Posted on 06/25/2015 3:05:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Responding to widespread public pressure, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol inCharleston. Although my colleague, S.E. Smith, pointed out that Haley has no power to actually remove it, she has joined other GOP politicians in denouncing the flag—including Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump. In addition, Walmart and Amazon have dropped all apparel donning the flag, while Virginia is dropping the flag as an option from their personalized license plates. While it’s absolutely time for the flag to go the way of the dodo, it’s hardly a cure for the real problems haunting Charleston less than a week after nine people were gunned down in the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old who subscribed to white supremacist ideologies. You can kill a symbol, but it’s not as easy to extinguish an idea—or the gun politics that help enforce it.
his is not to deny the power of the Confederate flag’s removal. The flag is not simply a memorial commemorating “bravery in the Civil War,” as Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly recently argued, it’s a reminder of the peculiar institution that the South fought to protect: slavery. If Barack Obama told Marc Maron that the slave trade “casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” it is not an abstract idea. He was being literal—slavery’s shadow can be seen flapping in the Charleston wind every day.
However, if slavery is part of our DNA, the effects of America’s troubled history won’t be quelled by taking down the flags of South Carolina, Mississippi, or any other flags that honor “Southern heritage.” Instead, we must combat that heritage itself, which continues to be romanticized in our schools, our homes, and our entertainment.
In a widely circulated photo that’s indicative of Dylann Roof’s ideologies, he’s pictured in front of the Confederate Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, one emblazoned with the Confederate flag, and the image shocked Americans. But shouldn’t we be more concerned with the fact that such an establishment continues to operate? Or that it’s far from the only museum of its kind?
This speaks to the stark discrepancy between how different parts of the country remember the Civil War. While 52 percent of all Americans believe that the war was a dispute over slavery, a 2011 CNN poll found that an alarmingly high 42 percent still believe that it was about states’ rights. Even more disturbing is the fact that nearly a quarter of respondents reported that they empathize more with the South’s cause than the North—and that figure jumps up to around 40 percent among Southern white folks. Clearly Charleston’s Confederate Museum does not want for potential customers.
This divide comes down to the words we use to describe the Civil War itself, often known in the South as “Lincoln’s War” or “The War of Northern Aggression,” which suggests that it was a conflict started by the Abraham Lincoln and Union.Idaho Statesman writer Banyard Woods grew up in Charleston, where their classroom education about the “War of Northern Aggression” tiptoed around the painful realities of the conflict, truths that many in the South clearly still cannot face up to.
“When we studied the Revolutionary War, we learned about Francis Marion, the ‘Swamp Fox,’ but we did not learn that despite hosting more battles than any other colony, South Carolina contributed fewer fighters than any other to the Continental Army, because they needed the men to oppress the slave population, partially because of the fear of another Stono Creek,” Woods writes.
This apologia for the war—cherrypicking the aspects most ripe for nostalgia—is surprisingly common in popular narratives about the Civil War, from the absurdly successful Gone with the Windto Birth of a Nation, a movie that wasn’t just popular among Southern Democrats. Woodrow Wilson liked D.W. Griffith’s ode to “Southern bravery” so much that he regularly showed it in the White House. In the film’s most infamous scene, Griffith depicts the effects of allowing black people intoCongress after Reconstruction. It’s presented like a zoo.
However, our double consciousness around the Civil War reflects more than just how we view the past. It’s a reflection of our historical present. The current NRA president, Jim Porter, even referred to the “War of Northern Aggression” in a 2015 speech.
The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the “War of Northern Aggression.” Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south.
But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it.
Porter’s statement (note the way he says “my Southern boys”) is a reflection of the ways in which we’ve allowed a debate over the removal of a flag to usurp the conversations we should be having instead. In addition to fighting the legacy of slavery—as well as America’s broader racial issues—Porter shows that racism and opposition to gun control often go hand in hand.
While they’re treated as separate issues, research has shown they’re all part of the same problem—white supremacy. In 2013, Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs reported on a study from Australia’s Monash University, which found that a “high score on a common measure of racial resentment increases the odds that a person will (a) have a gun in the house, and (b) be opposed to gun control. This holds true even after other ‘explanatory variables,’ including political party affiliation, are taken into account.”
It goes further than that: Our current gun control debate is actually a product of the Civil War itself, with the post-Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan fighting for gun control as a way to keep guns out of the hands of black people. “Before the Civil War, blacks in the South had never been allowed to possess guns,” the Daily Beast’s Adam Winkler writes. “During the war, however, blacks obtained guns for the first time.” That power scared whites so thoroughly that Southern states developed reactionary Black Codes, discriminatory policies that barred gun ownership from black people.
Although the development of the NRA should have then empowered black people (by lobbying for everyone’s right to own a gun), the gun laws that developed in the wake of the Uniform and Firearms Act continued to prevent equal access. The first gun control law, the Uniform and Firearms Act of 1934, required gun owners to apply for a license. But Winkler writes that there was a catch: “According to the law, only ‘suitable people’ with a ‘proper reason’ for being armed in public were eligible.” These terms were so vague that they could apply to anyone, and that loophole was often used to target prospective black gun owners.
While the Right’s stance on gun control has since shifted to the other extreme, policies continue to arm white men at the expense of people of color, who are structurally barred from ownership. “America’s most recent gun control efforts, such as requiring federally licensed dealers to conduct background checks, aren’t designed to keep blacks from having guns, only criminals,” Winkler writes. “Of course, the unfortunate reality is that the criminal population in America is disproportionately made up of racial minorities.”
Winkler reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same, especially for black folks in America. Retiring the Confederate flag might be a way to cosmetically address those concerns, but it doesn’t explain why it was still flying to begin with—or why so many people will fight to protect it, clutching their guns and heritage. Confronting the symbols of white supremacy means a true reckoning with a past that is very much alive—in Dylann Roof’s Facebook photos, on the streets of South Carolina, in our textbooks, and in our courts.
Throwing away a flag is a nice gesture, but for those mourning Charleston’s dead, it’s not the one they need.
Nico Lang is the Opinion Editor at the Daily Dot, as well as a contributor to L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, and the Onion A.V. Club. You can follow him on Twitter @nico_lang.
“They confuse the Tariff of Abominations of the 1830s with the situation in 1860.”
No, they don’t. Ever hear of the Morrel Tariff?
He never said that.
United States Revenue and Federal Spending in the 1850s:
Since practically the entire revenue each year of the government was derived from tariffs on imported goods, maintaining the export of US goods was absolutely vital to the operation of the country.
The total income of the Treasury for 1857 was $68,900,000. The portion of Treasury income from tariffs was $63,800,000. The Treasury spent $67,700,000 for the calendar year. The normal expenditures of the Government for operation of the government, the army and navy, interest on public debt, and pensions were $35,400,000. Therefore, discretionary treasury spending, authorized by Congress was almost double the normal operation of the government.
Congressional discretionary spending continued to soar. Financed by increasing public debt, the government increased the debt of the country by 43%, due to its inability to control spending.
The entire system was vulnerable. Money from the sale of cotton and tobacco in overseas markets bought goods that were then imported. In 1858, Tariffs from the sale of these goods produced 65% of the revenue of the entire treasury. The value of raw cotton sold to Northern mills, which was then finished and sent in trade to Europe accounted for another 5% of the value of imports. Thus, the treasury was not only totally dependent upon tariffs, but largely tariffs on goods purchased with money earned from the sale of Southern exports.
As the recession of 1857 deepened, Northeastern financiers and overseas bankers doubled the interest rate they required for purchase of the government’s treasury notes. The rate rose to an unprecedented 12%. The bankers also required of a pledge of government owned land as collateral. This pledge had never been required, and demonstrated the precarious financial condition of the US Treasury.
The US Treasury and Congressional Borrowing in 1859:
In preparation for the President’s state of the union report, Howell Cobb (of Georgia), the Secretary of the Treasury (Buchanan Administration), reported to Congress that based on projected spending, there would be dramatic increases in the debt of the government.
In his state of the Union report of December 5, 1859, President Buchanan’s Secretary of the United States Treasury issued his report stating that for fiscal year 1859, the total revenue of the US Treasury was $88,090,787. This was misleading, because $28,185,000 was ‘income’ from government borrowing. The actual total revenue from tariffs, and sale of public lands was $53,486,000. Tariff revenue contributed 92% of the total revenue of the country.
But the Congress spent $69,071,000, which was 29% more than it took in.
“I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.” —James Madison
The value of total US exports for the year was $278,392,000. The value of the exports grown or produced in the South was 74% of the total.
In order to understand the contribution of Southern agriculture to the trade, and thus tariff and taxation structure of the entire country, the following chart shows the percentage of the total value of exports contributed by the South for the year of 1859:
U. S. Department of Commerce
International Transactions and Foreign Commerce
Agricultural Production of the South
Yearly Detail 1859
Value of : Cotton $161,434,000
Tobacco 21,074,000
Rice 2,207,000
Naval stores 3,694,000
Sugar 196,000
Molasses 75,699
Hemp 9,227
Other 8,108,000
___________
Total $196,797,926
Value of Southern manufactured 4,989,000
Cotton exports
Value of cotton component of Northern 3,669,000
Manufactured cotton exports (60%) ___________
$205,455,926
Percentage of Southern Production to
the total US exports for 1859 of
$278,392,000. 74%
The Tariff Issue in 1860:
There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -—James Madison .
By 1828, the North had become more and more industrialized, leaving its agricultural roots taking the role of a great producer of products and goods. The South maintained its agrarian roots, growing much of the nation’s food as well as exporting a tremendous amount of agricultural products to Europe. As the North grew in factories and production, more people moved to the North. Meanwhile, the voting base in the South did not grow. When the North picked up increasingly more votes in Congress due to the population growth, it was in a position to assert its will.
Unfortunately, it started to wield its power unjustly.
The greatest manifestation of this was the Tariff of 1828.
Many European goods were still much less expensive than the same goods from the North. In 1828, Congress, against the will of the Southern minority, imposed a tax on many European goods so that those goods would now be more expensive and U.S. citizens would then have to purchase the more expensive goods from the North. This meant Europe sold much less of their products to the U.S. and had much less money to purchase agricultural products from the South. Worse yet, Southerners also had to pay more for the goods they needed to farm and to live, so their cost of agricultural production went up.
This artificially drove up the cost of Southern agricultural products. Because Europe was the number one market for Southern agricultural goods, the South suddenly lost its market for its products. Therefore, the new tariffs made the North artificially wealthy and financially damaged the South . The citizens of the agricultural South were injured by this unequal treatment, despite prohibitions against this condition by the Constitution.
They later expressed this treatment in secession decrees
South Carolinian John C. Calhoun’s reaction to the Tariff of Abominations was immediate. He became an Anti-Federalist and wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. In this protest, Calhoun stated that if the Tariff of 1828 was not repealed, SC would secede.
More importantly he introduced his Doctrine of Nullification, the basis of which came from the states’ rights arguments of famous Anti-Federalists James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Calhoun argued that the several states were not bound to stay under the Federal government if their rights were trampled under the U.S. Constitution. In other words, a state always had the right to nullify any act of Congress that violated the U.S. Constitution, and if Congress did not thereafter repeal said act, then the state had the right to secede.
Rather than abolish the unjust tariffs, Congress proceeded to slightly mitigate the tariffs with new tariffs in 1832. At that point, the South Carolina Legislature acted upon Calhoun’s protest and passed the Ordinance of Nullification, stating that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void within the state of SC.
Unbelievably, Congress also passed the Force Bill, which authorized the president to organize troops against SC if she did not enforce the tariffs. The War of Northern Aggression was only averted at that point by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, who offered a new compromise that would lessen the tariffs on SC.
The inherent problem remained that Congress had no problem continuing to pass legislation that benefited the Northern states at the expense of the Southern states simply because they had the votes and the power to do so. This became visibly manifest in Congress’ adoption of the Morrill Tariff legislation in 1860-61.
From the time Lincoln had entered politics, he championed the political agenda of the “American system.” First advocated by his mentor, Henry Clay, it had become a three-part program of protective tariffs, internal improvements, and centralized banking. This program tied economic development to strong centralized national authority.
Lincoln believed that import tariffs were necessary, even at the expense of consumers. He believed that American industries needed to be shielded from foreign competition and cheaper imported goods. Lincoln and the Republicans were absolutely determined to push mercantilist legislation, and this was documented by their platform in 1860.
Regardless of the Republican party’s infrastructure and protectionist rationalization, the fact was that tariffs were about to go up again.
Many in the North could not perceive that there was anything threatening about tariff legislation.
Economically there was.
“The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.” —James Madison.
An export economy’s entire livelihood depends upon being able to trade. Unless one is in the business of intentionally sending regions of a country into recession, heavy protectionism is indeed an apocalyptic event to those economies.
The South provided increasingly greater percentages of exports while the North’s share declined (this was in part due to the fact that protectionism between 1816 and 1846 severely impaired technological modernization in the northern economy by encouraging a lazy domestic monopoly).
By 1860 the south literally supported the entire nation in the world economy. It provided in excess of 70% of the country’s exports with most of the remainder coming from Midwestern and Western agriculture. Despite the success of the Southern farmer, the tariff system was defeating the work of the entire region to the benefit of Northern and Mid-Western states that were receiving the benefit of the protectionism and inflated prices.
This smoldering inequality eventually led to the state of SC acting on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union. Shortly thereafter, ten more Southern states seceded and created a new country, the Confederate States of America. This would not have happened if Congress did not abuse its power by treating its states and citizens unequally.
Because of all of this, John C. Calhoun is widely recognized as the Father of Secession. He established that the Southern states should not be subjected to continued unequal treatment under the U.S. Constitution. When unequal treatment continued unabated, on December 20, 1860, SC became the first state to secede from an oppressive Union.
I wonder what it felt like then to live in a nation without income taxes. What a wonderful way to live. I love tariffs and consumption taxes.
No, in Missouri, Unionists outnumbered secessionists by about three to one.
On March 19, 1861 the Missouri Constitutional Convention voted 89 - 1 against secession.
That convention then called for new state-wide elections which replaced the pro-Confederate officials.
A rump state government, consisting of the state's former governor and secessionist legislators was recognized by the Confederacy as a Confederate state.
Kentucky's story is similar, with at least two-to-one Unionists and a Confederate sympathizing governor, whose rump legislature was recognized as a state by the Confederacy.
In Kentucky the legislature first voted to remain "neutral", which kept Kentucky out of it, until the Confederacy violated their "neutrality".
Forced to chose, Kentuckians chose Union overwhelmingly, to the point where the legislature could override the pro-Confederate governor's vetoes.
ought-six: "Lincoln had the Maryland legislature arrested so they could not even take up the issue!"
No, like Missouri and Kentucky, Maryland was at least two-to-one pro-Union.
The Maryland legislature met and voted on April 29, 1861 against secession by 53 -13.
After the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861), then open support for Confederates met the Constitution's definition of "treason" and so some Maryland politicians were arrested and held on suspicions.
ought-six: "Delaware, also a slave state, overwhelmingly rejected any secession, and remained loyal to the Union."
Correct, and the major reason is Delaware, though a slave state, had very few slaves compared to other Southern states.
bbbt
Which was passed only after and because votes against it were lost when southern states seceded and their reps went home.
It was thus a consequence of secession, not its cause.
But let’s assume it was the cause, and the only cause. What you’re saying is that the South destroyed itself and killed more than 700,000 Americans over the question of a few tens of millions of dollars in taxation, most of which would be paid by northern consumers.
The effects of protective tariffs were not distributed by region, but by occupation. Those owning and working in protected industries benefited, and to a lesser extent those who did business with them. Everybody else paid.
The regional effect was due simply to the fact that more southerners were engaged in non-protected occupants than northerners.
The hilarious part is that the idea that this disparity justified secession and war is based on “disparate impact,” by which Group A is disadvantaged in relationship to Group B, even though that is not the wording of the law nor necessarily its intent. Most conservatives today believe, rightly, that disparate impact should not automatically be cause to reject a law. Yet some of them claim that disparate impact on the South justified secession and war.
BTW, I’m curious how y’all explain how the Union not only managed to keep its economy and government going during the war, being utterly dependent on southern exports as it supposedly was, but expanded economically while carrying the costs of the war?
US total exports in 1860 were $270M, mostly cotton. In 1863 they were $75M and in 1865 had recovered to $174M, almost none of it cotton.
All the talk about how the US government and economy was utterly dependent on the South was a bunch of hooey, as comprehensively demonstrated by the fact that the Union economy did NOT collapse.
Doesn’t that put a bit of a crimp in the notion that tariffs justified secession?
The South was agrarian so they hated tariffs. I get that. But the North was right about tariffs. But to me it is an issue of states rights over all.
Articles of Secession:
Missouri
An act declaring the political ties heretofore existing between the State of Missouri and the United States of America dissolved.
Whereas the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and
Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof: Now, therefore,
Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Missouri, That all political ties of every character new existing between the Government of the United States of America and the people and government of the State of Missouri are hereby dissolved, and the State of Missouri, resuming the sovereignty granted by compact to the said United States upon admission of said State into the Federal Union, does again take its place as a free and independent republic amongst the nations of the earth.
This act to take effect and be in force from and after its passage.
Approved by the Missouri Legislature on October 31, 1861.
Kentucky
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government: Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State, clothed with all power to fix her own destiny and to secure her own rights and liberties.
And whereas, the majority of the Legislature of Kentucky have violated their most solemn pledges made before the election, and deceived and betrayed the people; have abandoned the position of neutrality assumed by themselves and the people, and invited into the State the organized armies of Lincoln; have abdicated the Government in favor of a military despotism which they have placed around themselves, but cannot control, and have abandoned the duty of shielding the citizen with their protection; have thrown upon our people and the State the horrors and ravages of war, instead of attempting to preserve the peace, and have voted men and money for the war waged by the North for the destruction of our constitutional rights; have violated the expressed words of the constitution by borrowing five millions of money for the support of the war without a vote of the people; have permitted the arrest and imprisonment of our citizens, and transferred the constitutional prerogatives of the Executive to a military commission of partisans; have seen the writ of habeas corpus suspended without an effort for its preservation, and permitted our people to be driven in exile from their homes; have subjected our property to confiscation and our persons to confinement in the penitentiary as felons, because we may choose to take part in a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional majority waging war against the people and institutions of fifteen independent States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrance’s of the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives: Therefore,
Be it further ordained, That the unconstitutional edicts of a factious majority of a Legislature thus false to their pledges, their honor, and their interests are not law, and that such a government is unworthy of the support of a brave and free people, and that we do therefore declare that the people are thereby absolved from all allegiance to said government, and that they have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.
Adopted 20 Nov 1861, by a Convention of the People of Kentucky.
“BTW, I’m curious how y’all explain how the Union not only managed to keep its economy and government going during the war, being utterly dependent on southern exports as it supposedly was, but expanded economically while carrying the costs of the war?”
They taxed their own citizens and interests, and borrowed. And went into debt. Which led to the Depression of the 1870s.
Just to remind Freepers, that prior to the Federal Income Tax in 1913 the Federal gov't was funded by tariffs, alcohol and tobacco taxes. The ATF was there to make sure alcohol and tobacco taxes were collected. There might have been a few other minor excise taxes also collected to fund the Federal Gov't which of course was much smaller back then due no income tax.
Also not a coincidence that Federal Reserve was founded in 1913. Tariffs have along and honorable history in America. Few are aware of this.
“All the talk about how the US government and economy was utterly dependent on the South was a bunch of hooey, as comprehensively demonstrated by the fact that the Union economy did NOT collapse.”
It was a war economy, using taxes and borrowing to finance its war economy. You’re right: It did not collapse DURING THE WAR; but it did not long after.
You also leave out one of the main rationales for protective tariffs originally being implemented.
During the War of 1812 the USA was severely damaged in its military efforts by imports being cut off by the British blockade. As a result, after the war efforts were made to encourage domestic industry to keep this from happening. Of course, it soon became a political issue and morphed into horse-trading.
This is why, had the CSA won its independence, it would undoubtedly have implemented something with the effect of protective tariffs, despite their prohibition in its Constitution.
What, they’re going to leave themselves vulnerable to being cut off from overseas military supplies in the name of theoretical free trade?
The other amusing part of the “taxation caused the war” is that, had they won, southerners would undoubtedly have paid much higher taxes. Leaving aside the need to pay off the war debt, they would have had to finance a separate government, much as both parties after a divorce have similar expenses no longer shared. More critically, they would undoubtedly had had to finance a much larger army, as would the United States, because both countries now had a hostile neighbor with which they shared a looonngg border.
This is similar to the way Americans paid much higher taxes after the Revolution than before, when they were among the least taxed people in world history.
BTW, some of the highest protective tariffs were on sugar and hemp, two commodities grown almost entirely in slave states.
This is about the deliberate use of broadcast and social media to perform a cultural lobotomy on the United States of America, nothing less. This is the "fundamental transformation" we were warned about. It will not stop with flags and statues, nor will it be restricted to the South. This is the Kulturkampf fanned to a high blaze, and it is only the beginning.
The US economy expanded, rapidly, for eight years after the War ended. Saying the War caused depression in 1873 is much like saying WWI caused the Great Depression. While there was no doubt a connection, it was only one of many factors.
A good chunk of the $2.7B debt had been paid off by 1873. Almost all had been paid off by 1890.
There was an income tax during the WBTS, but it was tiny by today’s standards.
No I haven't. When did they put a tariff on mushrooms? :)
I was looking for a word to describe what is occurring right before our eyes. It is either “Orwellian” or “Stalinesque”.
Sometimes I think of North Korea when I see Liberals drooling at the Sight of Obama. I guess the old saying “if you ignore History you are doomed to repeat it” should read “if you change History you have no idea when you repeat it”.
It was a temporary income tax as you said.
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