Posted on 07/26/2021 4:33:01 PM PDT by ammodotcom
“The tariffs and penalties were on imports.”
As I have written before, the navigation act of 1817, in regards to imports, was rescinded in 1830. Only coastal shipping remained affected, and it remains so restricted to this day. I have posted, and will post further examples, of IMPORT and EXPORT vessels at harbors OTHER THAN New Orleans.
AND YOU STILL IGNORE THAE FACT THAT THIS DISPROVES YOUR CONTENTION THAT SOUTHERN BUSINESSES WERE FORCED TO USE NORTHERN SHIPS!
To recap:
The reason for secession was the South’s desire to preserve slavery.
The trigger for secession was the election of Abraham Lincoln, which fed fear of the abolitionist foundation of the Republican Party.
The American Civil War began when units of the South Carolina Militia fired upon a Union fort in Charleston harbor.
So you are saying that the United States, making slavery permanent and protected by the US Constitution, would have "kept the peace"?
That is an awesome example of cognitive dissonance.
I don't see how protecting slavery in the USA would "keep the peace." John Brown begs to disagree.
But what I do see is that people claiming to be against slavery, yet voting in favor of making slavery stronger legally, are lying hypocrites who do not really care about slavery.
I do believe the CSA/USA border was probably as long as the US Mexico border.
You mean the newspaper editorials?
When it comes to reporting that the locals intend to stop paying the tariffs if the Southern states are not going to be required to pay the tariffs, I would put that in the category of "news."
If you have math showing that they could come up with more than 28% of the money to pay for European imports (specie excepted) then I will be glad to take a look at it.
But it seems axiomatic to me that if you produce 28% of the export value, you will only be able to pay for an equal import value.
“Mr. Mallory went on to say on the general subject:
Jeff Davis & Co. have willfully involve themselves in war; they have deliberately brought on the war; they have no right or reason to expect that Kentucky will fight their battles. She will do nothing to avert their merited retribution. There was no adequate, just or reasonable excuse for the secession, rebellion or revolution of a single southern state. The pretext for secession were all silly, flimsy, groundless and absurd.”
Chicago Tribune June 1, 1861
“What is Coming to Already
(from the New York Times, 30th alt)
If slavery remains undisturbed, we must not forget that this is the sole cause of the rebellion, and that it may be further disturbance. Men brought up on under its influence different radically from those nurtured in freedom.”
Daily Ohio Statesman
(Columbus, Ohio)
June 5, 1861
“The Queen’s Proclamation.
(From the New York World
The men who have undertaken, by the vilest treachery that history records, to break up the most beneficial government ever forged, and who have done this for the sole avowed purpose of propagating Slavery, and who maintain their ascendancy undisputed in their own states only by fear and the violent suppression of truth, are placed upon exactly the same footing as a member of that Government under which this country has in three-quarters of a century raised to the first rank among the nations.”
(Written in opposition to a statement from the Queen of England.)
Delaware Gazette
(Delaware, Ohio)
June 7, 1861
“We take it for granted that is war, wage in behalf of slavery, will be its death-blow; and happy it will be for the south for general stampede of slave she’ll be the worst thing that she’ll be for them; but there is yet fearful danger of bloody and fearful insurrections.
From all appearances it is evident that the present or, which is commenced for the purpose as its originators intended, to sustain slavery, will be the death of it.”
The Zanesville Daily Courier
(Zanesville, Ohio)
June 4. 1861
Again I ask, what kind of cherries do you prefer, maraschino or bing?
To recap:
The reason for secession was the South’s desire to preserve slavery.
The trigger for secession was the election of Abraham Lincoln, which fed fear of the abolitionist foundation of the Republican Party.
The American Civil War began when units of the South Carolina Militia fired upon a Union fort in Charleston harbor.
One of the things i've noticed that big government liberals do when they are in charge of the government is cook the books.
I remember when Obama took office, and shortly thereafter the price of everything doubled. What did the government report? No significant inflation. They had removed the cost of fuel and food from the formula they used to calculate inflation.
What did the value of the dollar do during this civil war period? Did it remain the same, or did it suddenly get massively inflated? Did they borrow money to pay for their imports? Where did their extra money come from?
I don't believe in economic magic, and they had to pay for European imports somehow, and unless the Europeans suddenly got a craving for fish and leather goods, i'm not sure what it was they would have exported to Europe to pay for all their imports.
Well, it was in the past and postulating an absence of war, so "predicted" is probably not the best term, but it would very likely have happened.
And money would have been the motivating factor.
And the war couldn't have waited till they resumed?
What was the hurry?
In December?
What was the hurry?
That would be a question for Jeff Davis.
And again, without a single shred of evidence to support you, you claim fake news. Not at all surprising.
I have the fact that without southern exports tariff income increased markedly from 1863 onward. You have your convoluted math and asinine conclusions.
There are at least 50 border crossings for trucks and cars plus more for railroads plus aircraft. How much of that was available to rebel smugglers in 1862?
When it comes to reporting that the locals intend to stop paying the tariffs if the Southern states are not going to be required to pay the tariffs, I would put that in the category of "news."
Fake news?
“The figures on imports and exports would show that for the most part ships arrived at southern ports empty and loaded up for the voyage home. That would be true regardless of whether they are U.S. or foreign flagged vessels. For the foreign ships the only explanation is that for the most part they unloaded in the north and then went south to load up for the voyage home.”
Multiple examples are found, mostly from Charleston as newspapers there seem to list more detail, at least in the online archive I am searching, of foreign ships unloading their cargo, many again with specific cargo manifests and even names of those ordering the goods. As some of the stiffer provisions of earlier navigation acts had been repealed in 1830, I’m not sure why foreign ships would have to head west with empty cargo holds.
I have only listed ships identified as foreign or which can be so identified.
“IMPORTS-NOVEMBER 28
LIVERPOOL- Br. ship Aeolus-3,293 sacks Salt, to C.T. Mitchell & Co.”
Charleston Daily Courier
November 26, 1850
“Charleston Imports-February 28.
MARCH 1
LIVERPOOL-Ship Lady Sale-3063 sacks Salt, to order.”
Charleston Daily Courier
March 2, 1858
“Savannah Imports-November 19
Liverpool— Ship Highland Chief-1010 bars iron, 21 bundles iron, 6 casks hardware, 3 casks earthenware, 22 bags nails, 27 anvils, 37 casks and boxes mdze., 3995 sacks salt.”
Charleston Daily Courier
November 22, 1858
“Charleston Imports-February 22
Rotterdam-Dutch brig America-99 casks Madder, 375 bales Chicorey Roots, 60 pipes and 40 three-quarter pipes Gin, to order”
Charleston Daily Courier
February 23, 1859
“Charleston Imports- December 12
LIVERPOOL-British ship Sunderland-32 cases Segars (sic), to J. Bancroft, Jr., I bale Mdze. and 1 case Saddlery, to A. McKenzie & Co.; 100 bbls. Bottled Beer, to Ravenel & Co., 657 tons Coal, to J. Schneirle.”
Charleston Daily Courier
December 13, 1860
OK Mr. Magoo...
Ah you are upset and you got your panties in a wad. What a friggin idjit.
I doubt they would prefer the living standard and life style of Egyptian or Indian or Chinese peasants. I don't know which system would produce cheaper cotton. I'm simply raising the question. Like slave owners, peasant families didn't have to pay wages. Unlike slave owners, they didn't need to buy workers. They also had a low standard of living and didn't need big profits. And I suppose the rupee and the Egyptian pound were cheaper currencies than the dollar, and thus it is at least possible that goods and materials produced in Egypt or India could be cheaper than those produced in the USA or CSA.
What good is a large market that has no money to purchase your items? The way New Yorkers were getting their foreign money is by taking 60% of the total value of production of Southern exports.
I doubt either of us understands the intricacies of currency markets, but the US didn't have much trouble buying imports and collecting tariffs during the Civil War, when Southern cotton wasn't in the mix. Money from grain and mining and manufacturing made up for it. Money is fungible and fluid. If one source dries up it doesn't mean other sources aren't available.
Yes, having a major regional power blockade your trade with warships and pummel you into submission has a tendency to interfere with future prosperity.
But what would have happened if people hadn't used war to stop their natural economic activity?
That is what you always do. Whenever anyone comes up with objections to your idea of the Confederacy as the coming economic superpower, you immediately get indignant and attack the Yankee. What other people are talking about is the obstacles -- apart from war and destruction -- to the independent South fulfilling your fantasy in the 19th century. Someone writes about the decline of Charleston shipbuilding before the Civil War and you blame that on the devastation brought by the Civil War. That's not very logical and does a lot to discredit your argument. They are talking about what was likely to happen if the Civil War hadn't, while you are just indulging your daydream.
In the days before air conditioning and modern medicine, New Orleans was regarded as too hot and too prone to epidemics. Immigrants didn't like to go there because the city was dominated by slave labor. Foreigners would prefer to invest elsewhere because of the fears of slave uprisings. In the 19th century countries with cool or temperate climates dominated. That's not a law of history, but it's something you never deal with.
I have long argued that those attempting to justify the war go to great efforts to cherry pick their "evidence."
And you don't? You don't ignore the decade long debate about slavery to focus on a few editorials by panicky business columnists? History is about sorting out the evidence in terms of significance and reliability. You just ignore most of it.
And you're doing it again. Written in 1894 after he had become a Republican?
Mosby was an honest man. Others in his generation had simply whitewashed the record and lied about their motives.
There is corroborating evidence for Lamon's claim. I read something the other day indicating there were three or four examples of corroboration for Lamon's claim.
Historians haven't found it. Lamon gave his name to a book written by his law partner Chauncey Black, son of Jeremiah Black who had been Buchanan's Attorney General. The younger Black, a Democrat like his father, went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. The biography was regarded as unreliable. Lamon didn't mention the Taney incident in his own later book. A historian thought he found confirmation for story, but later had to admit that he had misread a footnote.
I keep pointing out we can't even control the Southern border we have now. Massive amounts of illegal goods flow across it, and we have better means of controlling it now than they would have then.
The government doesn't have the will to do so, but is it really easier to control smuggling today? There are thousands of border crossings everyday now, and we have means of transportation that weren't even dreamed of back then. It's probably easier to smuggle goods into the country now than it was then. Moreover, laws were probably more strictly enforced then than they are now. If you made smuggling your livelihood, sooner or later you'd get caught and put away for a long stretch.
Smuggling usually involves goods with a high value to weight or volume ratio: drugs or jewels or currency. Cigarettes and liquor have also been smuggled, though usually in large enough quantities to turn a profit. I can't see smuggling locomotives or rails across international boundaries in the 19th century -- or axes or shovels or even doorknobs in quantities large enough to make a difference. I don't see that anybody is dying to have just the right brand of shovel in the way that they might be dying for their favorite drug or scotch or cigarette.
Also, American manufacturers weren't obligated to sell at a higher price than foreign competitors. The tariff meant that they could charge more than a foreign competitor, but there would be competition between American manufacturers and in the unlikely event that smuggling axes or shovels became a widespread practice, a firm could lower their prices to meet the competition.
Several Northern newspapers had pointed out that it makes no sense to have a high tariff when this will simply cause traffic to go south. They articulated the position that if the South would allow low tariff goods, they must also do, and some communities even said that if the Southern tariffs were allowed to stand, they would refuse to collect any more at their own ports.
That doesn't make sense. You had more consumers in the North. It made sense to ship goods directly to them. Goods sent to the South to go North would have to pay two tariffs or else be broken into smaller quantities for the riskier business of smuggling Either way, it's not going to be a great boon to Northern consumers. Moreover, the transportation costs would be greater. I can't see either customs workers or a whole city deciding to just let foreign goods in untaxed because of what the rebels decided to do.
Nobody is saying that no imports were landed in southern ports. As you point out some where. But let's look at total value of imports and exports by port which would put it in perspective. All figures come from "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War" by Stephen Wise. He sources congressional documents for 1860.
We'll start with Charleston, where your information comes from. In the year prior to the rebellion the value of exports leaving Charleston was $21,179,350. Total value of all imports entering Charleston was $1,569,570. Total tariff receipts were $299,339.43. For Mobile the figures were $38,670,183 in exports, $782,061 in imports, tariff revenue of $118,027. For New Orleans the figures are $107,559,594 in exports, $20,636,316 in imports, $2,120,058 in tariffs. For Savannah it's $18,351,554 in exports, $782,061 in imports, $89,157 in tariff revenue. So it's clear that the volume of imports was a minute fraction of the volume of exports. Which must mean that the majority of ships arrived in southern ports for the sole purpose of loading up and leaving.
By comparison, the tariff figures for New York was $35,155,453, for Boston it was $5,133,415, and for Philadelphia it was $2,262,350. So if we agree that ships would not head west from Europe empty then the only explanation is that they sailed to a northern port to offload imports and then headed south to load up, thus minimizing the time spent sailing in ballast.
In your reply 510 is was 40%. Now it's 60%. If this thread goes on much longer it's going to be 80% or more.
I don’t necessarily draw the same conclusions. First of all, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the balance of payments for merchandise (which must include crops because there’s no separate category) for the U.S. in 1860 was -34.2 million dollars, as shown in Table 3 on (labeled) page 581 here:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c2491/c2491.pdf
This is confirmed here:
“From 1800-1870, the United States ran a trade deficit for all but three years and the trade balance averaged about –2.2 percent of GDP”
So there was more imports than exports, in terms of value.
You wrote:
“So if we agree that ships would not head west from Europe empty then the only explanation is that they sailed to a northern port to offload imports and then headed south to load up, thus minimizing the time spent sailing in ballast.”
That’s a possibility, but there are others. The total figures for trade says nothing about what nation’s ships are carrying the freight. You are assuming that, say, a British ship loads up with manufactured goods, sails to American shores, then takes cotton and other raw materials back to the UK. What if it’s the other way around? What if an American ship hauls a load of cotton east then heads back home with finished goods? American shipping, at least before the introduction of steam powered vessels, was more competitive because clipper ships were faster and had bigger holds than British ships, so they could carry more per trip. So if there were more US ships in the trade, there would be fewer foreign ones, but they could all be filled to the brim regardless.
Another possibility is that a European ship could bring passengers to the United States with minimal cargo and take mostly cargo with few passengers on the return trip. Technically, that might fit the definition of “an empty hold” but as you wrote, foreign ships could not afford to make half the trip completely empty.
Finally, due to the nature of the cargo, its conceivable that the value of exports in a hold might exceed that of imports because raw materials filled the hold more completely, where manufactured goods like furniture would not.
In any event, remind me again how all is supposed to support the idea that navigation laws forced Southern businesses into submission?
I know! I know! The hurry was that Davis was advised by his top men, that if he drew first blood that Virginia would come in on the side of the south! Major Anderson had just stated to Beauregard’s messenger that he had three days of provision left and would then have to abandon the fort. That put the pressure on Davis to act. It would have been meaningless to Virginia for Davis to attack an abandoned fort.
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