Posted on 07/07/2012 11:51:43 AM PDT by nickcarraway
At the height of the holiday shopping season of 1860, a bookseller in Richmond, Va., placed a telling advertisement in The Daily Dispatch promoting a selection of "Elegant Books for Christmas and New Year's Presents." Notably, the list of two dozen "choice books, suitable for Holiday Gifts" included five works by the late Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott in "various beautiful bindings."
Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict. His highly idealized depiction of the age of chivalry allowed Southern readers and writers to find positive meaning in war's horrors, hardships and innumerable deaths. And his works inspired countless wartime imitators, who drew upon his romantic conception of combat.
In 1814 Scott had begun his ascension to the heights of literary stardom with the publication of the historical romance "Waverley," which was soon followed by other novels in the so-called Waverley series. The works were an immediate and immense success in Great Britain and America. Over the course of many volumes, Scott glamorized the Middle Ages, at once shaping and popularizing what we now consider the classic tale of chivalry. As one enamored 19th-century reader explained, each of Scott's romances focused upon the "manners and habits of the most interesting and chivalrous periods of Scottish [and] British history."
Among Scott's most famous works was "Ivanhoe," published in 1820. The romance, set in the 12th century, presents a tale of intrigue, love and valor. The plot traces the fortunes of young Wilfred of Ivanhoe as he strives, despite his father's opposition, to gain the hand of the beautiful Lady Rowena. In the course of Ivanhoe's adventures, Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood appear, and Ivanhoe performs many a remarkable feat.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
How typical of the Cornpone Brigade to post a lot of irrelevancies and ignore the question.
Was there a federal tyranny, as claimed by the Slavers, in 1860?
Your opportune ambiguity conceals whether you consider "the land of the whip and the lash" to be part of the United States for the purpose of the claim above, or if a separable North is the United States this time.
2) “Southerners” are not being upbraided by me. They were terribly afflicted by their ruling class’ insane policies. Non-slave owners in the South were enslaved by the requirements of slavery, not the least of which was being dragooned into Slave Patrols. Nor was it possible for whites to speak against the Slaver system without great danger to their lives and livelihoods. There is no question that there was more freedom for blacks and whites outside the Land of the Whip and the Lash.
You don't question it. Questioning prior beliefs is for critical thinkers, anyway.
It is not even a debatable point.
You don't debate it. You simply make declarations.
Any freedom Southerners had was easily available to Northerners but not vice-versa.
Because the land that gave America the Bill of Rights is somehow less libertine than the land that gave America the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Most of the elements of non-freedom were the results of enforcing such abominations as the Fugitive Slave laws enacted, of course, by the Slaver politicians North and South.
I'm going to surprise you by agreeing with the underlined portion. In the first half of the century, the government was such a non-factor in people's daily lives that it could not have greatly impacted the average citizen's personal freedom without some extraordinary legal interface. Engaging in interstate trafficking was one way of becoming entangled with the government.
Union armies were mostly disbanded after the war other than those necessary to prevent the wholesale slaughter of the Freedmen. The small armies sent West mainly occupied posts.
Maybe the Indians got lost and somebody else's army tried to wipe them out.
It was the Republican administrations which mostly treated the Indian properly while the Democrats proceeded in a questionable fashion.
Your ability to just make things up will always defeat my insistent reliance on the facts.
The Indian Wars were not related to the Civil War in any important fashion unless one is trying to hide the facts about the Slaver Revolt. Additionally, it is undeniable that the conflict between Indian and American was primarily the result of irreconcilable cultures and pretty much inevitable. It isn’t as though white people treated other white people all that well in the 19th century to start with.
What an extraordinary (and sociopathic) statement! Firstly, not only do you think that any reference to Northern human rights abuses only serves to deny any Southern crimes, but you believe that the undeniability of favored selections of truth invalidates the argumentative worth of any inconvenient facts. Normal people don't think that way. I assure you, no moral failing of the North undoes the sins of the South because it's actually possible for nonexclusive facts to coexist. But presenting an unbalanced set of claims as though they were balanced is functionally lying.
Secondly, I have to ask, did you mean to claim that cultural incompatibility with a different culture justifies it's extermination? Isn't that exactly the sort of view Northerners have been accused of having? Isn't that the sort of thing you'd want to deny?i
No sooner than I hit the "Post" button did I notice that. Should be "its".
Freedom within the United States for white people was high even with the Slavers in it. For Blacks on the plantations, and Indians it was not if the Whites wanted their lands. There was never anything but ONE United States of America notwithstanding the Slavers attempt to destroy it.
There is no question for anyone who has studied history and not swallowed the Slaver rhetoric. No more than there is a question that the US fought and won a war for its independence.
This whole thread has been a debate.
Jefferson’s allies used the state equivalents to the A&S acts to prosecute federalist newspaper editors for criticizing him. Hamilton was opposed to the federal passage of the Acts.
Your presumption as to what I think should be confined to want I have actually said and forget what you think I think.
When you start yammering on about the problems of existence in the North which were mainly unintended consequences of industrialization and pretending that those are the equivalents of intentional and necessary parts of slavery it is clear you are not objective.
BTW slavery was as concentrated in certain parts of the North at the time of independence as it was in the South until outlawed by the states impacted. THEY saw the light and overcame the blight unlike states totally controlled by Slaver forces.
Perhaps you need to look at the definitions of “justify” and “explain”. Cultural differences often in history lead to massacre and genocide that FACT does not mean it was something good. Islam murdered and looted across the Christian and Persian lands because of such differences, you think I justify that?
If you want to start a thread on the crimes of Whites against the Indian that might be useful but it is irrelevant to the issues here.
Since none of the Cornpone Brigade will answer the simple question I asked maybe you will.
Was there a federal tyranny directed against the South in 1860?
Then I'm having trouble reconciling your hyperbolic descriptions. The South is "the land of the whip and the lash" (LoTW&TL), but it is part of the United States which is "one of the islands of freedom". There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance here. Was the South only bad in comparison to the North but still much better than elsewhere?
Perhaps you need to look at the definitions of “justify” and “explain”. Cultural differences often in history lead to massacre and genocide that FACT does not mean it was something good. Islam murdered and looted across the Christian and Persian lands because of such differences, you think I justify that?
That detached explanation is as satisfactory as saying "Technological differences often in history lead to enslavement". Either both issues belong under the common heading 'Stuff That Just Happened' or not. I hope that you'll agree that both cases were unjustifiable.
If you want to start a thread on the crimes of Whites against the Indian that might be useful but it is irrelevant to the issues here.
I don't think this thread was initially about slavery, either. Did I violate the thread-jacker's code?
Was there a federal tyranny directed against the South in 1860?
I don't think so: The courts were working, representatives were seated, legislatures operated unfettered, roads were open and sea lanes were clear, laws were enforced and contracts were upheld. I would trade the government of 1860 for the government of 2012 in a heartbeat.
But I believe that it is the unconditional right of a people within a constituted state to exercise their sovereignty and withdraw from a political union with other people within other states. I support a state's right (a state's people's right, really) to secede at the drop of a hat on a whim.
To the extent that the Slavers were not able to negate the US Constitution the South was (for White people) preferable to most places. Maybe not England though Dickens paints an often dismal picture of London. Though Slavers dragged down the overall degree of freedom in the nation they could not eliminate it entirely for whites. It has nothing to do with “the South” per se but the ruling class of that region. Had the North been entirely under its control it would have been just as bad.
Indeed, enslavement was the result of power disequilibrium. Look at who were slaves in Rome, they were often Greeks superior to the Romans in education, culture and historic importance but not militarily. Of course, earlier it was the Greek who were culturally, militarily and politically superior to most of those surrounding it. And the Arab slave traders had similar advantages to the Africans they enslaved.
Since there would have been no Civil War without slavery discussions of it and secession are entirely appropriate.
OK, there was no “tyranny” in 1860. Since that was the basis of secession it means it was based entirely upon a LIE. As I have repeatedly said.
So it would be acceptable/reasonable in your world for Communist operatives to agitate for secession and build a movement in Iowa or Nebraska to secede from the US, sign a treaty with the Red Chinese and allow missiles to be based there?
If you're going to claim that one is the LoTW&TL but the other is "one of the islands of freedom" (IoF, I guess), you should expect that the consistency of your standard of proof for those two independent claims will be challenged. *IF* the IoF has a poorer record than the LoTW&TL, then your moral scale needs to be recalibrated.
OK, there was no “tyranny” in 1860. Since that was the basis of secession it means it was based entirely upon a LIE. As I have repeatedly said.
There were two rounds of secession. The Deep South withdrew because they disliked the tone of the new management. The Upper South left in reaction to the Union response to the initial break.
So it would be acceptable/reasonable in your world for Communist operatives to agitate for secession and build a movement in Iowa or Nebraska to secede from the US, sign a treaty with the Red Chinese and allow missiles to be based there?
If foreign agents of influence are undermining the sovereignty of the state(s) through subversion (which isn't even a hypothetical, these days), then the seceding unit can hardly be said to be exercising it's sovereign will. But if Iowa or Nebraska left the Union as an original notion and then partnered with China for spite and giggles, we would find ourselves in the difficult position of having to explain how we could oppose their independence while supporting the liberation of Tibet or the independence of Taiwan.
BTW, do you agree that "The courts were working, representatives were seated, legislatures operated unfettered,..." is evidence of non-tyranny?
Another content-free post from you pea. If you are going to take up bandwidth, then say something relevant.
Of course, there was no tyranny. It is entirely a Cornpone Brigade myth.
There need be no “explanation” for actions so protective of the sovereignty of the US as to prevent a Red Chinese military presence within the Union. It is indivisible by its nature as this illustrates.
Taiwan and Tibet are different because it was the Revolting forces (like the secessionists) which took over China. Those places had no allegiance to them any more than an American would have had to the Secessionists had they been successful.
But you didn't answer my question. Is the non-tyranny dependent on "the courts were working, representatives were seated, legislatures operated..."? If those are the sine qua non of tyranny, then wouldn't interfering with courts and legislatures, arresting representatives, blockading free travel, and breaking laws and contracts be tyrannical?
There need be no “explanation” for actions so protective of the sovereignty of the US as to prevent a Red Chinese military presence within the Union. It is indivisible by its nature as this illustrates.
Then there is likewise no need to explain why a seceding state would make arrangements to defend ITS sovereignty. It's the threat of your solution to the problem which necessitates the creation of the problem. And how did you illustrate with no explanation?
Taiwan and Tibet are different because it was the Revolting forces (like the secessionists) which took over China.
So if seceding states rejoined the British commonwealth, then their departure from a revolutionary regime would be somehow make their secession alright? Besides, Tibet was a separate country which the Chinese have brutally conquered. Does having been brutally conquered create an allowance?
Those places had no allegiance to them any more than an American would have had to the Secessionists had they been successful.
So, if the Confederacy had seceded in war, then it would have retroactively have had the right to secede?
The Morrill Tariff Issue
“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one
another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread
it has earned.” -—Thomas Jefferson
In the three decades between 1830 and 1860, non-protectionist tariffs were in place for a grand total of 14 years, or less than half of that period. The period began under the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which was restored to lower but still protectionist 1824 rates in 1832 and then to lower yet still protectionist rates in the 1833 compromise.
Heavy protectionism was reinstated with the Black Tariff in the early 1840’s. The 1846 Walker Tariff was the first true reduction and the first true non-protectionist tariff schedule that the U.S. had enacted since the War of 1812. It lasted 11 years until 1857 when it was reduced even further. That reduction lasted three years until the Morrill Tariff passed in May of 1860 and March of 1861.
3/1861 The Northern British Review, Edinburgh,
“The ‘Tariff’ question, again, enters largely (more largely than is commonly supposed) into the irritated and aggrieved feelings of the Southerners. And it cannot be denied that in this matter they have both a serious injury and an unconstitutional injustice to resent.
“... All Northern products are now protected: and the Morrill Tariff is a very masterpiece of folly and injustice. No wonder then that the citizens of the seceding States should feel for half a century they have sacrificed to enhance the powers and profits of the North; and should conclude, after much futile remonstrance, that only in secession could they hope to find redress.”
3/1861 Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the New York Tribune,
“If the cotton states shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we shall insist on letting them go in peace. Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep them in. We hope never to live in a republic where one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.”
3/1861 By 1860 the protectionists had a solid majority in the House of Representatives. This majority was also strictly sectional. The northerners voted in near unanimity for the Morrill tariff while the southerners opposed it in equally unified form. The northerners outnumbered the southerners in the House, meaning it passed with a large majority.
The senate was a slightly different situation in 1860 but its tide had shifted by 1861.
Even if one assumes that every single seceded state's senators had (a) remained and (b) voted against the Morrill act, they still would not have been able to muster enough votes to defeat the thing.
In the absolute best case voting scenario that could have occurred under the senate that took office in 1861, the best that the southerners could manage would be a tie vote, in which case VP Hanibal Hamlin would cast a tiebreaker in favor of the north and the tariff would pass. The southerners recognized this fact almost immediately after the 1860 elections and publicly stated so.
It's certainly true that some Northerners, especially iron founders in Pennsylvania and Ohio, were very strongly pro tariff. So were Southern sugar and hemp growers. While it is always true that some protectionists existed in the south, the tide of southern opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the free trade position. Every single major trade vote in Congress from the era testifies to this fact by displaying virtual unanimity among the southerners in opposition to tariffs.
Senator Robert Hunter of Virginia was on the senate floor in 1861 fighting the passage of the Morrill Tariff. He admitted its passage was inevitable ever since Pennsylvania and the Republican Party united on the issue. He told his colleagues;
“I believe it has been generally understood that the adhesion of the State of Pennsylvania to the Republican party was upon the condition of the passage of this Morrill-tariff bill. Still, I owe it, perhaps, to those whose opinions I represented on this committee, and to my constituents, to expose, if I can, the shallow pretexts on which it is sought to adopt this measure, and strip it of those disguises in the shape of specific duties, under which its enormous taxation is hidden.”
3/2/1861 The Morrill Tariff was signed into law by outgoing President Buchanan.
Before the seats vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen were cold, the economic order of the United States was dramatically changed. The tariff took off on an upward trajectory that was far above any tariff in history
This tariff raised the taxation rate from an average of approximately 15% to 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items. This effectively tripled the taxation rate on imported goods. The law allowed a second additional rate averaging 47% for iron.
This was a major change in taxation. Having evolved from the low taxation rates of the early 1800’s, voters in certain sections of the country were in favor of higher tariffs to protect their manufacturing industries. Southerners, whose income came from agriculture, of course demanded low tariffs. They preferred buying European products, which were better and cheaper than those made in the United States.
Westerners, whose income also came from agriculture at first opposed high tariffs. But they came to accept the “American System” proposed by Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky. In 1824, Congress had boosted most tariffs as a result of Clay’s proposals.
Many people, especially Southerners protested the rising tariffs in 1828. Subsequent negotiations in the US Congress caused the tariffs to rise and fall intermittently during the 1840’s and 1850’s. Since the agricultural South needed more imported goods than the industrial North, the tariff highly affected the South while benefiting the manufacturing interests in the North. Most of the discretionary Federal spending was on Northern projects and infrastructure that did not encourage industrial development in the South.
When Morrill’s tax plan was introduced into debate in Congress in 1860, the Southerners felt betrayed when the West and North joined in support of the high tariffs.
Earlier in the year, the 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.”
The editor advised that the South be left alone, and the Morrill tariff be repealed.
The Republican Party and Lincoln’s major focus was on raising taxes, in particular raising and enforcing the tariff. His convention victory was particularly made possible by support from the Pennsylvania delegation.
Pennsylvania had long been the home and the political focus of the nation’s iron and steel industry which, ever since its inception during the War of 1812, had been chronically inefficient, and had therefore constantly been bartering its votes for high tariffs and, later, import quotas.
“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
—Samuel Adams
Virtually the first act of the Lincoln administration was in passing the Morrill protective tariff act, doubling existing tariff rates, and creating the highest tariff rates in American history
3/2/1861 The New York Evening Post stated:
“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources, which supply our treasury, will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.
There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”
The following table demonstrates the rationale of the comments by the Evening Post writer. It shows the value of Southern cotton and tobacco expressed as a percentage of the total value of US exports. With very little cash money, or specie, returning to the United States, essentially the sale of Southern goods financed the purchase of goods returning to the country and taxed at port of entry.
“Historical Statistics of the United States”
US Documents Section
317.3
U. S. Department of Commerce
Pages 890-899
International Transactions and Foreign Commerce
Total Exports Cotton and Tobacco Percentage
In dollars dollar value as assign- of total export
Year (less re-exports * ed at port of exit dollar values
and specie) by US Customs
Dollar values expressed in millions
1860 $316m $208m 65%
1859 $278m $182m 65%
1858 $251m $148m 58%
1857 $279m $152m 54%
1856 $266m $140m 52%
1855 $193m $103m 53%
*re-exports defined as commodities shipped into the US for re-shipment to Europe.
.
3/2/1861 Senator Louis T. Wigfall, said:
“That the people of the North shall consider themselves as more blessed than we, more civilized, and happier, is not a matter at which we would complain at all, if they would only content themselves with believing that to be the fact; but when they come and attempt to propagandize, and insist that we shall be as perfect as they imagine themselves to be, then it is that their good opinion of themselves becomes offensive to us.
“Let my neighbor believe that his wife is an angel and his children cherubs, I care not, though I may know he is mistaken; but when he comes impertinently poking his nose into my door every morning, and telling me that my wife is a shrew and my children brats, then the neighborhood becomes uncomfortable, and if I cannot remove him, I will remove myself; and if he says to me, “you shall not move, but you shall stay here, and you shall, day after day, hear the demerits of your wife and children discussed,” then I begin to feel a little restive, and possibly might assert that great original right of pursuing whatever may conduce to my happiness, though it might be kicking him out of my door.
“If New England would only be content with the blessings which she imagines she has, we would not disturb her in her happiness.”
Outside of New England and territories populated by transplanted New Englanders, the idea of forcing the South to stay in the Union was highly unpopular.
In many middle-tier states, including Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, there was a considerable sentiment to mimic the South by forming a middle Confederacy to isolate the fanatical Yankees.
3/2/1861 The New York Tribune reported:
“Mr. Lincoln has advised that the Republicans of his State should support Mr. Corwin’s constitutional amendment...prohibiting Congress from interfering with the domestic institutions of the South.”
12/10/1860 The Daily Chicago Times openly admitted that the tariff was indeed a tool used by Northern manufacturers for the purpose of plundering the South, and the editor warned that that valuable mechanism for this plunder was threatened by the existence of free-trade ports in the South.
“The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole…we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor of millions annually.”
“Let the South adopt the free-trade system, and the North’s commerce must be reduced to less than half what it now is….Our labor could not compete…with the labor of Europe,…a large portion of our shipping interest would pass into the hands of the South…these revulsions will bring in their train very general bankruptcy and ruin”.
The Northern Tariffocracy was to have its war to protect its revenue stream.
Well if verbose=substantive then you certainly can give yourself a participation award. Other than being all over the map what is all that supposed to represent?
“Northern Tariffocracy”?! Really pea, you’ve worked yourself into a lather again.
Oh, yeah we can rely on the DEMOCRAT newspapers particularly pro-slavery ones for an understanding of reality. That rag still kisses RAT ass on a daily basis.
The tariff had been the principle funding mechanism of the federal government basically since the Constitution went into effect. So we were a tyranny since 1789?
Prior to that STATES with ports received the revenue. There was no free trade (which is kinda impossible under slavery in any case.)
Not only is that true but only one utterly ignorant of what a tariff is would claim that it effected Southern importers more than Northern ones.
“The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country....” Dear Dumbass Editor, perhaps you are unaware that tariffs are NOT on exports but on imports so it would not matter if ONE HUNDRED PER CENT of exports came from the South. Tariffs on exports is EXPLICITLY forbidden in the Constitution.
Now I am no fan of tariffs but there are still many around this site who are, most of the Cornpone Brigade included, and they want our tax system to rely more on tariffs than it does.
And these tariffs prior to the Wah were the products of governments almost entirely dominated by Slaver and Pro-Slaver politicians.
It should be noted that under the Tariff of Abominations the “Nullification Crisis” erupted. Strongly Pro-Union President Andrew Jackson (who was born in S.C.) promptly warned the South Carolina Slavers that if they persisted in their folly he would HANG their leaders. Jackson understood that the Union was NOT to be destroyed.
Surely you can do better than this stupidity to make a case for federal tyranny in 1860. Just admit there was NO tyranny and save your fingers the typing of falsehoods.
This is one of the Cornpone Brigade’s favorite stunts when faced with an question impossible for them to deal with - try and bury the issue in BS.
All these interesting facts about EXPORTS which, according to the Constitution, cannot be taxed hoping that their fellow economic ignoramuses will forget that the issue is IMPORTS.
Watching them flounder about trying to save their stupidities is extremely funny.
Since court officers and State legislatures are required to swear to uphold the US Constitution before anything, I suppose you could argue that those courts and legislatures under Slaver control were not functioning.
State “sovereignty” under the Constitution cannot trump the sovereignty of the United States of America. That was PRECISELY why the Constitution was written in the first place since state sovereignty had almost destroyed the Union.
Colonies never chose to be part of Britain. They realized that they were nothing but appendages to the Empire to be used as the Crown and Parliament wished without the rights of Englishmen. So that attempt goes down in flames.
Presumably you meant “succeeded in war.” But revolting against a pretended tyranny and a Union you swore to uphold is far different than revolting against a political structure which denied you the basic rights of Englishmen. My guess is had representation been allowed in the Parliament there would have been no rebellion.
BTW since you appear very confused about tariffs it might interest you to know that:
1) EVERY consumer of imports paid the tariff;
2) more revenue was obtained from the Northern farmers and consumers paying tariff rates than the South;
3) without the Northern industries which absorbed huge quantities of cotton Slaver income would have been MUCH lower. And even so most planters lived on debt;
4) As had always been the case, the planters debts were held by British bankers so they were not interested in having those debts compromised by anti-Slaver actions.
Just some more relevant facts for you to ignore and pretend don’t exist. But you are very good at that.
How did the federal GOVERNMENT get the profit from cotton and tobacco EXPORTS from PRIVATE sources? Let’s hear THAT gem.
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