>>x wrote: "When you have somebody who was an economist forty years ago making pronouncements about the Holocaust and the Civil War, you can't assume that there's any expertise involved. You can read Robert's Holocaust BS here. Examples: "The “death camps” were in fact work camps. ... Every camp had crematoriums. Their purpose was not to exterminate populations but to dispose of deaths from the scourge of typhus, natural deaths, and other diseases." Judge for yourself whether Roberts is somebody you want to trust about history."
I have read all of that, and, frankly, I think he is absolutely nuts on that issue. But his analysis of the "tariffs against the South" is on the money.
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>>x wrote: "As to the Civil War, his theory isn't based on evidence, rather it gives people who want to believe him a theory to justify ignoring the bulk of the evidence. You didn't find people saying, "Let's secede because of tariffs," so Roberts comes up with a theory that just assumes the tariffs were the reason for secession and that whatever else was said at the time doesn't matter."
There are many historians who hold the position that Roberts takes on the tariff. In fact, South Carolina threatened to secede over the 1828 tariff (even though they had no constitutional right to,) over and against a threat of war by Andrew Jackson. Henry Clay stepped in with a compromise tariff to prevent war and secession.
The tariff issue was on-going. Lincoln's support for a high tariff was very unpopular in most of the South.
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>>x wrote: "Now consider: secessionist leaders wanted to win over foreign countries, especially Britain and France, countries that had already abolished slavery and weren't friendly to slaveholding. If secessionists didn't believe in slavery, but were only concerned about the tariff, why would they risk alienating potential supporters - abroad, and in the North and in the slave states - by talking so much about slavery? Why wouldn't they have said more about the tariff? The answer is that they did believe in slavery, they believed it was threatened and they cared intensely about saving slavery and viewed secession as the best means to that end."
Roberts explained it. States had no constitutional authority to secede based on the tariff, and Lincoln routinely expressed his desire for a high protectionist tariff and industrial subsidies (e.g., "to foster our manufactures".) On slavery, he said this in 1858:
"I stand here surrounded by friends—some political, all personal friends, I trust. May I be indulged, in this closing scene, to say a few words of myself. I have borne a laborious, and, in some respects to myself, a painful part in the contest. Through all, I have neither assailed, nor wrestled with any part of the Constitution. The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied. In resisting the spread of slavery to new territory, and with that, what appears to me to be a tendency to subvert the first principle of free government itself my whole effort has consisted. To the best of my judgment I have labored for, and not against the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us, is the difference of circumstances." [Springfield, Illinois, Oct 20, 1858, in Roy P. Basler, "Abraham Lincoln: his speeches and writings." 1946, p.29]
The editor, Roy Basler, commented:
"The truth is that Lincoln had no solution to the problem of slavery except the colonization idea which he had inherited from Henry Clay, and when he spoke beyond his points of limiting the extension of slavery, of preserving the essential central idea of human equality, and of respecting the Negro as a human being, his words lacked effectiveness." [Ibid. p.23]
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>>x wrote: "Now consider how Robert's theory contradicts other neo-Confederate arguments. So many people out there are saying "My ancestors didn't own any slaves. They weren't fighting for slavery. It was the rich folk who owned slaves and wanted to keep them." Roberts is saying that those rich folks didn't care about keeping their slaves. He's saying that was all a front. And your ancestors fell for it. They weren't put off by all the proslavery propaganda."
What is a Neo-Confederate?
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>>x wrote: "That doesn't disprove the theory, but it makes everybody concerned look pretty awful: the rich folk who tore the country apart because they wanted more money, the poor folks who couldn't see through the ruse, and people like Roberts and Diogenes who do everything they can to whitewash the big slaveowners."
That is not the way Andrew Jackson presented it. He clamed the rich money-grabbers were those, like Clay, who pushed for a national bank:
"Congress did respond favorably, however, to Clay's proposal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States—only to have President Jackson veto the bill. Flouting a Supreme Court ruling that the government had a constitutional right to establish the bank, the President insisted the bank was unconstitutional. He called it an instrument designed to 'make the rich richer and the potent more powerful' while leaving 'the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers,' subject to government injustice. Clay lashed out at the President, saying he had been guilty of 'perversion of the veto power.... The veto is hardly reconcilable with the genius of representative government.... It is a feature of our government borrowed from a prerogative of the British king.... Ought the opinion of one man overrule that of a legislative body twice deliberately expressed?'" [Harlow Giles Unger, "Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman." De Capo Press, 2015, p.163]
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>>x wrote: "For Diogenes it's all about money, but somehow the millions invested in slaves don't count as a material interest. Somehow people who had thousands of dollars invested in slavery didn't worry about losing their investment. Somehow people who lived with slaves all their lives and grew rich off them were blissfully uninterested in the institution that underlay their society and their wealth."
There was no threat from Lincoln that would cause slave holders to lose their slaves.
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>>x wrote: "Who can believe that nonsense? Who can read about all the conflicts in the 1850s about slavery and conclude that it was all nothing? Who can study the records of the secession and conclude that the tariff was somehow at the root of it all? You have to be terribly uninformed or willfully blind to accept Roberts' nonsense."
Perhaps you will be so kind as to show us references that explain what you are referring to.
Mr. Kalamata
Kalamata:
"The editor, Roy Basler, commented: "The truth is that Lincoln had no solution to the problem of slavery except the colonization idea which he had inherited from Henry Clay, and when he spoke beyond his points of limiting the extension of slavery, of preserving the essential central idea of human equality, and of respecting the Negro as a human being, his words lacked effectiveness." [Ibid. p.23]"
No, the truth is quite different.
The truth is Lincoln hated slavery and wished to abolish it everywhere he lawfully could -- in Northern states and Western territories.
As for what was then called "recolonization", that was first proposed by Thomas Jefferson and had been official US government policy since the time of President Monroe, circa 1820.
For decades both Federal and state governments voted large sums to support voluntary recolonization of freedmen to Liberia and elsewhere.
These efforts proved very disappointing -- hugely expensive with meager results.
By 1860 many, especially freed-blacks themselves, had grown disillusioned with recolonization, but Lincoln was determined to give it another try.
President Lincoln's efforts on a vastly larger scale than attempted before also failed and in the end he gave up on recolonization.
The real truth is that most freedmen wanted to remain in the country where they were born, and Lincoln came to realize that having such people as reliable Republican voters would be a good thing.
Curiously, so it's sometimes said, that's what got Lincoln assassinated.
Kalamata: "What is a Neo-Confederate?"
I think for purposes of these threads: Neo-Confederate = Pro-Confederate = Southron = secessionist = anti-American.
Kalamata: "That is not the way Andrew Jackson presented it.
He clamed the rich money-grabbers were those, like Clay, who pushed for a national bank:"
And most curiously, both Jackson and Clay were New Englanders, from those Northeastern states of Tennessee and Kentucky.
And they were initially joined by that other uber-Northerner, John C. Calhoun, from Northern South Carolina, in proposing the 1828 Tariff of Abominations against strong objections from other New England states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, etc.
And this proves it was "Northern oppression" which drove Southern lunatics to secede over tariffs in 1828... oh, wait... ![]()
I have read all of that, and, frankly, I think he is absolutely nuts on that issue. But his analysis of the "tariffs against the South" is on the money.
We used to have a guy here who kept posting some Latin words that translated to something like "That which is asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence." I'll spare everybody the Latin, but it applies here. Roberts assumes that secession couldn't have been about slavery and then just ignores the evidence to the contrary. If you don't already believe that tariffs were the cause of the war, he gives you no reason to believe that.
The tariff issue was on-going. Lincoln's support for a high tariff was very unpopular in most of the South.
Protective tariffs were more central to the Whig party platform than to the Republicans. Republicans had old protectionist Whigs and old free trading Democrats in their membership, but the Whig party was built around high tariffs. Yet Southerners and those of Southern origin voted for the Whigs and even ran as Whig presidential candidates. The Whigs were competitive in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. That wouldn't have happened if tariffs were such a big bugaboo in the South.
What is a Neo-Confederate?
If you think slavery wasn't the main reason for secession, you just might be neo-Confederate yourself.
There was no threat from Lincoln that would cause slave holders to lose their slaves.
...
Perhaps you will be so kind as to show us references that explain what you are referring to.
This is your lucky day. I have plenty of evidence and put it on my freep page. If you want more, you can go to James Epperson's site, or read Alexander Stephens's Cornerstone Speech or Jefferson Davis's April 29th Message to the Confederate Congress or Charles Dew's book, Apostles of Disunion.