from post #484, response 3.
Kalamata: "Who do we believe: the Confederates who were living in the nightmarish days of Lincoln, or Joey?"
Naw, you missed my point, again.
Confederates calling Union actions a "declaration of war" began long before Lincoln was even inaugurated...
- As early as December 31, 1860, when President Buchanan responded to South Carolina's demands to surrender Fort Sumter, Buchanan's written response was, in effect, "no way Jose".
The SC commissioners called that a declaration of war.
- In February, Congress considered updating the 1807 Insurrection Act and some Southerners called that a declaration of war.
- And many claimed Lincoln's March 4 Inaugural Address was a declaration of war.
- Now we see from your quote that Jefferson Davis himself called Lincoln's post-Sumter actions a declaration of war.
So it seems that some Confederates were seeing declarations of war behind every tree and under every rock long before Lincoln took office.
Now, what's it called when you go around projecting your own fears onto others?
That's right, it's called being a Democrat, a form of mental illness.
Kalamata: "Joey speaks with a forked-tongue.
With a little more practice he may qualify as a progressive lawyer."
That's just nonsense -- what Olive-boy uses whenever he's lost an argument.
Regarding Lincoln's Inaugural promise to occupy Federal properties, on a second look at Lincoln's words, I notice now he said nothing about which properties he would occupy.
Indeed, if Confederates really believed their own lies about property magically changing ownership just because some people declare themselves seceded, then Confederates would not have interpreted Lincoln's words as a threat at all, since Lincoln would not occupy their property, only the Federal government's.
Kalamata: "...you appear to be correct about Fort Sumter.
Several of my references mentioned Fort Sumter as a tax collection depot,"
Right, I've seen that same claim on these threads before, that somehow duties were being collected at Fort Sumter.
In fact, in 1860 after 30 years of construction Sumter was still not finished and was not then used for anything.
More important, it's irrelevant exactly where Charleston's tariffs were collected and Lincoln had even considered a plan to collect them off-shore, before ships even entered the harbor.
But even more important, I'll repeat the fact that Charleston's tariff collections represented roughly one half of one percent of total tariff revenues and so that could not have been an important factor in Lincoln's thinking.
And again, that's exactly what causes our FRiends like DiogenesLamp to concoct cockamamie conspiracy theories involving "money flows from Europe" and "Northeastern power brokers" who were somehow pulling Lincoln's strings, forcing him to do things for their reasons rather than any of the reasons Lincoln himself expressed.
Kalamata: "That said, the collection of tariff revenue was a significant part of the narrative of those trying times. "
Sure, Federal revenues then as now were always a matter of concern to many, but had nothing to do with Fort Sumter.
Indeed, if you add up all tariff revenues from every Confederate port, including the huge one at New Orleans, they still come to only 4% of total Federal tariff revenues.
Further, the last thing Congress did before adjourning on March 4, 1861 was vote to authorize the government to borrow several millions of dollars, enough in those days to keep things going smoothly for many months.
So money was not the immediate issue at Fort Sumter, but rather it was more a matter of national honor and potential strategic advantages.
Kalamata: "Buchanan was a little better versed than Lincoln on the construction of the Constitution, but not by much."
I disagree with Buchanan's analysis.
In fact, the 1807 Insurrection Act (signed by President Jefferson) provided the authority President Lincoln used:
"Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion. "
Kalamata:
"Lost Causers? LOL!" I've used the terms "pro-Confederate" and "Lost Causers" more or less interchangeably without much push-back on either.
Kalamata: "I have read similar economically-illiterate statements to yours from other "Burners and Pillagers," and I must declare that I am astonished!
This is Economics101, Joey.
Read carefully:
Where, and by whom, tariffs are collected has nothing to do with who benefits from them or who is harmed by them...."
Sure, I'm not disputing some of that, but merely noting that some pro-Confederates tell us Lincoln "invaded" Charleston harbor in order to collect it's tariff revenues!
And I'm saying factually, that's just nonsense.
Kalamata: "The Southern states were mostly consumers of the protected items, so they were harmed by the tariffs.
Rightly, they saw the tariffs as a method of redistribution-of-wealth "
Actually, Southern products were also protected by tariffs, especially the big ones: cotton and sugar.
So every region -- North, East, West and South -- both benefitted from and paid for import tariffs.
Kalamata: "Regarding revenue, Lincoln said this: "And whereas, since that date, public property of the United States [Fort Sumter] has been seized, the collection of the revenue obstructed, and duly commissioned officers of the United States, while engaged in executing the orders of their superiors, have been arrested and held in custody as prisoners..."
Sure, Charleston tariff revenues were part of the mix, but they were not, all by themselves (as some posters here like to claim), an existential threat the republic.
Kalamata: "This conversation on the eve-of-the-war between a Virginia delegate and Lincoln reveals Lincoln's passionate concern about revenue collection:"
[John Brown Baldwin, "Interview between President Lincoln and Col. John B. Baldwin, April 4th 1861 - statements and evidence." 1866, p.13-14]
Now, now, FRiend, up to now I've given you great credit for not (unlike some others) posting fake quotes.
But Confederate Congressman & Col. John Baldwin's postwar testimony is about as fake as fake can get.
Nothing at the time corroborates his claims and everything suggests that he concocted his conversation with Lincoln five years later, based on how things turned out.
Kalamata: "The following statement, as recorded by Robert L. Dabney, is from the same conversation between Colonel Baldwin and Lincoln, but with a few extra details:"
[C. R. Vaughn, "Discussions by Robert L. Dabney Vol IV - Secular." Crescent Book House, 1890, pp.93-94]
Again recorded many years after the fact with very clear 20-20 hindsight.
The truth is that nobody in 1861 had any real idea what all the potential for war might imply.
Kalamata quoting: "Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence."
[Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861, in Kenneth M. Stampp, "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69]
Right, notice the wording, "alleged grievances in regard to slavery" meaning the Boston Transcript does not think those grievances were either real or serious.
But those are in fact the grievances Southern elites used to sell secession to the majority of Deep South voters.
To those voters the reasons were both real and serious.
Now we might also ask, did Deep South elites themselves also believe in their alleged grievances, or was it strictly cynical voter manipulation?
I think the clear answer is "yes, they were sincere at the time."
Their first & foremost priority was protecting slavery against a President and Congress which were for the first time in history openly and blatantly hostile to slavery.
That's what they said at the time.
After that, then, as a consequence of protecting slavery the result was everything else followed, summed up by the Boston Transcript's term, "commercial independence."
Kalamata quoting: "The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade."
This is pure hyperbole, however often repeated by Northerners, in fact Confederates never seriously considered "free trade".
What they wanted in March 1861 instead was to redirect tariff revenues from Washington to Montgomery.
How much was that?
Including New Orleans, about $2 . 5 million of the $52 million total Federal tariff revenues = ~4%.
Confederates also hoped to tariff "imports" from Union states which could add another $20 million per year for Montgomery.
Kalamata still quoting: "The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York"
And that is absolute complete nonsense, so far off the mark that we can only hope the Boston Transcript did not really believe its own lies.
The best we might say is that here the Transcript exaggerates the "threat" of Confederate free trade just as much as Fire Eaters exaggerated Lincoln's "threat" to their slavery.
What we can say is that, absent war, Confederate tariffs & taxes would certainly change trading patterns to some degree, but it would have been orders of magnitude less change than actually experienced during the Civil War.
Kalamata still quoting: "In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties.... The [government] would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against." "
Notice again that the Transcript does not call for war or invasion or any other violence, but only that Washington take presumably reasonable steps in response.
Kalamata: "The highlighted statement should read, "the cause of Lincoln and his crony-capitalist friends" was advanced. "
Your insane obsession with "crony capitalism" is noted and dismissed as nothing more than the rantings of feeble mind unaccustomed to dealing with reality.
Kalamata: "Lincoln's advancement of the war was the way for him and his cronies to break the shackles of the Constitution -- the shackles that have always irritated greedy, power-hungry men, like Lincoln."
There's no evidence -- none -- that Lincoln intended before 1861 to break any "shackles", not even slavery's shackles, and plenty of evidence that he did his best to win the war while remaining within Constitutional limits.
Kalamata: "That was Lincoln's War, Joey, and the extermination was strictly a one-sided operation by Lincoln's "Burners and Pillagers.""
"Extermination" was Jefferson Davis' word, not Lincoln's, and Davis used it famously at least twice - first just after Fort Sumter in declaring a "war of extermination on both sides" and then again near the war's end:
See I seriously doubt if a person like Kalamata can become this insane in old age if he didn't first learn it as a youth.
I suspect Lincoln-loathing (or something closely related) was in his heart from the beginning, perhaps suppressed as a younger man, but now released to enflame & consume his entire brain.
Kalamata: "No doubt Lincoln's flip-flop discussions of slavery were strictly politics.
On the other hand, his desire for white-separatism, fiat currency, crony "internal improvement" ventures, and a high protective tariff for the politically-connected, was his religion."
And here our new FRiend, Olive-boy, abandons any pretense of sanity he previously maintained in favor of stark, raving, froth-at-the-mouth lunacy.
So I'll repeat: I don't think you can suddenly learn that degree of nuttiness as an old man unless it was already in you, perhaps long suppressed, from childhood. ![]()
>>Kalamata wrote: "Who do we believe: the Confederates who were living in the nightmarish days of Lincoln, or Joey?"
>>Joey wrote: "Naw, you missed my point, again. Confederates calling Union actions a "declaration of war" began long before Lincoln was even inaugurated..."
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
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>>Joey wrote: "As early as December 31, 1860, when President Buchanan responded to South Carolina's demands to surrender Fort Sumter, Buchanan's written response was, in effect, "no way Jose". The SC commissioners called that a declaration of war.
That was an act of war.
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>>Joey wrote: "In February, Congress considered updating the 1807 Insurrection Act and some Southerners called that a declaration of war. And many claimed Lincoln's March 4 Inaugural Address was a declaration of war. Now we see from your quote that Jefferson Davis himself called Lincoln's post-Sumter actions a declaration of war. So it seems that some Confederates were seeing declarations of war behind every tree and under every rock long before Lincoln took office."
Acts-of-war are acts-of-war, Joey. Pretending those were peace initiatives will never alter that fact that they were threats against sovereign states.
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>>Joey wrote: "Now, what's it called when you go around projecting your own fears onto others? That's right, it's called being a Democrat, a form of mental illness."
I will agree that Lincoln was a psychopath, and a true democrat. This fellow also believed that Lincoln was a true democrat:
"[I]n an instance of urgent necessity, an official of a democratic, constitutional state will be acting more faithfully to his oath of office if he breaks one law in order that the rest may operate unimpeded. This was a powerful and unique plea for the doctrine of paramount necessity. It established no definite rule for this or any other country, but it does serve as a superlative example of how a true democrat in power is likely to act when there is no other way for him to preserve the constitutional system which he has sworn to defend."
[Rossiter, Clinton, "Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies." Princeton University Press, 1948, pp.228-220]
That statement could just as easily apply to Hitler. Obviously, Rossiter, a devout Lincolnite, believed the deception that a constitutional system of government can be saved by destroying it, thus demonstrating that Rossiter, also, was a true democrat.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Joey speaks with a forked-tongue. With a little more practice he may qualify as a progressive lawyer."
>>Joey wrote: "That's just nonsense -- what Olive-boy uses whenever he's lost an argument."
It is not about winning or losing, Joey, but seeking the truth.
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>>Joey wrote: "Regarding Lincoln's Inaugural promise to occupy Federal properties, on a second look at Lincoln's words, I notice now he said nothing about which properties he would occupy. Indeed, if Confederates really believed their own lies about property magically changing ownership just because some people declare themselves seceded, then Confederates would not have interpreted Lincoln's words as a threat at all, since Lincoln would not occupy their property, only the Federal government's."
That is misleading. Lincoln 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. I cannot say this enough: Lincoln was a tyrant.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "...you appear to be correct about Fort Sumter. Several of my references mentioned Fort Sumter as a tax collection depot,"
>>Joey wrote: "Right, I've seen that same claim on these threads before, that somehow duties were being collected at Fort Sumter. In fact, in 1860 after 30 years of construction Sumter was still not finished and was not then used for anything."
The point is, Montgomery considered Sumter to be more secure than Moultrie, so he secretly relocated his troops there, committing an act of war.
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>>Joey wrote: "More important, it's irrelevant exactly where Charleston's tariffs were collected and Lincoln had even considered a plan to collect them off-shore, before ships even entered the harbor."
That would also be an act of war.
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>>Joey wrote: "But even more important, I'll repeat the fact that Charleston's tariff collections represented roughly one half of one percent of total tariff revenues and so that could not have been an important factor in Lincoln's thinking."
Lincoln considered free trade going through the ports of Charleston to be a serious threat to his crony Whig agenda.
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>>Joey wrote: "And again, that's exactly what causes our FRiends like DiogenesLamp to concoct cockamamie conspiracy theories involving "money flows from Europe" and "Northeastern power brokers" who were somehow pulling Lincoln's strings, forcing him to do things for their reasons rather than any of the reasons Lincoln himself expressed."
Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing. He was a greedy, power-hungry crony capitalist for his entire professional and political life.
****************
>>Kalamata wrote: "That said, the collection of tariff revenue was a significant part of the narrative of those trying times."
>>Joey wrote: "Sure, Federal revenues then as now were always a matter of concern to many, but had nothing to do with Fort Sumter. Indeed, if you add up all tariff revenues from every Confederate port, including the huge one at New Orleans, they still come to only 4% of total Federal tariff revenues. Further, the last thing Congress did before adjourning on March 4, 1861 was vote to authorize the government to borrow several millions of dollars, enough in those days to keep things going smoothly for many months."
Again, Lincoln considered free trade going through the ports of Charleston to be a serious threat to his Whig agenda. This is a part of conversation between Lincoln and Colonel Baldwin, a Virginia delegate, prior to Virginia's secession:
"Lincoln seemed impressed by his solemnity, and asked a few questions: "But what am I to do meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?'' "Yes, sir." replied Colonel Baldwin, decisively, "until they can be peaceably brought back." "And open Charleston, etc.. as ports of entry, with their ten per cent, tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?"
"This last question he announced with such emphasis, as showed that in his view it [the tariff] decided the whole matter. He then indicated that the interview was at an end, and dismissed Colonel Baldwin, without promising anything more definite."
[C. R. Vaughn, "Discussions by Robert L. Dabney Vol IV - Secular." Crescent Book House, 1890, pp.93-94]
From the same conversation:
"You have been President a month to-day, and if you intended to hold that position you ought to have strengthened it, so as to make it impregnable. To hold it in the present condition of force there is an invitation to assault. Go upon higher ground than that. The better ground than that is to make a concession of an asserted right in the interest of peace."
"Well," said he, "what about the revenue? What would I do about the collection of duties?" Said I, "Sir, how much do you expect to collect in a year?" Said he, ''Fifty or sixty millions." "Why, sir," said I, "four times sixty is two hundred and forty. Say $250,000,000 would be the revenue of your term of the presidency; what is that but a drop in the bucket compared with the cost of such a war as we are threatened with? Let it all go, if necessary; but I do not believe that it will be necessary, because I believe that you can settle it on the basis I suggest,"
[Baldwin, John Brown, "Interview between President Lincoln and Col. John B. Baldwin, April 4th 1861 - statements and evidence." 1866, pp.13-14]
The bottom line is, the South was for peace, but Lincoln was for war. That reminds me of this scripture:
"My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war." -- Ps 120:6-7 KJV
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>>Joey wrote: "So money was not the immediate issue at Fort Sumter, but rather it was more a matter of national honor and potential strategic advantages."
Blah, blah, blah . . .
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Buchanan was a little better versed than Lincoln on the construction of the Constitution, but not by much."
>>Joey wrote: "I disagree with Buchanan's analysis. In fact, the 1807 Insurrection Act (signed by President Jefferson) provided the authority President Lincoln used: >>Joey quoting: "Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."
Name-dropping Jefferson is a political trick typically used by progressives, like Joey. The legal document called the Constitution states, by omission, that when states exercise their constitutional authority to secede, they are no longer States or Territories of the Union, but sovereign states – or sovereign nations. If the constructors of the Constitution had intended the states to lose their sovereignty upon ratification, it would have explicitly said so within the powers authorized to the general government in Article I, Section 8, or, negatively, in the prohibited powers of Article I, Section 9. Jefferson not only understood that fact, but enshrined the right of the states to secede from the Union in his legacy works and writings, many times.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Lost Causers? LOL!"
>>Joey wrote: "I've used the terms "pro-Confederate" and "Lost Causers" more or less interchangeably without much push-back on either."
The term would be accurate if it were renamed to "Lost Constitutioners".
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>>Kalamata wrote: "I have read similar economically-illiterate statements to yours from other "Burners and Pillagers," and I must declare that I am astonished! This is Economics101, Joey. Read carefully: Where, and by whom, tariffs are collected has nothing to do with who benefits from them or who is harmed by them...."
>>Joey wrote: "Sure, I'm not disputing some of that, but merely noting that some pro-Confederates tell us Lincoln "invaded" Charleston harbor in order to collect it's tariff revenues! And I'm saying factually, that's just nonsense."
You cannot hide Lincoln words by pretending they don't say what they say.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "The Southern states were mostly consumers of the protected items, so they were harmed by the tariffs. Rightly, they saw the tariffs as a method of redistribution-of-wealth "
>>Joey wrote: "Actually, Southern products were also protected by tariffs, especially the big ones: cotton and sugar. So every region -- North, East, West and South -- both benefitted from and paid for import tariffs."
You are confused, Joey. Raw cotton was an export. The constitution disallowed duties on exports:
"Article I, Section 9 - Limits on Congress: No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State."
You must be thinking of duties on finished cotton goods, such as shirts, dresses, etc.., which would cause everyone to pay more. Cotton growers were hurt mostly by: 1) reciprocal tariffs placed by foreign trading partners, which lowered their incomes, and 2) higher prices for imported items. It is simple economics, Joey.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Regarding revenue, Lincoln said this: "And whereas, since that date, public property of the United States [Fort Sumter] has been seized, the collection of the revenue obstructed, and duly commissioned officers of the United States, while engaged in executing the orders of their superiors, have been arrested and held in custody as prisoners..."
>>Joey wrote: "Sure, Charleston tariff revenues were part of the mix, but they were not, all by themselves (as some posters here like to claim), an existential threat the republic."
As aforementioned (several times,) free trade through southern ports would have destroyed the Lincoln's crony-capitalistic schemes. Every northern manufacturer and newspaper of those days knew and understood that. You can find many reports like this aforementioned one:
"It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union, which they have abandoned. Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding States are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby.
"The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.... The... [government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against."
[Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861, in Stampp, Kenneth M., "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69-70]
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>>Kalamata wrote: "This conversation on the eve-of-the-war between a Virginia delegate and Lincoln reveals Lincoln's passionate concern about revenue collection:" [John Brown Baldwin, "Interview between President Lincoln and Col. John B. Baldwin, April 4th 1861 - statements and evidence." 1866, p.13-14] >>Joey wrote: "Again recorded many years after the fact with very clear 20-20 hindsight. The truth is that nobody in 1861 had any real idea what all the potential for war might imply."
Yeah, everyone who doesn't kiss Lincoln's ring is a liar. I get it . . .
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>>Kalamata quoting: "Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence." [Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861, in Kenneth M. Stampp, "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69]
>>Joey wrote: "Right, notice the wording, "alleged grievances in regard to slavery" meaning the Boston Transcript does not think those grievances were either real or serious. But those are in fact the grievances Southern elites used to sell secession to the majority of Deep South voters. To those voters the reasons were both real and serious. Now we might also ask, did Deep South elites themselves also believe in their alleged grievances, or was it strictly cynical voter manipulation?"
I mentioned that in one of my earlier posts on this thread, but it didn't go over very well. The secession was for economic reasons, no matter how it is spun.
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>>Joey wrote: "I think the clear answer is "yes, they were sincere at the time." Their first & foremost priority was protecting slavery against a President and Congress which were for the first time in history openly and blatantly hostile to slavery. That's what they said at the time."
That is not all that was said, Joey. Recall that Senator Toombs labeled the Morrill Tariff a "raid against the South":
"It is true... that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction— a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the pon-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill—the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South. Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its ordinary and most favorable action, bounties and protection to every interest and every pursuit in the North, to the extent of at least fifty millions per annum, besides the expenditure of at least sixty millions out of every seventy of the public expenditure among them, thus making the treasury a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands."
[Senator Robert Toombs, speech before Georgia legislature on the Morrill Tariff, November, 1860, in Stampp, Kenneth M., "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, pp.64-65]
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>>Joey wrote: "After that, then, as a consequence of protecting slavery the result was everything else followed, summed up by the Boston Transcript's term, "commercial independence."
Actually, I believe the newspaper said that slavery was merely a "mask," and that trade was "the controlling motive." You are aware that some Northern newspapers were calling for a blockade of the South to prevent free trade, are you not?
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>>Kalamata quoting: "The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade."
>>Joey wrote: "This is pure hyperbole, however often repeated by Northerners, in fact Confederates never seriously considered "free trade".
No, that would have been an economic reality under a non-protective tariff authorized by the Confederate Constitution. They were not arm-chair historians, Joey: they were living it.
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>>Joey wrote: "What they wanted in March 1861 instead was to redirect tariff revenues from Washington to Montgomery. How much was that? Including New Orleans, about $2 . 5 million of the $52 million total Federal tariff revenues = ~4%. Confederates also hoped to tariff "imports" from Union states which could add another $20 million per year for Montgomery."
That is stupendously simple-minded, Joey. Duty-free (or duty-light) imports would come through Southern ports. The South and Territories would no longer be subject to the high prices of protected Northern goods.
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>>Kalamata still quoting: "The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York."
>>Joey wrote: "And that is absolute complete nonsense, so far off the mark that we can only hope the Boston Transcript did not really believe its own lies. The best we might say is that here the Transcript exaggerates the "threat" of Confederate free trade just as much as Fire Eaters exaggerated Lincoln's "threat" to their slavery."
Joey never ceases to amaze me at his inability to grasp simple economics. This is another article from those trying times:
"One of the most important benefits which the Federal Government has conferred upon the nation is unrestricted trade between many prosperous States with divers productions and industrial pursuits. But now, since the Montgomery [Confederate] Congress has passed a new tariff, and duties are exacted upon Northern goods sent to ports in the Cotton States, the traffic between the two sections will be materially decreased.... Another, and a more serious difficulty arises out of our foreign commerce, and the different rates of duty established by the two tariffs which will soon be in force.."
"The General Government,... to prevent the serious diminution of its revenues, will be compelled to blockade the Southern ports... and prevent the importation of foreign goods into them, or to put another expensive guard upon the frontiers to prevent smuggling into the Union States. Even if the independence of the seceding Commonwealths should be recognized, and two distinct nations thus established, we should still experience all the vexations, and be subjected to all the expenses and annoyances which the people of Europe have long suffered, on account of their numerous Governments, and many inland lines of custom-houses. Thus, trade of all kinds, which has already been seriously crippled would be permanently embarrassed..."
"It is easy for men to deride and underestimate the value of the Union, but its destruction would speedily be followed by fearful proofs of its importance to the whole American people."
[Ibid. Philadelphia Press, p.69]
Blockading ports is considered an act of war.
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>>Joey wrote: "What we can say is that, absent war, Confederate tariffs & taxes would certainly change trading patterns to some degree, but it would have been orders of magnitude less change than actually experienced during the Civil War."
The truth is, one way or another -- either by war or crony-capitalism -- the "republicans" would have plundered the South.
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>>Kalamata still quoting: "In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties.... The [government] would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against."
>>Joey wrote: "Notice again that the Transcript does not call for war or invasion or any other violence, but only that Washington take presumably reasonable steps in response."
How simple-minded can one get?
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>>Kalamata wrote: "The highlighted statement should read, "the cause of Lincoln and his crony-capitalist friends" was advanced. "
>>Joey wrote: "Your insane obsession with "crony capitalism" is noted and dismissed as nothing more than the rantings of feeble mind unaccustomed to dealing with reality."
Lincoln was always a devout crony-capitalist, Joey, from the days of the $12 million "internal-improvements" boondoggle in 1837 (that saddled Illinois with "brilliant schemes" and a mountain of debt,) right up until his death. Illinois amended its state constitution in 1848 to prohibit public financing of private industry, but too late to escape the graft and ambition of the "De Witt Clinton of Illinois," Abraham Lincoln.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Lincoln's advancement of the war was the way for him and his cronies to break the shackles of the Constitution -- the shackles that have always irritated greedy, power-hungry men, like Lincoln."
>>Joey wrote: "There's no evidence -- none -- that Lincoln intended before 1861 to break any "shackles", not even slavery's shackles, and plenty of evidence that he did his best to win the war while remaining within Constitutional limits."
I can see how you might think that way, since you, like Lincoln, believe in a Living Constitution. But it was common knowledge of those days, as well as common sense, that the Constitution was a barrier to the implementation of the Whig economic agenda, which was Lincoln's economic agenda. Neely noticed:
"In the 1840s, Lincoln appeared to be marching steadily toward a position of gruff and belittling impatience with constitutional arguments against the beleaguered Whig program."
[Mark E. Neely Jr., "The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties." Oxford University Press, 1992, p.212]
When the Whig party died, its economic was adopted by the Lincoln "republican" party. Its progressive concept of "implied powers" (that is, "If I imply it," it magically becomes an authorized power) was pretty much enshrined into law by Lincoln's usurpations. I am simply a voice crying in the wilderness, Joey.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "That was Lincoln's War, Joey, and the extermination was strictly a one-sided operation by Lincoln's "Burners and Pillagers.""
>>Joey wrote: "Extermination" was Jefferson Davis' word, not Lincoln's, and Davis used it famously at least twice - first just after Fort Sumter in declaring a "war of extermination on both sides" and then again near the war's end:
You are ignorant of, or avoiding, Lincoln's total war on civilians, Joey. When Sherman and Sheridan were finished impoverishing and making homeless both white and black civilians in the South, for generations to come, they turned their "racial justice" on the Plains Indians to make room for another great, crony-capitalist boondoggle, the Transcontinental Railroad (more appropriately called the Zig-Zag Railroad.)
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>>Joey wrote: "See I seriously doubt if a person like Kalamata can become this insane in old age if he didn't first learn it as a youth. I suspect Lincoln-loathing (or something closely related) was in his heart from the beginning, perhaps suppressed as a younger man, but now released to enflame & consume his entire brain."
I am simply defending the Constitution, Joey, against progressives like you. Speaking of insane, you have to be insane to believe a living constitution is worth more than wet toilet paper.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "No doubt Lincoln's flip-flop discussions of slavery were strictly politics. On the other hand, his desire for white-separatism, fiat currency, crony "internal improvement" ventures, and a high protective tariff for the politically-connected, was his religion."
>>Joey wrote: "And here our new FRiend, Olive-boy, abandons any pretense of sanity he previously maintained in favor of stark, raving, froth-at-the-mouth lunacy."
Your love affair with a blood-thirsty tyrant cannot be healthy, Child.
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>>Joey wrote: "So I'll repeat: I don't think you can suddenly learn that degree of nuttiness as an old man unless it was already in you, perhaps long suppressed, from childhood."
Ignorant Child.
Mr. Kalamata