Posted on 07/11/2015 9:54:21 AM PDT by golux
“Tariffs are meant to discourage imports, not promote them, because they are supposed to make domestic goods more cost effective.”
Exactly! Which screwed the South with its exports to Europe! European markets (especially British) proved a ready market for Southern produce and goods, and that exchange was very profitable to Southern merchants — and European, as well — who were able to buy European goods at very favorable rates (the timeless business dictum of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” that is the lifeblood of commerce). By raising tariffs on imported goods, the cost of doing business with Europe would become prohibitive, and the Southern economy would collapse because if Southern merchants stopped buying European goods because of the tariffs, European markets would stop buying Southern goods and produce. (Northern interests were not buying Southern products or produce, so with whom were Southern markets to trade?)
To serve all the ports, shipping companies had shallow draft side paddle vessels that were used to ship south.
Big ports, I.e. New York, Philly, etc. were break bulk operations that split/sorted goods for various ports south.
Owners could pay tariffs at the port of entry, or according to Federal law, defer payment for long periods. That meant that tariff payment might come after transshipment south. As a result, “tariff” houses were found in any port...there were dozens all over the waterways.
Yes they were. Once the goods reached shore then unless they were destined for a foreign customer and placed in a bonded warehouse the duties were collected.
For another thing, shipping goods from Europe to America is a lot quicker — and cheaper — if they are unloaded or delivered to a northern port, because delivering them to, say, Mobile or New Orleans or Galveston is twice the distance and would take twice the time and would double the cost.
So you're saying it was cheaper to ship the goods to New York, unload the goods, then load them again on another ship and travel to another port? Then why wasn't the same true for cotton exports? Why not load the cotton in New Orleans, ship it to New York, unload it, load it on another ship, and ship it to Europe? Wouldn't that also be cheaper? But that didn't happen. The overwhelming majority of cotton exports left southern ports and went to Europe. Why couldn't imports do the same?
Even today, goods manufactured in Asia are almost exclusively shipped to the American west coast, even if the purchaser of the goods is a company in Maine.
You're forgetting a few things like extensive rail lines, air lines, and the interstate highway system that makes that not only possible but also cost effective. Three things that were absent back in 1860.
I'm looking for the reason why tariff revenues more than doubled between 1861 and 1863 if the South paid the overwhelming majority of the tariff and the Morill Tariff jacked the rates up to impossible levels. You post doesn't explain that.
But I would be interested in learning what the South imported in such huge amounts that they paid most of the tariff.
“Why not load the cotton in New Orleans, ship it to New York, unload it, load it on another ship, and ship it to Europe? Wouldn’t that also be cheaper?”
I guess you never heard of Bermuda. Cotton — and rice, and sugar — loaded in, say, New Orleans was often shipped to Bermuda (part of the British Empire, don’t you know).
Can you point me to a source where I can learn more about these trade routes?
I think it’s important to consider the dates. The Great Britain that recognized Brazil in 1825 was very different from the Great Britain that refused to recognize the Confederate States in 1861. Just think of all of the differences in the US in the last 36 years. Do you really think that, in 1979, people would not be totally outraged at gay marriage, legalized marijuana (in some states, portrayals of interracial couples on TV and movies, and a greatly relaxed attitude towards living out of wedlock?
As far as continuing to recognize countries that had slavery, there is a very large difference between continuing relations and starting new relations. The only apt comparison would be to point to a major country that Great Britain recognized after 1861 that had slavery. I suspect you can find some small Arab or Central Asian Emirate or Khanate that they did recognize after 1861, but certainly not a country the size and importance of the CSA.
Your statement that Great Britain abolished slavery in name only, because they continued to practice what amounted to slavery in India and Africa is partially true. The big point is the statement “what amounted to slavery”. The same point could be directed at many areas of the American South after Reconstruction, what with Black Codes, the Convict Lease system, Share Cropping, and Jim Crow laws. But, no one claimed that slavery was not abolished in the US. The same is true in the British Empire. Slavery was abolished in name in 1833. It took many decades for the practice to catch up with the law (same as in the US).
So my point remains the same. Great Britain refused to recognize the CSA due to the dislike of the Working Class of England of slavery (although the defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam certainly helped). Further proof of this is the motion that the cotton workers of Manchester passed and sent in a letter to Lincoln. I quote from the motion “ That this meeting, recognising the common brotherhood of man-kind, and the sacred and inalienable right of every human being to personal freedom and equal protection, records its detestation of negro slavery in America, and of the attempt of the rebellious Southern slaveholders to organise on the great American continent a nation having slavery as its basis.”
“I’m looking for the reason why tariff revenues more than doubled between 1861 and 1863 if the South paid the overwhelming majority of the tariff...”
Revenues rose between 1861 and 1865 due to: ever-increasing tariffs (that fell on Northern interests since the Southern states were not paying them); income taxes (yes, Lincoln initiated the first income tax in U.S. history); loans (Northern apologists for how well the country was doing economically during the Civil War ALWAYS include loans in their numbers to inflate “revenues”).
“...and the Morill Tariff jacked the rates up to impossible levels. You post doesn’t explain that.”
It did, increasingly (the tariff rate was raised three times), and it fell principally on Northern interests.
“But I would be interested in learning what the South imported in such huge amounts that they paid most of the tariff.”
A lot of machinery and manufactured goods, that were (1) of better quality than anything manufactured in the North; and (2) were less expensive than similar products manufactured in the North.
“As far as continuing to recognize countries that had slavery, there is a very large difference between continuing relations and starting new relations. The only apt comparison would be to point to a major country that Great Britain recognized after 1861 that had slavery. I suspect you can find some small Arab or Central Asian Emirate or Khanate that they did recognize after 1861, but certainly not a country the size and importance of the CSA.”
The United States, which did not abolish slavery until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
“Great Britain refused to recognize the CSA due to the dislike of the Working Class of England of slavery.”
How quaint. Now tell me what Parliament had to say about the matter of recognizing or not recognizing the CSA. Last I checked, Parliament set policy, not some laborers in Soho.
Well, first off, Manchester is over 200 miles from Soho,so I’m not sure where that reference came from.
Secondly, the House of Commons is a representative body, so I would hope that the Members of Parliament would care would the voters thought on policy.
Thirdly, I chose to highlight the feelings of the cotton workers of Manchester because they were directly impacted by the reduction in cotton supplies because of the embargo, but still chose to go on record against recognizing the CSA because of slavery. They felt very strongly that recognizing the CSA was wrong, even though they were losing their jobs.
Lastly, still waiting for you to provide the identity of a major country that had slavery that the UK recognized AFTER 1861.
It should be lowered. Not because of racism but because it was a symbol for the Democratic Party (y’know, like Obama) and for treason. Frankly, any defenders of it should learn their own history.
Revenue did not double. Tariff revenue dropped substantially.
Maybe this will help......
The success of the shipping trade of New England in the early 19th century was a deliberate effort of mercantilism, in which the South at first willingly participated.
The federal government set out deliberately to encourage the commercial trades there, especially ship-building and shipping. The raw material for Northern factories, and the cargoes of Northern merchantmen, would come from the South.
The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. But in addition to the new duties, it reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving only in American craft.
It also required domestic construction for American ship registry. Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.
This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States.
The navigation act of 1817 had made it official, providing “that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power.”
The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels. American ship owners’ annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.
New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, in part because the British had been feeding cargoes to Boston all through the war to encourage anti-war sentiment in New England. New York was the more starved, therefore it became the port of choice. The dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. In the decades to come. New Yorkers made the most of the situation.
Four Northern and Mid-Atlantic ports still had the lion's share of the shipping. But Boston and Baltimore mainly served regional markets. Philadelphia's shipping interest had built up trade with the major seaports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially as Pennsylvania's coal regions opened up in the 1820s. But New York was king. Its merchants had the ready money, it had a superior harbor, it kept freight rates down, and by 1825 some 4,000 coastal trade vessels per year arrived there. In 1828 it was estimated that the clearances from New York to ports on the Delaware Bay alone were 16,508 tons, and to the Chesapeake Bay 51,000 tons.
Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on “packet lines” — groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the Atlantic.
The reason for success was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.
So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.
Since this “triangle trade” involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition.
By creating a three-cornered trade in the ‘cotton triangle,’ New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it.
This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.
Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.
The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.
As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.
Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.
U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.
This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.
According to a Treasury report, the net revenue of all the ports of South Carolina during 1859 was a mere $234,237; during 1860 it was $309,222.
New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, were able to control the movement of Southern goods.
In his December 1864 state of the union message to Congress Lincoln put tariff revenue for the prior fiscal year at over $102 million. That's double for 1860-1861.
I think it did. Especially this line here:
"As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool."
Your article describes it as a triangle trade where west-bound ships loaded with imports and immigrants land in northern ports and discharge their cargo. Then they have to travel down to the cotton ports and load with exports destined for Europe. That seems to support the fact that the South imported comparatively little in the way of imports since if they demand for imported goods was greater then it would make sense for the ships to load in southern ports with cotton and return to southern ports with imported goods. Instead what goods southern consumers did demand could be met by smaller packet ships.
"I'm looking for the reason why tariff revenues more than doubled between 1861 and 1863".
.......And it had major declines for that period. So is there a point?
And your point is?
And I'm asking where the decline was? If tariff revenue in the year before the war was in the $50 million range and the tariff revenue for 1863 was in the $100 million range. If the South did account for most imports and most tariff payments then the revenue should have dropped to near nothing and stayed there.
That according to your own source the Southern demand for imports was so small that it did not justify shipping the goods directly to the Southern ports. And therefore the South could not generate the majority of tariff revenue as claimed.
Tariff revenue for year 1860 was $56.1 with a federal debt of $64.8.
I do not know when the tariff deposits in Southern tariff houses stopped being transferred, nor do I know when Northern merchants stopped paying their tariff deposits on goods (sold South) to the government.
But according to Treasury Dept. data, tariff deposits dropped to $41.5 for calendar year 1861.
For calendar year 1862 and forward, data includes the new variables of raw war material imports, and foreign goods now having to be imported as a substitute for Southern goods no longer available.
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