What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

National Review ^ | April 7 2018 | Daniel Gerelnter

[iowamark]

A friend recently posed this question: “If you had to recommend one book for a first-time visitor to the U.S. to read, to understand our country, what would it be and why?”...

If the goal is an education, we could recommend Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s Growth of the American Republic, a two-volume history that used to be required reading...

Huckleberry Finn may be the greatest American novel... But there is no single novel, no matter how great, that can do the job alone.

Consider instead the great American essayists who invented a new style of writing in the 1920s and founded The New Yorker. E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat is the finest such essay collection... Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel is nearly as great...

Teddy Roosevelt’s short book The Strenuous Life, which opens with his 1899 speech by that name, is an explanation of America’s view of itself — a view that greatly shaped the 20th century. It was the peculiar marriage of power and prosperity together with a sense of moral urgency. Roosevelt demands an active life, a life of struggling for personal and national virtue. He commends a triad of strength in body, intellect, and character — of which character is the most important. America must meet its moral obligations vigorously, he tells us: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”...

The origin of that moral urgency was America’s most important spiritual crisis. It is best expressed in a single speech, rich in Biblical imagery and contemporary prophecy: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is the greatest of all American writing. It is a tone-poem or photograph of the American soul. A complete understanding, in just 697 words.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Southerns COULD NOT have based secession on unfair taxes placed on them by northern interests. The democrats dominated congress in most of the antebellum period, led by southern democrats. The Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 forced a partial abandonment of the Whig position supporting higher tariffs, and by 1835 Andrew Jackson, a southern democrat from Tennessee, cut tariff rates roughly in half and eliminated nearly all federal excise taxes. The Whigs managed to raise tariffs again in 1842, but James Polk, another Tennessean, cut them again in 1846.

Though the South had achieved its goal of low tariff rates before the Civil War, they were cut again in 1857. The rate was all the way down to 18%.

The idea that tariffs caused the Civil War is an after-the-fact obfuscation of the reality that southern democrats simply refused to accept Lincoln as president. That’s why the word “tariff” is not found even once in South Carolina’s secession document, but the word “slavery” is found six times and “slave” another five.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I call them as I see them. It is bullshit. Such a long discredited alternate history doesn’t deserve the effort, but I have and will post plenty of facts. Let’s see what you do with them.

As for Lincoln goating the south into war, I’m afraid Johnny Reb was itching for a fight long before he was even inaugurated. Let’s see what the southern fake news media had to say back then.

“The election of Abraham Lincoln to the chief magistracy of the country by the hordes of fanatics and negrophilists who have been flocking to his standards since the opening of the Presidential canvass has awakened throughout the South a spirit of stubborn resistance which it will be found is impossible to quell. . . .

The crisis now impending upon the whole country is a necessary consequence of the abnormal condition into which our dearest and most sacred institutions have been plunged by the success of our avowedly unrelenting enemies. . . .

The unmistakable fact stares us in the face that we are now in a state of danger unparalleled in the annals of our history. . . . Of one thing, however, the whole South may rest assured — that the sons of Louisiana will not remain indifferent spectators of the drama about to be enacted, and if the sword is to be drawn, they will be . . . found in the vanguard of the Southern phalanx. . . .”

New Orleans Courier Nov. 9, 1860

[DiogenesLamp]

I'm going to ignore your response about where the Federal money got spent because it is of much less significance than is the larger point of where the North was getting the money to buy European goods.

“Where did the merchants in the area (New York) get the money to pay for European goods?”

Probably the same places where merchants get the money to finance business today. Supplier credit, bank loans, stock investment, past profits. What a dumb question.

The question is the most salient question which can be asked on this topic, it is your attempted deflection answer which is stupid. It ignores all the mechanics of how European money gets into the hands of New York merchants.

Somehow the money has to come from Europe or specie has to be traded for European products, and few people want to give up their gold. Most would rather trade their goods for foreign goods.

Somehow there has to be a trade of assets or services to acquire European currency with which to purchase European products.

What assets were New York merchants trading for European goods in order to buy them?

That act simply required imported goods to be shipped on vessels owned by companies in the US or in nations from which the goods were made. How is that unfair to one region or another?

That's another bit of complication of the situation that I would rather discuss at a later time. I want to focus on the big pieces, and then later we can come back and talk about the smaller pieces. After we've figured out where New York Merchants got their hands on that European money, then we can talk about how the Navigation act of 1817 handed a defacto monopoly to New York shipping interests.

[SoCal Pubbie]

You figure out who ran congress throughout most of the antebellum period, then we can end this asinine mental masturbation.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I know you’re walking down the Mason Dixon line until you get to Tara, err, the fallacy that southern cotton paid for northern imports. Let’s see what people at the time said about that.

“When the valued exports and imports of any of the Southern states are compared, it is found that the former is invariably exceeds the latter, in consequence of the want of a consuming class… It is common theme for the Southern politicians to lament the want of enterprise among the merchants in conduct a foreign import trade… But the truth is, there are few imports required, for every Southern town tells the same tale.”

-North America, its Agriculture and Climate, by Robert Russell, Edinburgh 1857

“A very large part of our duties are collected on the class of goods for which there is almost no demand at all from the South, either directly or indirectly – woolen and fur goods, for instance; of the goods require for the South not a few have been practically free. The whole slave population of the South consumes almost nothing ... The majority of the population habitually makes use of no foreign production except chicory, which, ground with peas, they call coffee. I have never seen reason to believe that with absolute free trade the cotton States would take a tenth part of the value of our present importations. And as I can judge from observation of the comparative use of foreign goods at the South and at the North, not a tenth part of our duties have been defrayed by the South in the last twenty years.”

- The Cotton Kingdom, Vol. 1, by Frederick Law Olmsted, New York – London, 1861

[DiogenesLamp]

You figure out who ran congress throughout most of the antebellum period, then we can end this asinine mental masturbation.

We haven't followed any money yet. That's what woke me up to what happened. I followed the money. Where was New York Merchants getting European money to pay for their imports?

[DiogenesLamp]

I know you’re walking down the Mason Dixon line until you get to Tara, err, the fallacy that southern cotton paid for northern imports.

I haven't suggested that. I just asked where the New Yorkers got their money to pay for European goods.

Could they have gotten it from their trade in Northern goods bought by Europe?

[SoCal Pubbie]

Go look it up yourself and stop tiptoeing through the tulips.

[DiogenesLamp]

Go look it up yourself and stop tiptoeing through the tulips.

I know the answer to the question, but I don't want you to take my word for it. You will find it a lot more persuasive if you find the information, because then you will have to realize it's true.

But since you want to hear what i've learned, i'll tell you.

The "North", only produced about 27 % of the total export trade to Europe. The South was producing about 73% of all trade value with Europe.

The North had four times the population, but only produced a little more than 1/4 of the total European export value.

So where were the New York merchants getting the money to buy those European imports? They were getting it from the South, because the South was earning the vast bulk of the European money.

The South was earning 200 million dollars per year from Europe, while the North was earning 78 million dollars per year from Europe.

[apocalypto]

Interesting.

[DiogenesLamp]

Interesting.

That is exactly what I thought when I first learned of it. It was another one of those things about the Civil War period that didn't seem to make sense.

If the South was producing the bulk of the money, why was nearly all of it ending up in New York?

[Political Junkie Too]

Green Eggs and Ham.

-PJ

[SoCal Pubbie]

Boy, you really know how to move the goalposts. I mean, exactly how would exports affect unfair tariff rates on IMPORTED goods?

By the way, again your stats are factually untrue. The South was NOT producing about 73% of all trade value with Europe.

[SoCal Pubbie]

The South was NOT producing the bulk of the money. Exports were not the same as GDP, which was about $4 billion in 1860. Agriculture in total only provided 38% of U. S. GNP and cotton was only a portion of that. Industry accounted for 28% of GNP and services provided another 34%.

In that same year 90 percent of the nation’s manufacturing output came from northern states. The North produced 17 times more cotton and woolen textiles than the South, 30 times more leather goods, and 20 times more pig iron. Even in the agricultural sector, northern farmers were out-producing their southern counterparts in several important areas. In 1860 northern states produced half of the nation’s corn, four-fifths of its wheat, and seven-eighths of its oats.

The real faction that wanted to fight to keep what they had were Southern slaveholders. In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation’s railroads, factories, and banks combined. Now, how does that square with your fallacies of bogus King Cotton?

[DiogenesLamp]

Boy, you really know how to move the goalposts. I mean, exactly how would exports affect unfair tariff rates on IMPORTED goods?

You call that moving the goal posts? I simply point out where the money comes from, and you think it has nothing to do with imports? How do you think imports get paid for? Do you think the European suppliers simply give their stuff away? No, they want something in return.

Imports and exports are intimately tied together. You can't have one without the other.

By the way, again your stats are factually untrue. The South was NOT producing about 73% of all trade value with Europe.

Well, see now why I wanted you to find your own information? I knew you wouldn't accept what I said. So if you don't think the South was producing 73% of all the export value of the United States, how much do you think they were producing, and how do you arrive at this figure?

I know a couple of people who claim the South was producing 82% of all the export value, and they have told me this information comes from Official US government sources, but i'd like to see what you come up with.

[DiogenesLamp]

The South was NOT producing the bulk of the money. Exports were not the same as GDP, which was about $4 billion in 1860.

Don't mix these two things up. GDP is not European trade. European trade is part of GDP, but it is not the same thing.

The South was producing the bulk of European Trade, which was about 278 million dollars per year in 1860.

GNP and cotton was only a portion of that. Industry accounted for 28% of GNP and services provided another 34%.

Gross National Product is not the issue here. Only European trade is the issue. Were taxes collected on GNP? Then why talk about it? Taxes (tariffs) were only collected on Imports, therefore imports were the sole source of revenue for the US Government.

Imports were paid for by exports, 73% of which were products of the Southern states.

Show me your figures for how much export value the North created. (Do not include specie. Goods purchased with specie are not "trade", and a nation that continues to use specie to purchase goods will soon run out of specie.)

[SoCal Pubbie]

Why don’t you talk about the $4 billion in assets that slaveholders feared losing if slavery was outlawed, and how that fear manifested in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Why don’t you talk about the seccesion documents of the southern states who justify rebellion not on tariffs but on the institution of slavery.

[DiogenesLamp]

Why don’t you talk about the $4 billion in assets that slaveholders feared losing if slavery was outlawed, and how that fear manifested in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

Every single time the topic of the "Civil War" is broached, the knee jerk reaction of most people is to bring up "Slavery" as the dominant cause of the war. Any effort to get people to stay out of this rut is usually ineffectual.

But let's look at it (for about the 100th time) for a moment, shall we? (I didn't want to get side tracked onto this old dodge, but I am not surprised that we have.)

A Constitutional amendment requires 3/4ths of the states to approve it to become law. There were 11 states in the old Confederacy. With 11 States against, it takes 33 states to override, which would require a Union of 44 states to even attempt. (Assuming all 11 states that became the Confederacy would all vote "no.")

If the South had not left the Union, it would take until 1896 to achieve a Union that had 44 states in it. (Utah, which would have been the 44th state, became a state in 1896.)

So the nation would have had to wait until 1896 to even take the first vote on abolition of slavery. But wait! There's more! When we add the "No" votes of the five *UNION* slave states, (if they were fighting to abolish slavery, why didn't they abolish it in areas they already controlled?) Then it would require a Union that had 64 states to make it law. We still don't have a Union with 64 states in it.

Bottom line, Slavery wasn't going anywhere in the US of A. It was literally impossible to legally get rid of slavery at this point in history.

Add to this the fact that Lincoln urged the ratification of the original 13th amendment, (The Corwin Amendment) making slavery even harder to abolish, and now you have a virtual impossibility of ever getting rid of slavery in the United States Union.

Why don’t you talk about the seccesion documents of the southern states who justify rebellion not on tariffs but on the institution of slavery.

You mean all four of them? (Out of an 11 state confederacy?) Because the reasons why some states claimed they were leaving are not relevant to the reasons why the North decided to invade them. Without the decision to invade, there would have been no war, so the reason why the North invaded is far more significant than the reasons claimed by some of the Southern states to be leaving.

Why did the North feel the need to invade them? It wasn't because of slavery, because slavery had been legal in the Union for "Four Score and Seven years".

Slavery, as I have shown above, was nearly impossible to get out of the Union, so it must have been for some other reason that the North invaded.

The answer is "Money." "Money" is the reason a war was launched against the South.

For some reason, you don't seem to want to talk about the money issue leading up to the civil war. I didn't ask you about slavery. (Yet here we are trying to side track the conversation into this ditch) I asked you about the European trade, and who was earning the money used to buy those imports.

I asked for your sources about who created most of the European trade. I'd like to get back to this focus on the money issue.

[READINABLUESTATE]

Traffic signs.

[x]

Democracy in America, de Tocqueville

Good choice. The best choice, even though it's 180-odd years old.

Distant competitors might be Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.

At some point in history it got hard to write about "America" as a whole.

Maybe Henry James or Mark Twain or Hemingway or Fitzgerald had something to say in fiction about the American character.

For the closest thing to a modern Tocqueville maybe we have to go back to David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd.