What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

National Review ^ | April 7 2018 | Daniel Gerelnter

[DiogenesLamp]

We’ve been arguing specifics for dozens of posts now!

In the context of the conversation to which you replied, the "specifics" to which I refer are things like the Corwin Amendment.

People on your side simply cannot wrap your minds around the significance of Lincoln Supporting the Corwin Amendment, and the fact that it passed the Senate.

To a rational man, it demonstrates clearly that slavery was not the issue to which the North objected. We have been told all our lives that the war was over slavery, and yet here is proof positive that slavery was not an issue for the North, and apparently not for the South either, because they didn't jump at this offer from the North.

So when you remove slavery as a bone of contention, what then is left?

These are the "specifics" that your side cannot look at.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You keep saying that, but nobody is buying it.
It doesn't even make any sense.
There were far more Northern states than Southern states, but you would have us believe the Southern states controlled the congress?
That is just stupid on the face of it."

You know, for somebody like you, DiogenesLamp, who has with stroke of genius brilliantly figured out that "exports pay for imports", you just as brilliantly can't quite "get" the concept of, the majority of the majority??

OK, then here it is: in a country like ours you don't need to be a majority to rule, you need only be a majority of the majority.
Indeed, when you get right down to it, you can rule as just the majority of the majority of the majority.
In simple numbers, if you have 100 members you need 51 to rule.
A party with 51 members is controlled by its own 26 member majority caucus.
And if you get right down to it, that 26 member majority of the majority is itself ruled by its own 14 member majority, etc, etc.

Of course, all that requires huge, huge, almost impossible diplomatic, managerial & ideological skills and its why such "majority of the majority" control is unstable and changing.
Nevertheless, with Southern Democrats control over the national Democrat party, their rule was much more stable, made so by their common commitment to slavery.

Now 'fess up, DiogenesLamp, did I really have to 'xplain all that to you?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The "mundane historical fact" is that had the South been left alone, the North was going to lose a whole lot of money and power.
Easily sufficient motive to start a war to prevent it."

But not near as much loss as you fantasize.
More important, if wars were truly started of just economic issues, then WWII would have begun for us with the Great Depression in, say, 1930.

[DiogenesLamp]

One, the whole system was more complex than what’s described in the Southron lament.

Not a "Southron" and it really isn't. I've noticed you've gone to great lengths to make it more complex, and i've been trying to simplify it.

This is not rocket science. The vast bulk of European trade was for items produced by the Southern States. When the South left, most of the European trade in New York was going to leave with it.

Now you want to get into the grass about what was this particular year's trade deficit, and how much profit was made by this entity, and so on and so forth, and you are hoping you can find some sort of mitigating explanation for why the vast bulk of the products going to Europe were produced in the South while virtually all the money came back through New York.

Instead of just accepting the reality that the North East had the South paying their taxes and subsidizing their industries, while gouging them on services, you want to find something to rescue your theory in the financial details somewhere.

I'm trying to simplify, and you are trying to make things more complicated.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Northern states refused to accept their rulings that they didn't like.
Besides that, the Supreme court couldn't create laws out of thin air back in those days.
It was a lot less powerful then than it is now."

Well... except for that little matter of Dred Scott v. Sanford...

[DiogenesLamp]

Your posts are also often quite long, but I take the effort to read & rebut them.

I know you believe that, but after having read so many of your worn groove responses that usually don't address the point to which you are responding, I have mostly given up on seeing anything that I would regard as an objective rebuttal.

It's one difference between scholarship & mere propaganda.

Scholarship is acknowledging the Corwin Amendment, and it's significance to the Northern claim that the war was over slavery.

Objectivity is realizing both can't be true.

[DiogenesLamp]

DegenerateLamp bristles at the term “slavocracy” - even though it pre-dates the Civil War and fltbird drinks heartily from the lost cause bible

Bristles? I merely pointed out that the construction of the word doesn't make any sense, because it implies that the Slaves are the rulers. Even the Etymology dictionary said the construction is "irregular" (meaning wrong) and it's origin was from the 1840s.

I opined that it was intended as deliberate propaganda in the 1840s, in the manner that "anti-choice" is a deliberate propaganda term nowadays.

It didn't upset me and it doesn't bother me. I just did it to needle you a bit, and it seems to have worked out splendidly, because you are still seemingly bothered by it. :)

[DoodleDawg]

When the South left, most of the European trade in New York was going to leave with it.

So then what you're saying is that European trade would basically dry up altogether? All outgoing and little or no incoming?

Instead of just accepting the reality that the North East had the South paying their taxes and subsidizing their industries, while gouging them on services...

I thought you wanted us to accept reality.

[DoodleDawg]

Scholarship is acknowledging the Corwin Amendment, and it's significance to the Northern claim that the war was over slavery.

You and your cohort seem to be the only ones saying it was over slavery. And what you and your friend continue to ignore about the Corwin Amendment is the fact that while it protected slavery where it existed it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery. Having adopted their own constitution which protected slavery far more than the Corwin amendment did, why would the Southern states accept half a loaf?

[DiogenesLamp]

Nevertheless, with Southern Democrats control over the national Democrat party, their rule was much more stable, made so by their common commitment to slavery.

You would have us believe that they controlled the Congress, and had a total commitment to slavery, but for some reason didn't bother voting on a law to extend it to the territories?

Either they didn't have a "commitment" or they didn't have "control."

Your two goofy theories contradict each other, so you will have to pick which one you want to keep, and shoot the other poor bastard in the head.

Let us know which of the two turns out to be the lucky survivor. :)

[DiogenesLamp]

Well... except for that little matter of Dred Scott v. Sanford...

The North did not accept it, and the only part that wasn't supported by American law is the claim that African descended people could never be citizens.

The rest of it was legally accurate and supported by the existing body of law.

And the North absolutely refused to accept it, and threw a fit about it the way Liberals today do about sanctuary cities and border security. They simply don't want to obey laws they don't like.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I can tell you this much from memory.
Federal payments to Northern Shipping companies for carrying the US Mail, gave them a competitive advantage against shippers located anywhere else."

Effecting only a handful of specialized ships out of the many hundreds required for US export/import trade.
The real reason Southern ship-building declined after 1800 was very likely the introduction of steam power and other heavy metal components which were not at the time produced in the South.

USS John Adams built in Charleston SC, launched 1799:

SS Planter steamboat carrying cotton, built in Charleston SC, launched 1860:

[BroJoeK]

SoCal Pubbie: "The imbalance of merchandise bought and sold totaled a deficit of $715.3 million dollars.
In only eleven of those years was there any trade surplus, with only three of those years reporting more than single digit surpluses.
How do you explain that?"

Two items: California gold and Nevada silver.
They balanced everything quite nicely.

But please remember: when I say cotton was 50% of US exports, I'm including specie.
When DiogenesLamp & others say "Southern products" represented (tak your pick) 75% or 80% or 90%, they exclude specie from their calculations and add in a lot more than just cotton.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to SoCal Pubbie: "And I now marvel at your willingness to go to all this trouble to ignore the fact that the South produced the vast majority of all Trade income for the US, while trying to salvage what you wish to believe by attempting to see if you could get the statistics to lie on your behalf.
I dare say you didn't even know the South was producing the vast majority of export income until I informed you of it.
You still do not want to believe it, because it make my argument that the North attacked the South to prevent Trade competition, uncomfortably close to proven for your taste."

And in these few sentences we clearly see that DiogenesLamp's argument is not based on actual history, but on his desperate need to "prove" his untenable thesis that "Lincoln attacked the South" strictly over economic concerns.

The power of DL's thesis means any and all data must be forced to fit it, regardless of historical reality.

[DiogenesLamp]

So then what you're saying is that European trade would basically dry up altogether?

I didn't say altogether. The 73-84 percent (depending on who you believe) of the trade created by Southern Exports would move to the South, and the 27-16% of the trade created by Northern exports would continue to go to New York and other Northern ports.

I thought you wanted us to accept reality.

I'm not surprised you couldn't be more creative in coming back with a dig.

[DiogenesLamp]

You and your cohort seem to be the only ones saying it was over slavery.

Here we go again. Another denial that the vast majority of Americans believe and repeat the claim that the war was about slavery.

And what you and your friend continue to ignore about the Corwin Amendment is the fact that while it protected slavery where it existed it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery.

Slavery could not expand within the United States, even if a law to do so had been passed by that Congress which BroJoeK says was under the Control of the Democrats which were committed to slavery.

You couldn't set up plantations in the territories because slave intensive cash crops wouldn't grow there.

It couldn't grow in west Texas or beyond without modern irrigation systems, so it was impossible to grow it there in the 1860s. This whole allegation about "expansion" I now think was just a load of propaganda.

Expanding it into the Caribbean (it was already there) or Mexico, would have been outside the prerogative of the US to control anyway, so is therefore irrelevant.

[DiogenesLamp]

Let me juxtapose these two seemingly contradicting statements by you, one after the other.

The real reason Southern ship-building declined after 1800 was very likely the introduction of steam power and other heavy metal components which were not at the time produced in the South.

.

SS Planter steamboat carrying cotton, built in Charleston SC, launched 1860:

[DiogenesLamp]

Specie isn't trade, and if you keep spending it, you eventually run out.

But it does bring up a curious question. If the specie is coming from California and Nevada, then why is almost all the import money ending up in New York?

[DiogenesLamp]

It doesn't take much effort to get it to fit. I'm not the one needing to get into the statistical weeds to disprove it. It fits well on the face of it.

[BroJoeK]

SoCal Pubbie: "I don’t get this idea that the Navigation Act of 1817 was part of some Yankee conspiracy to enslave the South.
I’m doing a lot of research and it reflects part of what you alluded to. Companies weren’t all 'Southern' or a 'Northern' or even 'British.' "

The key fact here is that DiogenesLamp hopes to impose his own historical narrative on historical people who would not recognize it.
He claims they were being forced by law to use certain shippers or certain companies -- "Northeastern power brokers" -- when the fact is they weren't "forced" to do anything, but instead did what seemed at the time the best things to do.

Today the US has dozens of large ports, including inland ports like St. Louis (#19).
Of those, New York-New Jersey is number three overall, behind Houston and New Orleans.
New York at #3 handles roughly 5% of total US freight tonnage.
So there is nothing unique or monopolistic about New York today, nor was there in 1860.