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 ...
bkmk
I wouldn't know if there was such an act or not. I have never tried to find such an act. Somehow you have gotten it confused with the "Navigation act of 1817."
If there was, you could simply link to it and I will be able to look for myself but you won’t do that because it doesn’t exist.
Wishful thinking. It most certainly does exist. I have linked to it in the past.
I now perceive you just want to look for contradictions to what I am telling you it did, and I wonder why I should be motivated to help you undermine my statements?
You are not interested in an honest debate. You simply want to disprove things you don't want to believe because they would overturn your world view of what happened, and you will simply not allow your world view to be changed by actual facts.
I think this will prove you wrong in your assertion that the act did not exist.
But help you find it? Why should I bother? You aren't even trying to be sincere. "X" can probably find it for you if you can't.
Sorry for the typo and autocorrect’s intervention. I hope I didn’t ruin your day.
Your link does not go to the text of the act. That’s what I’m looking for. I’ve yet to find any text for such an act, nor any mention of it in the Congressional record. I don’t doubt that legislation covering shipping from that period does exist. I do doubt it did what you and your tangential sources claim it did.
Now, about Charleston….?
I found it! An actual image of the act, nor just the text. So yes, Dim you were right. There was legislation regarding navigation in 1817!
I have no issue with the truth, or acknowledging when you are trading in actual historical facts. The problem is you do so very infrequently. The legislation of course didn’t do half of what you claimed it did. It will take me a while to type out the verbiage. Of course I’ll link the original.
But first we need to examine the factor of factors in the cotton trade, of which you seem to know little.
Societal disapproval does not equal force of law. To eradicate something, you must make it illegal. There was not sufficient support in the populace to do this in 1861, and if we are being honest, there was not sufficient support in the populace to do it in 1865 either, but Washington DC cheated, as they are wont to do.
Not different from what the government today does with smoking. One can argue about whether the policies are right, but it is a possible middle way between an outright ban and complete acceptance that is more tolerable than either of those alternatives. One could also draw a parallel to "fat acceptance" today as well. Government action against the overweight has been limited so far, but already there are people saying that being overweight shouldn't be viewed as a negative and shouldn't have social liabilities, and they might want to use the government to enforce their own view, barring discrimination against the fat in the same way that slaveowners wanted to ban "discrimination" against slaveowners. Or take school prayer or the pledge of allegiance. For some people, these are unfair to atheists. Others argue that the country shouldn't treat atheism and religious faith as being morally equal. In their view, a level field would encourage atheism. Bottom line: governments that don't want to prohibit things outright do take steps to encourage worthwhile behavior and discourage what they consider to be harmful behavior.
It's an easy comparison to make. Where were the hearts of progressivism in 1860? In the big cities, especially in Northern big cities like Boston and New York. What is the ideology of Progressivism in the 1860s? Protectionist. Societal upheaval. Big government control. Disapproval of the existing social morality. Party of wealth and privilege. Same as today.
Whether protectionism is progressive or not could be the subject of much debate. I don't think the farmers and shopkeepers of the North who voted Republican would see their votes as being in favor of "big government control" or social disruption or opposed to existing social morality. If anything, the Whig-Republican tradition was more moralistic and moralizing than the Democrat one and more inclined to hold people to strict moral standards. Democrats, then and now, wanted looser moral standards.
Party of wealth and privilege? Wealthy merchants in the big cities wanted to keep their commercial connections with Southern planters. Most of them weren't Republicans in 1860. Your own materialistic view of history ought to make it clear to you why they wouldn't want to disrupt things. It was more those who aspired to better their condition who voted Republican, not those who already had it made and had much to lose.
And where were the wealthiest counties in the country -- in terms of average income of free white people? In Mississippi. Southern politicians had a lot of trouble figuring out if they were a ruling class privileged by God or if they were scorned, neglected and abused by the free states, but we don't have to accept their victimization narratives or assume that the Southern states in 1860 (or today) were as poor and victimized as they might have been in the 1890s or the 1930s.
You are apparently saying that Republicans in the mid 19th century were the same as progressives today. But when Republicans in 1920s supported the same policies as they did in Lincoln's day -- protectionism, government encouragement of industry -- they were seen as conservative or reactionary by liberals, progressives and Democrats. If you're stuck in some tribal hatred of New Yorkers or New Englanders or big cities of course you aren't going to see any difference between the Northeasterners of 1860 and 1920 and 2020, but most people may not be hampered by such prejudices.
I don't think it really matters if they were worse, and there is some evidence to indicate they were
Not enough evidence to justify the charge or the degree of certainty some people feel about it. There was always friction between various ethnic groups in the North. There had been at least one anti-Catholic riot. But generalizations always oversimplify complicated human relationships. People who are quick to tell us about every slaveowner who felt affection for a slave don't go looking for cases where Northern Whites may have respected or cooperated or worked with African-Americans. Indeed, it's in nature of distant, yet not hostile relationships, that they don't make much of mark on history.
The claim that the civil war was about slavery goes down as the biggest con-job in American history
It wasn't about securing equal rights, dignity and respect for African-Americans, but it very much was about slavery. To say that there was only one reason for a war would be foolish, but in the big picture, it was slavery (or free labor) that had estranged the North and the South. And by the middle of the war, slavery was very much the issue.
Some well-off Southerners complained about New York and felt that they were being cheated, but the statistics used to support that view could easily be used to point out that they were dependent on Northerners providing commercial services that Southerners didn't provide themselves.
Others, though, wanted to stay agricultural, and wouldn't have had much problem with the British providing the same services that Northerners did. Still others didn't have the same grievances and pointed out that Southerners already were involved in shipping, finance, and other aspects of commerce and were already competiting with Northerners and those on the other side of the Atlantic.
That's an indication of where the modern world is headed. Out of the way rural areas aren't much affected. If you want to form your own country and develop it into an economic powerhouse, those changes will transform your culture and society. Examples are Ireland, Quebec, the American South today, and the United States itself. Wealthy countries form their own elites, and those elites look for things to do. I suppose a new country could resist becoming wealthy and an elite could cut itself off from the world and move in the opposite direction, but those aren't necessarily better options.
The vast majority of the populace out of the South was not Planters.
The planter class was crushed by the war. Had the war not happened, they would have been ruling for a long time. This would not have been acceptable to the midwestern states. Take the time if you have it to look up what South Carolina politics were like before the Civil War. That is not something that would be appealing to any people with free and democratic traditions.
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.
You apparently still think that the 2004 election was the template for all American politics. But it took time for the Southern and Plains states to come together politically. The South had to get rid of slavery and segregation. The planter elites had to be displaced. Corporations and industry had to move in. Air conditioning had to be developed and made common.
The Germans and Scandinavians of the Plains had to become assimilated and lose their European ways. Southerners a century and a half ago didn't much love the Germans. Neoconfederates today are forever maligning them as early socialists, wrongly but not entirely without reason. All that would have to change, and as recently as half-century ago, the Upper Plains were more Mondale, McGovern, and Humphrey than anything else.
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.
Tariffs weren't the big determining factor that you believe they were. Moreover, tariffs only went up as high as they did because of the necessity of paying for the war. And they only stayed up as high as they did because the Democrats had become identified as the party of rebellion. American politics is a dynamic system, and barring some catastrophic event -- the Civil War, the Great Depression -- the two parties tend towards equilibrium. Had their been no war, the two parties would have competed on more even terms and protectionism would have been less of a reality and less of an issue. If farmers were discontented, they would work within the political system to redress their grievances, something Southern planters didn't want to do.
They had the opportunity to do so for half a century, and yet they did not. Therefore they would not.
There were only 13 years between the Mexican Cession and the Civil War. Arizona and New Mexico were sparsely settled in those days and wouldn't become states for another fifty years. Forms of slavery had been around in the area for centuries, and given a pro-slavery national government, slavery would have continued and been expanded.
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.
What we are seeing now is a special case. Most of the time active measures are taken to secure borders and control border traffic. Most of the time, borders more or less work if you want them to. But you don't really answer my point here, which is that if Northerners had no great love for African-Americans, they would appreciate a national border keeping them out.
Of course, it's pointless to argue about counterfactual history. We will never know what would have happened if things had happened differently. There are too many factors involved to be able to say anything with any certainty. Given the complexity, I don't see how anyone can have the confidence in their own predictions that you have.
This is quite correct. It’s difficult to state in absolute terms what sector benefited from what activity back then when detailed written records weren’t always kept or have been lost over time. But I am doing research which will go a long ways toward revealing the truth.
DimLamp seems to think that Southern planters should have gotten the full profit generated by the crops they grew, with no added costs, or at least all profits taken for themselves, from all the logistical activities after the crop left the plantation. That’s not how the real world works.
So the question is who got the profit from that logistical activity? And if that profit was not in balance North vs South, was that unfair? Was there a reason other than deliberate subjugation? Was it, as you wrote, at least in part because Southerns were dependent on Northerners providing commercial services that Southerners didn’t provide themselves? And didn’t want to?
I will post more in coming days.
I get that a lot. People who say it usually turn out to be wrong.
In this case, not so much. Charleston was in decline as a seaport long before the Civil War, as my source indicated. Or perhaps you knew that, but didn’t want to admit it.
Thanks for posting those documents. Now EVERYONE can search fir the parts that prohibited Southern shipbuilding.
I have no doubt it was. Why would anyone need to use it? The import taxes there were the same as they were in New York, and it was 800 miles further south. Why would anyone go there?
Well let's say you could make 40% more profit going there. Would that change your mind? I think it would have done for most back in that era.
Or perhaps you knew that, but didn’t want to admit it.
More like I have no idea what you are trying to get at, or why you think the particular condition of Charleston is especially relevant.
Charleston wasn't much of a port prior to secession, but with secession, it would have become greatly more significant. 13% tax versus 45% tax is why Charleston would have taken business from the Northeast. New Orleans would have been the primary beneficiary, but other ports in the South would have benefited as well.
Because everyone can discern the effects of a complex piece of legislation just from reading it.
You are too simplistic. The Navigation act of 1817 was one component of the problem. Federal subsidies for northern shipping such as mail carrying contracts, fishing vessel subsidies, and tax money to finance improvements in rail lines, canals and harbors is also a factor.
The warehousing act also helped. There were several acts passed between 1817 and 1860 that benefited the northern industries at the expense of the southern industries.
But what would have happened immediately with secession is that the prohibition on using foreign ships and/or crews would have disappeared, and the European ships would have taken over the entirety of Southern import/export trade, and this would have cut out the northeastern shipping as well as 72% of the FedGov tax base.
The products manufactured in the north would lose their southern markets because they would be displaced by lower cost and better quality European manufactured goods.
It was many hundreds of millions of dollars per year which would have been instantly lost to the Northern industrialists and power brokers.
So they got an army to invade to stop the money loss. And then they pretended they were invading for some other reason.
You said Charleston’s decline as a major shipping port was due to the Civil War. In point of fact that fall began long before.
“This was a humiliation for the once-famous port city that had dominated maritime trade in the American South in colonial and early antebellum days….
From the 1730s to the early 1800s—the golden age of deep-water sailing ships—South Carolina’s plantation economy thrived on maritime global trade and the hundreds of ocean-borne vessels that docked in Charleston each year to load rice and cotton for European markets…
…In the years before the American Revolution, Charleston was the fourth largest city in British North America but easily the richest. Its wealth dominated the rest of the raw southern outback, with perhaps the exception of Virginia. Visitors were awed by the city’s glittering society…
… P.C. Coker, an independent scholar of local maritime history, has described the thinking of a typical colonial Carolina merchant who had 1,200 pounds to invest in the 1730s. With that sum, a merchant could build and outfit a 200-ton seagoing vessel, but he would risk his investment with storms, wars, fires, groundings, and pirates. Or he could pour his money into a dozen slaves and a 500-acre plantation, where he could grow rice and indigo, which fetched high prices. The choice was simple: purchase slaves and a plantation and charter someone else’s ship to send produce to Europe….
… By 1800, Charleston was steadily losing maritime trade to other cities. Greater precision in navigation and improved vessels allowed ship captains to sail directly from Europe to New York. Ships no longer had to travel the southerly route via the Caribbean and Charleston. The faster transatlantic route between New York and Europe left Charleston out of the loop.
Many British and New England merchant firms in the 1820s began avoiding Charleston because free black seamen could not enter the city without a hefty bond being posted..”
The decline began LONG before your boogie man of import taxes, and was due entirely to the choices made in South Carolina.
“… tax money to finance improvements in rail lines, canals and harbors is also a factor.”
The fact that Southern ports were dredged using federal funds has already been pointed out to you.
The Navigation Act of 1817 required all shipping among US ports to be by US owned ships, and I think some law like that is still in effect today.
The key point to remember here is that in 1817 Washington, DC, was ruled over by Southern Democrats -- with a Southern Democrat President, and Democrat majorities in both House (79% Democrats) and Senate (70% Democrats) under solid Southern control.
So this had nothing to do with "northeastern power brokers" or their "money flows from Europe", it was simply a common-sense attempt to encourage putting Americans first.
In 1817 Southern cities like Baltimore, MD, and Charleston, SC, had prosperous ship-building industries, so there was no reason then to suppose the 1817 Navigation Act would in some way disadvantage them.
What did disadvantage Southern ship-builders in Charleston or New Orleans were steam-powered ships and railroad connections to interior populations.
And whose fault was that?
You’ve posted in a general manner that which I’m seeking in detail. The state by state vote on the act. I think seeing who voted in favor will be interesting to say the least. And go a long way toward dispelling the idea that Southern states were at the mercy of the whims of Northern politicians.
One other thing. Great Britain was doing the same thing, with various protectionist acts going clear back to 1651. That’s why the restrictions did not apply to nations that did not have similar restrictions in their own laws.
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