling great to collapsed on the floor unable to get up, all in about 3 or 4 hours. I’m OK now though.
Union Pacific was HQd in Omaha NB. Central Pacific was HQd in San Francisco. Since both were formed in 1862, Lincoln probably never worked for them.
Your recent posts do not substantiate any claim that the Federal government subsidized railroads with federal money.
the 1862 Transcontinental railroad act subsidized the Union Pacific and Central Pacific by giving them Federal land for the right of way and every other section of land along the right of way. . The Feds had been giving federal land to railroads for right of ways beginning in 1847. This land for right of ways was available to Southern railroads as much as it was to Northern railroads. The vast disparity of rail construction between North and South cannot be pinned on “Federal monetary subsidies”. Because there were none.
The Government paid railroads to haul government cargo. If the mail or cargo was bound for a destination in the South, a Southern owned railroad was paid to haul that cargo.
It doesn't address the culture of corruption that led to it though.
I have not made any intense efforts to locate any such information. I have only identified it indirectly by noting several articles that say they did. At some point I should be able to identify their sources for saying the Federal government was subsidizing railroads in the North, and then we will have found what *you* claim you want to see.
The articles about CSS Alabama and the Kearsarge were very interesting. It looks like if their shells hadn't misfired, the Alabama would have won that exchange. Also the Alabama was unaware that the Kearsarge had been armored up. Might have changed their decision to engage had they known.
Thanks.
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.
Your idiot contradicts himself and the facts by saying that the "Hamiltonian mercantilism of the platform was its central theme, if not quite its only one." The bulk of the platform is about freedom, slavery, federalism and civil peace. Only 4 of its 17 points are about economic policy. And the demand for a transcontinental railroad was also found in the Democrat platform (in both of them in fact).
Stromberg is making the same mistake DiLorenzo makes: he ignores or dismisses anything that's not economics and not likely to provide a basis for condemning the Republicans. His conclusions are the result of his biases, not of an objective analysis of the facts.
Stromberg goes on to cite Thomas C. Cochran's and William Miller's Age of Enterprise, which was written in 1942, when sympathy for the antebellum South was at a high point among historians. He doesn't mention this passage from the book:
Northern business took advantage of the Civil War once it began and after it was over, but that does not prove that business wanted the war; it does not prove, certainly, that business started the war. Northern and western businessmen were bound to the South by ties which they deemed strongest — ties of profit. Secession strained these almost to the breaking point ; war would shatter them altogether. New England cotton factories depended upon the South for raw materials; boot and shoe factories found their markets there, northern shippers their cargoes. All but the shippers could hope to preserve these ties with the South In or out of the Union, and the shippers certainly wanted no war. Commerce feeds on peace: no one knew It better than they.
From every section of the industrial North, from many types of industry, had come business spokesmen for peace. On December 19, 1860, August Belmont reported a meeting of “our leading men . . . composed of such names as Astor, Aspinwall, Moses H. Grinnell, Hamilton Fish, R. M. Blatchford, &c. They were unanimous for reconciliation, and that the first steps have to be taken by the North.” From New Jersey came the voice of Abram Hewitt, who had suffered as much as any one from southern tariff and railroad policies but who in November, i860, was “using every effort to induce the public mind to give up the idea of coercion, and to take that of peaceable separation.”
Stromberg's source doesn't quite agree with the argument he's making - and certainly doesn't agree with the one you're making.
Timothy Sandefur makes a compelling rebuttal of Stromberg's Howard Zinn-inspired screed here, continued here
This implies that the economic data condemns the Republicans.
But let us take a look at the modern world for just a moment. How important is "Abortion" to the Democrats? Is it more important than the money they make from government power?
How important is LGBT/homosexual stuff to the Democrats? Is it more important than the money they make from government power?
How important is "black lives matter"? Is it more important than the money they make from government power?
What all these things have in common is different constituency groups who will vote as a coalition if their interests are served.
I offer that the Democrat leadership does not really care about any of these issues beyond the utility to them of getting votes as a consequence of these constituency groups.
I may be cynical, but I believe their primary motivation is money and power, and these other issues are merely vehicles to obtaining that goal.
Do you think I am right about this motivation of the Democrats, or do you think they really deeply care about these issues as a matter of bedrock foundational principles near and dear to their heart?
No. It implies that if you throw out all non-materialistic factors, you can skew the economic factors to make your case -- if you're biased enough and unscrupulous enough.
Businesses can make out well from wars - if their side wins. But that doesn't mean that they wanted war or that they were the driving force behind the war.
Cochran and Miller - Stromberg's cited source -- explicitly say as much. Stromberg -- and you -- just throw out all evidence that doesn't confirm what you already believe and then are surprised that what's left confirms your theory.
I may be cynical, but I believe their primary motivation is money and power, and these other issues are merely vehicles to obtaining that goal.
By that logic you and everybody who agrees with you is also a cynical opportunist or else a dupe.
If you have some general theory about human motivation, what makes you (and maybe a few people who agree with you) the exceptions to that rule?
Statement of Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, petitioning Lincoln and Stanton for relief [bold text mine for emphasis]:
I shall never forget how he suddenly lifted his head and turned on us a black and frowning face.
"'Gentlemen, he said, in a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for Emancipation, and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you have demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you. Go home, and raise your 6,000 extra men.
And you, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your 'Tribune' have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared at a moment when your cause is suffering. Go home and send us those men.'
"I couldn't say anything. It was the first time I ever was whipped, and I didn't have an answer. We all got up and went out, and when the door closed, one of my colleagues said: 'Well, gentlemen, the old man is right. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.' "
Source: Ida Tarbell, (Joseph Medill meeting with Lincoln), Life of Lincoln, McClure, Phillips & Co., 1900, Vol. III, p. 149
The above was originally posted by 4CJ many years ago.
Medill’s Chicago Tribune was a longtime supporter of Lincoln, the Republicans, and the Union. [Source: Lincoln and the Press. by Robert S. Harper]. I suppose that the Chicago Tribune and other such Northern papers were the MSM of that time period.
Also, while Joseph Medill must have had some money and connections, it would be a mistake to assume that he was first and foremost just a representative of the business community. He was a publisher with abolitionist convictions and ties.
If Lincoln said those words or something like them, he would more likely have been referring to anti-slavery agitation, than to some plot by wealthy businessmen to enrich themselves. He says as much, "You called for Emancipation, and I have given it to you." Did big business really call for Emancipation?
The Medills later intermarried with the McCormicks and Pattersons (who in turn married into other rich families). The growth of Chicago, the McCormick fortune, and the later media empire made the extended family very rich indeed, but that wasn't quite the case in the Tribune's early days.
"Mr. Medill said that they (Messrs. Medill, Hayes, and Hough) went to Washington and performed the duty assigned them, to the best of their ability. They remained in that city six days, laboring with the President, Secretary of War, and Provost Marshal General. He regretted to say that they did not accomplish what was desired."
A key reason given for not publically changing the draft order for Illinois was that it would give some information to the enemy. It was suggested that matters would be fixed or adjusted sometime in the future if the state and Chicago met the existing draft quota. The state was told to go ahead and enroll draftees under the existing order. One concern with the Chicago enrollment was that in one ward, 1100 men had been enrolled who could not be found, and that two million dollars had been furnished to Cook County more than her due. (Cook Country has never changed.)
By the way, for the year ending May 1, 1865, sales receipts for circulation of the Chicago Tribune were more than the Times, the Journal, and the Post all combined. Not a bad business.
Up until Lincoln was elected President, Chicago was a notorious sanctuary city for escaped slaves. Medill was reportedly strongly against the South and an abolitionist. He eventually joined the Radical Republicans after the war.
Ida Tarbell's account of the meeting with the president does make him sound crafty, like Lincoln certainly was. But like you, I can't verify that Lincoln actually said those words to the Chicago delegation.
Just when I thought I was out
They pull me back in
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