Posted on 08/11/2015 1:11:21 PM PDT by iowamark
What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery.
But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and love the South to want to believe that the continued enslavement of our neighbors could not have possibly been the motivation for succession. But we should love truth even more than liberty and heritage, which is why we should not only acknowledge the truth about the cause of the war but be thankful that the Confederacy lost and that freedom won.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.acton.org ...
It is you doing the cherry picking. Here from Wiki:
"...the Morrill Tariff increased the effective rate collected on dutiable imports by approximately 70%.'
Shortly after the seats were vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen, 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
You said: “So which part do you disagree with?”
You did not answer my question.
‘In a Saturday Evening Post article dated August 31st, 1963, Barry Goldwater said, “Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.”’
Listen, I was alive during these events. People who were alive at that time are aware of these things. And, you know, in 1963, there was much discussion about the upcoming Kennedy vs. Goldwater election in 1964. Tell me something - would you have advised Goldwater to make that kind of a statement one year before he was going to run a nationwide campaign? Do you see what one of his problems might have been?
The northeastern Republican establishment fought Goldwater more ferociously than the Democrats and in the general election many openly refused to support him. The 1964 electoral map shows where Goldwater’s strongest support was- in the Democratic dominated Deep South.
Do you know why the South voted against Johnson in 1964? Has somebody told you that it had something to do with spending or taxes? Why don't you see if you can find a statement by President Johnson to the effect that if he signed a certain bill in 1964, the Democratic Party would lose the South for a generation? I want you to investigate that and find out what that bill was called and what it was all about. I think you're going to discover that it had nothing to do with Southern views about taxes or welfare spending or defense spending or fiscal matters. Go look that up and see what you learn.
What are they teaching in schools?
Some of us think that the USA is already a socialist country in too many respects.
I don't think the Soviet Union would still exist under any circumstances. Maybe we just disagree about communism, but I don't think it works. It is just fundamentally a doomed system. Nobody wants to live like that and it's getting harder to hide what's happening in the rest of the world from your people. I guess there are still a couple of exceptions, like North Korea, but the prospects aren't good for communism.
I don't think I've ever met any "South haters" out here in the West. Are you running into any "West haters" out your way? I really don't think that most people think of other sections of the country in those terms (except everybody hates to be in Newark or Flint, Michigan).
You know, I've had to travel quite a bit and about 20 years ago (maybe sometime in the nineties), I began to notice how similar different areas of the country began to seem. The hotels all started to look the same and the people all started to sound the same. And, now, even the food is pretty much the same. You can get anything you want now anywhere you go.
I'm not sure it's better, but it's easier.
Dude the MSM, GOPe, liberals, Democrats all hate the South, you are one naive fellow. The South haters are all over Free Republic.
Do you really think that people don't notice these things?
“Listen, I was alive during these events.”
I used to watch Ike give speeches live on television. I watched Khrushchev pound his shoe at the UN. The first election I took an interest in was Nixon vs JFK. I lived in Phoenix in 1963 and was a big fan of Goldwater.
So while it’s been amusing to read your version of those days you’ll need to try the “I was alive and you weren’t” trick on someone else.
As I recall the back door rhetoric from back then, it was "give the darkies some free stuff and they will stay quiet."
That has not worked to well because the bureaucrats in Washington have figured out that the more crumbs we give to the peasants, the more cake they can eat. The bureaucrats always want more cake and they really do not give a damn about the people the a pretend to help.
I think we all need to understand that Congress or the Executive branch run this nation today. The permanent government... The bureaucracies and the law firms and lobbying firms who buy their affection are really our government.
Meant to say Congress and the Executive branch do not run this nation today.
(And I saw JFK in August, 1963)
I am sure they are both rolling over in their graves. I am in denial about where we are today.
In any event, the point that I have been trying to make remains the same. There just isn't any section in this country with clean hands when it comes to our huge national debt. People want goodies and they don't want to pay for them. I'm not sure that's a philosophy as much as it is a description of human nature.
BTW, my father took me out on a sidewalk to see Khrushchev fly by in a limousine in Los Angeles when he came to the U.S. As I recall, he was very upset that they didn't let him go to Disneyland.
Again, I apologize for my misunderstanding. I should not have just assumed that you are younger than you are. (Boy, that sounds terrible, doesn't it?) ;-)
I've seen plenty of racism in the North and in the West in my time. What some sections of the country did with statutes, other sections of the country did with neighborhoods. I grew up in the West and there was one black kid in my high school. Other schools, not too far away, were mostly black. And, we had a lot of riots in Northern cities.
Race has been a mess since the beginning pretty much everywhere in this country. I don't pretend to have any good answers.
I never saw Ike but he’s still my favorite President. Reagan’s a close second. I snuck into a high roller GOP campaign shindig in ‘68 and saw Governor Reagan and candidate Nixon down on the stage. I met Edmund Muskie and George McGovern who both went on to disaster- so evidently my presence jinxes Democrats.
The neighborhood where I grew up is just six miles from the White House, right across the Potomac. A great place to be a kid when your interest is politics and wars and every other sort of world event.
The dad of one of my classmates was Kennedy’s driver. I saw one of LBJ’s daughters drive her Corvette right past me with a Secret Service escort. Back when America wasn’t filled with exotic immigrants from all over the world I classmates from foreign lands whose parents worked at various embassies.
“I am sure they are both rolling over in their graves. I am in denial about where we are today.”
I agree. I think most of us who remember pre-1965 America feel exactly the same way. Maybe that’s part of the appeal of Trump. At least that’s what Make America Great Again and booting out the horde of illegals means to me.
” I should not have just assumed that you are younger than you are. (Boy, that sounds terrible, doesn’t it?) ;-)”
At this stage we are both hoping people can’t guess our real age, that’s for sure.
You were at Shiloh weren’t you?
I just don't think that young folks today feel that same sense of optimism and hope. Everything seems like its become old and fragile. It's like the world is fighting for scraps now. Anger. Hostility. Even the music is repetitive.
I feel so lucky to have had all of the opportunities that I have had, to have lived here in the years that I have lived. We've been blessed.
It doesn’t seem real. We had an Irish Catholic President. Today, an Irish Catholic couldn’t serve as a county clerk in KY.
The music- there were so many extremely talented musicians when we were young that we just assumed that that was the normal condition of the world. Little did we suspect what would be coming after... A lot of rock musicians had come up through the folk era and so they could actually sing. Amazing. Harmonies and everything. Although I still can’t explain the popularity of Bob Dylan...
“I’m sure that you can remember how exciting it was to get up early in the morning to watch those first space flights, etc”
We lived through what sci-fi writers had been dreaming of. I remember going out at night and watching the Echo satellites pass overhead- you could see them with your naked eyes. After Ike’s Redstone scientists figured out how to keep the rockets from blowing up on launch Kennedy announced that by the decade’s end we would land a man on the Moon. A shame JFK didn’t live to see it. Ike nearly did. I thought 2001 A Space Odyssey was a reasonable guess of our having space wheels serviced by Pan Am and a colony on the Moon... what the heck happened to kill that America? ...other than Lyndon Johnson’s welfare state, the 1965 immigration act and the quisling Republicans never reversing any of it.
“I just don’t think that young folks today feel that same sense of optimism and hope. “
They have little reason to. When we were growing up high school grads could get good paying manufacturing jobs. Those have been outsourced along with all the support industry. There is less job opportunity, the welfare/victim mentality has taken over a larger portion of society, white middle America is targeted by government and the media, political correctness has killed freedom, and their music and clothes absolutely suck. I’m surprised they don’t hurl themselves off of cliffs like lemmings.
“It doesn’t seem real. We had an Irish Catholic President. Today, an Irish Catholic couldn’t serve as a county clerk in KY.”
I’m starting to think that my Second Coming is Imminent friends are right on the money. Barky will turn out to be John the Baptist for the AntiChrist.
Slavery did not cause the first shots to be fired, but did have a role in secession. Was war a necessary consequence of secession...of course not.
On the 4th of February, 1861, the Confederate Congress, met at Montgomery and completed their secession movement by adopting their own constitution.
This ended the slavery problem for the Union states and all territories.
The 27 Union states all had stable legislatures and courts. Their commerce was continuing and there was business as usual. In Boston and New York, ships were sailing their regular routes to Europe, and many continued their commerce with Southern ports. Newspapers were printing, banks were lending, legislators were occupied, roads and canals were open, and the Federal government was operating.
On March 2, the Morrill Tariff was signed into law raising the taxation rate to 37.5%. This effectively tripled the taxation rate on imported goods.
The US Treasury had on deposit $6,000,000—enough to finance the government for a month and a half. Tariff revenue financed practically the entire government.
Income from the imports of goods purchased with the proceeds of the sales of Southern goods were now ceased. To pay for normal operating expenses, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase increased the national debt to over $80,000,000, and was borrowing more.
On March 11, the Confederacy published its tariff rates. The average tariff rate to be collected on dutiable goods was 13.3%.
News reached the North that the Confederacy was enacting the much lower tariff. This led the New York Herald to say:
“The effect of these two tariffs, then, upon our trade with the best, and most reliable part of the country will most disastrously be felt in all the Northern cities. We learn that even now some of the largest houses in the Southern trade in this city, who have not already failed, are preparing to wind up their affairs and abandon business entirely”.
A few weeks later, the results of the secession and the impact on trade were revealed in the Richmond Dispatch:
“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%.
An article in the Charleston Mercury described the early effects of secession on the business interests:
“The business men of Charleston are already beginning to reap the advantages of the independent position which the South has taken.
“The results of the last few weeks have demonstrated commercial prosperity. Business of all kinds has increased at an amazing pace; customers are thronging the city from all quarters of the South, and the indications are that Charleston is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the Confederate States.
“In dry goods and fancy goods the operations have been very large, and the purchasers, we are informed, are principally composed of those who used to patronize New York.”
Without Southern states’ exports and Southern customers, more than 70% of the Northern import market ceased to exist.
Domestic and overseas financiers, having already loaned large amounts to the government at extremely high interest rates for the prior 4 years were not likely to continue to lend money to a government that was losing most of its revenue.
A Washington newspaper reported that a meeting of over 100 New York City merchants revealed great concern on the tariff issue and its destruction of trade and legitimate business. The newspaper said that:
“It is a singular fact that the merchants who, two months ago were fiercely shouting ‘no coercion’ now are for anything rather than inaction.”
That is when Northern businessmen and politicians began to visit Lincoln’s office.
By mid-March, President Lincoln had seen a number of governors of the Northern and Western States. Among these men were Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, Governor Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, Governor Andrew Curtain of Pennsylvania, and Governor Austin Blair of Michigan.
They offered him money and militia to coerce the South.
Despite all of this, the country was not at war and the concern with slavery disappeared from debate.
3/22/1861 The economic editor of the New York Times said,
“At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.”
On April 4, the Lincoln government supplied this quote to the press:
“It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use armed force to subjugate the South. If the people of the South want to stay out of the Union, if they desire independence, let them have it.”
...while giving this order:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., April 4, 1861.
Lieutenant Colonel HENRY L. SCOTT, A. D. C., New York:
SIR: This letter will be landed to you by Captain G. V. Fox... He is charged by high authority here with the command of an expedition, under cover of certain ships of war, whose object is to re-enforce Fort Sumter.
To embark with Captain Fox you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about two hundred, to be immediately organized at Fort Columbus, with a competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence. A large surplus of the latter-indeed, as great as the vessels of the expedition can take-with other necessaries, will be needed for the augmented garrison of Fort Sumter.
Consult Captain Fox and Major Eaton on the subject, and give all necessary orders in my name to fit out the expedition, except that the hiring of vessels will be left to others.
Some fuel must be shipped. Oil, artillery implements, fuses, cordage, slow-march, mechanical levers, and gins, &c., should also be put on board.
Consult, also, if necessary, confidentially, Colonel Tompkins and Major Thornton.
Respectfully, yours,
WINFIELD SCOTT.
The war began because of failure of the Republican led government to require Lincoln to observe the Constitution.
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