Posted on 08/05/2010 6:01:30 AM PDT by Michael Zak
[by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA), re-published with his permission]
For years I have admired Congressman Ron Paul’s principled stance on spending and the Constitution. That said, he really damaged himself when he blamed President Lincoln for the Civil War, saying, “Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war… [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.”
This is historical revisionism of the worst order, and it must be addressed.
For Congressman Paul’s benefit – and for his supporters who may not know – seven states illegally declared their “independence” from the United States before Lincoln was sworn in as President. After South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, four additional states declared independence...
(Excerpt) Read more at grandoldpartisan.typepad.com ...
Tariffs affect ALL agriculturalists North and South the same.
You pretend that huge areas of the North were not agricultural with the wild declarations of impact on the South.
“True” Southerner means a Southerner swallowing the bilge and lies justifying the RAT Rebellion.
No one cares if his reputation is ruined with YOU. There is no question that the South was very underdeveloped industrially and that the majority of what industry there was was in Virginia.
No one claimed there was NO industry in the South but that is a common method the Clown College uses. Take a point someone makes, distort it into an absolute then claim that since the absolute is false then the original point is discredited. This is also done with the black Confederate soldier argument.
Not only was the South underdeveloped wrt industry but also wrt railroads and both crippled its war-making ability. After the blockade prevented importation of most arms the South had very little chance of winning the war. When one side can produce arms at will and the other has to scrounge for them guess who is going to lose?
Tariffs affect ALL agriculturalists North and South the same.
That's not necessarily true, either of agriculture as an industry or of region. Since protective tariffs throw all international trade into turmoil by - first - provoking retaliation and - second - altering/manipulating the direction and balance of payments abroad, who the tariff affects the most will depend upon (1) what exports the country produces at the time and (2) what import-competing sectors are being protected. It also isn't even immediately clear in the import-competing sector that the tariff will be a good thing for all participants in that sector due to Stolper-Samuelson effects (in layman's terms, whether and what in a sector gains will depend on if it is a labor intensive or capital intensive production process).
Generally speaking though, at the time of the nullification crisis protective tariffs did disproportionately burden export agriculture through their trade-discouraging effects. The question then becomes what type of agriculture products were being exported: southern crops such as tobacco and cotton or norther crops such as corn and grain? Answer that and you will know who likely had the strongest tariff grievance.
Early tariff rates averaged about 15%. It was a revenue tariff only slightly protectionist.
[conimbricenses]: Not according to the letters I posted.
Here's an excerpt from another Jefferson letter, this one to John C. Breckenridge dated August 12, 1803 [Link]:
The future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.
Why would one bother to argue with you since you tend to make up a claim then refute it?
Jefferson had little impact on the Constitution and Madison was closer to Hamilton in thought than he was J when the Constitution was being created. I have no doubt he would not have supported it since his later statements essentially destroy it. Judicial independence? Naah, better the mob decide what justice is. J. and his toadies in Congress actually prevented the US Supreme Court from sitting for a year and a half.
The Va. and KY. Resolutions would mean there was no law of the land. His view that each branch of government decide what it believes the constitution says is idiotic in the extreme and would guarantee chaos.
He didn’t even believe the Constitution allowed the Louisiana Purchase. He hated the military and did all he could to weaken and destroy it. He did not want American ships to carry trade goods or a Navy to protect them believing in gunboats rather than frigates.
Thank God that Washington and Hamilton set the course for American strength and growth. Had J been the first president I doubt the nation would have survived at all.
During the first period rates were low and varied only by a few percentage points. Most categories under the 1789 tariff were taxed at 8%, and the modifications of it in the 1790's only tweaked those rates on a handful of goods. When trade resumed after the War of 1812, Congress passed the first overtly protective tariff in 1816 and a succession of hikes over the next two decades. The peak rate topped out at over 60% in 1828, and tariffs did not drop to a stable rate below 20% again until after World War II.
Jefferson understood the difference between revolt against an authority never consented to and one freely consented to and thus would never have gone along with the hotheads leading the South into disaster because they didn’t like the president elected. Elected mainly because of the stupidity of the slavers. I must say this was one of the most lunatic of ruling classes only topped perhaps by the boneheaded Russian nobility.
Luther Martin was in no way irrational in his hatred of Jefferson. He knew of his dishonesty and duplicity. Martin was also a Federalist after the new government began to work.
After about 1790 Madison was a negative influence. In other words, after Jefferson’s return he became unreliable.
Our greatest expositors of the constitution are Hamilton and Marshall two of the greatest legal minds ever created especially the former.
Compared to Jefferson, however, Madison was a constitutional whiz.
Jefferson had little impact on the Constitution
Really? Because he was sending Madison letters advising him what to include throughout the convention. Many of Jefferson's ideas were directly incorporated into the document by Madison.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch8s11.html
Furthermore, your claim that Madison was following Hamilton instead is contradicted by Hamilton's own activities at the convention, the thrust of which consisted of a widely ridiculed and dismissed pitch for a de facto monarchy followed by a couple of months of sitting there as New York's lone impotent delegate after Yates and Lansing left. Hamilton definitely became an advocate of the Constitution that was adopted, but its design was very different from the one he himself wanted and much closer to that put forth by the Virginia Plan.
The Va. and KY. Resolutions would mean there was no law of the land.
As opposed to the alternative in which newspaper publishers were being rounded up and jailed en masse for writing unfavorable opinions about John Adams. Some "rule of law" that is!
He didn’t even believe the Constitution allowed the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson was probably wrong about that. The Louisiana Purchase was done by a senate ratified treaty, so it's constitutionality is of little doubt.
New York EXPLICITLY rejected the “conditional ratification” in its convention that was the occasion of Madison’s letter to Hamilton on the subject. So stop using that lie. The statements of other states do not say what you claim either.
In any case states could say anything they wished but the only thing that had any legal standing was the answer to the question of “do we ratify or not?” And the answer could not be “Yes, but...”.
The only minds the 10th amendment provides a legal basis for secession for are weak ones. No authority believes that.
States NEVER had “their own governance” to resume. They went from being colonies to being part of the USA. Most did not even have constitutions until Independence was declared. All realized that without Union they would have little chance of survival.
A constitution is the basis of the Union and like the foundation of a house cannot have part of it removed without endangering the whole structure. It weaves the states into a nation AND WAS INTENDED TO. It is a fundamental law. There are strictures within it dealing with the powers of the federal government to put down rebellion and insurrection even in states taken over by rebels against the constituted authority.
There was no need for a constitutional amendment to anyone understanding (or caring) what a constitution is.
I find it much harder to defend Marshall though, with the exception of Barron v. Baltimore. His career was fraught with self-contradiction and politicized decision making. At times he was outright stupid, such as when he made the constitutionally absurd claim (along with Madison) in 1794 that the government did not have the power to impose an excise tax on carriages. Even his famous McCulloch ruling was a farce when the case is scrutinized. He quite literally had the AUTHOR of the supremacy clause in his courtroom during the case telling him exactly what was intended at the convention when it was written, but ignored him in favor of a contrary interpretation that meshed with his own political preferences at the time. Sadly most judges since then have followed Marshall's model of decisionmaking, hence the government we have today.
Martin's hatred of Jefferson was anything but rational, regardless of what he thought about Jefferson personally (come to think of it, there seem to be tinges of irrationality in your own insult-laden position on Jefferson. Why is that?). Martin's dislike stemmed almost entirely from a silly personal dispute between the two men after Jefferson published a pamphlet that insulted Martin's late father-in-law over complicity in an Indian massacre on the frontier in the 1770's. He became a Federalist in repudiation of Jefferson as a result, but was at odds with virtually all of the Federalist platform. Despite his party label, he then politically aligned himself with the Aaron Burr faction of the Jeffersonians and spent the remainder of his career at odds with the Federalists (including Marshall, who he argued against as the attorney general for Maryland in McCulloch v. Maryland). had made about one of Martin's wife's relatives.
Exports from the South were not going to be the subject of retaliation since England needed the cotton and the mills were not going to allow Parliament to cut their throats. Tariffs on luxuries affected the North as much as the South and were a way to avoid oppressing poor people. Tariffs on machinery affect both sections’ agriculture about the same and even raised costs for manufacturers using it.
Protective tariffs were initially meant (by Hamilton) to be only mildly protective and were not intended to be used to protect mature industries. His concern was to rapidly develop our manufacturing capacity and remove the distortions imposed by the colonial system for the benefit of English industry. It was not as if there was true Free trade in any case.
One should recall that colonial policy was designed to cripple or completely prevent the development of an industrial base in the colonies. So we were born deformed.
It is not an accident that The Wealth of Nations was published the same year as the Declaration.
He was discussing the creation of new states from the Purchase not the secession of states already part of the Union.
It has been some time since I read Taussig, the authority on US tariff history, but I seem to remember his comment that the rates initially averaged about 15%. I do know Hamilton was not for an oppressive protectionist scheme.
Rates were lowered after the nullification crisis.
As to rates after the nullification crisis:
1. They never dipped below 20%, which was only attained for about a year in the late 1850's.
2. They fluctuated pretty wildly, usually depending on what party was in power in Congress. When the Whigs & later Republicans were in control, rates generally went up. When the Dems were in control, rates generally went down.
3. The immediate post-1833 reductions were botched in their administrative phase due to a poorly written law and were reduced haphazardly and inconsistently for about a decade, before shooting back up again in 1842 when the Whig Congress counteracted them.
In any case, tariffs in the 1816-1861 period were raised to the point of being exorbitant more than once, and at no time resembled the comparatively low and stable rates in place before the war of 1812.
Jefferson’s comments sank without a trace as far as I can tell. It took months to cross the Atlantic and there could have been very few letters to even make it to Madison in Philadelphia.
I did not say Madison was “following” Hamilton quite the contrary since at the time M was more Hamiltonian than Hamilton. He even propose getting rid of states entirely.
Your description of Hamilton’s contribution is a gross distort of the facts. His proposal during his day long speech did not win much support but had the result of pushing the convention closer to the “active” government he knew was necessary for national survival.
His experience as Washington’s right hand man during the war made him realize a stronger Union was necessary as it did most of those who actually fought in the revolution.
Newspapermen were in NO way “rounded up in mass” for any comments. The impact of the Alien and Sedition Acts were WILDLY exaggerated for political purposes by the Democrats and their lying press.
Not only that but Jefferson did the same thing. See the Croswell case in NY which provided Hamilton with his last great court case. He lost but the law on libel was changed so that truth was a defense.
Hamilton was also against extreme protective tariffs because he knew they needed the revenue source, and he believed he could obtain protection by different means through subsidies or “bounties” as he called them without distorting tariff revenue. Hamilton’s economics were muddled though and he did not realize that his proposed policies would have more or less had the same effect on imports.
Here is Marshall during in Virginia's ratification convention [Link].
The state governments did not derive their powers from the general government; but each government derived its powers from the people, and each was to act according to the powers given it. Would any gentleman deny this? He demanded if powers not given were retained by implication. Could any man say so? Could any man say that this power was not retained by the states, as they had not given it away? For, says he, does not a power remain till it is given away?
Sounds similar to my Jefferson Davis Tenth Amendment quote above.
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