Posted on 07/26/2021 4:33:01 PM PDT by ammodotcom
The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse is considered by many historians the end of the Civil War and the start of post-Civil War America. The events of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General and future President Ulysses S. Grant at a small town courthouse in Central Virginia put into effect much of what was to follow.
The surrender at Appomattox Courthouse was about reconciliation, healing, and restoring the Union. While the Radical Republicans had their mercifully brief time in the sun rubbing defeated Dixie’s nose in it, they represented the bleeding edge of Northern radicalism that wanted to punish the South, not reintegrate it into the Union as an equal partner.
The sentiment of actual Civil War veterans is far removed from the attitude of the far left in America today. Modern day “woke-Americans” clamor for the removal of Confederate statues in the South, the lion’s share of which were erected while Civil War veterans were still alive. There was little objection to these statues at the time because it was considered an important part of the national reconciliation to allow the defeated South to honor its wartime dead and because there is a longstanding tradition of memorializing defeated foes in honor cultures.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammo.com ...
About 12% of American workers are unionized. So where are these flaming hotbeds?
The South was in turmoil after Lincoln's election. Southern states started seceding in December 1860. Why? Some Northern states were nullifying the Constitution by flouting the Fugitive Slave Act. Plus, Lincoln was saying the US couldn't permanently exist half slave and half free - it would have to be one or the other. Then there was the endorsement by many Republican Congressmen of the Helper Book, which included such statements as:
... our purpose is as fixed as the eternal pillars of heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, and -- so help us God -- abolish it we will! [page 187]We believe it is, as it ought to be, the desire, the determination, and the destiny of this party [Republican] to give the death-blow to slavery; ... [page 234]
We are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards ... [page 149]
While the abolition of slavery was by far the best thing that came out of the war, slavery was the basis of much of the South's economy, and to Southerners the threat to their economy was very real.
The North had a similar threat to their economy, one that was basically self inflicted. Lincoln ran on a platform of increasing the tariff, which, if passed, would extract even more wealth from the South to benefit Northern manufacturers and provide more jobs for Northern workers.
On the other hand, why wouldn’t the South let the North do something stupid to the North’s economy like substantially raising the US tariff by passing the Morrill Tariff after Southern states started seceding and the Confederacy had issued their own temporary tariff earlier in February. The Confederate Tariff in February was essentially the same as the tariff that the US had used since 1857. The North then passed the Morrill Tariff. As a result, there was a high tariff in the North and a low tariff in the South. The incentive existed for importers to ship their imports directly to Southern ports and thereby bypass the Morrill tariff. No wonder a number of import businesses immediately started failing or closing in Northern ports.
Here's data on the change in the value of imports at the Port of New York from 1860 to 1861 on a monthly basis [Source of the data that went into my calculation: the 1865 Appleton's]:
Month ... % change from 1860 to 1861Jan ..... 23.5
Feb ..... -15.6
Mar ..... -22.8
Apr ..... -12.3
May ..... -11.5
Jun ..... -34.0
Jul ..... -40.0
Aug ..... -65.7
Sep ..... -55.1
Oct ..... -49.2
Nov ..... -37.5
Dec ..... -54.8
That Confederate blockade of the Port of New York was really effective, wasn't it?
The two different tariffs created obvious revenue and balance of payments problems for the North. Lincoln would say to at least two different people on separate occasions and to one large group of people urging peace on a third occasion, “what about my revenue?” or equivalent statements. IMO, that is what drove the North to provoke the war and start blockading Southern ports. Lincoln's Treasury Secretary advocated repealing the Morrill Tariff (so a newspaper said), but Lincoln found a different solution.
You are correct. WarIsHell in fact did send that post to someone else in 2016 and had included me and others as recipients. I had archived the post, but hadn't indexed it so that I could easily find it.
You also oversimplify Northern racial attitudes. Some Northern states had Black Codes (as Southern states had Slave or Black Codes). Others didn't. Some Northern people were pathologically Negrophobic (as some Southerners were). Others may not have wanted to live too close to too many African-Americans (like some Whites today), but others had no problem with the Black family down the road.
“warishellaintityall” was apparently “Historian Doris Kearns Goodwad,” a notorious joker, who posts under another name as well. I wouldn’t necessarily believe his supposed family history.
Thank you, your post shows how secession could not have been motivated by tariffs. The calculus was simple. Stay in the Union and cast your no votes and kill the bill, or leave and allow higher tariffs. And risk war, since Presidents had made it clear that disunion was not going to happen, back at least to Andrew Jackson. So we can dispense with that nonsense going forward. But what was the reason?
“The South was in turmoil after Lincoln’s election. Southern states started seceding in December 1860. Why? Some Northern states were nullifying the Constitution by flouting the Fugitive Slave Act. Plus, Lincoln was saying the US couldn’t permanently exist half slave and half free - it would have to be one or the other.”
I do declare, sir, you have acknowledged the corn at last! Praise be to the Almighty! You see that Dim, some Southrons CAN handle the truth!
Then read the Arver v. United States (245 U.S. 366) Supreme Court decision.
There is no doubt that tariffs benefitted the North economically at the expense of the South. This was a significant irritant to the South. I am reminded of a statement I found in the New Orleans Picayune newspaper quoting the Daily Chicago Times newspaper on/of December 10, 1860 that admitted:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
No doubt some Southern politicians realized that the two new tariffs (Morrill vs. Confederate) with their different tariff rates would result in some big future advantages to Southern ports and businesses. Northern newspapers in early 1861 recognized the harmful effect of the two tariffs on Northern ports and businesses.
As you said, tariffs weren’t the prime motivators of the secession of the South. However, the potential loss of revenue to the Northern government caused by the two different tariffs was, in my opinion, the main reason Lincoln provoked war with the South. Face it, he intentionally did just that and did not want compromise with the South. With war, Lincoln could blockade the Southern ports and starve the Southern government of import revenue and needed supplies.
The US government was virtually broke when Lincoln became president due to previous high government spending and current plans for even more spending, such as the Northern railroad route to the West coast. The US government very much needed more revenue. If memory serves, even Congress was not getting paid because the Treasury was nearly empty.
“…that ‘my fellow citizens understand the true principles of government and liberty [and appreciate] their inseparable union.”
- George Washington
“I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the union into two or more parts.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“ The right of a state to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by the principles of the Declaration of Independence.”
- John Quincy Adams.
“Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure.“
“…disunion by armed force is treason.”
-Andrew Jackson
In February 1850, he (Zachary Taylor) held a conference with southern leaders who had threatened secession. Taylor told them that, if necessary to enforce the laws, he would personally lead the army. Persons “taken in rebellion against the Union, he would hang . . . with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico.”
Millard Fillmore sent government troops to the South to act against rumors of secession by South Carolina.
“ And this brings me to observe that the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.”
- James Buchanan
I guess Lincoln wasn’t the only one after that revenue.
You also oversimplify Northern racial attitudes. Some Northern states had Black Codes (as Southern states had Slave or Black Codes). Others didn't. Some Northern people were pathologically Negrophobic (as some Southerners were). Others may not have wanted to live too close to too many African-Americans (like some Whites today), but others had no problem with the Black family down the road.
No response from you to this. I guess you really wouldn't mind losing your job to somebody's slave, a Chinese convict or an illegal immigrant and would defend to the death the rights of slaveowners to make money off the unpaid labor of others.
That's on you. I didn't say that, but I will point out that it's as close to "free" as it was possible to get in that era.
And that using slave labor is a legitimate way to become wealthy.
It is an immoral way to become wealthy, but it was a legal way to become wealthy in that era.
I guess you wouldn't have any problem losing your job to a slave, convict or illegal immigrant.
You are trying to make it about me. It is not about me. I didn't say the northerners who hated slavery didn't have a valid gripe. What I said is they weren't motivated by concern for slaves as modern historians would have us believe.
You also oversimplify Northern racial attitudes. Some Northern states had Black Codes (as Southern states had Slave or Black Codes).
It is not remarkable to discover that Southern states were racist. What is not known among most people nowadays is how very racist were the Northern states. It undermines the illusion that they were good people doing the lord's work in stamping out slavery. They weren't. They were just ordinary people for their time, doing what the powers in Washington DC ordered them to do.
...but others had no problem with the Black family down the road.
Very small minority of the population at that time.
It was expressing amusement at your effort of wishful thinking.
Anyway, I will wait for you to show me how any legislation affected Southern ship building, shipping lines, or any other activity as regards the logistics of the cotton trade or other major business activity. I’ll grow old(er) but I’ll wait.
I cannot help but feel you are flippant about this and don't really care about the information because you have already made up your mind to ignore it if it doesn't show what you wish to believe. It is not easy to remember where to find all this, but I managed to find some information on the subject which I had read a long time ago. Thanks to PeaRidge for compiling this information.
I believe there is more, and more detailed information in the linked discussion thread, but I think this addresses your interest in an accurate and somewhat detailed manner.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3443027/posts?page=929#929>
You cannot know that this was done without secret orders from Lincoln because Porter never revealed the text of his orders. Again, we've got Captain Mercers orders, but we have no idea exactly what Lincoln told Porter to do.
I'll link you to PeaRidge's excellent synopsis of what the government did which impacted Southern shipbuilding.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3443027/posts?page=929#929
You didn't? It looks like you just said exactly that: that free labor is labor you don't have to pay for. For you, slavery is freedom, I guess.
It is an immoral way to become wealthy, but it was a legal way to become wealthy in that era.
Society has decided some ways of getting wealthy are immoral. If it can't forbid such ways, it tries to disadvantage them. It can decide that pornography or escort services or human trafficking or gambling aren't good ways to make money. They may be legal, but the fact that they are considered to be immoral means that they can't claim to be on the same level of legitimacy as other, more respectable ways of earing a living.
I didn't say the northerners who hated slavery didn't have a valid gripe. What I said is they weren't motivated by concern for slaves as modern historians would have us believe. ... What is not known among most people nowadays is how very racist were the Northern states.
You are about fifty years behind the times. Current historians are very critical of Northern racial attitudes, Lincoln, and the early Republican Party. So are journalists. You persist in identifying today's progressives with the mid-19th century Republicans, when most of today's progressives, apart from occasionally appealing to popular images of Lincoln, aren't fans of Lincoln or his party or his policies.
Once people understand that virtually everybody was racist back then, it's not hard to buy into the idea that Northerners were even more anti-Black than Southerners, as Dickens did at the time. The truth is more complicated than that. Replacing one myth with another isn't much of an improvement.
And why do these things always seem to develop in states with heavy port traffic and much contact with foreign nations and ideas?
Midwesterners out on the Plains may not have had much in common with New Yorkers, but they had no more in common with Virginia or Mississippi planters.
The vast majority of the populace out of the South was not Planters. They were just ordinary folk like those in the Midwest. Socially the groups of states I showed you would have all grown together over time and become a more or less similar voting bloc without efforts to keep them separated artificially.
had a common culture for a century after the Civil War and had more in common with each other than they did with the Southern states.
After the civil war, the Southern states were impoverished and many were desperately trying to get on their feet in the midst of crushing poverty.
I am referring to what would have happened in the absence of a war. The Southern population would not have been destitute and would have had similar incomes and concerns as the rural Northern populations, and they would have grown together in absence of war.
If New Orleans transformed itself into the great commercial capital, wouldn't far away farmers resent its power?
Oh absolutely. It is in the nature of man to resent and envy wealth. However, the wealth of New Orleans would have also been commensurate with an increase of wealth of these farmers because their dollars would go further without the protectionism instituted to protect the Northeastern manufacturers.
You don't really live in today's America, do you? There's a metropolitan culture in New York City or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago, but it's also in Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte and other big metropolitan areas.
It is a sickness of big cities and concentrated wealth. Alexander Tytler pointed out that it is part of a much larger cycle of which most people are unaware.
And as I've pointed out, those were African-American slaves. Native Americans had been enslaved under the Mexicans, the Spanish, and the pre-Columbian Indian civilizations. Probably there were still some Indians who were essentially enslaved even under US rule. The region wasn't inhospitable to slavery and probably would have adapted to African-American slavery if the Confederates had taken over.
They had the opportunity to do so for half a century, and yet they did not. Therefore they would not.
Where slavery was legal and slaveowners controlled the government, uses would be found for slaves.
You are ignoring the economics. Unless a "use" could be found which would pay better than cotton farming, people would put their slaves into cotton farming. It's about money. People want as much of it as they can get with as little effort on their own part as possible.
I believe the Confederate Constitution protected the right of slaveowners to take their slaves everywhere.
As did the US Constitution, though it had been deliberately misinterpreted in such a way to give states the right to overrule the "privileges and immunities" clause in the case of slaves. I think the US Constitution was never intended to be interpreted in the manner it was when it was written, but we've seen the misinterpretation play over and over again in Liberal strongholds.
The Southern constitution simply made the point explicitly.
You've said Northerners hated Blacks and didn't want to live among them and have to compete with them. If true, that's all the more reason why they'd want a national border between themselves and the South.
A border is just a meaningless line. (as we are now seeing with our own southern border.) It won't keep people out, only proactive measures will do that.
The economics would have moved states to join the South, and those advantages would have overcame a lot of reluctance in other areas.
Again, it would have started with the borders states like Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, etc.
Missing is the fact that smaller New England ports -- Salem, Newburyport, etc. -- also went into decline in the early 19th century.
The advantage at the time was to larger ports with extensive rail connections and large economic hinterlands: New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia.
Charleston and Savannah didn't develop their rail connections. The free population was smaller and more sparsely settled.
Still, there was regular shipping between Charleston and foreign ports. James Adger, a Charleston shipper, was at one point the fourth-richest man in America. George Trenholm, another Charleston shipper, was also one of the richest men in the country.
Linking to other posters won’t cut it. I’m doing my own research. So far, I found no legislation actually titled “The Navigation Act of 1817” or anything like that. Maybe the Library of Congress will respond to my inquiry. In any event, no, I actually do care about your information. I’d just like more than “because you say so” or “some other poster says so.”
nice recap except the premise of the 1817 navigation act being passed to boost Northern shipping is wrong. The act was passed in retaliation for the British barring American shipping from trading between with their Caribbean islands.
Absolutely correct. The genteel folk in Charleston didn't want noisy locomotives disturbing the tranquil downtown area. So any cargo had to be transferred from the rail cars, carried through town, and reloaded at the dock. Other cities built rail lines right to the port and passed the once thriving port of Charleston went into decline.
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