The Civil War movie 'every conservative needs to see' (Copperhead)

Conservatives are grabbing popcorn and lining up to catch a new historical drama with modern connections.

“Copperhead,” the new film from director Ron Maxwell, focuses on the Northern opponents of the American Civil War and stars Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.

At least one conservative — Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — emailed his audience to tell it about the movie “that every conservative needs to see.”

“[W]hile Copperhead is about the Civil War, believe me, it will hit close to home for every conservative fighting to preserve our Constitution and our American way of life,” Viguerie wrote. “Because Copperhead is about standing up for faith, for America, and for what’s right, just like you and I are doing today. In fact, I’ve never seen a movie with more references to the Constitution, or a movie that better sums up our current fight to stand up for American values and get our nation back on track.”

The movie, which is based on the novel by Harold Frederic, follows Abner Beech, a New York farmer who doesn’t consider himself a Yankee, and is against slavery and war in general.

Asked about whether he sees his film as conservative, Maxwell told POLITICO, “I think if ‘Copperhead’ has any relevance at all, in addition to illuminating a time and place from our common heritage, it’s as a cinematic meditation on the price of dissent. I’ve never thought of dissent as a political act belonging to the right or left. It’s an act of liberty, expression of the rights of a free person — free not just in law but free from the confines and pressures of the tyranny of the majority.”

Maxwell said while the concept of dissent is as “old as time,” in the U.S., “it’s protected in the Constitution.”

IMO The original "error" of including the BOR in the USC brought the whole Federal / individual relationship into play. That was not the purpose of the document as drafted. It's original purpose was to reign in the Federal's ability to concentrate power. The BOR just being in the USC elevated the Federal and watered down the whole intent.

Before the Bill of Rights, our Constitution created another new relationship between the individual and the U.S. Government. Under the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Government could not tax individuals and could only raise money by asking for contributions from state governments. The Constitution authorized the Congress "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises" that individuals were required to pay directly to the United States government.

As Patrick Henry warned, the "we the states" foundation for the Articles of Confederation became a "we the people of the United States" foundation for the United States Constitution. Your belief that the Bill of Rights was some sort of "original error" should not cause you to pretend that they don't exist. They do exist.

I don't know how anyone can read the Articles of Confederation, then read the United States Constitution and conclude that the Constitution's "original purpose was to reign in the Federal's ability to concentrate power." The purpose of the Constitution was to dramatically increase the power of the U.S. Government. That's why Ben Franklin supported the Constitution and that's why Patrick Henry opposed it.

Anyway, like it or not, Americans (as individuals) now have a slough of direct relationships with one another and with our national government. As American citizens, we have numerous individual rights protected by the United States Constitution. The immediate effect of what you call a "secession" by a state would be to strip American citizens in that state of their American citizenship and of all of their individual Constitutional rights. Any honest argument in favor of "secession" needs to address that reality.

Your facts are wrong as is your knowledge.

The Confederate Tariff rates were announced on March 11, 1861. They quickly became public knowledge....not in May as you would insinuate.

3/18/1861 It took only a week for Northern newspapers to understand the meaning of the low Confederate Tariff announced the week earlier in Montgomery.

The Boston Transcript wrote that week,

“It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.

“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.

“The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.

“If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby…

“The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“

“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”

I don't see any truth to your point about the Morrill Tariff since it passed the Senate and became law the week before the Confederate Tariff was announced.

You said: “Are you saying that Norther Shipping interests reliant of foreign trade wanted high tariffs? That northern textile mills reliant on southern cotton wanted trade cut off? That northern bankers who had lent hundreds of millions to southern planters didn't want to be repaid? And even northern iron mills in Pennsylvania who most benefited from high tariffs rates on British pig iron wanted to close their markets in the south on manufactured goods?”

I am saying that the North did not want an independent South because of the economic competition.

But believe your own people:

The New York Evening Post wrote,

“Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the Southern ports.”

The Philadelphia Press said,

“Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries, and make British mils prosper. Finally,, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls.”

A newspaper that supported Lincoln said: ( Philadelphia Press on March 18, 1861: )

“One of the most important benefits which the Federal Government has conferred upon the nation is unrestricted trade between many prosperous States with divers productions and industrial pursuits. But now, since the Montgomery Congress has passed a new tariff, and duties are extracted on Northern goods sent to ports in the Cotton States, the traffic between the two sections will be materially reduced)

“Another, and a more serious difficulty arises out of our foreign commerce, and the different rates of duty established by the two tariffs which will soon be in force. …

”The General Government, … to prevent the serious diminution of its revenues, will be compelled to blockade the Southern ports … and prevent the importation of foreign goods into them, or to put another expensive guard upon the frontiers to prevent smuggling into the United States.

Previously, on 1/18/1861, the same newspaper had opposed military action, arguing that the secession crisis should be settled peacefully and not by conquest, subjugation, coercion, or war.

The Philadelphia Public Ledger as reported in the Richmond, VA Dispatch on March 19, 1861 said the following:

The Revenue and Its Collection.

”The last act of the United States Congress was to largely increase the rates of duties upon importations; the first act of the secession Confederation was to reduce them. The natural effect of these two diametrically opposite policies is to drive importations away from Northern ports and to send them to Southern ports, to avoid the duties.

”There being no interior custom-houses, no collectors at the railroad stations, which extend from one State to another, or upon the great rivers which sweep through Southern and Northern States, there is nothing to prevent these importations into Southern ports from being sent to every Northern city, and foreign articles may be introduced, and sold under the very noses of those who were to be protected by a high tariff. to the exclusion of the home production.

”The Government can only prevent this by collecting duties at the mouth of Southern harbors, or establishing a chain of internal custom-houses all along the line which separates the United States from the seceding States. The latter there is no authority for till Congress shall authorize it, and the expense would be enormous. The former is attended with difficulties which are almost insurmountable. It might be an easy matter to station national vessels at the mouth of the Mississippi, or at the entrances to Savannah and Charleston, but the collection districts are so numerous that all the unemployed vessels in the American Navy would be required to guard them.

”How the difficulty is to be got over is not so clear, though the consequence to Northern commerce of allowing goods to enter Southern ports under low duties, or none at all, are very evident. If secession is to be uninterred with, the only way to preserve the commerce of the North will be to open our ports free of duties. This is one of the inevitable consequences of successful revolution in the South, and the fact has got to be faced squarely.
Greed and fear of economic loss was propelling the Federal government toward coercion of the seceded states. The South held to the principle of the consent of the governed as reflected in, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that …Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….

The New York Herald said:

“ The combined effects of these two tariffs must be to desolate the entire North, to stop its importations, cripple its commerce and turn its capital into another channel; for, although there is specie now lying idle in New York to the amount of nearly forty millions of dollars, and as much more in the other large cities, waiting for an opportunity of investment, it will be soon scattered all over the country, wherever the most available means of using it are presented, and it will be lost to the trade of this city and the other Northern states.

“There is nothing to be predicted of the combination of results produced by the Northern and Southern tariffs but general ruin to the commerce of the Northern confederacy… The tariff of the South opens its ports upon fair and equitable terms to the manufacturers of foreign countries, which it were folly to suppose will not be eagerly availed of; which the stupid and suicidal tariff just adopted by the Northern Congress imposes excessive and almost prohibitory duties upon the same articles.

“Thus the combination of abolition fanatics and stockjobbers in Washington has reduced the whole North to the verge of ruin, which nothing can avert unless the administration recognizes the necessity of at once calling an extra session of Congress to repeal the Morrill tariff, and enact such measures as may bring back the seceded States, and reconstruct the Union upon terms of conciliation, justice and right.”

The results of the secession and the impact on trade were reported in the Richmond Dispatch of May 23, 1861:
“The total amount of imports at the port of New York for the week ending on the 18th, was $2,328,479; for the same week in 1860, $5,517,58 . This was a decrease of 57%.

“Since 1st January, $66,424,138; for the same period last year, $91,215,143. The decline was 30% at that point.

The link you gave was misleading as well as an insinuation that the Confederacy announced its tariff rates in May, after Lincoln's invasion of Charleston harbor.

The first announcement of the Confederate tariff happened just after March 11, 1861, the date of ratification of the first Confederate Constitution, and ten days after the Morrill tariff was ratified by the US Senate.

Your posting of the second tariff schedule in May is misleading in that its date of publication leads the casual reader to think it was not an issue, when it was much more.

Your comment about the Morrill tariff: “As to the Morrell (sic) Tariff of 1861, which only had a chance of passing after the Southern delegation left Congress, I don't see your point.”

You speak as if you don't know that the Morrill bill had passed the week before. Any source will tell you that. More importantly, the comparative rates were: Confederacy 13.3%, Morrill 26 to 37%.

You need to familiarize yourself with the dynamics of the tariff issue because it will expand your understanding of the influences on Lincoln at the time he initiated the war.

New Haven Daily Register said,

“There was never a more ill-timed, injudicious and destructive measure proposed, than the Morrill tariff bill, because while Congress is raising the duties for the Northern ports, the Southern Constitutional Convention is doing away with all import duties for the Southern ports, leaving more than three-fifths of the seafront of the Atlantic States…beyond the reach of our tariff…Southern ports would then invite the free trade of the world.”

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