Replies

Kalamata to DoodleDawg on Republicans, post #587: "The party was established on a principle of corporate welfare, and protective tariffs was the chief source of income."

DoodleDawg responding, post #588: "Upwards on 95% of all tariff income was collected in Northern ports.
Losing far less than 10% would hardly have cause crony capitalism to crash and burn, assuming it existed as you describe to begin with."

Actually, the Republican party formed in 1854 in response to the Southern Democrat Kansas-Nebraska Act, expanding slavery in US territories.
The old Whigs were not solidly anti-slavery enough for many, so they formed a new party, Republicans.

"The Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs such as Zachariah Chandler and Free Soil Democrats such as Salmon P. Chase.[11][12]"

Notice Salmon Chase here -- beginning as a Free Soil Democrat he served in Lincoln's cabinet, providing crucial support for Lincoln's Fort Sumter mission, and ending as the US Supreme Court Chief Justice and Democrat candidate for President in 1868, in opposition to Republican plans to try Jefferson Davis & other Confederate leaders for treason.
Chase was quite the guy.

What Kalamata & other Lost Causers mock as "crony capitalism", normal people call government infrastructure projects, and yes, Republicans did favor them:

"The new Republican Party envisioned modernizing the United States, emphasizing expanded banking, more railroads and factories, and giving free western land to farmers ("free soil") as opposed to letting slave owners buy up the best properties.
It vigorously argued that free market labor was superior to slavery and was the very foundation of civic virtue and true republicanism; this was the "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" ideology.[12]
Without using the term "containment", the Republican Party in the mid-1850s proposed a system of containing slavery. Historian James Oakes explains the strategy:

"The federal government would surround the south with free states, free territories, and free waters, building what they called a 'cordon of freedom' around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery.[19]"

Who exactly were those first Republicans?

"The Republican Party absorbed many of the previous traditions of its members, who had come from an array of political factions, including Working Men,[Note 1] Locofoco Democrats,[Note 2] Free Soil Democrats,[Note 3] Free Soil Whigs,[Note 4] anti-slavery Know Nothings,[Note 5] Conscience Whigs,[Note 6] and Temperance Reformers of both parties.[Note 7][24][25][26][27]
Many Democrats who joined were rewarded with governorships,[Note 8] or seats in the U.S. Senate,[Note 9] or House of Representatives.[Note 10] "

And when you consider how our own natural-born Democrats, like Kalamata & DiogenesLamp loathe & mock Lincoln Republicans, well... think of what they said about us in Lincoln's own time -- from his Cooper Union speech:

"[W]hen you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.
You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans."
[...] But you will not abide the election of a Republican president!
In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!
That is cool.
A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"[28]"

Seriously, Lincoln at Cooper Union said, "that is cool."
Who would have thought?
But the important point here is to notice how Republicans were mocked, scorned and threatened since Day One.
Indeed, compared to what they said in 1860 the vile words our Lost Causers launch at Lincoln today are really pretty gentle, if no less false.

Indeed, I've long thought about Republicans that if Democrats are not trying to murder you, impeach you or otherwise destroy you, then you haven't done anything truly important.
Think of them -- Lincoln, Garfield & McKinley killed, Teddy Roosevelt & Ronald Reagan shot but miraculously survived, now President Trump impeached for nothing!
You know you're a good Republican when Democrats are coming after you with knives, guns and whatever words they can weaponize against you.

By the way least you imagine the transcontinental railroad was strictly a Republican issue, Southern Democrats too were in hot pursuit of Federal approval for a Southern route.
Most notably, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis successfully pushed for the Gadsden Purchase and stood to profit greatly form his proposed Southern route.
So, if you're looking for "crony capitalist" motives for secession, there's a pretty good place to start.
With Republicans in charge there was no-way Jefferson Davis could get his own Southern route.

Kalamata "The U.S. didn't import cotton during that time, that I am aware of.
Are you referring to finished cotton goods; and, if so, for what purpose?"

DoodleDawg: "No, I am referring to your claim that high U.S. tariffs caused foreign countries to apply their own tariffs in retaliation and that cost Southern exporters money.
Since most U.S. cotton exports went to the UK then my question is what was their tariff on U.S. cotton imports that cost Southern exporters so much money?"

A lot of people here seem very confused about the economic issues in 1860, but that doesn't stop them from making wild accusations about, for example, alleged Confederate "free trade" destroying "Northeastern power brokers'" and their "crony capitalism".
Gross exaggerations are made of the Southern economic output in order to claim, first, it was being "plundered" by "the North" and second, loss of such "plunder" would destroy the Union.

Here are some facts:

In 1860 Confederate states had about 20% of the US white population and produced just under 20% of US GDP -- about $800 million of the US $4.4 billion total.
Deep Cotton South states exported about $200 million in cotton, roughly 50% of US total exports.
Upper South & Border Slave-States produced the number two export, tobacco, worth a few more percent of the total.
Other states exported another $200 million, including California gold and Nevada silver.
That made total exports $400 million, balanced by about $400 million in imports.
Now Lost Causers today and Confederates then made a big deal out of "Southern exports", claiming they represented 75% or 87% of total US exports and without them the entire economy would collapse.
It's not true, and one reason is, for every dollar "the South" exported, it also "imported" a dollar's worth of manufactured good from the North.
What did the South "import" from the North?
About 2/3 were cloth products -- wool, cotton & silk.
Another 10% were iron products from rail to stoves & farm equipment.
The balance was a wide assortment of items, from hats to soap, tea and musical instruments.
Those Northern "exports" were now at risk in 1861, not because of "free trade", but because Confederates intended to tariff them, expecting revenues of maybe $20 million per year.
Those Confederate tariffs would make Northern goods more expensive in the South and thus potentially reduce such Union "exports".
That was the real threat of Confederate economic independence.
But if you imagine, "that's why the Union went to war", then consider that war took a bad situation and made it much worse, since Civil War ended all such commerce.
So what might otherwise have been a peaceful 20% reduction in Union "exports" to Confederate states became a 100% elimination of it.
As for those Federal tariffs, about 95% were collected at Union ports and so were not directly effected by events in Charleston, SC.
They would be indirectly affected by a war which eliminated Northern "exports" to the South, and thus, those so-called "Northeastern Power Brokers" & "crony capitalists" were mostly Democrats who wanted peace, not war with the new Confederacy.