On Confederate Memorial Day, an honest annotation of the Mississippi Declaration of Secession

The Declaration of Secession was the result of a convention of the Mississippi Legislature in January of 1861. The convention adopted a formal Ordinance of Secession written by former Congressman Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar. While the ordinance served an official purpose, the declaration laid out the grievances Mississippi’s ruling class held against the federal government under the leadership of President-elect Abraham Lincoln...The convention really couldn’t be any more straightforward:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest in the world.

BROJOEK:Naw, the US had debated slavery related issues since 1776.

Yeah. Discussions started in late 1860 right after the election and everyone knew secession was coming.

BROJOEK: In the end, Sen. Davis's insistence -- that Congress had no authority to abolish slavery within states -- made its way into both the new CSA Constitution and the proposed US Corwin Amendment. Davis's other proposals regarding slavery in territories and an alleged slaveholders' "right of soujourn" were rejected by Republicans in December 1860, hence secession of Mississippi (#2 to secede) and other Deep South states.

No. Slave owners had the right of transit already as per the Dred Scott decision. There was nothing to decide, as the Supreme Court had already ruled. The idea of a constitutional amendment expressly protecting slavery was one that occurred to lots of people - not just Davis as you would have it. Had Southern states really been concerned about the continuation of slavery, they could have simply accepted the Corwin amendment - yet they did not.

BROJOEK: Naw... the Corwin Amendment was eagerly accepted and adopted by the Montgomery, Alabama Constitutional Convention into their new CSA constitution, along with Jefferson Davis's other proposals to Congress from February 2, 1860.

Yeah. They could have just accepted it and stayed in the US where slavery was not threatened in any case. That way they could have avoided the risk of war. Yet they rejected it.

BROJOEK: Confederates loved Corwin and copied and pasted it into their Montgomery constitution:

The Corwin Amendment came out before the Confederate Constitution. Your timeline is backwards.

BROJOEK: regarding CSA constitution's use of words like "slave": "They were simply more honest honest." Fixed it.

Fixed it back

BROJOEK: So far as I can tell, that was exactly Abraham Lincoln's opinion in 1860. Lincoln then saw no need for an amendment along lines of Sen. Davis's February 1860 proposal, eventually adopted in Corwin in March 1861. As far as Lincoln was concerned, such an amendment was unnecessary, but, if it helped keep the Union together, he did not oppose it.

Correct! Lincoln was of the opinion that the Corwin Amendment merely explicitly spelled out that which already existed under the US Constitution. Slavery simply was not threatened in the US. Lest anyone think it was, explicit protection of slavery in the US Constitution was a bargaining chip the North was quite happy to offer. The original 7 seceding states turned it down.

BROJOEK: Just as the 1787 US Constitution granted no authority to Federal government to abolish slavery in states, it also granted Federal government no authority to limit states from restricting and abolishing slavery themselves -- suggestions to the contrary from Crazy Roger Taney's 1857 Dred Scott ruling notwithstanding.

This was not contrary to the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court in the Dred Scott ruling. All a slave owner could do was transit with his slaves. He could not reside in a state that had abolished slavery. He could not employ his slaves in an enterprise there.

BROJOEK: And yet... and yet... the fact remains that the Confederacy's largest source for imported slaves would be the USA, and those imports were not outlawed. Therefore, the CSA's constitutional provision is meaningless eyewash.

And yet the ONLY POSSIBLE place slaves could be imported was from the same places they could be "imported" from before. The situation was not changed. Banned was the African Slave Trade as well as the importation of slaves from foreign countries which the US Constitution allowed for 20 years.

BROJOEK: And yet... and yet... Crazy Roger placed no time limit on his new-found "slaveholders' right of sojourn". Dred Scott himself had lived for many years in free states and territories, and yet... and yet... in Crazy Rogers' eyes that was not enough to make poor Dred Scott a free man, much less a full US citizen. Why is that, you might ask? Answer: because Crazy Roger was a raging Democrat lunatic, and for no other conceivable reason.

And yet, and yet, that was the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court. Not litigated or decided by the Dred Scott case was how long a slave owner could have to transit with his slaves. States could enact laws governing that and declare that any state on its territory longer than a reasonable period for transit were thereby deemed to be legally emancipated. This almost certainly have been upheld by the Supreme Court of the US since all they had ruled was that a slave owner had the right of transit with his property - not that the state ban on slavery was repealed as you would have it.

BROJOEK: Your constant references to alleged historian Doris Kerns Goodwin notwithstanding, there is no actual evidence for Lincoln's direct involvement with Corwin either in Congress or in states.

There is eyewitness testimony from numerous sources that Lincoln worked directly with Republicans in Congress to draft the Corwin Amendment, get it introduced in Congress and get it passed both by Congress as well as by multiple Northern states.

BROJOEK: The majority unanimous ravings of Southern Democrat lunatics of the US Supreme Court issued their ruling and as such it was the highly disputed law of the land."

No matter how much you or anybody else does not like it, that was the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States and as such was the law of the land. Your incessant childish namecalling changes nothing.

BROJOEK: You can easily credit Crazy Roger with electing Republican majorities to Congress and Lincoln as president, in response to Crazy's Dred Scott opinion.

That might've affected politics. Then again, most people were far more concerned about the Morrill Tariff which was working its way through Congress at this time.

BROJOEK: Believe me, I do understand why you want to minimize Crazy Roger's raging insanities, and make him appear like any other normal human being, and therefore you ignore his worst lunacies and focus on just what might possibly be defended. And the reasons are obvious -- in 1857 Crazy Roger was not alone in his opinions and they were shared widely by slaveholders and slavery defenders throughout the South. They were all just as crazy as Roger was. Do I need to list out for you all the craziness Democrats like Crazy Roger inflicted on the USA in 1857?

Believe me, I understand why you act like a gradeschool kid on the playground and splutter idiotic insults and try to pretend that it was all one man. But it wasn't. It was the majority opinion of the SCOTUS.

No matter how much you don't like it, people in the past were different and had a different worldview. All of the original 13 colonies had slavery. The overwhelming majority of the Founding Fathers were slave owners. To them slavery was something that could be compromised over and that would die off in time. They were right about the latter. Industrialization did kill off slavery throughout the Western world. What they really got wrong was: 1) they should have expressly stated that any state could unilaterally secede 2) they should have placed limits on the General Welfare clause (as Patrick Henry pointed out) 3) they should have limited the federal government's ability to borrow money (as Thomas Jefferson lamented they had not)

Had they done those things whatever disputes arose between the states could have been resolved AND the massive leviathan in Washington DC would not have been able to unconstitutionally usurp all the power it has from the states.

BROJOEK: Nooooo... it was far more than a "vague hope" because our Founders were willing to take legal actions to restrict and abolish slavery wherever possible, a prime example being abolition of slavery in the Old Northwest Territories in 1787.

They hoped it would wither away in the future and sought to restrict its spread as it was.

BROJOEK: Further, by 1787, abolition was already the law in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania -- a total of 65% of all Northern state area.

Wrong. Rhode Island and Connecticut passed bills banning slavery in 1843 and 1848, respectively, and New Hampshire passed a final abolition bill in 1857. Vermont was not admitted as a state until 1791. Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783-84.

"Pennsylvania was the first to agree to gradual abolition during the Revolution. First, the Executive Council suggested to the Assembly in 1778 that they stop further importation of slaves as a first step towards emancipation. An initial emancipation bill, framed that year, called for the children of slaves born after the effective date to be freed after serving 18 years for females and 21 years for males. It also ordered slaves arriving with new residents of the state freed within six months, although they could be indentured until the age of 28 for minors or for four years for adults. Passage of the law was delayed due to the war but the ideas were reinforced in 1779 when the Council declared that slavery was incongruent with the goals of the Revolution and a disgrace to a people who were then fighting for the cause of liberty. When the state returned to the abolition bill they revised it so that all children under the bill would serve until the age of twenty-eight. This law was passed in 1780; it did not free any slave born before that year and the first emancipation under the law would not happen until 1808. With its provisions for 28 years in bondage, the law gave a two generation grace period for slavery to die out. Total abolition did not happen in Pennsylvania until 1847."

https://civildiscourse-historyblog.com/blog/2017/1/3/when-did-slavery-really-end-in-the-north#:~:text=Rhode%20Island%20and%20Connecticut%20passed,final%20abolition%20bill%20in%201857.

BROJOEK: So, if we add the 65% of Northern States area plus the Northwest Territories, then we see that in 1787, almost exactly half of the entirety of US square miles were under laws abolishing slavery -- that was vastly more than a "vague hope".

What we see is that you are grossly ignorant about the history of slavery in the North.

FLT-bird on Crittenden Compromise items: "Discussions started in late 1860 right after the election and everyone knew secession was coming."

No, however, specific proposals from Mississippi Democrat Sen. Davis -- which had been rejected by Congress in February, 1860 -- were in December dusted off and reconsidered, and again mostly rejected, in the Crittenden Compromise of December 1860.
As a result of these rejections, Mississippi led other Deep South states into secession.

FLT-bird: "Slave owners had the right of transit already as per the Dred Scott decision.
There was nothing to decide, as the Supreme Court had already ruled."

Contrary to your claims here, the issue in 1860 was far from settled, which is why:

Northern courts totally ignored Crazy Roger's insane rantings, except to condemn them and reaffirm their own anti-slavery laws.
Mississippi Sen. Davis's February 1860 proposal -- that Congress act to guarantee a "right of any citizen of the United States to take his slaver property into the common Territories" -- clearly implied the SCOTUS Dred Scott ravings did not settle the matter.
In December 1860, in Congress the Crittenden Committee looked at many proposed "compromises" to stop secessions, including the "right to sojourn", many such rejected by Republicans.
In March 1861 the CSA constitution again asserted a slaveholder's "right of sojourn" with his slaves, thus revealing the issue was far from settled, even in the new Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "The idea of a constitutional amendment expressly protecting slavery was one that occurred to lots of people - not just Davis as you would have it.
Had Southern states really been concerned about the continuation of slavery, they could have simply accepted the Corwin amendment - yet they did not."

Contrary to your repeated claims, the Montgomery Constitutional Convention totally accepted and embraced the idea of Corwin and so inserted it into their own CSA constitution.
Any suggestion otherwise is just crazy.

FLT-bird quoting BROJOEK: "Confederates loved Corwin and copied and pasted it into their Montgomery constitution"

FLT-bird: "The Corwin Amendment came out before the Confederate Constitution.
Your timeline is backwards."

Read what you quoted me as saying again.
The fact remains -- all your denials notwithstanding -- that Confederates loved and embraced Corwin so much they copied and pasted it directly into their own Montgomery CSA constitution.

FLT-bird: "Lest anyone think it was, explicit protection of slavery in the US Constitution was a bargaining chip the North was quite happy to offer.
The original 7 seceding states turned it down."

Naw... Confederates didn't "turn it down" because that was never even a question for them.
They did fully accept, embrace and then copy and paste the Corwin idea into their own Montgomery CSA constitution, along with several other pro-slavery provisions which Republicans had rejected in December 1860.

FLT-bird: "This was not contrary to the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court in the Dred Scott ruling.
All a slave owner could do was transit with his slaves.
He could not reside in a state that had abolished slavery.
He could not employ his slaves in an enterprise there."

Those are all lies.
The truth is that Crazy Roger Taney (why do you think I call him "Crazy Roger"??) abolished all such restrictions on the alleged "right to sojourn" in free states and territories!!!

Crazy Roger claimed there were no limits on a slaveholder's rights to take his "property" into other states and stay there as long as he wanted.

Consider the case of Dred Scott, the man, a slave taken from the slave-state of Missouri to the free-state of Illinois and lived there for six years!!, from 1830 to 1836, and then was taken to the free-territory of Wisconsin for another four years!!, from 1836 to 1840.
So Dred Scott had lived in free-states or territories for 10 years and yet Crazy Roger still claimed that was not long enough to declare the man, Dred Scott (or his family), freed.

Indeed, the lunatic Crazy Roger Taney and his insane Democrat fellow SCOTUS justices declared that not only could Dred Scott never be freed by living in free states & territories, but also, that even if Dred Scott were voluntarily freed, as an African-American, the man could never become a US citizen with all the rights and privileges of other US citizens, i.e., voting, juries, military service, etc.

How is you do not yet grasp the depths of depravity in Crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scott opinions??

FLT-bird: "And yet, and yet, that was the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court.
Not litigated or decided by the Dred Scott case was how long a slave owner could have to transit with his slaves.
States could enact laws governing that and declare that any state on its territory longer than a reasonable period for transit were thereby deemed to be legally emancipated."

Again, those are lies.
The truth is that Crazy Roger's Dred Scott ravings effectively declared all such laws unconstitutional and invalid, and removed all limitations on the lengths of time slaveholders could "sojourn" with their "property" in free-states & territories.

See my link above for actual Crazy Roger quotes.

FLT-bird: "There is eyewitness testimony from numerous sources that Lincoln worked directly with Republicans in Congress to draft the Corwin Amendment, get it introduced in Congress and get it passed both by Congress as well as by multiple Northern states."

None of which you've presented here for closer inspection.

FLT-bird: "No matter how much you or anybody else does not like it, that was the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States and as such was the law of the land.
Your incessant childish namecalling changes nothing."

Nooo... "Crazy Roger" is not "name-calling", it is a factual description of a raving lunatic, as were his fellow Democrat SCOTUS justices, as are Democrats today.
Indeed, the very word, "Democratic" from the beginning in the 1790s meant, "stark raving Jacobin lunatics" of the French Revolution.
So, while Thomas Jefferson called himself a small-r republican, his Federalist opponents called his party the Democratic-republicans, by which they meant "lunatics".
And, of course, Jeffersonians were perfectly happy with the designation and so kept the name "Democratics".

So, Democrats always were, and remain insane, none more so than Crazy Roger Taney.

FLT-bird: "That might've affected politics.
Then again, most people were far more concerned about the Morrill Tariff which was working its way through Congress at this time."

And yet nobody in any document of the time mentioned the Morrill Tariff as a reason for secession.
What every such document did mention, some of them exclusively, was slavery.

FLT-bird: "Wrong.
Rhode Island and Connecticut passed bills banning slavery in 1843 and 1848, respectively, and New Hampshire passed a final abolition bill in 1857.
Vermont was not admitted as a state until 1791.
Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783-84."

Again, you're just lying.
The truth is that all of those states, plus the entirety of the Old Northwest Territories had begun to abolish slavery before the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

1777 Vermont
1780 Pennsylvania
1783 Massachusetts
1783 New Hampshire
1784 Conncecticut
1784 Rhode Island
1787 Old Northwest Territories, which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and about 1/3 of Minnesota.

Further, by the time of the 1787 Convention, over half of the delegates did not own slaves.

So, bottom line: your repeated claims -- that our Founders didn't care about slavery and weren't working to abolish it -- those claims are simply untrue.

BROJOEK: As a result of these rejections, Mississippi led other Deep South states into secession.

No. As a result of Lincoln's election and the certainty that the Morrill Tariff would pass, the states of the Deep South decided to leave. Then the North offered slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment. Then the original 7 seceding states turned it down. Then Lincoln decided to start a war to prevent his cash cows from leaving. Then the states of the Upper South seceded.

BROJOEK: Contrary to your claims here, the issue in 1860 was far from settled,

Contrary to your BS, the matter was already decided. The Supreme Court had already ruled. Temper tantrums by lower courts were null and void.

BROJOEK: implied the SCOTUS Dred Scott ruling did not settle the matter.

No it didn't. It was settled law after the SCOTUS ruling.

BROJOEK: In March 1861 the CSA constitution again asserted a slaveholder's "right of sojourn" with his slaves, thus revealing the issue was far from settled, even in the new Confederacy.

No it didn't. It just expressly spelled out in the Constitution what was already settled law in the US.

BroJoeK: Contrary to your repeated claims, the Montgomery Constitutional Convention totally accepted and embraced the idea of Corwin and so inserted it into their own CSA constitution. Any suggestion otherwise is just crazy.

I've never said they did not accept the idea of the Corwin Amendment in the Confederate Constitution. I said they did not accept the Corwin Amendment offered by the North in exchange for giving up their independence. Obviously their main concerns were not for the continuance of slavery which many Southerners saw would come to an end - just as it was in the Northern states and just as it already had in several other Western countries.

BROJOEK: Read what you quoted me as saying again. The fact remains -- all your denials notwithstanding -- that Confederates loved and embraced Corwin so much they copied and pasted it directly into their own Montgomery CSA constitution.

The fact remains that the Corwin Amendment came out before the Confederate Constitution AND the original 7 seceding states rejected it in exchange for giving up their independence when offered it by the North.

BROJOEK: Naw... Confederates didn't "turn it down" because that was never even a question for them.<

Nah. They turned it down because slavery was not their main concern. Their real concern was gaining their independence so they'd be free of the grasp of imperial Washington and so they could set their own economic policy for their own benefit rather than be taxed for others' benefit.

BroJoeK: Those are all lies.

Nope! They're all 100% true.

BroJoeK: The truth is that Crazy Roger Taney (why do you think I call him "Crazy Roger"??) abolished all such restrictions on the alleged "right to sojourn" in free states and territories!!!

Nope. That is pure fiction. Firstly, Taney did not decide the case himself. The entire SCOTUS decided the case. The ruling was that a slave owner had the right of transit with his property and could not be excluded from the territories. Nowhere in the ruling did it say that states that had abolished slavery or which did not have slavery must now accept slavery if somebody brought their slaves in from out of state. That's just your insane little fantasy.

BroJoeK: Crazy Roger claimed there were no limits on a slaveholder's rights to take his "property" into other states and stay there as long as he wanted.

False. Your knowledge of the law is as faulty as your knowledge of history. The ruling by the majority of the SCOTUS was that slaveowners and their slaves could not be excluded from a territory. As for a state, it was never ruled that a slave owner could reside in a non slave state with his slaves. He could transit yes, but nowhere does it say he could reside. Dred Scott's lawyers argued that because he had resided in Wisconsin and Illinois he therefore should be emancipated but he was a resident of Missouri at the time where slavery was legal. Had he still been an Illinois or Wisconsin resident, THAT would be a different set of facts and almost certainly a different ruling by the SCOTUS.

BroJoeK: Consider the case of Dred Scott, the man, a slave taken from the slave-state of Missouri to the free-state of Illinois and lived there for six years!!, from 1830 to 1836, and then was taken to the free-territory of Wisconsin for another four years!!, from 1836 to 1840. So Dred Scott had lived in free-states or territories for 10 years and yet Crazy Roger still claimed that was not long enough to declare the man, Dred Scott (or his family), freed.

Not exactly. He didn't sue when he lived in those states. Had he done so, that would have been an entirely different set of facts. Effectively, he "sat on his rights" when he was a resident of those two states and lost them when he moved to Missouri where slavery was legal and he only then brought his lawsuit. The way the SCOTUS ruled in this case is consistent with many other cases in which there is a similar fact pattern.

BroJoeK: Indeed, the lunatic Crazy Roger Taney and his insane Democrat fellow SCOTUS justices declared that not only could Dred Scott never be freed by living in free states & territories, but also, that even if Dred Scott were voluntarily freed, as an African-American, the man could never become a US citizen with all the rights and privileges of other US citizens, i.e., voting, juries, military service, etc.

Nope. You didn't understand the ruling. They ruled that since he was in Missouri where slavery was legal, he couldn't make his case that he should be free. Obviously he should have sued when a resident of Wisconsin or Illinois. The Supreme Court did rule that Blacks could not be citizens. That was a majority opinion in most of the country at the time including in Illinois and Wisconsin.

BroJoeK: How is you do not yet grasp the depths of depravity in Crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scott opinions??

What I grasp is that you not only don't know history, you also don't know the law and furthermore, you are incapable of discussing this without grade school level namecalling of anybody you disagree with.

BroJoeK: Again, those are lies.

Again, no they're not.

BroJoeK: The truth is that Crazy Roger's Dred Scott ravings effectively declared all such laws unconstitutional and invalid, and removed all limitations on the lengths of time slaveholders could "sojourn" with their "property" in free-states & territories.

The truth is you don't know what the hell you're talking about - as usual. The ruling of the SCOTUS did not "remove all limitations on the lengths of time slaveholders could remain in free states".

BroJoeK: None of which you've presented here for closer inspection.

LOL! Feel free to look it up yourself.

BroJoeK: Nooo... "Crazy Roger" is not "name-calling", it is a factual description of a raving lunatic, as were his fellow Democrat SCOTUS justices, as are Democrats today. Indeed, the very word, "Democratic" from the beginning in the 1790s meant, "stark raving Jacobin lunatics" of the French Revolution. So, while Thomas Jefferson called himself a small-r republican, his Federalist opponents called his party the Democratic-republicans, by which they meant "lunatics". And, of course, Jeffersonians were perfectly happy with the designation and so kept the name "Democratics". So, Democrats always were, and remain insane, none more so than Crazy Roger Taney.

More childish namecalling and ahistorical gibberish.

BroJoeK: And yet nobody in any document of the time mentioned the Morrill Tariff as a reason for secession. What every such document did mention, some of them exclusively, was slavery.

And yet, 3 of the 4 states that issued declarations of causes for secession talked extensively about tariffs (general not just the current one working its way through congress at the time) and grossly unequal federal pork barrel spending EVEN THOUGH THIS WAS NOT UNCONSTITUTIONAL. WAS NOT. No matter how much they hated it, thought it exploitative and totally unfair, Southerners could not argue any of this was illegal or in any way violated the compact between the states. What did actually violate the compact was the Northern states violations of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution. So naturally, they cited that. When offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment - but no relief from the absolutely crushing tariffs to be imposed - the original 7 seceding states said No.

BroJoeK: Again, you're just lying.

Again, no. You are lying. I provided the link which said exactly that.

BroJoek: The truth is that all of those states, plus the entirety of the Old Northwest Territories had begun to abolish slavery before the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

The truth is they had not abolished slavery by 1787 with the lone exception of Massachusetts....though Massachusetts was more than happy to keep trading in slaves. They just didn't want any brought back to their territory.

BroJoeK: 1777 Vermont 1780 Pennsylvania 1783 Massachusetts 1783 New Hampshire 1784 Conncecticut 1784 Rhode Island

None of them had abolished slavery by those dates except Massachusetts - see above.

BroJoeK: So, bottom line: your repeated claims -- that our Founders didn't care about slavery and weren't working to abolish it -- those claims are simply untrue.

Here you're making a strawman argument. I never said the Founding Fathers "didn't care" about slavery. I said it wasn't nearly as big of a deal and was something that could be compromised over and which they thought would die out on its own - which they were undoubtedly right about. Just look at everywhere else in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, the European colonial Empires around the world, etc. It did died out in the 19th century in all those places.

The Founding Fathers were working to limit it. That's all. They didn't try to abolish it. They didn't believe they needed to try to do so.

FLT-bird: "No.
As a result of Lincoln's election and the certainty that the Morrill Tariff would pass, the states of the Deep South decided to leave.
Then the North offered slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment.
Then the original 7 seceding states turned it down.
Then Lincoln decided to start a war to prevent his cash cows from leaving.
Then the states of the Upper South seceded."

OK, one more time, let's review:

Southern Democrat Fire Eaters
weren't worried about tariffs!!

F-B: "As a result of Lincoln's election and the certainty that the Morrill Tariff would pass, the states of the Deep South decided to leave."
Lincoln's election was certainly the trigger, but the Morrill Tariff had nothing to do with it, for at least these reasons:
- US tariff rates were historically 100% negotiable "politics as usual", with relatively minor adjustments having never caused threats of secession, nor did they in 1860.
- The original Morrill proposal was defeated in Congress in 1860 and could again be defeated, or watered down enough to become acceptable, even in 1861.
- The original Morrill proposal simply returned then record-low tariffs to levels previously approved by Southern Democrats in the 1846 Walker Tariff
  Here are examples (Source: Hays Importer Guides, Hunts Merchant Magazine 44, no. 4 (April 1861), The Shipping and Commerical List and New York Price Current, 47-48 (January 2, 1861-July30 1862) ):
  Comparing US tariff rates in 1846, 1857 and 1860 Morrill proposed:
  Commodity 1846 Tariff 1857 Tariff Morrill
  Cotton 25 19 25
  Brown Sugar 30% 24% 26%
  Tobacco 40 30 25
  Woolens 30% 24% 37%
  Coal 30% 24% 18%
  Iron pig 30 24 29
  Iron mfg 30 24 30
  Wines 40 30 40
  Average tariffs: 30% 24% 29%
- During the election campaign of 1860, no Southerner threatened secession if Morrill passed and, after the November election, no "Reasons for Secession" document named the Morrill Tariff as a cause of secession.
However, during the campaign, many Southern Fire Eaters did threaten secession over slavery if Lincoln's "Black Republicans" were elected.
After the November election, every "Reasons for Secession" document listed slavery as a major reason, some (i.e., Mississippi) as their only reason.
F-B: "Then the North offered slavery effectively forever by express constitutional amendment.
Then the original 7 seceding states turned it down."
Noooo... there was no "offer" in December 1860, when it might have mattered, and so nothing could be "turned down".
Instead, in December 1860 Kentucky Sen. John Crittenden worked closely with Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis (future CSA Pres.) and Georgia Sen. Robert Tombs (future CSA Sec. of State) to develop the "Crittenden Compromise" proposals, which Davis and Tombs believed could prevent further secessions, including Davis's state of Mississippi (which did secede on January 9) and Tombs's state of Georgia (seceded January 19).
Crittenden's Compromise took elements from Sen. Davis's February 9, 1860 proposals, along with others to recommend six new amendments and four new laws, all intended to protect slavery and prevent states other than South Carolina from declaring secession.
Crittenden's Compromise was presented to Congress on December 18, 1860 and was defeated by Republicans on December 31, 1860.
Nine days later -- January 9, 1861 -- Sen. Davis's Mississippi declared secession, and why? Over the Morrill Tariff?
No, that's foolish -- Mississippians were not in the least ashamed to explain their own reasons:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory..."
So, any suggestions that Southerners' overwhelming concerns to protect slavery, even if that required secession, any suggestions these were merely a ruse and smokescreen to hide their true motives, which concerned very minor and 100% negotiable returns to previously approved 1846 Walker Tariff rates, such suggestions are pure 100% unadulterated anti-historical nonsense.
F-B: "Then Lincoln decided to start a war to prevent his cash cows from leaving.
Then the states of the Upper South seceded."
In fact, Civil War began with CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis ordering a military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, Davis's order coming precisely because he knew that would cause states of the Upper South to secede.

Commodity	1846 Tariff	1857 Tariff	Morrill
Cotton	25	19	25
Brown Sugar	30%	24%	26%
Tobacco	40	30	25
Woolens	30%	24%	37%
Coal	30%	24%	18%
Iron pig	30	24	29
Iron mfg	30	24	30
Wines	40	30	40
Average tariffs:	30%	24%	29%

FLT-bird re Dred Scott: "Contrary to your BS, the matter was already decided.
The Supreme Court had already ruled.
Temper tantrums by lower courts were null and void."

Here might be a good time to remember Pres. Jackson's response to the SCOTUS 1832 Worcester v. Georgia ruling:

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

Likewise, Crazy Roger's Dred Scott ravings caused huge outrage in the North, and some gloating in the South, but no actual laws were changed as a result.
Instead, proposals were made in Congress -- i.e., Sen. Davis's proposals of February 2, 1860 -- and in national election party platforms, notably Southern Democrats (Breckenridge) in 1860.

Crazy Roger Taney did not settle the issues with his Dred Scott ravings, but he did start the political processes working to impose them in US laws.

FLT-bird re the CSA constitution's "right of sojourn": "It just expressly spelled out in the Constitution what was already settled law in the US."

Crazy Roger's 1857 Dred Scott rantings notwithstanding, an alleged slaveholder's "right of sojourn" with slaves into free states and territories was still the opposite of "settled law".
But Southerners like Mississippi's Democrat Sen. Jefferson Davis and Georgia's Democrat Sen. Robert Tombs were working hard to make it settled.

In December 1860 their work resulted in the Crittenden Compromise proposals, which Senate Republicans defeated on December 31, 1861, causing Mississippi, Georgia and other Deep South states to immediately secede.

FLT-bird: "I've never said they did not accept the idea of the Corwin Amendment in the Confederate Constitution.
I said they did not accept the Corwin Amendment offered by the North in exchange for giving up their independence."

So, you do agree that Corwin was a great idea from the Southern perspective and that's why Confederates copied and pasted it into their 1861 Montgomery CSA constitution?
You may also agree that Corwin helped keep Border Slave States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware in the Union, even after the Battle of Fort Sumter, right?

And I think we can agree that Corwin was not a strong enough incentive to keep Upper South states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennesse and Arkansas in the Union after Fort Sumter, right?

Plus, obviously, Corwin had no effect on proceedings in Montgomery, Alabama in February and March of 1861, other than likely encouraging the CSA's Constitutional Convention to add their version of Corwin, plus additional protections for slavery that Republicans had rejected in December 1860, when it might have mattered, do we agree?

So, what exactly do we disagree on here?

FLT-bird: "The fact remains that the Corwin Amendment came out before the Confederate Constitution AND the original 7 seceding states rejected it in exchange for giving up their independence when offered it by the North."

No, and we've covered this already, because:

There were not one but two CSA constitutions, both basically "cut and paste" versions of the 1787 US Constitution, with relatively minor modifications.
The first provisional constitution took just three days to write, from February 5 to 8, 1861.
The second permanent constitution took 12 days to add some minor items such as Crittenden and Corwin-like protections for slavery -- from February 28 to March 11, 1861.
Whether by coincidence or cooperation, February 28 was also the date for Corwin's introduction in the US Congress, which then hurried to pass it in time for Democrat Pres. Buchanan's signature on March 4.
So, by the time of Lincoln's alleged "offer" to seceded states of Corwin, beginning with his letter of transmittal on March 16, Corwin-like language was already firmly installed in the brand-new CSA Montgomery constitution.
So there was no action Confederate states needed to take regarding Corwin.

FLT-bird: "Nah.
They turned it down because slavery was not their main concern.
Their real concern was gaining their independence so they'd be free of the grasp of imperial Washington and so they could set their own economic policy for their own benefit rather than be taxed for others' benefit."

Of course that's right, once the slavery issued was firmly dealt with, via Corwin-like language in their new CSA constitution, then everything else normal to governing a country became more immediate and pressing.

But, first and foremost, as spelled out in their earliest "Reasons for Secession" documents, Confederates had to deal with the "Black Republicans" threats against slavery.

Here are all of those original "Reasons for Secession" documents analyzed for what was most important:

"Reasons for Secession" Documents before Fort Sumter -- % of words devoted to each reason*

Reasons for Secession	S. Carolina	Mississippi	Georgia	Texas	Rbt. Rhett	A. Stephens	AVERAGE OF 6
Historical context	41%	20%	23%	21%	20%	20%	24%
Slavery	20%	73%	56%	54%	35%	50%	48%
States' Rights	37%	3%	4%	15%	15%	10%	14%
Lincoln's election	2%	4%	4%	4%	5%	0%	3%
Economic issues**	0	0	15%	0%	25%	20%	10%
Military protection	0	0	0	6%	0%	0%	1%

* Alabama listed only slavery in its "whereas" reasons for secession.
** Economic issues include tariffs, "fishing smacks" and other alleged favoritism to Northerners in Federal spending.

FLT-bird on Dred Scott and a "right of sojourn": "Nope.
That is pure fiction.
Firstly, Taney did not decide the case himself.
The entire SCOTUS decided the case.
The ruling was that a slave owner had the right of transit with his property and could not be excluded from the territories.
Nowhere in the ruling did it say that states that had abolished slavery or which did not have slavery must now accept slavery if somebody brought their slaves in from out of state.
That's just your insane little fantasy."

Sadly, there's a lot of fantasy in your own words here:

F-B: "Firstly, Taney did not decide the case himself.
The entire SCOTUS decided the case."
There are many legal terms involved here, but let's stick to the five(+) basic words:
1. "Opinion" or "decision" refers to the entire document, in Dred Scott's case it ran to some 248 pages which included:
2. "Ruling" or "holding" refers to the court's decisions and outcome of the case, which set precedents lower courts must follow.
3. "Judicial Dicta" and "Obiter Dicta" refer to judicial explanations which may also have the force of precedent, depending on circumstances.
  In the Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion -- rulings and dicta -- took 48 pages.
4. "Concurrences" -- five of the six Democrat concurrences also wrote their own opinions on how they arrived at the same rulings as Chief Justice Taney.
5. "Dissents" -- both Republican dissenters wrote their own opinions.
  All told, the Dred Scott concurrences and dissents ran to roughly 200 pages.
Crazy Roger's majority opinion rulings included:
- Dred Scott, a slave who had resided in a free state and territory, was not thereby entitled to his freedom.
- African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States.
- The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional.

Direct quotes from Crazy Roger himself include:

"We think ... that they [black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.
On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."
— Dred Scott, 60 U.S. at 404–05."

Crazy Roger "then extensively reviewed laws from the original American states that involved the status of black Americans at the time of the Constitution's drafting in 1787".[17]
Crazy "concluded that these laws showed that a

'perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery'.[42]

Crazy Roger "therefore ruled that black people were not American citizens and could not sue as citizens in federal courts.[17]
This meant that U.S. states lacked the power to alter the legal status of black people by granting them state citizenship:[40]"

'It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted.
... They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.'
— Dred Scott, 60 U.S. at 407."

"This holding normally would have ended the decision, since it disposed of Dred Scott's case, but Taney did not confine his ruling to the matter immediately before the Court.[17]
He went on to assess the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise itself, writing that the Compromise's legal provisions intended to free slaves who were living north of the 36°N 30' latitude line in the western territories.
In the Court's judgment, this constituted the government depriving owners of slave property without due process of law, which is forbidden under the Fifth Amendment.[43]
Taney also reasoned that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights implicitly precluded any possibility of constitutional rights for black African slaves and their descendants.[40]"

"Now, ... the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.
... Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the [36°N 30' latitude] line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void...."
— Dred Scott, 60 U.S. at 451–52."

I'd say, if this is not stark raving Democrat insanity, then there is no such thing.

FLT-bird: "Dred Scott's lawyers argued that because he had resided in Wisconsin and Illinois he therefore should be emancipated but he was a resident of Missouri at the time where slavery was legal.
Had he still been an Illinois or Wisconsin resident, THAT would be a different set of facts and almost certainly a different ruling by the SCOTUS."

Obviously, living six years in the free state of Illinois made Dred Scott an Illinois resident, not Missouri.
Then four more years in the free territory of Wisconsin made Scott a Wisconsin resident, not Missouri.
However, the issue of Scott's residency is bogus, and a red herring anyway, since it had nothing to do with Crazy Roger's insane Dred Scott rulings.
Crazy Roger didn't give a d*mn about Dred Scott's state of residency, Crazy only cared about one thing -- Scott was an African slave and therefore could only ever be "property", never a full US citizen.

Truly, my term "Crazy Roger" is far too mild and respectful for such an obvious raving lunatic.
And people who defend such lunacies are beyond the reach of words to describe.

FLT-bird: "The way the SCOTUS ruled in this case is consistent with many other cases in which there is a similar fact pattern."

Sorry, but that is just fact-free Lost Cause propaganda, because Crazy Roger's ruling had nothing to do with Dred Scott's residency or lack of residency.
Rather, Crazy's ruling was 100% based on Dred Scott's race and origin as an African slave.

FLT-bird: "Nope.
You didn't understand the ruling.
They ruled that since he was in Missouri where slavery was legal, he couldn't make his case that he should be free. Obviously he should have sued when a resident of Wisconsin or Illinois.
The Supreme Court did rule that Blacks could not be citizens.
That was a majority opinion in most of the country at the time including in Illinois and Wisconsin."

I'm sorry, but again, you've been reading Lost Cause propaganda and it has rotted your brain, you must stop that.
Here is the truth of it, in a brief nutshell:

"In essence, Taney’s opinion was that the status of slavery followed a person, regardless of their location, and that living in a free state or territory did not grant a slave freedom."

This is also the "logic" behind Crazy Roger's voiding the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

FLT-bird: "What I grasp is that you not only don't know history, you also don't know the law and furthermore, you are incapable of discussing this without grade school level namecalling of anybody you disagree with."

Obviously, you are here looking in a mirror and pointing at yourself, since your understanding of Dred Scott is totally distorted to meet the needs of pro-Confederate Lost Cause propaganda.

FLT-bird: "The truth is you don't know what the hell you're talking about - as usual.
The ruling of the SCOTUS did not "remove all limitations on the lengths of time slaveholders could remain in free states"."

This is it!! This is your problem -- you've been reading a pack of lies and so totally misunderstand what Dred Scott was all about.
FRiend, there is just no way to help you understand until you give up on those G.D. lies.

FLT-bird: "And yet, 3 of the 4 states that issued declarations of causes for secession talked extensively about tariffs (general not just the current one working its way through congress at the time)"

Not one mentioned the proposed Morrill Tariff, which at that time simply returned rates to their levels of the 1846 Walker Tariffs approved under a Southern Democrat Congress and signed by Southern Democrat Pres. Polk.

In 1860 tariffs were a political annoyance, invisible to over 90% of Southern citizens, and to be hammered out and compromised on in Congress, as always.

In 1860 slavery was the vital issue that every Southern Fire Eater and many normal Southern citizens believed was worth secession and war to defend.

"Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
And the war came."
A. Lincoln, March 4, 1865

BROJOEK: Then the states of the Upper South seceded." OK, one more time, let's review: Southern Democrat Fire Eaters weren't worried about tariffs!!

OK let's review.

Most Southerners who did not own slaves were FAR more concerned about tariffs than they were about slaves!!!!

BroJoeK: Lincoln's election was certainly the trigger, but the Morrill Tariff had nothing to do with it, for at least these reasons:

But it did.

BroJoeK: US tariff rates were historically 100% negotiable "politics as usual", with relatively minor adjustments having never caused threats of secession, nor did they in 1860.

This is just false. Yeah they were negotiable and were part of politics but one region had a significantly larger population and thus was able to push through tariff rates that even at their lowest were still much higher than the other region would have preferred they be at their very highest. The Tariff of Abominations had already caused massive economic harm in the Southern states and had provoked the Nullification Crisis - then the most serious internal power struggle in the nation's history. A generation later, the same northern corporate interests were on the verge of pushing through a tariff that would have reproduced the Tariff of Abominations.

Though Tariffs were part of normal politics, they had been the source of absolutely bitter political fights for over a generation by 1860.

BroJoeK: The original Morrill proposal was defeated in Congress in 1860 and could again be defeated, or watered down enough to become acceptable, even in 1861. The original Morrill proposal simply returned then record-low tariffs to levels previously approved by Southern Democrats in the 1846 Walker Tariff

The Morrill tariff would immediately DOUBLE tariff rates. So much for being "watered down". This passed the House in the May of 1860 and was certain to pass the Senate - as everybody well knew. All that was needed was the usual log rolling to pick off one or two senators and it would pass. Lincoln vigorously lobbied for the bill, telling a Pittsburgh, Pa. audience two weeks before his inauguration that no other issue — none — was more important. The "record low" Walker Tariff was 16%. In the Confederate Constitution the maximum tariff allowed was a revenue tariff which was universally understood to mean no more than 10%. So even this "record low" tariff was still significantly higher than the Southern states wanted.

BroJoeK: During the election campaign of 1860, no Southerner threatened secession if Morrill passed and, after the November election, no "Reasons for Secession" document named the Morrill Tariff as a cause of secession.

"Robert Barnwell Rhett similarly railed against the then-pending Morrill Tariff before the South Carolina convention. Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860 to accompany its secession ordinance."

"On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South." Anti-tariff sentiments also appeared in Georgia's Secession Declaration of January 29, 1861:"

BroJoeK: However, during the campaign, many Southern Fire Eaters did threaten secession over slavery if Lincoln's "Black Republicans" were elected. After the November election, every "Reasons for Secession" document listed slavery as a major reason, some (i.e., Mississippi) as their only reason.

As we've gone over before, violation of the compact over slavery was something the Southern states COULD legitimately claim. The Northern states really had violated the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution. The Tariffs and federal expenditures - no matter how unfair they were and no matter how much Southerners hated them - were not unconstitutional.

Oh, lest we forget, here are the two largest newspapers in the then original 7 seceding states

"The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism." Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty to seventy millions of 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. They, the North, are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it. These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

BroJoeK: Noooo... there was no "offer" in December 1860, when it might have mattered, and so nothing could be "turned down".,/p>

Yessssssss. There was quite clearly an Offer. That was the whole point of the Corwin Amendment. We give you this and in exchange you don't leave. The original 7 seceding states turned it down.

BroJoeK: Crittenden's Compromise was presented to Congress on December 18, 1860 and was defeated by Republicans on December 31, 1860. Nine days later -- January 9, 1861 -- Sen. Davis's Mississippi declared secession, and why? Over the Morrill Tariff? No, that's foolish -- Mississippians were not in the least ashamed to explain their own reasons: So, any suggestions that Southerners' overwhelming concerns to protect slavery, even if that required secession, any suggestions these were merely a ruse and smokescreen to hide their true motives, which concerned very minor and 100% negotiable returns to previously approved 1846 Walker Tariff rates, such suggestions are pure 100% unadulterated anti-historical nonsense.

Firstly, Mississippi was the ONLY state which issued declarations of causes that only discussed slavery. Secondly, slavery simply was not threatened in the US. Lest anybody think it was, Lincoln assured one and all that it was not, that the federal government had no power to abolish it. Furthermore, there was extremely little support for abolishing it even in the Northern states. Abolitionists routinely got trounced whenever they ran for office being unable to muster more than single digit percentages of the vote.

As we have previously discussed, strife over the tariff was anything but minor, and for the minority section of the country was not negotiable since they no longer had sufficient votes in Congress to prevent ruinous tariffs from being imposed on them. Several people in the North saw what was really happening:

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review (Boston October 1862)

On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."

But they were not alone of course. This is from Rhett's address attached to and sent out along with South Carolina's Declaration of Causes:

"The Southern States, now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern States, that the Colonies did towards Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British parliament. "The General Welfare," is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation, this "General Welfare" requires. Thus, the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government; and the people of the Southern State, are compelled to meet the very despotism, their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776."

"And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures."

So as we can see, any claim that the Tariff was not a big deal, that it was negotiable, that the continuance of slavery was the "real" concern, that the tariff did not in fact concern vastly more Southerners than slavery did is just pure 100% antihistorical propaganda and lies.

BroJoeK: In fact, Civil War began with CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis ordering a military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, Davis's order coming precisely because he knew that would cause states of the Upper South to secede.

The fact is that the War for Southern Independence began with President Lincoln ordering a heavily armed fleet to invade South Carolina's sovereign territory. War was the objective as his letter to his naval commander congratulating him on getting a war started amply demonstrates:

" , May 1st, 1861. Washington Capt. G.V. Fox: My Dear Sir, I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground ; while, by an accident, for which you were in nowise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent, was, you were deprived of a war-vessel, with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprise.

I most cheerfully and truthfully declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort have greatly heightened you in my estimation. For a daring and dangerous enterprise of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man of all my acquaintances whom I would select. You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. Very truly your friend, A. LINCOLN."

BroJoeK: Here might be a good time to remember Pres. Jackson's response to the SCOTUS 1832 Worcester v. Georgia ruling: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

So you're arguing then that the President is free to ignore Supreme Court rulings or that the Supreme Court does not have the power of Judicial Review?

Likewise, Crazy Roger's Dred Scott ravings caused huge outrage in the North, and some gloating in the South, but no actual laws were changed as a result. Crazy Roger Taney did not settle the issues with his Dred Scott ravings, but he did start the political processes working to impose them in US laws.

The fact is that your childish namecalling aside, the SCOTUS issued their ruling and the SCOTUS does have the power of Judicial Review. Their ruling was the law of the land - no matter how much you don't like it or anybody at the time didn't like it.

Crazy Roger's 1857 Dred Scott rantings notwithstanding, an alleged slaveholder's "right of sojourn" with slaves into free states and territories was still the opposite of "settled law".

Your little childish temper tantrum aside, the ruling of the SCOTUS was settled law.

BroJoeK: In December 1860 their work resulted in the Crittenden Compromise proposals, which Senate Republicans defeated on December 31, 1861, causing Mississippi, Georgia and other Deep South states to immediately secede.

You've brought up the Crittenden Compromise several times. Here are the relevant facts:

"Crittenden had consulted with colleagues North and South before offering his broad scheme, and had received hopeful assurance of support. . . . (No, it was not just Davis and Toombs as you've been claiming)

"That Crittenden's scheme had wide and enthusiastic public support there could be no question. John A. Dix, Edward Everett, and Robert Winthrop no sooner saw it than they wrote approbatory [approving] letters. Martin Van Buren declared that the amendments [proposed in Crittenden's plan] would certainly be ratified by three-fourths of the States. The Senator received hundreds of assurances from all over the North and the border States that his policy had reached the popular heart. It took time to hold meetings and get memorials signed, but before long resolutions and petitions were pouring in upon Congress. In New York City, sixty-three thousand people signed an endorsement of the plan; another document bore the names of fourteen thousand women, scattered from North Carolina to Vermont. From St. Louis came nearly a hundred foolscap pages of names, wrapped in the American flag. Greeley [an influential New York newspaper editor and owner], who had as good opportunities for knowing public sentiment as any man in the country, later wrote that supporters of the Crittenden Compromise could claim with good reason that a large majority of people favored it. . . .

"The first committee vote on the Crittenden Compromise was taken in Seward's absence, and the proposal was defeated by the Republican majority. In a discussion of nearly seven hours, Douglas, Bigler, and Crittenden supported the plan. Hunter, Toombs, and Davis, speaking for Southern Democrats, declared they would accept it if the Republicans gave sincere assent, but not otherwise. On the vital point, the reestablishment of the Missouri Compromise line, [Republicans] Collamer, Doolittle, Grimes, and Wade all voted no. Thereupon Toombs and Davis cast negative votes, and the resolution failed six to six. Returning to the sessions on December 24, Seward [who was also a Republican] recorded a negative vote. Four days later, the committee reported to the Senate that it could reach no conclusion.

"In rejecting the Crittenden Compromise, the Republicans had taken what history later proved to have been a fearful responsibility. . . . Some Republicans, after war came, made an effort to divest themselves of the burden by contending that the true blame for the rejection fell upon Davis and Toombs, whose votes in the affirmative would have carried the compromise eight to four--or with Seward voting, eight to five. (Even then the measure would have died under the rule requiring a majority of both parties.) Edward Everett argued that the supposed willingness of Davis and Toombs to support the compromise was purely illusory, and that if the Republicans had come out for it, the two would have gone over to the opposition. But we have unimpeachable evidence that the pair were sincere, and much additional evidence that, as Breckinridge told the Senate, 'the leading statesmen of the lower Southern States were willing to accept the terms of settlement' proposed. . . .

It was the Republicans who were unwilling to compromise. What Davis and Toombs said was that they were perfectly willing to support reinstating the Missouri Compromise.

BroJoeK: So, you do agree that Corwin was a great idea from the Southern perspective and that's why Confederates copied and pasted it into their 1861 Montgomery CSA constitution?

I think they and Lincoln and everyone else thought abolishing slavery was not a power the federal government had, but spelling it out explicitly would be a good idea. The imposed the same explicit limit on the power of the Confederate Government.

BroJoeK: You may also agree that Corwin helped keep Border Slave States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware in the Union, even after the Battle of Fort Sumter, right?

Possibly. How much is difficult to say and those states were divided. Missouri and Kentucky were claimed by some political leaders of each state to have seceded. The Confederate government accepted the secession of both. IMO, the case for Missouri is strong. They probably really did secede. The case for saying Kentucky seceded is dubious. Regardless, those states were very divided. The Federal government knew better than to actually use most of the troops raised from each state. They mostly were just asked to guard their own home states.

And I think we can agree that Corwin was not a strong enough incentive to keep Upper South states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennesse and Arkansas in the Union after Fort Sumter, right?

No, it wasn't. Those states left because they believed every state had the right to unilaterally secede - as Virginia had stated explicitly at the time that it ratified the US Constitution:

"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the general assembly, and now met in convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, Do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will...."

And that to try to impose the rule of the federal government over sovereign states which did not consent to that rule was tyranny plain and simple. When ordered to assist in attacking the original 7 seceding states, they then seceded. They were obviously seceding over the constitutional issue.

BroJoeK: Plus, obviously, Corwin had no effect on proceedings in Montgomery, Alabama in February and March of 1861, other than likely encouraging the CSA's Constitutional Convention to add their version of Corwin, plus additional protections for slavery that Republicans had rejected in December 1860, when it might have mattered, do we agree?

I'll agree with that. The drafters of the Confederate Constitution as well as the Confederate government as well as the original 7 seceding states were set on Independence. Protection of slavery was obviously not their main concern - as indeed slavery had not been threatened in the US anyway.

So, what exactly do we disagree on here?

Nothing that I can see. Just that neither the original 7 seceding states nor the Upper South States were motivated by any offers for the protection of slavery (which was not threatened anyway).

BroJoeK: No, and we've covered this already, because: So, by the time of Lincoln's alleged "offer" to seceded states of Corwin, beginning with his letter of transmittal on March 16, Corwin-like language was already firmly installed in the brand-new CSA Montgomery constitution. So there was no action Confederate states needed to take regarding Corwin.

There was no action the original 7 seceding states needed to take regarding Lincoln's very clear offer of express constitutional protection of slavery effectively forever in his inaugural address because as we have already discussed, slavery was not the real reason the states of the Deep South seceded, and slavery was not threatened in the US in any event. Indeed the ONLY threat to the continued existence of slavery would come from war. The 7 original seceding states could have protected slavery by staying in the US or by accepting the Corwin amendment. They chose the only course of action that could result in its ending.

Of course, it could have been dealt with by simply remaining in the Union OR by accepting the Corwin Amendment and giving up their Independence.

BroJoeK: But, first and foremost, as spelled out in their earliest "Reasons for Secession" documents, Confederates had to deal with the "Black Republicans" threats against slavery.

Nah. That was just the excuse they were looking for to get out. This provided them with the convenient pretext they were looking for. Once out of the US, they would be free to set their own economic policy and they knew they would have a LOT more money as a result.

Here are all of those original "Reasons for Secession" documents analyzed for what was most important:

pre·text /ˈprēˌtekst/ noun a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason.

BroJoeK: Sadly, there's a lot of fantasy in your own words here:

Nope. My interpretation is accurate. Nowhere did the SCOTUS rule that a slave owner can take his slave into a state did not allow slavery and permanently reside there, engage in business enterprises with his slaves there, etc. Dred Scott and his backers should have sued when he was still a resident in Illinois or Wisconsin.

"Opinion" or "decision" refers to the entire document, in Dred Scott's case it ran to some 248 pages which included: "Ruling" or "holding" refers to the court's decisions and outcome of the case, which set precedents lower courts must follow. "Judicial Dicta" and "Obiter Dicta" refer to judicial explanations which may also have the force of precedent, depending on circumstances. In the Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion -- rulings and dicta -- took 48 pages. "Concurrences" -- five of the six Democrat concurrences also wrote their own opinions on how they arrived at the same rulings as Chief Justice Taney. "Dissents" -- both Republican dissenters wrote their own opinions. All told, the Dred Scott concurrences and dissents ran to roughly 200 pages. Crazy Roger's majority opinion rulings included: blah blah blah I'd say, if this is not stark raving Democrat insanity, then there is no such thing.

So we have determined that I was right and Taney did not rule all by himself. This was in fact that majority opinion of the SCOTUS.

At the time Blacks were not considered to be citizens. Nor were Indians. That was the overwhelming majority opinion North and South at that time no matter how much we may disagree with it today. So no, it was not "stark raving Democrat insanity". It was the overwhelming majority view - and among Republicans too.

Look what this guy said:

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Abraham Lincoln

"Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” Abraham Lincoln

"I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal. . . We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.” -Abraham Lincoln

“anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)

"Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man." Abraham Lincoln

"There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ..." Abraham Lincoln

Again, these were OVERWHELMING MAJORITY views at the time - and not just American either. Welcome to the mid 19th century.

BroJoeK: Obviously, living six years in the free state of Illinois made Dred Scott an Illinois resident, not Missouri. Then four more years in the free territory of Wisconsin made Scott a Wisconsin resident, not Missouri. However, the issue of Scott's residency is bogus, and a red herring anyway, since it had nothing to do with Crazy Roger's insane Dred Scott rulings. Crazy Roger didn't give a d*mn about Dred Scott's state of residency, Crazy only cared about one thing -- Scott was an African slave and therefore could only ever be "property", never a full US citizen.

No, the state of his residency at the time was directly relevant. Oh, and it was the majority opinion of the SCOTUS, not just Taney. Oh, and these were the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY VIEWS of the time. You don't have to like it but the fact that the overwhelming majority felt that way is something anybody who seeks to actually understand history must recognize.

BroJoeK: Truly, my term "Crazy Roger" is far too mild and respectful for such an obvious raving lunatic. And people who defend such lunacies are beyond the reach of words to describe.

Lincoln expressed views that were right there alongside Taneys. So did everybody else who had any kind of public influence at the time.

BroJoeK: Sorry, but that is just fact-free Lost Cause propaganda, because Crazy Roger's ruling had nothing to do with Dred Scott's residency or lack of residency. Rather, Crazy's ruling was 100% based on Dred Scott's race and origin as an African slave.

sorry but that is fact free PC Revisionist propaganda. Its also obvious you have no legal education. Taney's clearly racist views were the views of the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY at the time. "the past is a foreign country".

BroJoeK: I'm sorry, but again, you've been reading Lost Cause propaganda and it has rotted your brain, you must stop that. Here is the truth of it, in a brief nutshell: "In essence, Taney’s opinion was that the status of slavery followed a person, regardless of their location, and that living in a free state or territory did not grant a slave freedom." This is also the "logic" behind Crazy Roger's voiding the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

I'm sorry but you're engaging in Presentism which anybody who is remotely serious about history learns right from the start is the thing he should not do. People who lived back then do not share our views. Their morality was quite different from ours. They would disapprove of much of our views today every bit as much as we disapprove of theirs. The undeniable fact is that the overwhelming majority of the people who lived back then thought Blacks were inferior, and that they could not be citizens.

Oh, and you're just wrong about your legal interpretation as your are about everything else. That was not the essence of the ruling. The ruling was that a slave owner could transit with his slaves, not that he could keep slaves in non slave states indefinitely. As I said, its obvious you don't have a JD.

BroJoeK: Obviously, you are here looking in a mirror and pointing at yourself, since your understanding of Dred Scott is totally distorted to meet the needs of pro-Confederate Lost Cause propaganda.

Obviously not. Look around and see if legal experts say the essence of the Dred Scott Ruling was that slave owners could bring their slaves anywhere - including non slave owning states - and permanently reside there. Try reading something somewhere other than PC Revisionist dogma - for once.

BroJoeK: This is it!! This is your problem -- you've been reading a pack of lies and so totally misunderstand what Dred Scott was all about. FRiend, there is just no way to help you understand until you give up on those G.D. lies.

LOL! You've really lost all touch with reality haven't you? Do try to get some kind of legal education somewhere so you can hopefully stop embarrassing yourself here.

BroJoeK: Not one mentioned the proposed Morrill Tariff, which at that time simply returned rates to their levels of the 1846 Walker Tariffs approved under a Southern Democrat Congress and signed by Southern Democrat Pres. Polk. In 1860 tariffs were a political annoyance, invisible to over 90% of Southern citizens, and to be hammered out and compromised on in Congress, as always.

this is simply lies and BS.

Robert Barnwell Rhett similarly railed against the then-pending Morrill Tariff before the South Carolina convention. Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860 to accompany its secession ordinance.

Robert Barnwell Rhett, who served in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, said in 1850: "The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives." Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence.

"The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city."

James H. Hammond likewise stated in 1858, "I have no hesitation in saying that the Plantation States should discard any government that makes a protective tariff its policy."

"Next to the demands for safety and equality, the secessionist leaders emphasized familiar economic complaints. South Carolinians in particular were convinced of the general truth of Rhett's and Hammond's much publicized figures upon Southern tribute to Northern interests." (Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Ordeal of the Union, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, p. 332)

On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." The tariff legislation, he argued, was the product of a coalition between abolitionists and protectionists in which "the free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists." Toombs described this coalition as "the robber and the incendiary... united in joint raid against the South." Anti-tariff sentiments also appeared in Georgia's Secession Declaration of January 29, 1861:

BroJoeK: In 1860 slavery was the vital issue that every Southern Fire Eater and many normal Southern citizens believed was worth secession and war to defend.

FRiend, I can't help you if you are going to continue to cling to the GD Leftist Lies like this. The vast vast vast majority of White Southerners did not own so much as a single slave. The Tariffs, the loss of sales abroad and the higher prices for manufactured goods touched all their pockets.

BroJoeK: "Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came." A. Lincoln, March 4, 1865

Typical pack of Lincoln lies. The nation would have survived just fine without the original 7 seceding states. It would have simply been smaller. Wisconsin was free to associate with Vermont or any other state just as it pleased. So were all the other states. What Lincoln means is that if states were allowed to leave in peace, the centralized rapacious federal Leviathan he wanted to erect in Washington would not be able to control everything.

FLT-bird: "Most Southerners who did not own slaves were FAR more concerned about tariffs than they were about slaves!!!!"

That is a total Lost Cause lie, and here's why:

First, how many slaveholders were there?
In 1860, 15 slaveholding states with roughly 8 million whites (plus 4 million slaves), about half were males and half of those adults (the median age in 1860 was 19), of whom about half were relatively prosperous -- so, in 1860 the entire South included about one million prosperous adult white men.
According to the 1860 census, ~400,000 were slaveholders, meaning circa 40% of prosperous white men.
But slaveholders and slaves were far from evenly distributed over the South, about half of all slaveholders lived in the seven Deep South states, meaning, of ~300,000 prosperous adult white men in the Deep South, nearly 200,000 owned slaves.
Further, everybody in those days had very large families and communities of close friends -- meaning everyone was closely related or associated with slaveholders.
So, nearly anyone who didn't themselves hold slaves was closely related to others who did.
That meant only in relatively "backward" regions -- i.e., Appalachia, northern Alabama, central & northern Texas -- where few or no slaves were held, could communities be found to actually oppose slavery, secession and civil war against "the North".
Slaveholders in the Confederate Army:
"Historian Joseph Glatthaar’s statistical analysis of the 1861 volunteers in what would become the Army of Northern Virginia reveals that one in 10 owned a slave and that one in four lived with parents who were slave-owners.
Both exceeded ratios in the general population, in which one in 20 owned a slave and one in five lived in a slaveholding household.
“Thus,” Glatthaar notes, “volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population.”
In short, Confederate volunteers actually owned more slaves than the general population."
It's important to remember that these percentages varied widely among different regions of the South.
Historian James McPherson estimates 1/3 of Confederate soldiers came from slaveholding families, and doubtless that's true of some regions, not true of others.
How important were tariffs in the 1860 presidential election?
- The 1860 Southern Democrat Party (Breckenridge) platform said not one word about tariffs.
- The 1860 Northern Democrat Party (Douglas) platform said not one word about tariffs.
- The 1860 Constitutional Union Party (Bell) platform said not one word about tariffs.
- The 1860 Republican Party (Donald Trump) platform said this about tariffs:
  "12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imports as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges, which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence -- in other words, MAKE AMERICA GREAT and PUT AMERICANS FIRST -- DJT"
95% of Southerners never saw a tariff and never paid a tariff, so tariffs were irrelevant to their lives except in a vague sense of everybody grumbles about high prices.
But this was not a political issue in 1860, nor did any Southern politician threaten secession over tariffs.
Not a single 1860 or 1861 "Reasons for Secession" document mentioned the Morrill Tariff specifically, or even high tariffs generally as their reason for secession.

FLT-bird: "This is just false.
Yeah they were negotiable and were part of politics but one region had a significantly larger population and thus was able to push through tariff rates that even at their lowest were still much higher than the other region would have preferred they be at their very highest.
The Tariff of Abominations had already caused massive economic harm in the Southern states and had provoked the Nullification Crisis - then the most serious internal power struggle in the nation's history.
A generation later, the same northern corporate interests were on the verge of pushing through a tariff that would have reproduced the Tariff of Abominations.
Though Tariffs were part of normal politics, they had been the source of absolutely bitter political fights for over a generation by 1860."

Some of that is fake history, beginning here: the 1860 proposed Morrill Tariff did not restore 1828 Tariff of Abominations rates, but rather those of the much lower 1846 Walker Tariff.
These Walker rates had been approved by Southerners in 1846, were even commended in Georgia's "Reasons for Secession" document of January 1861, and as predicted at the time (1846), produced an economic boom throughout the country.

The problem in 1860 was (as always) Democrat government overspending, which doubled the national debt in just the four years of the Buchanan administration.
The Democrat government needed more revenues to pay its bills, and that was the origin of the Morrill Tariff.

After the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations", Congress reduced tariffs four different times:

1832 Tariff -- from >50% to ~40%
1833 Tariff -- from 40% to ~20%
1842 "Black Tariff" -- increased from 20% to 32%
1846 Walker Tariff -- from 32% to 25%
1857 Tariff -- from 25% to ~16%
1860 Proposed Morrill -- from 16% to ~26%

So, the entire Lost Causer claim that anything remotely resembling a majority of Southerners could be persuaded to declare secession and civil war against the United States over minor fluctuations in tariff rates is just absurd, ridiculous and 100% counter-factual.

FLT-bird: "The Morrill tariff would immediately DOUBLE tariff rates.
So much for being "watered down". "

No, Morrill didn't double average rates, but those did rise from the record low 1857 levels of ~16% to around the Tariff of 1846 rates -- 26% -- which were about half of 1828 "Tariff of Abomination" rates, over 50%.
Remember, Morrill was defeated in 1860 and only passed in 1861 because Southern Democrats walked out of Congress, thus letting Republicans call the shots on tariffs.
Had Democrats remained in Congress in 1861 they could have again defeated Morrill, or at least modified it more to their liking.

FLT-bird: "This passed the House in the May of 1860 and was certain to pass the Senate - as everybody well knew.
All that was needed was the usual log rolling to pick off one or two senators and it would pass. "

Morrill could not even pass the House in 1860, had Democrats remained solid in opposition, but they weren't -- a huge number even abstained from voting.
In the Senate, even in 1861, Morrill could only pass after Southern Democrats left Congress.

FLT-bird: "The "record low" Walker Tariff was 16%.
In the Confederate Constitution the maximum tariff allowed was a revenue tariff which was universally understood to mean no more than 10%.
So even this "record low" tariff was still significantly higher than the Southern states wanted."

First of all, the 1846 Walker Tariff reduced the "Black Tariff" of 1842 from 32% to 25%.
The Tariff of 1857 further reduced rates to ~16%, contributing to a doubling of the US national debt during the four years of the Buchanan administration.
That's why the Morrill Tariff was proposed to restore the old Walker Tariff rates of 1846.

Second, your 10% rate is pure fantasy that had never been achieved, was never even proposed, not even in the Confederate Congress.
Third, no politician in the 1860 election ever threatened to secede over tariffs -- that's a fact.

Finally, here are the average total tariff rates per presidential administration (source 1), (source 2):

Washington: 21% (Tariff of 1792)
John Adams: 24%
Jefferson 32%
Madison: 31%
Monroe: 35% (Tariff of 1816)
J.Q. Adams: 47% (Tariff of 1824)
Jackson (1): 48% ("Tariff of Abominations")
Jackson (2): 23% (Tariff of 1833)
Van Buren: 19%
Harrison/Tyler: 22% ("Black Tariff" effective 1844)
Polk: 26% (1846 Walker Tariff)
Taylor/Fillmore: 24%
Pierce: 26%
Buchanan: 17% (Tariff of 1857)
Lincoln (1): 25% (Morrill Tariff)
Lincoln/Johnson (2): 43%

FLT-bird quoting unnamed: "Robert Barnwell Rhett similarly railed against the then-pending Morrill Tariff before the South Carolina convention.
Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860 to accompany its secession ordinance."

In fact, Rhett did not mention the Morrill Tariff, in his Address to the Slaveholding States, and only spoke vaguely and falsely about tariffs -- by claiming that only Northerners supported them and only Southerners opposed them.
The truth is that both support for and opposition to protective tariffs was national and depended highly on how people made their livings.
The actual rates then were the results of complicated political negotiations and varied depending on elections.
In 1860 tariffs were the lowest they had been since the early years of Pres. Washington's administration.

And one fact which no Southern politician ever mentioned was that every Southern export -- cotton (25%), tobacco (40%), sugar (30%), rice, etc. -- was also highly protected by US import tariffs.

FLT-bird: "On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs gave a speech to the Georgia convention in which he denounced the "infamous Morrill bill." "

Sure, after the November election, when Toombs was campaigning for secession, and as a result, Georgia was the only state to mention tariffs in its "Reasons for Secession" document.
However, even Georgia did not mention the Morrill Tariff and, indeed, pointed to the Tariff of 1846 as their example of a "good tariff".
Ironically, it was the 1846 Tariff levels that Morrill was attempting to restore!!!

FLT-bird: "As we've gone over before, violation of the compact over slavery was something the Southern states COULD legitimately claim.
The Northern states really had violated the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution.
The Tariffs and federal expenditures - no matter how unfair they were and no matter how much Southerners hated them - were not unconstitutional."

Of course, I understand your point here, however, the Compromise of 1850 took responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave Laws away from states and made that a Federal authority.
In November 1860 there had been no complaints by Southerners against the Federal enforcement of Fugitive Slave Laws, nor could there be so long as Democrats were in charge, which they had been almost continuously since the election of 1800.

FLT-bird quoting: "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism."
Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election"

I agree with you that a very small number of South Carolina's richest globo-slaver elites had believed this ever since the Nullification Crisis of 1832.
However, there was no possible way that a handful of South Carolina's wealthiest citizens could convince millions of loyal Southern citizens to declare secession and war on the United States over something as minor as small adjustments in the tariff rates.
So, whatever the SC elites believed and wanted, the masses of Southern citizens had to be convinced that their vital interests -- their way of life, their "peculiar institutions" -- were being assaulted by "evil Northerners".

And that would require a massive campaign of propaganda, lies and deceptions the likes which this country had never seen before, and didn't see again until very recent years.

This is a good place to stop for now...

1860 political cartoon:

BroJoeK: That is a total Lost Cause lie,

Nope! its the reality. The denial of it is the lie.

BroJoeK: First, how many slaveholders were there? In 1860, 15 slaveholding states with roughly 8 million whites (plus 4 million slaves), about half were males and half of those adults (the median age in 1860 was 19), of whom about half were relatively prosperous -- so, in 1860 the entire South included about one million prosperous adult white men. According to the 1860 census, ~400,000 were slaveholders, meaning circa 40% of prosperous white men. But slaveholders and slaves were far from evenly distributed over the South, about half of all slaveholders lived in the seven Deep South states, meaning, of ~300,000 prosperous adult white men in the Deep South, nearly 200,000 owned slaves. Further, everybody in those days had very large families and communities of close friends -- meaning everyone was closely related or associated with slaveholders. So, nearly anyone who didn't themselves hold slaves was closely related to others who did.

Its true that the Wealthy owned a grossly disproportionate share of the slaves. Of that 5.63% of all White Southerners who owned slaves, half owned 5 or fewer. Meaning, about 2.8% owned a LOT of them. Of course, in those wealthy families which owned a lot of slaves, it was quite common for the husband to own slaves, the wife to have inherited slaves from her family (like Lee's Wife, Grant's Wife, etc), adult children would be given slaves (eg a childhood playmate they were close to, a personal servant, etc) so having multiple slave owners in one family was common for those wealthy families.

BroJoeK: That meant only in relatively "backward" regions -- i.e., Appalachia, northern Alabama, central & northern Texas -- where few or no slaves were held, could communities be found to actually oppose slavery, secession and civil war against "the North".

The percentage of White families which owned slaves was relatively small and this was more true in the Upper South where industrialization was more advanced and where for the most part the land was less suited to growing cash crops like cotton and tobacco.

BroJoeK: Slaveholders in the Confederate Army: "Historian Joseph Glatthaar’s statistical analysis of the 1861 volunteers in what would become the Army of Northern Virginia reveals that one in 10 owned a slave and that one in four lived with parents who were slave-owners. Both exceeded ratios in the general population, in which one in 20 owned a slave and one in five lived in a slaveholding household. “Thus,” Glatthaar notes, “volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population.” In short, Confederate volunteers actually owned more slaves than the general population." It's important to remember that these percentages varied widely among different regions of the South.

That was volunteers at the beginning....which makes sense given that a lot of family farmers couldn't afford nearly so easily to take time away from the farm to go off to fight. Ergo, the volunteers at the start tended to be more from the wealthier strata which could afford to send the men off to fight more easily.

BroJoeK: Historian James McPherson estimates 1/3 of Confederate soldiers came from slaveholding families, and doubtless that's true of some regions, not true of others.

Yeah I've seen his claims here and don't find them credible. He doesn't provide much evidence for his guesstimate.

BroJoeK: How important were tariffs in the 1860 presidential election? The 1860 Southern Democrat Party (Breckenridge) platform said not one word about tariffs. The 1860 Northern Democrat Party (Douglas) platform said not one word about tariffs. The 1860 Constitutional Union Party (Bell) platform said not one word about tariffs. The 1860 Republican Party platform said this about tariffs: "12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imports as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges, which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence -- in other words, Line the pockets of our coporate fatcat supporters and appeal to Northern factory workers too since they stand to benefit from the competition being priced out of the market."

Gosh, how did these parties do in the Deep South? Oh that's right! They were complete non entities. The Southern Democrats utterly dominated the South - most especially the Deep South and they were not at all shy in their complaints about the Tariff or about the totally unequal federal government expenditures. They had not been shy about complaining about it bitterly for years and years.

BroJoeK: 95% of Southerners never saw a tariff and never paid a tariff, so tariffs were irrelevant to their lives except in a vague sense of everybody grumbles about high prices.

This is 100% pure unadulterated BS. Southerners saw the effects of the tariff when they got less money from Wholesalers for their cash crops. They saw the effects of the tariff when they saw sales of their cash crops decline in foreign markets. They saw the effects of the tariff when the price of the manufactured goods they needed to buy went up considerably. They knew full well exactly what caused all of this - high tariffs. That's what caused the Nullification Crisis after all.

BroJoeK: But this was not a political issue in 1860, nor did any Southern politician threaten secession over tariffs.

More complete and utter BS. It was a political issue in the 1820s. It was a political issue during the Nullification Crisis. It had been an ongoing political issue ever since then. Multiple Southern politicians said quite openly that the ruinously high tariffs were ample ground for them to secede. They had been saying similar things for a long time.

BroJoeK: Not a single 1860 or 1861 "Reasons for Secession" document mentioned the Morrill Tariff specifically, or even high tariffs generally as their reason for secession.

They didn't say "Morrill" Tariff specifically but they said "they drain our substance via sectional partisan legislation" (Texas), they complained bitterly about tariffs and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Georgia) or they complained bitterly about both the Tariff and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Rhett's address attached to and sent out with South Carolina's declaration of Causes).

BroJoeK: Some of that is fake history, beginning here: the 1860 proposed Morrill Tariff did not restore 1828 Tariff of Abominations rates, but rather those of the much lower 1846 Walker Tariff.

No, that is false. Everybody knew the first round of the Morrill Tariff would not be the last. They "only" proposed to double tariff rates but once they pushed that through, they weren't going to stop. They'd keep pushing until the Tariff rates were pushed to the stratosphere as indeed they were going to an incredible 53% where they stayed until passage of the 16th amendment in 1913. The Walker Tariff was 25%. That was already WAY higher than the Southern states wanted. Remember the MAXIMUM tariff allowed under the Confederate Constitution was 10%.

These Walker rates had been approved by Southerners in 1846, were even commended in Georgia's "Reasons for Secession" document of January 1861, and as predicted at the time (1846), produced an economic boom throughout the country.

Southerners agreed to the Walker Tariff because that was as low as they could get the tariff rates and they knew it. It was still far far higher than would have been appropriate to meet their needs. Free to set their own tariff rates in the Confederate Constitution they set their maximum at 10%. What you're acting like was a compromise and such a great deal for the Southern states was just getting screwed not quite as hard as they'd been getting screwed before. It was a LONG way from being a tariff rate that would be beneficial to them.

BroJoeK: The problem in 1860 was (as always) Democrat government overspending, which doubled the national debt in just the four years of the Buchanan administration. The Democrat government needed more revenues to pay its bills, and that was the origin of the Morrill Tariff.

LOL! Pure BS. The Tariff was raised because corporate interests had been screaming for it for commercial reasons. A higher tariff meant they could raise price and still gain market share. Similarly, who were the ones who had their greedy hands out grasping for ever more federal pork paid for mostly by Southerners? Why that would be Northerners yet again. It was they who got all kinds of subsidies for their fishing fleets, for mining, for public works like the Erie Canal and the Sewer system for NYC and especially for Railroads.

After the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations", Congress reduced tariffs four different times: 1832 Tariff -- from >50% to ~40% 1833 Tariff -- from 40% to ~20% 1842 "Black Tariff" -- increased from 20% to 32% 1846 Walker Tariff -- from 32% to 25% 1857 Tariff -- from 25% to ~16% 1860 Proposed Morrill -- from 16% to ~26% So, the entire Lost Causer claim that anything remotely resembling a majority of Southerners could be persuaded to declare secession and civil war against the United States over minor fluctuations in tariff rates is just absurd, ridiculous and 100% counter-factual.

Firstly, the Morrill Tariff would not raise rates from 16% to 26% as you claim. It would DOUBLE tariffs to 32% and as I've said before, everybody knew that was just the first bite of the apple and they would be back again for more. As indeed they DID come back for more jacking rates all the way to 53% and leaving them there for over FIFTY YEARS.

That puts the lie to the myth that it was just "minor fluctuations" in tariff rates. While Tariffs and grossly unequal federal government expenditures (you conveniently leave that part out) were part of the complaints Southerners had, the centralization of power in Washington DC....aka the usurpation of power by the federal government never granted to it by the states was another bitter bone of contention. Southerners hated "centralism" as they called it. They hated it at the time the Constitution was ratified. They still hate it.

So the entire PC Revisionist claim that it was "all about slavery" is shown once again to be nothing more than antihistorical, unfactual, propaganda and lies.

BroJoeK: No, Morrill didn't double average rates, but those did rise from the record low 1857 levels of ~16% to around the Tariff of 1846 rates -- 26% -- which were about half of 1828 "Tariff of Abomination" rates, over 50%.

32% initially...and of course after the first bite of the apple they came back for more and raised rates to over 50% - as everybody knew they would. That was their aim all along. Kinda like when the gun grabbers say "we only want to ban this set of guns here....the rest will be fine, don't worry about it". Bullshit. They want to ban them all. That is their endgame and everybody knows it. Same deal here.

BroJoeK: Remember, Morrill was defeated in 1860 and only passed in 1861 because Southern Democrats walked out of Congress, thus letting Republicans call the shots on tariffs.

Remember Morrill passed the House in 1860 and everybody knew it was going to pass the Senate. All that was needed was to pick off one or two Senators and that could easily be done by offering a sweetener for this industry or that which happened to be in one Senators' district or another.....and better hurry up and accept our deal or one of your colleagues will accept the deal we offered him and you'll be left out in the cold." ie log rolling.

BroJoeK: Had Democrats remained in Congress in 1861 they could have again defeated Morrill, or at least modified it more to their liking.,/P>

Nah. A Senator or two would have been picked off as I described above and given their majority due to their larger population, the Northern states could have then passed it.

BroJoeK: Morrill could not even pass the House in 1860, had Democrats remained solid in opposition, but they weren't -- a huge number even abstained from voting.

It DID pass the House in 1860.

BroJoeK: In the Senate, even in 1861, Morrill could only pass after Southern Democrats left Congress.

It could have been passed in the Senate by picking off one or two Senators. Remember when they exempted the entire state of Nebraska to get a Senator to vote for Obamacare? If they need to pick off one or two Senators, they can cut a sweetheart deal for him and threaten him that if he doesn't accept and somebody else jumps at the deal they were offered, he and his constituents will be screwed and get nothing. That kind of arm twisting pretty much always works if all you need is one or two.

BroJoeK: First of all, the 1846 Walker Tariff reduced the "Black Tariff" of 1842 from 32% to 25%. The Tariff of 1857 further reduced rates to ~16%, contributing to a doubling of the US national debt during the four years of the Buchanan administration.

Well gosh. Just stop giving Northern corporations and special interest groups so much money from the federal treasury and there won't be any budgetary problems. Its not like the US was spending much on its military or like it was spending on social programs since there were none. But no. Northern special interest groups couldn't take their snouts out of the public trough even a little bit for any length of time.

That's why the Morrill Tariff was proposed to restore the old Walker Tariff rates of 1846.,/p>

No it wasn't. Northern Manufacturers had been clamoring for ever higher tariffs for a long time. They had difficulty competing with Britain and France which had first mover advantages and economies of scale. They knew the only way they could really make inroads into their market share was to jack tariffs way up and have a captive market.

BroJoeK: Second, your 10% rate is pure fantasy that had never been achieved, was never even proposed, not even in the Confederate Congress.

The 10% maximum tariff was eminently achievable. Remember that Southern state governments had very small budgets at the time. They also didn't spend much. The South HATED pork barrel spending. They required that bills can only be about one thing and it must state what it is about in the title as part of the Confederate Constitution. They gave the president a line item veto to allow him to cut pork barrel spending. The ONLY reason the Confederate Congress was not able to have tariff rates as low as they would have preferred is they had to raise money to defend themselves from the war of aggression Lincoln started.

BroJoeK: Third, no politician in the 1860 election ever threatened to secede over tariffs -- that's a fact.

There was no maximum tariff in the US Constitution. Jacking tariffs to the stratosphere was perfectly legal no matter how much Southerners hated it. They knew that.

BroJoeK: Finally, here are the average total tariff rates per presidential administration (source 1), (source 2): Washington: 21% (Tariff of 1792) John Adams: 24% Jefferson 32% Madison: 31% Monroe: 35% (Tariff of 1816) J.Q. Adams: 47% (Tariff of 1824) Jackson (1): 48% ("Tariff of Abominations") Jackson (2): 23% (Tariff of 1833) Van Buren: 19% Harrison/Tyler: 22% ("Black Tariff" effective 1844) Polk: 26% (1846 Walker Tariff) Taylor/Fillmore: 24% Pierce: 26% Buchanan: 17% (Tariff of 1857) Lincoln (1): 25% (Morrill Tariff) Lincoln/Johnson (2): 43%

Lincoln 25%???? ROTFLMAO!!! They jacked up the average rate to 47% (53% for some items) and left it there for decades. As several documents said, Southerners agreed to higher tariffs than they would have liked in the early years of the Republic because the Southern Colonies were far and away the richer colonies. Northern politicians pleaded for support for infant industries like shipbuilding, mining, etc. Southerners saw some sense in building up these industries for national security so they readily agreed. But of course once given Northerners only ever clamored for MORE! MORE! MORE! even when those industries were far from infant any more. Its always sweet when you can get the government to give you other people's money. Nobody ever wants to give that up.

BroJoeK: In fact, Rhett did not mention the Morrill Tariff, in his Address to the Slaveholding States, and only spoke vaguely and falsely about tariffs -- by claiming that only Northerners supported them and only Southerners opposed them.

In fact Rhett spoke explicitly about tariffs and spoke very truly. He admitted that Southerners were willing to support them initially for reasons I've outlined above but the greedy corporate interests in the North just kept demanding more.

BroJoeK: The truth is that both support for and opposition to protective tariffs was national and depended highly on how people made their livings.

Early on that was true. That was not really true anymore after the 1820s when Southerners saw just how damaging really high tariffs were to them economically.

BroJoeK: The actual rates then were the results of complicated political negotiations and varied depending on elections. In 1860 tariffs were the lowest they had been since the early years of Pres. Washington's administration.

And they were still considerably higher than Southerners wanted.

BroJoeK: And one fact which no Southern politician ever mentioned was that every Southern export -- cotton (25%), tobacco (40%), sugar (30%), rice, etc. -- was also highly protected by US import tariffs.

LOL! Irrelevant. The US was a large exporter of all the above. The British Empire had not yet developed extensive cotton production in their empire in places where it was suitable like the Nile Delta and India. The US was the world leader in production of Cotton and Tobacco. They weren't worried about foreign competition.

BroJoeK: Sure, after the November election, when Toombs was campaigning for secession, and as a result, Georgia was the only state to mention tariffs in its "Reasons for Secession" document. However, even Georgia did not mention the Morrill Tariff and, indeed, pointed to the Tariff of 1846 as their example of a "good tariff".,/P>

Of course Texas among its bill of particulars said they drain our substance through partisan sectional legislation (they meant tariffs) and South Carolina attached Rhett's address to their declaration of causes. Rhett's address talks in great detail about tariffs and grossly unequal federal expenditures.

BroJoeK: Of course, I understand your point here, however, the Compromise of 1850 took responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave Laws away from states and made that a Federal authority. In November 1860 there had been no complaints by Southerners against the Federal enforcement of Fugitive Slave Laws, nor could there be so long as Democrats were in charge, which they had been almost continuously since the election of 1800.

Northern STATES had violated the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution. There's no question here that they did.

BroJoeK: I agree with you that a very small number of South Carolina's richest globo-slaver elites had believed this ever since the Nullification Crisis of 1832.

oh it was FAR more than just "richest globo-slaver elites" who believed that - because it was true of course. There are numerous statements from other Southern political leaders from other areas who said much the same and the New Orleans paper I quoted said the same as well. Jefferson Davis in particular said the same many times before secession and after.

You note their dislike for centralized power as well. Though he's often quoted for the Cornerstone speech, here's what Stephens said about centralism: "If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity."

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government,and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne

BroJoeK: However, there was no possible way that a handful of South Carolina's wealthiest citizens could convince millions of loyal Southern citizens to declare secession and war on the United States over something as minor as small adjustments in the tariff rates.

We've already dealt with the false claim that it was "just" "minor adjustments" to the tariff rates. It was also grossly unequal federal expenditures....something you always leave out. It was also federal usurpation of ever more power. It was also arguments over slavery and as I've outlined before, the open support for John Brown and his fellow terrorists by prominent and wealthy backers in the North AND the Northern states' refusal to prosecute them. That event convinced a lot of fence sitters in the South that they weren't dealing with mere political opponents but actual enemies who genuinely meant them harm. Imagine if several prominent Saudis came forward after 9-11 and declared that they had provided financial backing to the terrorists AND the Saudi government refused to hand them over or prosecute them. Just imagine what the feeling in the US would have been toward Saudi Arabia. Now you can begin to understand how a lot of Southerners felt about the Northern states after John Brown's terrorist raid.

Southerners felt like they were being screwed over, that the federal government was becoming more and more tyrannical and those people up there in the Northern states had shown themselves to be enemies. Its not surprising they said "enough" and chose to leave. The war was strictly in self defense after Lincoln attacked them.

BroJoeK: So, whatever the SC elites believed and wanted, the masses of Southern citizens had to be convinced that their vital interests -- their way of life, their "peculiar institutions" -- were being assaulted by "evil Northerners".

See my answer above. It WAS NOT the continuation of slavery. That wasn't threatened. Most Southerners did not own any slaves anyway. It was everything I listed above. They had had enough by 1860-61 and were ready to get out of a toxic relationship.

BroJoeK: And that would require a massive campaign of propaganda, lies and deceptions the likes which this country had never seen before, and didn't see again until very recent years.

No. It just required Southerners to notice what had been happening. Trying to convince Americans in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that it was "all about slavery" despite the obvious facts showing it wasn't has been an ongoing massive campaign of propaganda, lies, half truths and deceptions by Leftists to first demonize the South and its history and culture and then to move on to demonizing the whole US and its history and culture. After all, the Founding Fathers were mostly the Fathers and Grandfathers of Southerners in 1861.

FLR-bird: "Nope! its the reality.
The denial of it is the lie."

FRiend, you are here peddling Lost Cause propaganda, which by definition is a pack of lies.
Of course, any propaganda will include the occasional fact and truth, but only where those coincidentally support the overall fake narrative.
So, I'm happy to acknowledge occasional facts appearing in Lost Cause narratives, but by definition, those are not "Lost Cause", they are simply elements of history.

FLR-bird: "Its true that the Wealthy owned a grossly disproportionate share of the slaves.
Of that 5.63% of all White Southerners who owned slaves, half owned 5 or fewer."

Your 5.63% number comes from the 1860 census which reported 316,632 named slaveholders in the 11 Deep South and Upper South states, out of their 5,482,222 total free population.
Your suggestion -- that large numbers of these slaveholders were other than adult white men -- is not supported by any data, and all logic dictates that the adult male "head of household" was listed on the census as the named slaveholder regardless of whom the family itself may have considered "owned" each slave.

Further, where you could find multiple slaveholders listed on the census for one family -- if anywhere -- is among the 1% of slaveholders who owned circa 25% of all slaves, meaning statistically it's insignificant.

And we do have a number for the average household size in 1860 -- it was 5.5 members, meaning circa 300,000 slaveholder families represented 1,650,000 people, or 30% of all whites in Confederate states.
However, the distribution of slaves and slaveholders was highly uneven, ranging from over 50% in some counties to fewer than 1% in others.

FLR-bird: "The percentage of White families which owned slaves was relatively small and this was more true in the Upper South where industrialization was more advanced and where for the most part the land was less suited to growing cash crops like cotton and tobacco."

Any map of the time shows where slavery was concentrated (up to 50%) and where it was weakest (less than 1%).
In Southern regions where slavery was weakest, there anti-slavery Unionism was strongest.

FLR-bird on McPherson's estimate of 1/3 slaveholder families: "Yeah I've seen his claims here and don't find them credible.
He doesn't provide much evidence for his guesstimate."

Here is the truth of this matter -- McPherson could easily have estimated 20% or 25% or 40% and all of those numbers are correct for some Confederate Army units from some Confederate regions, but the "overall" estimate depends 100% on how you decide to calculate it.
Regardless, one thing we can be certain of -- almost 100% of Confederate army officers and political leaders were slaveholders, regardless of how many of their troops did, or did not, come from slaveholding families.

FLR-bird: "Gosh, how did these parties do in the Deep South?
Oh that's right!
They were complete non entities.
The Southern Democrats utterly dominated the South - most especially the Deep South and they were not at all shy in their complaints about the Tariff or about the totally unequal federal government expenditures.
They had not been shy about complaining about it bitterly for years and years."

1860 Presidential Election, green = Southern Democrats

And yet... and yet... all your endless nonsense notwithstanding, the 1860 Southern Democrat Party platform said... {wait for it...}... not one word about tariffs!!

Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 campaign.

FLR-bird: "This is 100% pure unadulterated BS.
Southerners saw the effects of the tariff when they got less money from Wholesalers for their cash crops."

That is such a bald-faced lie I can't even believe you'd claim it -- have you no intellectual honesty at all??

Import Tariffs -- over 90% paid in Northern ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- had nothing whatever, zero, zip, nada, zilch, to do with wholesale prices paid to cotton farmers in Mississippi, or anywhere else.

How can you conceivably not understand that??

FLR-bird: "They saw the effects of the tariff when they saw sales of their cash crops decline in foreign markets. "

And yet the value of Southern exports grew exponentially from, say, 1820 to 1860.
In 1860 the American South was among the most prosperous regions on earth.

FLR-bird: "They saw the effects of the tariff when the price of the manufactured goods they needed to buy went up considerably."

And still, you're talking nonsense because the top items "imported" by Southerners "from the North" were:

Clothing made from Southern Cotton
Woolen goods made from Northern Wool.
Shoes and other leather goods made from Western Leather.

Imported luxury goods like silk, linen, musical instruments and furniture were only purchased by the wealthiest of slaveholders, not average Southerners.

Yes, cast iron stoves, railroad iron, bar, sheet and iron nails -- all those were slightly more expensive due to tariffs on iron imports.
But those tariffs were the same as tariffs on Southern exports of cotton, tobacco and sugar, so surely, what was good for the goose should be good for the entire flock, right?

FLR-bird: "They knew full well exactly what caused all of this - high tariffs.
That's what caused the Nullification Crisis after all."

The 1832 Nullification Crisis was caused by the 1828 Tariff of Abominations which had been supported by many Southerners including, most famously, Democrat Pres. Andrew Jackson.

The 1832 Nullification Crisis resulted in drastic tariff reductions in 1832, 1833, 1846 and 1857.
As a result of the 1857 Tariff reductions, the US national debt doubled under Democrat Pres. Buchanan, which led to Morrill's proposal to increase tariffs back to their 1846 Walker levels.

Tariffs were not a political issue in the South or anywhere else in 1860.

FLR-bird: "More complete and utter BS.
It was a political issue in the 1820s.
It was a political issue during the Nullification Crisis.
It had been an ongoing political issue ever since then.
Multiple Southern politicians said quite openly that the ruinously high tariffs were ample ground for them to secede.
They had been saying similar things for a long time."

Sure, Southern Democrat Fire Eaters (Yancey, Wigfall, Rhett, etc.) grasping at every straw they could find to justify secession and war against the USA -- however, even they well understood that Tariffs were a non-issue among the vast majority of Southern voters, which is why they stayed focused on slavery, slavery, slavery.

Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 election.

FLR-bird: "They didn't say "Morrill" Tariff specifically but they said "they drain our substance via sectional partisan legislation" (Texas)..."

Well, first of all, you've misquoted, the actual words are:

"They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."

Those words are vague enough to mean anything, or nothing at all -- they don't mention either tariffs or duties, much less the Morrill Tariff specifically -- plus, they are flatly untrue, since in 1860 few regions on earth were more prosperous than the American South.

FLR-bird: "they complained bitterly about tariffs and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Georgia)"

No, in fact, the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" commended the Walker Tariff of 1846, which are just the rates Morrill was intending to restore.

"After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.
The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy."

FLR-bird: "...or they complained bitterly about both the Tariff and the grossly unequal federal expenditures which benefitted the North at the South's expense (Rhett's address attached to and sent out with South Carolina's declaration of Causes)."

There's no doubt, of the seven documents which provided Reasons for Secession before Fort Sumter (SC, GA, MS, TX, AL, Rhett & Stephens), Rhett (from 1832 Nullifier South Carolina) put more words into his complaints about tariffs than any other.
However, even Rhett paired his economic complaints together with slavery:

"It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing among them had existed when the Constitution was framed.
There was then no tariff -- no negro fanaticism."
Here Rhett is simply wrong because our Founders well intended both tariffs and "negro fanaticism", meaning abolition wherever possible.
"To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and Slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things."
Again, notice that even Rhett, from tariff nullifying South Carolina, pairs tariffs and slavery as equal issues.
No other "Reasons for Secession" gives such prominence to complaints over tariffs.
And even Rhett does not mention the Morrill Tariff, for the perhaps obvious reason that as of December 14, 1860, the Morrill Tariff was dead in Congress -- Morrill was not an issue in the 1860 campaign nor at the time of South Carolina's declaration of secession.

FLR-bird: "No, that is false.
Everybody knew the first round of the Morrill Tariff would not be the last.
They "only" proposed to double tariff rates but once they pushed that through, they weren't going to stop."

Sorry, but now you are just babbling fact-free nonsense, since your "everybody knew" is nothing more than your own mythologizing fantasy.

The actual historical fact is that the Tariff of 1857 had reduced the previous 1846 Walker Tariff to levels lower than any since our first tariffs in 1790, and the predictable results were to double the national debt between 1857 and 1860.
That is exactly why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto Morrill after Southern Democrat withdrawals from Congress finally let it pass on March 2, 1861.

All of your nonsense about a "round two" happened during the Civil War, when there were no revenues from Confederate ports and there was a war to be paid for -- not anticipated in 1860.

Finally, the original increase from Morrill in 1862 was to ~26% from the 1857 rate of 16% and compared to the 1846 Walker average rate of 25%.
Even at the peak of the Civil War, Morrill rates did not reach those of the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations".

FLR-bird: "They'd keep pushing until the Tariff rates were pushed to the stratosphere as indeed they were going to an incredible 53% where they stayed until passage of the 16th amendment in 1913.
The Walker Tariff was 25%."

No, overall tariff rates were reduced below 30% in 1873, where they remained in the high 20%s until 1888 when tariffs fell below 25% and then to 20% in 1911.

The number one reason for the high tariff rates was to generate surplus revenues used to pay down the Civil War national debt -- which over those years was reduced from 33% of GDP in 1865 to 8% of GDP in 1910.

Today's national debt is north of 122% of GDP.

FLR-bird: "Southerners agreed to the Walker Tariff because that was as low as they could get the tariff rates and they knew it.
It was still far far higher than would have been appropriate to meet their needs.
Free to set their own tariff rates in the Confederate Constitution they set their maximum at 10%."

That is a total myth.
The truth is that Confederates simply adopted the US 1857 Tariff rates with some minor adjustments, in February 1861.
Then on March 15:

"March 15, 1861.
"The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That an ad valorem duty of fifteen per cent. shall be imposed on the following named articles imported from abroad into the Confederate States of America, in lieu of the duties now imposed by law, to wit: Coal, cheese, iron in blooms, pigs, bars, bolts and slabs, and on all iron in a less manufactured state; also on railroad rails, spikes, fishing plates, and chairs used in the construction of railroads; paper of all sorts and all manufactures of; wood, unmanufactured, of all sorts."

Then on May 21, 1861 Confederates published a new schedule of tariffs which ranged from zero to over 25% and which we discussed at great length here, in 2019

Those final Confederate tariffs were supposed to take effect on August 31, 1861, but in fact were never really paid, since by then the Union blockade had all but eliminated normal tariff revenue producing imports.
During the Civil War, Confederate blockade runners were not known for paying normal tariffs.

FLR-bird: "LOL!
Pure BS.
The Tariff was raised because corporate interests had been screaming for it for commercial reasons.
A higher tariff meant they could raise price and still gain market share.
Similarly, who were the ones who had their greedy hands out grasping for ever more federal pork paid for mostly by Southerners?
Why that would be Northerners yet again.
It was they who got all kinds of subsidies for their fishing fleets, for mining, for public works like the Erie Canal and the Sewer system for NYC and especially for Railroads."

Sorry, but all of that is fact-free nonsense unconnected to any historical records or reality.

The actual historical facts are simple -- when Southern Democrats had majorities in 1857, they reduced the 1846 Walker tariff from ~25% to 16%.
However, they did not correspondingly reduce profligate Federal spending (Democrats never do) and so the US national debt doubled from 1857 to 1860.
This created a perceived need for higher tariffs and Morrill's proposal was to, basically, return rates to the 25% Walker 1846 levels which Southern Democrats had previously proposed and approved.

That's why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto the new Morrill Tariff when it finally passed Congress on March 2, 1861.

And this is a good place to stop for now...

BroJoeK: PC Revisionist propaganda, which by definition is a pack of lies. Of course, any propaganda will include the occasional fact and truth, but only where those coincidentally support the overall fake narrative. So, I'm happy to acknowledge occasional facts appearing in PC Revisionist narratives, but by definition, those are not "PC Revisionist", they are simply elements of history.

FIFY

BroJoeK: Your 5.63% number comes from the 1860 census which reported 316,632 named slaveholders in the 11 Deep South and Upper South states, out of their 5,482,222 total free population. Your suggestion -- that large numbers of these slaveholders were other than adult white men -- is not supported by any data, and all logic dictates that the adult male "head of household" was listed on the census as the named slaveholder regardless of whom the family itself may have considered "owned" each slave.

Your claim that only adult head of household White men were slaveholders is what is really not supported by any data. We know of numerous examples of women being slave owners like Lee's and Grant's wives who inherited them from their families. We know of several examples of adult children being slave owners such as personal valets etc. You are simply ASSUMING that only the male head of household could possible be a slaveowner - in defiance of numerous examples - so you can maximize the number of slave owning families. You couldn't be more transparent.

BroJoeK: Further, where you could find multiple slaveholders listed on the census for one family -- if anywhere -- is among the 1% of slaveholders who owned circa 25% of all slaves, meaning statistically it's insignificant.

Again, you are wrong. Half of the 5.63% of the White population who were slaveowners fell into the more than 5 category. So 2.8%, not 1%.

Of course this only holds if the false assumption that only the male head of household could possibly own slaves and we know this to be false.

BroJoeK: Any map of the time shows where slavery was concentrated (up to 50%) and where it was weakest (less than 1%). In Southern regions where slavery was weakest, there anti-slavery Unionism was strongest.

Not uniformly and this often had as much to do with social class and....the mountain folk were rather clannish. They always had been and still are today. Many of them weren't necessarily pro union though there were some. More of them just wanted to be left alone and particularly did not want to be conscripted.

BroJoeK: Here is the truth of this matter -- McPherson could easily have estimated 20% or 25% or 40% and all of those numbers are correct for some Confederate Army units from some Confederate regions, but the "overall" estimate depends 100% on how you decide to calculate it. Regardless, one thing we can be certain of -- almost 100% of Confederate army officers and political leaders were slaveholders, regardless of how many of their troops did, or did not, come from slaveholding families.

As I said, McPherson didn't provide any evidence backing up his guesstimate. ROTFLMAO!!!! at the claim that almost all Confederate army officers were slaveholders. Total BS. You know how you became a captain and the head of a company in both armies North and South? You got elected by the troops! YES! My G-G-Grandfather was one of those captains who was elected by his men. I know from the 1860 US Census he was not a slaveowner nor were any of his 5 brothers who also served in the Confederate Army....nor his wife's two brothers who also served in the Confederate army nor my G-G-Uncle from the namebearing line who also served in the Confederate army. Not a single slaveowner among them. Multiple officers. Several other army officers were likewise not slave owners. This is more of your PC Revisionist propaganda and lies.

BroJoeK: And yet... and yet... all your endless nonsense notwithstanding, the 1860 Southern Democrat Party platform said... {wait for it...}... not one word about tariffs!!

And yet.....and yet....all your BS denials can't hide the fact that numerous Southern Political leaders had been complaining bitterly about the tariffs and grossly unequal federal expenditures for decades and the two largest newspapers from the original 7 seceding states made it quite clear that what was really driving all of this was the Tariff issue.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 campaign.

Slavery was a non issue in secession. It was merely the pretext which allowed Southern states to argue truthfully that the Northern states had violated the compact.

BroJoeK: That is such a bald-faced lie I can't even believe you'd claim it -- have you no intellectual honesty at all??

Nope! Its 100% true and your denial is the bald faced lie. Talk about lack of intellectual honesty!

BroJoeK: Import Tariffs -- over 90% paid in Northern ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- had nothing whatever, zero, zip, nada, zilch, to do with wholesale prices paid to cotton farmers in Mississippi, or anywhere else.

Where a tariff is paid is IRRELEVANT. WHO PAYS IT is what matters. Southerners, being the exporters and importers, were the ones paying - not Northern ports. As for Wholesale prices being depressed by high tariffs...OF COURSE THEY WERE. Its basic economics. If your imports are heavily tariffed, you are not going to make as much from the whole export/import venture. That's money out of your pocket. You therefore are not going to be able to pay as much for the commodity you are exporting. Also since their export sales are reduced due to the tariff, the English and French are not going to have as much money and will not be able to buy as much imports. So as the Southern exporter, not only are your profits reduced, the sales of your commodity are reduced as well.

This wasn't theoretical. Southerners already saw all of this happen in the 1820s.

BroJoeK: How can you conceivably not understand that??

How can you not?....and how can you just sit there and lie about it?

BroJoeK: And yet the value of Southern exports grew exponentially from, say, 1820 to 1860. In 1860 the American South was among the most prosperous regions on earth.

And yet they saw their sales decline in the 1820s when tariff rates were about as high as the Morrill Tariff would go.

BroJoeK: And still, you're talking nonsense because the top items "imported" by Southerners "from the North" were: Clothing made from Southern Cotton Woolen goods made from Northern Wool. Shoes and other leather goods made from Western Leather. Imported luxury goods like silk, linen, musical instruments and furniture were only purchased by the wealthiest of slaveholders, not average Southerners. Yes, cast iron stoves, railroad iron, bar, sheet and iron nails -- all those were slightly more expensive due to tariffs on iron imports.

You forgot agricultural equipment which was a major item. All of those goods could be and were manufactured by the English and French. The English in particular had a massive textile industry. The price of all those goods went up considerably as tariff rates were jacked up.

BroJoeK: But those tariffs were the same as tariffs on Southern exports of cotton, tobacco and sugar, so surely, what was good for the goose should be good for the entire flock, right?

Who was the low cost producer that was undercutting the South on price for those items? Gee, that would be....errr.......nobody! It wasn't the South that was clamoring for higher tariffs. Quite the opposite.

BroJoeK: The 1832 Nullification Crisis was caused by the 1828 Tariff of Abominations which had been supported by many Southerners including, most famously, Democrat Pres. Andrew Jackson. The 1832 Nullification Crisis resulted in drastic tariff reductions in 1832, 1833, 1846 and 1857.

Its true many Southern Politicians had supported high tariffs initially not understanding the effects they would have. Once they saw it in the 1820s they very quickly changed their minds and wanted them repealed. It was of course Northern manufacturers who loved those sky high tariffs.

BroJoeK: As a result of the 1857 Tariff reductions, the US national debt doubled under Democrat Pres. Buchanan, which led to Morrill's proposal to increase tariffs back to their 1846 Walker levels.

Repeating your BS is not going to make it any less false. The national debt was not caused by low tariffs. It was caused by excessive government spending - excessive demands by Northern special interests for subsidies. What the government needed to do was cut those subsidies.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were not a political issue in the South or anywhere else in 1860.

This is a bold faced lie as I have shown many times.

BroJoeK: Sure, Southern Democrat Fire Eaters (Yancey, Wigfall, Rhett, etc.) grasping at every straw they could find to justify secession and war against the USA -- however, even they well understood that Tariffs were a non-issue among the vast majority of Southern voters, which is why they stayed focused on slavery, slavery, slavery.

More of your BS and lies.

"The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue," John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question," March 4, 1850

"Northerners are the fount of most troubles in the new Union. Connecticut and Massachusetts exhaust our strength and substance and its inhabitants are marked by such a perversity of character they have divided themselves from the rest of America - Thomas Jefferson in an 1820 letter

"Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this." ----Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, cited at page 49 of The South Was Right!, by James Ronald Kennedy & Walter Donald Kennedy

South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties. In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000. When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Succession Charles Adams

[To a Northern Congressman] "You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange, which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of Northern Capitalist. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and our institutions." Rep. John H. Reagan of Texas

“What do you propose, gentlemen of the free soil party? Do you propose to better the condition of the slave? Not at all. What then do you propose? You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery. Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. What then do you propose? It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating us that you want to limit slave territory within circumscribed bounds. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the government into an engine of Northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South, like the vampire bloated and gorged with the blood which it has secretly sucked from its victim. You desire to weaken the political power of the Southern states, - and why? Because you want, by an unjust system of legislation, to promote the industry of the New England States, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.” Senator Jefferson Davis 1860

Gosh......looks like a live political issue to me both long before 1860 and right through 1860.

BroJoeK: Tariffs were a non-issue in the 1860 election.

The North had a sectional party that in its party platform called for high tariffs. The South was dominated by a political party that supported low tariffs. Each of those parties saw little opposition in their regions.

BroJoeK: Well, first of all, you've misquoted, the actual words are: "They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."

I paraphrased.

BroJoeK: Those words are vague enough to mean anything, or nothing at all -- they don't mention either tariffs or duties, much less the Morrill Tariff specifically -- plus, they are flatly untrue, since in 1860 few regions on earth were more prosperous than the American South.

Another of your completely laughable lies. "Drain our substance" in those days specifically meant "suck money out of our pockets/wallets". Look at the phrase Thomas Jefferson used in his 1820 letter complaining of the same thing. Look at the numerous comments I've listed above - one by a Texas US Representative say. Its OBVIOUS what they meant here. And one doesn't need to mention the Morrill tariff specifically. There had been other tariffs in the past and for all they knew could be others in the future. The Morrill Tariff was but the latest attempt. It was jacking tariff rates up and the grossly unequal federal government expenditures they complained of - not just one particular attempt to jack those tariff rates up one time.

BroJoeK: No, in fact, the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" commended the Walker Tariff of 1846, which are just the rates Morrill was intending to restore. "After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy."

As we've already discussed the Morrill Tariff proposed doubling tariff rates and everyone knew they would not stop there. That was just the first bite of the apple. Also, we need to remember that even the 16 tariff was considerably higher than the Southern States wanted as evidenced by them setting 10% as the maximum tariff rate allowable under the Confederate Constitution.

BroJoek: There's no doubt, of the seven documents which provided Reasons for Secession before Fort Sumter (SC, GA, MS, TX, AL, Rhett & Stephens), Rhett (from 1832 Nullifier South Carolina) put more words into his complaints about tariffs than any other. However, even Rhett paired his economic complaints together with slavery:

Of course he did! Violation of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution by the Northern states WAS actually unconstitutional. This was an ironclad legal argument Southern political leaders could use.....just the excuse they were looking for. Oh, and of course only 4 states issued declarations of causes, not 7.

BroJoeK: "It cannot be believed that our ancestors would have assented to any union whatever with the people of the North if the feelings and opinions now existing among them had existed when the Constitution was framed. There was then no tariff -- no negro fanaticism." Here Rhett is simply wrong because our Founders well intended both tariffs and "negro fanaticism", meaning abolition wherever possible.

Southern political leaders thought the tariffs and subsidies of Northern "infant industries" would be TEMPORARY. They did not think they were signing up to have their and their children's pockets picked for generations. The should have listened to Patrick Henry who warned this is exactly what would happen since there was no limit on the "General Welfare" in the US Constitution. As for "negro fanaticism" remember John Brown's terrorist attack and the financial backing it received in the North and the refusal to punish the supporters of terrorism directed against the Southern states. I don't think anybody envisioned that when the Constitution was being ratified.

BroJoeK: "To build up their sectional predominance in the Union, the Constitution must be first abolished by constructions; but that being done, the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and Slavery issues, was in the obvious course of things." Again, notice that even Rhett, from tariff nullifying South Carolina, pairs tariffs and slavery as equal issues. No other "Reasons for Secession" gives such prominence to complaints over tariffs.

Notice what Rhett was saying. Slavery was being used as a wedge issue by Northern corporate interests to keep the Midwest from siding with the South. Their interests otherwise aligned and they would have had no more cause to support high tariffs than the Southern states did. THAT is the sense in which Rhett meant the slavery issue here. None of the other declarations of causes goes on to the length Rhett does in describing Tariffs as a big driver of secession. Georgia focuses much more on grossly unequal federal expenditures. Texas does talk about the economics but has complaints that the federal government is failing to secure the border (sound familiar?) and failing to protect them adequately against the Commanche who were as savage in their raids as Hamas AND that this was done maliciously ie because Texas was a Southern state and allowed slavery. They also talked about the specific attempts by Northern terrorists to foment slave rebellions using the US mail, etc. So Texas had broader concerns than the other Southern states.

BroJoeK: And even Rhett does not mention the Morrill Tariff, for the perhaps obvious reason that as of December 14, 1860, the Morrill Tariff was dead in Congress -- Morrill was not an issue in the 1860 campaign nor at the time of South Carolina's declaration of secession.

Again, there was no need to mention one specific tariff when the issue had been tariffs in general and grossly unequal federal expenditures. Of course, the Morrill Tariff passed the House in the Spring of 1860 and was sure to pass the Senate in the Spring of 1861 as everyone knew. So yes, this latest attempt to jack the tariff rate up very high which everyone knew was coming was very much an issue in 1860.

BroJoeK: Sorry, but now you are just babbling fact-free nonsense, since your "everybody knew" is nothing more than your own mythologizing fantasy.<.i>

Sorry, but now you're just lying again. Everybody knew the Morrill Tariff passed the House in 1860 and was just one or two votes shy of passing the Senate. They also knew that the Republicans were staunchly in favor of high tariffs. The only question was which Senator or two would be picked off first. The whole power struggle for year after year had been about votes in the Senate. Southerners knew they couldn't hope to prevail in the House due to their smaller population. They knew that it was highly unlikely they'd be able to get Southerners sympathetic to their interests in the White House anymore for the same reason. Their only hope of stopping legislation that would really damage them - like the Morrill Tariff - was the US Senate. But the balance between the two sections had been thrown off with the admission of California so now Southerners knew they no longer had the votes in the Senate to protect themselves.

BroJoeK: The actual historical fact is that the Tariff of 1857 had reduced the previous 1846 Walker Tariff to levels lower than any since our first tariffs in 1790, and the predictable results were to double the national debt between 1857 and 1860.

the actual historical fact is that even the 16% tariff was considerably higher than the South wanted and Washington DC did not have a revenue problem. It had a spending problem (sound familiar?). That spending went overwhelmingly to Northern special interests by way of subsidies.

BroJoeK: That is exactly why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto Morrill after Southern Democrat withdrawals from Congress finally let it pass on March 2, 1861.

Buchanan was a Pennsylvanian. Pennsylvania was staunchly in favor of high tariffs. It would benefit them greatly.

BroJoeK: All of your nonsense about a "round two" happened during the Civil War, when there were no revenues from Confederate ports and there was a war to be paid for -- not anticipated in 1860.

All of your BS denials fall flat. They DID go for round two which DID jack tariff rates up higher than they had ever been and they left these rates in place for over FIFTY YEARS! By the way......since the goods landed in Northern ports mostly shouldn't the lack of tariff revenue from Southern ports have been no problem? Gosh....its almost as if the ports weren't paying the tariff but instead the OWNERS OF THE GOODS were paying the tariff and the owners of those goods were overwhelmingly Southerners....thus the massive drop in revenue. Huh? Seems somebody has been making that point over and over again and somebody else has failed to grasp it.

BroJoeK: Finally, the original increase from Morrill in 1862 was to ~26% from the 1857 rate of 16% and compared to the 1846 Walker average rate of 25%. Even at the peak of the Civil War, Morrill rates did not reach those of the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations".

No, they reached HIGHER than the Tariff of Abominations. The Morrill Tariff was the highest in US history and stayed in place for over FIFTY YEARS. This played a large role in reducing the South from the richest region of the country to the poorest in that time.....exactly as Southern political leaders knew it would when they opposed it.

BroJoeK: No, overall tariff rates were reduced below 30% in 1873, where they remained in the high 20%s until 1888 when tariffs fell below 25% and then to 20% in 1911. The number one reason for the high tariff rates was to generate surplus revenues used to pay down the Civil War national debt -- which over those years was reduced from 33% of GDP in 1865 to 8% of GDP in 1910.

Straight from wikipedia if anybody cares to look: "The tariff inaugurated a period of continuous protectionism in the United States, and that policy remained until the adoption of the Revenue Act of 1913, or Underwood Tariff. The schedule of the Morrill Tariff and both of its successors were retained long after the end of the Civil War." Though this is hardly a definitive source, the general thrust here is undeniable. It is exactly as I said above. Starting with the Morrill Tariff, Tariff rates remained very high until passage of the 16th amendment allowed the federal government to impose an income tax in 1913.

BroJoeK: That is a total myth. The truth is that Confederates simply adopted the US 1857 Tariff rates with some minor adjustments, in February 1861.

Nope! Its completely true and furthermore everyone can see that its completely true. The Confederate Constitution did not allow a protectionist tariff - only a tariff for revenue which was universally understood to never be more than 10%.

BroJoeK: Then on March 15: "The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That an ad valorem duty of fifteen per cent. shall be imposed on the following named articles imported from abroad into the Confederate States of America, in lieu of the duties now imposed by law, to wit: Coal, cheese, iron in blooms, pigs, bars, bolts and slabs, and on all iron in a less manufactured state; also on railroad rails, spikes, fishing plates, and chairs used in the construction of railroads; paper of all sorts and all manufactures of; wood, unmanufactured, of all sorts." Then on May 21, 1861 Confederates published a new schedule of tariffs which ranged from zero to over 25% and which we discussed at great length here, in 2019 Those final Confederate tariffs were supposed to take effect on August 31, 1861, but in fact were never really paid, since by then the Union blockade had all but eliminated normal tariff revenue producing imports. During the Civil War, Confederate blockade runners were not known for paying normal tariffs.

So you're saying due to having to fight a war of national survival forced on them by the Lincoln administration, the Confederate Government jacked tariff rates up to raise additional revenue???? Shocker!

BroJoeK: Sorry, but all of that is fact-free nonsense unconnected to any historical records or reality.

Sorry but the denial is simply an unfactual pack of lies. The historical records make quite clear that the vast majority of federal subsidies went to the Northern states, not the Southern states.

The actual historical facts are simple -- when Southern Democrats had majorities in 1857, they reduced the 1846 Walker tariff from ~25% to 16%. However, they did not correspondingly reduce profligate Federal spending (Democrats never do) and so the US national debt doubled from 1857 to 1860.

Not all Democrats were Southern. Northern Democrats were often as motivated to support the federal pork going to their districts as Northern Republicans were. And yes, the vast majority of federal expenditures went to the Northern states.

BroJoeL: This created a perceived need for higher tariffs and Morrill's proposal was to, basically, return rates to the 25% Walker 1846 levels which Southern Democrats had previously proposed and approved.

This is so much nonsense. The push to raise tariff rates was about protectionism much more than about raising revenue for the federal government. Northern manufacturers stood to benefit directly from high tariff rates.

BroJoeK: That's why Democrat Pres. Buchanan did not veto the new Morrill Tariff when it finally passed Congress on March 2, 1861.

Pennsylvanian Buchanan supported it because it would greatly benefit manufacturing interests in his home state.

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