What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

You quite obviously have learned nothing.

The Lonely Crowd, now there is a blast from our school days. I noticed LS paraphrasing C. Wright Miles in a post the other days. Some of that rhetoric is just part of the english language now

I wish I had read some of Richard M. Weaver back in those days in the 60s instead of waiting until the 80s. More Weaver and Kirk would have helped the thinking that came out of that era.

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

What did the U.S. export in 1863-64 that generated the $113 million in tariff revenue?

Don’t care. Isn’t relevant to the point of what was going on in 1861.

The topic here is the myth that Northern tariffs drove the Confederate states to secession, thus igniting the American Civil War beginning with the attack on the Federal installation at Ft Sumter in 1861. I have shown how this could not be the case, because in fact tariffs had been lowered before the 1860 election. Indeed, the Tariff of 1857 had been written by Southern interests. Tariffs were only raised later, after the election, because the secessionist senators had withdrawn from Congress, otherwise the legislation would have been voted down.

You are moving the goalposts by switching the conversation to imports. I know you want to repeat the myth of King Cotton, and how the Southern economy drove exports. You want to restate the fallacy of the War Northern of Aggression, when in fact the South started the war. You want to blame Lincoln for waging war to protect the profits Northern industry made off Southern cotton, but that idea also defies logic.

The issue of GNP is relevant to the argument that export revenues were vital to the nation’s economy. The numbers show that exports were only one third of the total profits generated in the country at the time. Furthermore, Southen agriculture was not the totality of exports. At most it accounted for 60-65%, not three quarters. In the overall picture, the ratio of exports to GNP was about 9% in 1859.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/docs/exporttax.pdf

My information on the percentage of Southern production in total exports comes from various sources. Wikipedia states that cotton, the vast majority of Southern exports, were 60% of total exports in 1860.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton

The Federal Reserve Bulletin of 1923 states that cotton exports accounted for 53% of all exports in 1850.

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/FRB/pages/1920-1924/26396_1920-1924.pdf

The New York Times states that ALL American cotton exports, of which only 80% came from the South, were 60% of total exports in 1860.

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/when-cotton-was-king/

Another source puts Southern cotton at 57% of all American exports in 1860.

http://inside.sfuhs.org/dept/history/US_History_reader/Chapter5/southernecon.html

I would challenge you to produce any legitimate source to prove that Southern exports amounted to 75-80% of American exports in the antebellum period. That was never the case.

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Douglass C. North, said that cotton Cotton accounted for over half of all American exports during the first half of the 19th century, not three quarters.

http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860

Of course even IF your facts were correct, and they are NOT, your reasoning makes no sense. If Southern production was so vital to Northern money interests then there was every reason to accommodate the demands of slave states. In reality every effort to do so had been attempted. That was aha the Missouri Compromise was all about.

Indeed, industrialists in the North opposed war, and wanted to appease slave interests to keep business going as usual. The mayor of New York City even proposed its own secession, but Unionist sympathies overwhelmed that idea. It was only after the war started thats Northern captains of industry joined ranks with Uncle Sam.

The CSA, had it been formed unchallenged, would have hardly affected the cotton trade, because those rich Southern planation owners would still need the rail and shipping assets of the USA to export their cotton. The whole idea that tariffs led to the war is ludicrous, and disproved by the statements of the Confederates themselves.

Great research! I doubt you’ll ever convince Diogenes, though. Too much in love with his own idea.

Who said the Northern States were fighting to abolish slavery in 1861? Not me! Lincoln’s purpose was to preserve the Union. He famously said so himself:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

Again, the issue is what drove Southern secession. It was Johnny Reb who started the war, not Uncle Sam. And Secesh was not thinking straight. But the prospect of abolition within the nation’s borders was not the only thing on hisr fevered mind. They dreamed of a Caribbean expansion to build a bigger slave empire.

https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/61/3/781/703349?redirectedFrom=PDF

The rebellious Southern states were motivated by preserving slavery, not any other issue. They wished to keep it, and they viewed Lincoln as a threat. Like I said, they were Democrats who wouldn’t accept the results of an election.

You can’t even get the basic facts straight about exactly how many secession documents were drafted by the Confederate States. All eleven states of the CSA issued secession documents. Of those, seven listed either the election of Abraham Lincoln directly or slavery as the casus belli.

Georgia

“For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. “

By the way, this document SPECIFICALLY DENIES that tariffs were the reason for secession:

“...the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.”

Mississippi

“It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion…

...It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst…

...It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.”

South Carolina (They got the party started)

“But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution…

...We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection…

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery”

(Democrats reusing to accept the results of an election, in other words)

Texas

“She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.”

Virginia

“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.”

Alabama

“Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security..”

(Democrats reusing to accept the results of an election, in other words)

“And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States…”

Arkansas

“Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City..”

(Democrats reusing to accept the results of an election, in other words)

Thank you. I've spent a lot of time looking these things up, which is why I initially simply called BS, but then I got called out for lack of facts. So I thought okay, let's dance!

My purpose is not to convince these old racist fools (I hate to use that word but what choice do I have?) but rather to show others how silly their ideas are. Wading into the morass of minutia around export financing is so ridiculous. Southerns were profiting on the cotton trade as much or more than were Northerners. In fact the South was richer per capita than the North at the time, while the aggregate of Northern resources obviously were larger in the North.

The plain fact was that the South was fighting to preserve its way of life, which was centered on class stratification and slavery. Yes, States Rights were the justification, but they wished to use that philosophy to protect slavery. They certainly didn't support the rights of Northern States to deal with runaway slaves as they saw fit!

By the same token, every knows the North was fighting too preserve the Union. The issue of slavery needed to be addressed eventually, but as even Diogenes admits abolition wasn't going going too be doable through politics for decades. The stupid Confederates just hastened its demise!

Alexis de Tocqueville

The Constitution.

Don’t care. Isn’t relevant to the point of what was going on in 1861.

Sure it is. If all imports were funded by exports in 1861 then how did that change in 1864?

You are moving the goalposts by switching the conversation to imports.

No, you are moving the goal posts by refusing to show who was producing what revenue stream. Why are you so afraid of this? I keep trying to make you go down this path, and you seize upon every straw you can find to avoid looking at it.

This makes me think you see quite clearly where this is going to go, and you simply do not want to go there. You are afraid of the truth. That's why you bring up "Tariffs", or "Slavery", or "GNP" instead of looking at revenue streams and loss of trade.

Wikipedia states that cotton, the vast majority of Southern exports, were 60% of total exports in 1860.

So i've got you to admit to 60% of the total. (and just for "cotton". )

The other exports from the South contributed as well. Tobacco made money. So did rice, sugar, molasses and hemp.

If Southern production was so vital to Northern money interests then there was every reason to accommodate the demands of slave states.

So an avowedly anti-slavery President, endorsing the continuation of slavery, and to make permanent slavery in the United States, would be evidence that they considered this Southern Production so vital that they would do virtually anything to keep the money flowing?

Beware. This articles is written by a Black, Boston College law professor, so you know it's just full of bias in favor of Southern slavery.

http://cognoscenti.legacy.wbur.org/2013/02/18/the-other-13th-richard-albert

Indeed, industrialists in the North opposed war, and wanted to appease slave interests to keep business going as usual.

Because they were making a *LOT* of money from the deal. Remember this map?

It was only after the war started thats Northern captains of industry joined ranks with Uncle Sam.

If things were allowed to stand as they were, that money stream would be gone to them. If they could force the South back into the Union, that money stream would return. Everyone expected a quick fight, and then the South would be back to producing that money. It didn't work out that way.

Who said the Northern States were fighting to abolish slavery in 1861? Not me! Lincoln’s purpose was to preserve the Union. He famously said so himself:

By what right did he have to force people to live under his rule who did not wish to do so? The nation was founded on the principle that people had a right to leave the United Kingdom, and that this right was given by God, and so why didn't this same foundational principle apply to anyone who was unhappy with their governance?

Lincoln himself endorsed this principle until it was applied to his government.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,– most sacred right–a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the teritory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution.
Abraham Lincoln, January 12, 1848

And lest you think this was a momentary brain-fart by Lincoln, He did it again in 1852.

Resolved, 1. That it is the right of any people, sufficiently numerous for national independence, to throw off, to revolutionize, their existing form of government, and to establish such other in its stead as they may choose.
Abraham Lincoln, January 9, 1852

So Lincoln believed in this right to independence, before he believed in repressing people's independence. He was "for it before he was against it."

It was Johnny Reb who started the war, not Uncle Sam.

Yes, they wanted to keep more of the money they produced, and they wanted to take the European trade away from New York, and the New York Plutocrats who had backed Lincoln were not going to have it.

They should have just kept paying their owners in the North instead of trying to get free of them.

I’m not moving any goalposts. The one and only topicwas and remains what caused the Civil War. The answer was Southern seccesion. The reason for that was slavery.

Now, your twisted, inane logic means that the North spent over $5 billion dollars on a war to maintain profits from Southern cotton (which was not a majority of the entire economy) only to see that profit evaporate after the war, since abolition wiped out the huge labor cost advantage of the plantation system.

Okie dokie.

The rebellious Southern states were motivated by preserving slavery, not any other issue.

OMG! I've never heard this before! Oh wait. It's all I ever do hear. It's chanted like a mantra. It's repeated constantly by everyone, despite the proof (which i've shown numerous times) that there was no intent by anyone to get rid of slavery in 1861. Indeed, Lincoln was urging the passage of an amendment to make slavery permanent.

But people have their propaganda which they have to repeat over and over again, and they simply will not look at anything which contradicts their brainwashing.

Now can we get back to looking at who makes money and who loses money?

The answer was Southern seccesion. The reason for that was slavery.

No, that is simply the constant propaganda from the winners. It does not even resemble the truth. The truth is in the money. Look at the money and stop repeating propaganda that the winners want everyone to believe.

You are afraid. You are terrified that the money tells the truth, and it makes the North look horrible, because they launched a war to protect robber barons that killed 750,000 people.

People don't *WANT* to believe their ancestors have been manipulated, and gulled into doing something horrible, and for a lie.

Now, your twisted, inane logic means that the North spent over $5 billion dollars on a war to maintain profits from Southern cotton

I said nothing even resembling that. If you are going to criticize my position, at least make sure you understand it.

The South was going to take virtually all the European trade away from New York. In the subsequent years, it would have been worth many billions of dollars. New York shipping and manufacturing would have been severely hurt.

But apart from that, why would the Plutocrats who controlled Washington DC in those days, give a crap that the entire nation spent 5 billion dollars protecting their assets and revenue streams? Do you think they would feel bad about making everyone else pay to keep them in power? (And they've been running the nation ever since.)

How much did we spend on the various gulf wars, and how much of that got paid by those who benefited from them?

Getting the government to keep money flowing into their pockets has long been a practice with those who have the influence to accomplish it.

Don't fear the truth. Look at who would have gained money, and who would have lost money.

You haven’t proved anything except that you can’t see reality. That there was no effort to repeal slavery didn’t stop Southern politicians from seeing Lincoln as the bogieman who was going to do so.

Both Southern plantation owners and Northen businessmen made money. Can we get back to why Johnny Reb himself said he went sesech?

Also, if you run those numbers I posted for 1859, you will see that the South was producing 73% of all revenue from Europe.

It wasn't just cotton. It was other stuff too, but the total demonstrates that the 1/4th of the population in the South was producing nearly 73% of all revenue (on which taxes were paid) while the 3/4ths of the population in the North was only producing about 27% of the total.

Run the numbers, and it shows the South was paying nearly 12 times the taxes of the North per capita. (Which was the original point to which you objected.)

For some it should be their Miranda Rights?