House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[ColdOne]

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

[DiogenesLamp]

It tells me that New York had good port and transportation facilities and could send goods cheaply to large numbers of paying customers.

Yes it did, but that is beside the point. Those tariffs represent import trade from Europe, all of which must be balanced by export trade from the United States.

The vast bulk of that export trade constituted products from the South.

If this book (written in 1860) is correct, Southern export value for 1859 is $198,389,351.00, and Northern export value for that same year is $78,217,202.

That means that 72% of the trade value represented by those tariffs represent money that would have gone to the South if it were an independent Nation, but instead ended up in New York because of laws imposed to make it difficult for ships to trade in Charleston.

So that money ended up mostly in New England.

Those railroads were built with significant portions of money that came from the South, and this "vigorish" system had been in place since at least 1817.

The prospect of that money pile moving from New England to Charleston is why the Union went to war. Their objection wasn't to those d@mn Southern people using slaves, it was that they were going to get cut out of the deal.

[Joe Boucher]

Visited Andersonville National Cemetery last year.
year.
Lot of Union P.O.W.’s buried there.
Union had Prisons for captured Southerners that were equally as bad but then again the North won so they write the history.

[x]

Notice the rapid expansion of East-West lines in the North.

Consider also the longer sailing times from New Orleans to Europe versus New York to Europe.

Also, look at the population map. You'd have more customers in the East accessible by rail, than in the South or Europe.

Thanks to cotton, New Orleans had been a major US export port for decades, but the much lower level of imports was likely a sign of structural conditions that would take more than a difference in tariffs to remedy.

Urban Colossus: Why Is New York America's Largest City?

[HangUpNow]

Lincoln's Northern Union reneged and violated an expressed legal compact between the Fedgub and Southern States sovereignty. Southern States optioned out, the North pulled out the Tyranny Card AND the Race Card.

The result was a Civil War, ushering the beginning of Fedgub tyranny and overreach, and the obliteration of States' Rights, sovereignty and self-determination. At what cost?

Lincoln enforced a re-joining of a broken Southern States and subservience by illegal means of coercion and the clear violation of States' sovereignty. It's lead to increasing federal tyranny and THE reason the Central Federal Gubmint eventually become just an extension of a elites' multi-National One World Government.

"Treason" and truth is in the eye of the beholder. The victors (the North) wrote the history books from their perspective. "A War Over Slavery." NOT QUITE. The South fought for States' sovereignty, NOT enforcing slavery.

[x]

That is the physiocratic idea that land and agriculture are the basis of all wealth. So if landowners give up their money to buy manufactured goods in a sense the wealth and money is still by rights theirs because they "earned" it from the soil.

In fact, plantation owners used their money to buy goods from the North and elsewhere or they invested the money in New York banks. They got full value for the money they earned from exports. Northerners then could use the money they earned in those exchanges to buy foreign goods.

This was (as we all should know by now) the subject of a bitter polemic between Thomas Prentice Kettell (Southern Wealth and Northern Profits) and Stephen Colwell (The Five Cotton States and New York). Colwell demonstrated the fallacies of Kettell's thesis.

[DiogenesLamp]

That is the physiocratic idea that land and agriculture are the basis of all wealth. So if landowners give up their money to buy manufactured goods in a sense the wealth and money is still by rights theirs because they "earned" it from the soil.

In fact, plantation owners used their money to buy goods from the North and elsewhere or they invested the money in New York banks. They got full value for the money they earned from exports. Northerners then could use the money they earned in those exchanges to buy foreign goods.

Let us say that everything you just said is absolutely true.

What happens to the economic conditions in the North when 72% of their import money gets cut off?

[DiogenesLamp]

Consider also the longer sailing times from New Orleans to Europe versus New York to Europe.

Not so much of an issue if you are unloading goods and reloading up with Cargo. Especially at a 13% tariff rate as opposed to a 45% tariff rate.

Chopping off all the protectionist laws imposed by the North would have transformed trade and which ports would suddenly see massive growth.

[x]

What happens to the economic conditions in the North when 72% of their import money gets cut off?

Then they start making stuff themselves, which is what the protectionists wanted.

Beyond that, I don't know. A lag in growth from not being able to buy new machinery from Europe could be offset by importing fewer finished goods.

Loss of export wealth would have cut into the luxury market, but Northerners did have the resources to produce what they needed at home and they weren't dependent on something like foreign oil to survive.

[x]

Chopping off all the protectionist laws imposed by the North would have transformed trade and which ports would suddenly see massive growth.

Things like that don't always happen -- certainly not overnight. Colonies that become free of the mother country and its regulations often don't have the resources to make good once they became independent. Also, slaveowners' desire for a highly controlled society cut into industry and development and that wouldn't change with a drop in the tariff.

[Yaelle]

What about Jolly Rogers? Pirate flags fly over restaurants, in children’s bedrooms, and there are even amusement park fun rides commemorating these bloodthirsty killers and thieves. Why do we worship this killing of innocents?? Ban pirate flags forever!

[Yaelle]

Thanks for writing this.

[DiogenesLamp]

Loss of export wealth would have cut into the luxury market, but Northerners did have the resources to produce what they needed at home and they weren't dependent on something like foreign oil to survive.

They were self sufficient as far as that went, but cutting 200 million out of your economy in 1861 would have caused a financial panic. It would have slowed down growth and probably caused a big upspike in unemployment.

My point is, the financially powerful people of New England did not want the South to secede because it would crush much of their finances, and their former customers would become competitors.

No, Southern secession was a dire financial threat to the New England economy.

[DiogenesLamp]

Things like that don't always happen -- certainly not overnight. Colonies that become free of the mother country and its regulations often don't have the resources to make good once they became independent. Also, slaveowners' desire for a highly controlled society cut into industry and development and that wouldn't change with a drop in the tariff.

You forget. They were "rich". Some of the animosity I think many northerners had for the South was the result of this wealthy "aristocracy" making all that money off of free labor.

With 200 million in exports versus the North's 78 million, i'm pretty sure they had the capital to expand their facilities to handle whatever traffic was necessary.

[rockrr]

Actually we do know what happens - happened. There was a dip in production, in trade, in every way measurable. But most of the losses were regained over time. This crap about the north couldn’t survive without the south was just that - crap.

[jmacusa]

States rights? States rights to own human beings. That’s the ultimate tyranny.

[jmacusa]

I know the North didn’t go to war to free the slaves. It went to war to preserve the union and it succeed . The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost.

[jmacusa]

The bs comes from your side and it’s nonsense about ‘’states rights’’.

[eyedigress]

Of course you would. The Industrial Revolution was on.

Passage through to the Gulf was being blocked.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks for writing this.

You're welcome. My interest in the Civil War waxes and wanes. For most of my life I never thought of it, but one day my best friend, who was both black and a history major, told me that he had just learned in History class that Lincoln had deliberately engineered the Civil War.

He was gleeful, and effusive in his praise of Lincoln's shrewdness in conning the South into firing on the fort.

*I*, on the other hand had several bad dreams about the Civil War over the years after I had red the "Red Badge of Courage", so I was a lot more subdued about it.

At first I thought he was mistaken, but the more I looked into it the more I realized that the information could be seen in that light.

After more time, I became convinced that he was right, and that Lincoln did deliberately trigger a war that killed over 600,000 people.

It was only in this last six months that it has finally started making sense to me. All evidence from the period indicates that for the first year and a half of the war, Lincoln would have allowed the South to continue using slaves.

So why then did people say it was fought over slavery if the intent wasn't to end slavery?

If we accept the facts as we read them and conclude the war wasn't fought to end slavery, then why was it fought? Well, "to preserve the Union."

But why did the Union need preserving? The British Union didn't need preserving, it needed splitting, so why did the US Union need preserving?

Finally I saw that map showing all the coins stacked on New York. The guy created the map to mock the Southern economy/tariff argument, but I eventually realized it proves the argument quite effectively. You see, the import numbers (as represented by those tariff collections) don't jive at all with the export numbers. (Trade has to balance.) We have nearly 3/4s of export value from Southern products, but 90% of the tariff's are collected in New York! (Meaning that's where the money came back into the country.)

When you finally take a look at the numbers, New England was making a *HUGE* amount of money off of both the South and the South's exports to Europe.

An Independent South cuts off that money supply to New England, and would have created a major financial crises had normal European Trade with the South every been allowed to be established.

Their former customers would not only quit buying, but would also have eventually become competition.

The war was launched to protect the money stream flowing into the coffers of Lincoln's big monied donors from New England. That's why they were going to preserve slavery until their own propaganda eventually made that plan completely unworkable.

The South fought too Hard and too Long, and as a result, they had to go ahead and do what they were threatening to do, just to save face.

But remember, their original plan was to get those profits flowing again, not to end slavery.

[eyedigress]

No it isn’t. States owned passage from Detroit and Chicago all the way to New Orleans. It started on the Ohio outside of Cincinnati.

There is your war hotrod. Might as well call CW2 the war against BLM. Bullshit.