Replies

Kalamata: "Your numbers have been cherry-picked, Joey.
The Morrill Tariff signaled a return to cronyism."

Referring to this chart:

Commodity	1846 Tariff	1857 Tariff	Morrill
Woolens	30	24	37
Brown Sugar	30	24	26
Cotton	25	19	25
Iron mfg	30	24	29
Wines	40	30	40
Average:	31	24	31

Those five items represented about half of US imports.
Another six items added 25% -- silk, coffee, molasses, flax, hemp & tea -- for which I don't have numbers.
But we can notice that some of those are luxury items only purchased by wealthy people able to pay higher tariffs.

So the numbers I've seen show the original Morrill proposal signaled a return to the 1846 Walker Tariff levels.
That makes "cronyism" just your own special Democrat propaganda talk.

Kalamata: "A tariff is constitutional, Joey, if applied equally and fairly; but tariffs eventually became a political tool – pay for play."

Danny-child, that is pure nonsense baby-talk.
You have no clue what you really mean.
The truth is that all laws & tariffs are political and all of politics is, in a sense, "pay for play", meaning: if you have the votes you get to call the tune.

The fundamental principle of all protective tariffs in 1790, in 1860 and with President Trump today is: "put Americans first".
If that's just too, too much for your tiny little Democrat heart to accept, well, then... get over it, snowflake.

Kalamata: "BTW, it was Hamilton who promoted a crony-capitalist economy to favor the wealthy and politically connected.
Clay was a Hamiltonite, and deep in bed with the bankers."

And it was James Madison who proposed the Tariff of 1790, President Washington who signed it.
Under Southern Democrat rule in Washington, DC, average tariff rates went up & down -- down to 10% in 1810, up to 20% in 1820.
And that with support from not just Henry Clay, but also SC Senator Calhoun.
Later, Calhoun decided higher tariffs were not such a good idea, but in the beginning he supported them.

Kalamata: "That is misleading.
The exporters favored standardized rates.
The Whigs favored item-by-item rates to subsidize politically-connected Northern interests."

That is misleading.
All exporters (i.e., Democrats) favored higher tariffs to protect their own products but some wanted lower tariffs on stuff they imported.
Other producers (i.e., Whigs-Republicans) were willing to accept higher tariffs in order to, ahem, "put Americans first" and "make America great".

Did you get that?
Democrats, then as now, were wealthy globalists who put their own interests ahead of average Americans.
Whig-Republicans, then as now, put Americans first in order to make America great.

Kalamata: "If Trump is an orange (no pun intended,) the Whigs were apples.
The “Republican” Party of Lincoln inherited Whig economics, which Lincoln promoted throughout his entire political career, as did his hero, Henry Clay."

When it comes to putting Americans first and making America great, G. Washington, Clay, Lincoln, Trump and many others from TR to Reagan are all peas in the same pod.

Kalamata: "With Joey, it is never about facts, but about “winning.”"

Says our house Democrat, projecting his own feelings onto others.

Kalamata: "That was, effectively, a declaration of war against a foreign nation.
When Montgomery secretly moved his troops to a more fortified position (Fort Sumter,) that showed an intention to declare war, at least in the minds of the Carolinians, which was “confirmed” when a resupply ship showed up."

A little senior moment there?
"Montgomery" could refer to Davis' capital in Alabama.
"Montgomery" was also our allied British general in WWII.
But likely, here you intended to say, Union Major Robert Anderson.

Your point is somewhat valid nonetheless.
We are now in December 1860, South Carolinians only have declared secession, were already threatening Union officials, and Maj. Anderson, fearing for his troops safety, moved them from the exposed Fort Moultrie to the much safer Fort Sumter.
South Carolinians, typical Democrats, were outraged and demanded Fort Sumter's surrender, which President Buchanan refused.
Instead, Buchanan ordered Fort Sumter reinforced, leading to the Star of the West incident on January 9, 1861.

Understand, war could have started right there, January 9, at Fort Sumter -- South Carolinians were eager for it, many in the North were ready to respond (see OIFVeteran's posts on this), but Buchanan backed down, as he did elsewhere, leaving the questions of war & peace to his successor, Lincoln.

First on December 28, then again on January 13, Buchanan told South Carolina envoys he will not surrender Fort Sumter.
On January 14, same day as the Star of the West, South Carolina's legislature declares any attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter is tantamount to war.

Three times, on January 11, 13 & 16, South Carolina demanded Major Anderson surrender Fort Sumter.
Three times Anderson refused.
On February 5, President Buchanan again tells SC officials that Fort Sumter will not be surrendered.
All this time a similar drama played out at Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida.

On February 21, three days after his inauguration, Jefferson Davis in Montgomery received SC Governor Pickens' request for immediate action on Fort Sumter.
Davis responded immediately by ordering Confederate Gen. Beauregard to prepare for military assault on Union troops in the fort.

All this before Lincoln's inauguration on March 4.

Kalamata: "Later, after Montgomery [sic] warned Lincoln that he could not defend the fort, Lincoln’s cabinet, including Seward, voted almost unanimously against resupply, with Seward explaining that he 'would not initiate war to regain a useless and unnecessary position on the soil of the seceding states [e.g., Fort Sumter.]' "

And that seems also to have been Lincoln's view at the time, it's what lead to talk of some sort of deal, i.e., "a fort for a state", meaning Virginia.
But all of them eventually came around to supporting Lincoln's resupply missions to Forts Sumter & Pickens, despite the risks.

Kalamata: "But Lincoln ignored his cabinet and pressed ahead with a scheme of “sending bread to Anderson,” to provoke the South into firing the first shot.
Lincoln was, after all, a high-powered railroad lawyer, who had mastered the rhetoric of effective propaganda."

Propaganda is you Democrats' weapon of choice, for example, in calling a constitutionally elected & constrained President Lincoln, "tyrant".
That's propaganda, FRiend.

Anyway, by the end of March Lincoln's cabinet had all changed their minds and supported Lincoln's resupply missions.
One reason was the Gustavus Fox plan to resupply Sumter without the need for a massive invasion.
It had a good chance to work and if it failed, well, then the Union would be united behind whatever came next.

Kalamata on Lincoln: "Yes he did.
He made it crystal clear in his inaugural that he rejected the constitutional authority of the states to secede, thus craftily reframing any resistance by them into “insurrection” and “rebellion,” rather than recognizing them as sovereign states.
Lincoln was a tyrant."

Well... here are Lincoln's actual 1st Inaugural words:

"Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade, by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it -- break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself.
The Union is much older than the Constitution.
It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774.
It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
It was further matured and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778.
And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was "to form a more perfect Union."
But if [the] destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union, -- that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.
Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary.
I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that will constitutionally defend and maintain itself."

I agree with Lincoln and there's nothing "tyrannical" about it.
The real tyranny came from those who used military force attempting to first dissolve the Union without mutual consent then invaded states which refused to secede with them.

Kalamata: "That is correct.
The South offered to pay for the forts and other properties recovered from the Union, but Lincoln rejected it."

As did President Buchanan before him.

Kalamata: "Lincoln effectively declared war in his first inaugural.
He told the seceding states to either consent to be governed by the Federal Government, or die."

Well... as for "declaring war", Confederates had claimed any number of Union actions "acts of war" or "declarations of war" from Day One.
But the only real declaration of war came from the Confederate Congress, on May 6, 1861.

Kalamata on Lincoln's resupply mission to Fort Sumter: "That was an act of war."

Child.

One thing I want to touch on here, if unilateral secession was something the founders wanted states to be able to do, wouldn't they have devised a procedure and put it in the constitution?

From what I've read of the constitutional convention there wasn't even talk of creating such a process.

And if there is no process spelled out in the constitution, than the President, or congress, has no power to make/recognize that a state is outside the Union? As Lincoln said in his first inaugural;

"The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor."

So if there is no process for states to leave the union it is not legal under the constitution. It is outside the law, i.e. rebellion.

>>Kalamata wrote: "Your numbers have been cherry-picked, Joey. The Morrill Tariff signaled a return to cronyism."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Referring to this chart:

Commodity	1846 Tariff	1857 Tariff	Morrill
Woolens	30	24	37
Brown Sugar	30	24	26
Cotton	25	19	25
Iron mfg	30	24	29
Wines	40	30	40
Average:	31	24	31

>>Joey continuing: "Those five items represented about half of US imports. Another six items added 25% -- silk, coffee, molasses, flax, hemp & tea -- for which I don't have numbers. But we can notice that some of those are luxury items only purchased by wealthy people able to pay higher tariffs. So the numbers I've seen show the original Morrill proposal signaled a return to the 1846 Walker Tariff levels. That makes "cronyism" just your own special Democrat propaganda talk."

Again, Joey, you are cherry-picking the data, or perhaps you do not know or understand the details. This is 19th-20th century Harvard professor and economist Frank Taussig explaining some of the details:

"When protectionists make a change of this kind, they almost invariably make the specific duties higher than the ad-valorem, duties for which they are supposed to be an equivalent,—a circumstance which has given rise to the common notion, of course unfounded, that there is some essential connection between free trade and ad-valorem duties on the one hand, and between protection and specific duties on the other hand. The Morrill tariff formed no exception to the usual course of things in this respect. The specific duties which it established were in many cases considerably above the ad-valorem duties of 1846. The most important direct changes made by the act of 1861 were in the increased duties on iron and on wool, by which it was hoped to attach to the Republican party, Pennsylvania and some of the Western States. Most of the manufacturing States at this time still stood aloof from the movement toward higher rates. [Frank W. Taussig, "The Tariff History of the United States." G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892, pp.158-159]

The term "specific duties" simply means "targeted protections," which is a more politically-correct way of saying, "crony-capitalism."

A modern historian/economist, Phillip Magness, who holds a PhD in public policy from George Mason, makes similar claims.

"Between December 1858 and March 1860, Morrill was inundated with letters from manufacturers and industrialists requesting favorable protective tariff rates against their foreign competitors. Many of these petitions were copied verbatim into the text of the tariff bill [e.g., crony-capitalism]. The Morrill schedule also replaced the ad valorem schedule system of Walker with the reintroduction of item-by-item rates. The new schedule utilized an ad hoc mixture of individual ad valorem rates and specific duties, assessed by import units rather than volume, making its administration less transparent. While it is difficult to measure the full effect of the revisions given this change of assessment, Morrill 's equivalent rates pushed most items well above the 1846 schedule and, in several instances, to near-parity with the Black Tariff levels of 1842." [Phillip W. Magness, "Tariffs and the American Civil War." Essential Civil War Curriculum, 2017, p.8]

And this is how it all played out, by Charles W. Adams, former tax attorney and current tax historian:

"The Morrill Tariff, as it was called, was the highest tariff in history, doubling the rates of the 1857 tariff to an average of 47 percent of the value of imports. Iron products were taxed over 50 percent. This was the Republicans' big victory, and their supporters were jubilant. They had fulfilled their IODs to the industrialists and commercial men of the North. But by this outrageous tariff for the South, the doors of reconciliation were closed. In Lincoln's inaugural address he had committed himself to collect customs in the South even if there was a secession. With slavery, he was conciliatory; with the import taxes, he was threatening. Fort Sumter was at the entrance to the Charleston Harbor, filled with federal troops to support U.S. Customs officers. It wasn't too difficult for angry South Carolinians to fire the first shot." [Charles W. Adams, "For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization." Madison Books, 2nd Ed, 2001, p.336

This is a lamentation of Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham on the floor of the House in June, 1861:

"[T]here was another and yet stronger impelling cause without which this horrid calamity of civil war might have been postponed, and, perhaps, finally averted. One of the last and worst acts of a Congress, which, born in bitterness and nurtured in convulsion, literally did those things which it ought not to have done, and left undone those things which it ought to have done, was the passage of an obscure, ill-considered, ill-digested, and unstatesmanlike high protective tariff act, commonly known as "the Morrill tariff." Just about the same time, too, the Confederate Congress at Montgomery adopted our old tariff of 1857, which we had rejected to make way for the Morrill act, fixing their rate of duties at five, fifteen, and twenty per cent, lower than ours. The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade are inexorable. Trade and commerce—and especially the trade and commerce of the West—began to look to the South. Turned out of their natural course years ago, by the canals and railroads of Pennsylvania and New York, and diverted eastward at a heavy loss to the West, they threatened now to resume their ancient and accustomed channels—the water-courses—the Ohio and the Mississippi. And political association and union, it was well known, must soon follow the direction of trade and interest. The city of New York, the great commercial emporium of the Union, and the Northwest, the chief granary of the Union, began to clamor now loudly for a repeal of the pernicious and ruinous tariff. Threatened thus with the loss of both political power and wealth, or the repeal of the tariff, and at last of both. New England—and Pennsylvania, too, the land of Penn, cradled in peace—demanded now coercion and civil war, with all its horrors, as the price of preserving either from destruction. Ay, sir, Pennsylvania, the great keystone of the arch of the Union, was willing to lay the whole weight of her iron upon that sacred arch, and crush it beneath the load. The subjugation of the South —ay, sir, the subjugation of the South! I am not talking to children or fools; for there is not a man in this House fit to be a Representative here who does not know that the South cannot be forced to yield obedience to your laws and authority again until you have conquered and subjugated her—the subjugation of the South, and the closing up of her ports, first by force, in war, and afterwards by tariff laws, in peace, was deliberately resolved upon by the East. And, sir, when once this policy was begun, these self-same motives of waning commerce and threatened loss of trade impelled the great city of New York, and her merchants and her politicians and her press, with here and there an honorable exception, to place herself in the very front rank among the worshipers of Moloch. Much, indeed, of that outburst and uprising in the North, which followed the proclamation of the 15th of April, as well, perhaps, as the proclamation itself, was called forth, not so much by the fall of Sumter—an event long anticipated—as by the notion that the " insurrection," as it was called, might be crushed out in a few weeks, if not by the display, certainly, at least, by the presence of an overwhelming force."
"These, sir, were the chief causes which, along with others, led to a change in the policy of the Administration, and, instead of peace, forced us headlong into civil war, with all its accumulated horrors."
[Clement L. Vallandigham, "Speech of Hon. C.L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, on Executive Usurpation, in the House of Representatives, July 10, 1861." 1861, p.4]

Perhaps you should consider better sources, Joey; at least resort to something other than Wikipedia.

Mr. Kalamata

>>Kalamata wrote: “Acts-of-war are acts-of-war, Joey. Major Anderson’s dumb move was the first. The second was when Buchanan ordered the reinforcement and resupply of the Fort”
>>BroJoeK wrote: “Right, Danny-child, you insane Democrats, then as now, were calling every defense of America “illegal”, “impeachable”, “acts of war”, etc., etc. When it comes to hating America, Democrats were just as rabid in 1860 as you are today.”

You are such a Drama Queen, Joey! Lincolnites (e.g., big-government progressives) tend to downplay the fact that about 350,000 United States Soldiers died during Lincoln’s war, as well as about 300,000 Confederate Soldiers (who are also U.S. Military Veterans;) along with tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians, which included tens of thousands of blacks. Lincoln really wanted those taxes.

Mr. Kalamata