Replies

You just talk for the sake of talking don't you?" All your handwaving here aside, the facts remain that: 1. Virtually no Southerner ever paid US import tariffs directly.

We know that you are not serious and are just going to keep repeating this lie ad infinitum. WHERE a tariff is paid is not WHO pays it. This has been explained to you over and over but you apparently have no life and live to just hear yourself talk. I'm done with this. Get a life and find something productive to do with your time. You're not going to waste more of mine with this nonsense.

3. Deep South cotton exports, which allegedly "paid for" Northern imports, were in fact only 50% of US total exports, including specie. One proof is, in 1861, with no Confederate exports counted, Southern products exports fell by 71%, while Northern and Western exports increased by 59%. In other words, a huge portion of what had been classified as "Southern products" were or could be, in fact, produced in Union states.

Again, lies and BS as the Northern newspapers themselves which I previously posted amply demonstrate.

Your 75% is a totally bogus number, but 50% is totally fair, and consists of only one major item -- King Cotton. Cotton was grown mainly by slave-labor in the Deep South, as was sugar.

No. This is a lie. Even the northern newspapers - let alone economists who have looked at the subject - have admitted that 75% of exports and imports were owned by Southerners. Thus, as the owners of the goods, Southerners paid 75% of the tariff.

A reasonably fair estimate would be 80%,

"reasonably fair"? Says who - you? LOL!

Kentucky was a Union state and tobacco was also grown in Union Southern Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Maryland. Bottom line: in 1861, when Confederate tobacco was removed from Union numbers, tobacco exports fell only 14%. So tobacco was not a strictly "Southern Product".

Kentucky was a border state. There were claims it did secede and claims it did not. The same goes for Missouri. Both were mostly occupied fairly early by union forces so they therefore put more men in the union army. A lot of these troops were not trusted by Washington and thus weren't asked to do more than guard their homes (ie they weren't sent South to seek combat for fear many of them would defect).

I have no idea what "Northern newspapers" you're talking about, but here is what the New York Times (link above) said at the time: "Such are the Treasury returns. In them the value of cotton exported is put down at only $34,051,483 [in 1861], against $191,806,555 for 1860; the excess in value for that year being $157,755,073." If you go on to read the rest of the New York Times article, you'll see that the reduction in Union imports more than offset the reduction in Union exports with a resulting increase of Union specie reserves.

If you have no idea which Northern newspapers I cited, go back and read. I posted them YET AGAIN in this thread after having posted them many many times in past such threads. Amazing how you managed to never see it.

First of all, I've read many, but far from all, of your posts and I've never seen actual data to support your many ridiculous claims.

then you haven't read. That's the only possible explanation since I've posted them over and over again including in this thread. Its your ridiculous claims that are unsupported.

Second, it's clear you don't yet understand that Democrats then, just as now, were the party of globalized business, especially then in the production and shipment of cotton. Northern Big-City, Big-Business Democrats would suffer the most from a loss of Confederate states' exports. In early 1861, Northern Democrats wanted to "live and let live" with Confederate states. New York's Democrat Mayor Wood even wanted to secede New York City too, to stay on good terms with the South. All that ended when rumors of Confederate "free trade" began to circulate, and Northern Democrats were filled with fears of losing everything in the South. Republicans were less concerned about the economics than with the Constitutional, legal, moral and military issues related to secession.

This is the most laughable and ridiculous pile of hogwash posted in this thread yet. The political parties have not remained the same over a century and a half. The Republicans were concerned about money above all because their voters were concerned about money above all - as the voters always are.

So far, you've shown no evidence of even one Southerner paying even one import tariff directly.

So far I've posted several newspaper articles from the North, the South and Abroad which all say the South was paying the vast majority of the tariff. I could also post quotes from Tax/Economics expert Charles Adams who looked at all this quite closely saying the same thing.

Surely you realize that all that is just babbling nonsense, for reason #1, the new Morrill tariff didn't take effect until after the Deep South had already declared their secessions.

Surely you realize that your denial of it is babbling nonsense and everything I posted is 100% true.

Confederates never paid the higher rates. Reason #2, Morrill originally increased average rates from 17% to 26% or roughly 50%. But on specific major items, the increase merely returned rates to their levels in the Democratic 1846 Walker Tariff: So, while the overall average of increases was about 50% -- from 17% to 26% -- on major items like wool, sugar, cotton and iron, the Morrill increase was only 20% and simply returned rates to those of the 1846 Walker Tariff.

The Confederate states seceded to avoid the tariff. The Morrill tariff eventually increased rates to TRIPLE what they were and left those rates sky high until the passage of the federal income tax. Did you see the word "eventually"? That means they did not it all at once. There were multiple rounds of rate hikes which everybody knew was coming once the initial tariff rate hikes went through.

And once again you revert to your old narrative, regardless of facts, and once again, facts don't support your narrative.

Once again you resort to your lying denials of the facts and once again the sources at the time all back up what I'm saying and all you have are your own cockamamie back of the envelope masturbating with numbers calculations to claim otherwise.

Such tariffs were believed necessary to fund the Federal government and to prevent foreign competitors from snuffing out Southern products.

LOL at you actually trying to sell this BS. Firstly, the money raised by the tariffs was not needed to pay for government. These were not revenue tariffs, they were protective tariffs. They raised far more money than was needed - which is what got the Northern states in the habit of getting all kinds of pork from the federal government. Secondly, Southern cash crops did not need protection. Southerners wanted LOW tariffs, remember? They were in no danger of being undercut by foreign competition. It was Northern manufacturers who were constantly clamoring for higher tariffs because they could not compete on price.

Finally, I notice you often like to argue against the 1859 Morrill proposal, which was effectively a return to the Democrat approved 1846 rates, based on Civil War era increases that were strictly the result of secession and war, not their causes -- you're trying to reverse cause and effect.

Everybody knew the first round of tariff rate increases proposed by the Morrill Tariff were not going to be the end of the matter. That was merely going to be the first bite of the apple. Once they proved they could push the first round through, it was always going to be a one way ratchet - with rates only ever going up up up. That's exactly what happened. You claim it was because of the war. No. That was just the fig leaf put on it. Those sky high rates stayed in place for over 60 years.

"Some historians in recent decades have minimized the tariff issue as a cause of the war, noting that few people in 1860–61 said it was of central importance to them.

Yes. We call those historians PC Revisionists.

Compromises were proposed in 1860–61 to save the Union, but they did not involve the tariff.[38] Arguably, the effects of a tariff enacted in March 1861 could have made little effect upon any delegation which met prior to its signing."

Let's see......compromises were offered but the one thing they did not offer to compromise on was the tariff. The compromise effort failed. Gosh....maybe if they had offered to compromise on the tariff.....after all, that's exactly what ended the Nullification Crisis a generation earlier......

FLT-bird: "We know that you are not serious and are just going to keep repeating this lie ad infinitum.
WHERE a tariff is paid is not WHO pays it.
This has been explained to you over and over but you apparently have no life and live to just hear yourself talk."

Here is the absolute truth: you have never presented even one shred of evidence proving that even one Southerner paid even one import tariff directly.
Of course, I am willing to stipulate, without argument, that 8% of total US 1859 imports landed in, and the tariffs were paid directly by Southerners, in the Southern ports of Baltimore, Wilmington, Charleston, Savanah, Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston.

But 92% of US imports landed in Northern & Western ports and the tariffs were paid by Northerners and Westerners.
I've seen no scrap of evidence from you or anyone else proving that any of those tariffs were paid by any Southerners.

FLT-bird: "This has been explained to you over and over but you apparently have no life and live to just hear yourself talk.
I'm done with this.
Get a life and find something productive to do with your time.
You're not going to waste more of mine with this nonsense."

Of course you're done with it, because you have no evidence to support your ridiculous claims, so now name-calling becomes more important to you than anything else.

FLT-bird: "Again, lies and BS as the Northern newspapers themselves which I previously posted amply demonstrate."

Except you never posted even one word proving your ridiculous claims.

FLT-bird: "No.
This is a lie.
Even the northern newspapers - let alone economists who have looked at the subject - have admitted that 75% of exports and imports were owned by Southerners.
Thus, as the owners of the goods, Southerners paid 75% of the tariff."

As I said, roughly 50% of exports came from Deep South Cotton.
In 1860 cotton exports were $192 million out of $400 million total exports, according to the New York Times article I posted yesterday.
Here it is again.
There is zero evidence to support claims that any Southerners directly paid tariffs on any imports landed at any Northern or Western ports.

To cotton, we could add rice, at less than $3 million, less than 1% of the total.
Everything else, notably tobacco, was not strictly "Southern Products", but rather was mostly grown in Union states like Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Maryland.

Those are facts, deny or ignore them all you wish, they're still true.

FLT-bird: "reasonably fair"? Says who - you? LOL!"

I was giving you some benefit of the doubt, even though Mississippians in 1861 officially said, "by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun."

In 1861, they said there were no white people out working in the tropical sun, now FLT-bird claims there were lots of them.
Who am I to believe, them or you?

FLT-bird: "Kentucky was a border state.
There were claims it did secede and claims it did not.
The same goes for Missouri.
Both were mostly occupied fairly early by union forces so they therefore put more men in the union army."

Both Kentuckians and Missourians voted overwhelmingly against secession.
Despite that, the governors in both states, in rump sessions, tried to declare secession, and their rump-declarations were accepted by the regime in Richmond, Virginia, making them the Confederacy's 12th and 13th stars.

Both Kentucky and Missouri were major tobacco producers, so claimed as part of "Southern Products".
However, in 1861, when the Mississippi River was blocked and Confederate products were deleted from Union exports, then Kentucky and Missouri continued to ship their products to market via Northern railroads, and so Union tobacco exports fell only 14% compared to 1860.

Therefore, tobacco was not strictly a "Southern Product" which means the total value of Southern Products exported in 1860 was not 75%, it was just 50% from one main item, namely cotton.

FLT-bird: "If you have no idea which Northern newspapers I cited, go back and read.
I posted them YET AGAIN in this thread after having posted them many many times in past such threads.
Amazing how you managed to never see it."

The truth is, in our exchanges, you've never posted a single link supporting even one of your ridiculous claims.
That's why it's impossible to take you seriously.
Further, when I do post actual facts and figures, you totally ignore them, handwave them away and respond with insults.

In short, you're behaving like a typical Democrat, for whom facts are meaningless and narrative trumps everything.

FLT-bird: "then you haven't read.
That's the only possible explanation since I've posted them over and over again including in this thread.
Its your ridiculous claims that are unsupported."

In our exchanges, you've posted nothing to support any of your own ridiculous claims.

FLT-bird: "This is the most laughable and ridiculous pile of hogwash posted in this thread yet.
The political parties have not remained the same over a century and a half.
The Republicans were concerned about money above all because their voters were concerned about money above all - as the voters always are."

Seriously?
The truth is, no Republican was more -- or less -- concerned about money than any Democrat.
The differences are in how we earn our money.
Republicans (plus Whigs & Federalists before them) have always been middle-income small businesses, family farms, skilled workers and professionals in suburbs, small towns and rural areas.
By contrast, Democrats have always been the alliance of globalist elite Washington-protected Big Business (i.e., King Cotton plantations) with Big City impoverished immigrants' bosses (i.e., Tammany Hall).
The Democrats' alliance goes all the way back to at least the election of 1800.

Those are facts, regardless of how much you mock or ridicule them.

FLT-bird: "So far I've posted several newspaper articles from the North, the South and Abroad which all say the South was paying the vast majority of the tariff.
I could also post quotes from Tax/Economics expert Charles Adams who looked at all this quite closely saying the same thing."

In our exchanges, you've posted nothing of the sort, zero, nada, zilch, ever.
Why is that?

FLT-bird: "Surely you realize that your denial of it is babbling nonsense and everything I posted is 100% true."

Nothing you've claimed here is supported by a single shred of evidence that you've posted here.
That's a fact.

FLT-bird: "The Confederate states seceded to avoid the tariff."

After further review, I stand corrected -- in the first four "Reasons for Secession" documents issued by South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas, while slavery is listed as a major reason in all of them, tariffs, even in general terms, are not mentioned, much less the specific issues related to Morrill.

The one place tariffs are mentioned is in Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech, where he remarks:

"This subject

came well nigh causing a rupture of the old Union, under the lead of the gallant Palmetto State, which lies on our border, in 1833.
This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new."

Even Stephens here refers back to the 1833 Nullification Crisis, not to the 1860 Morrill Tariff.

FLT-bird: "The Morrill tariff eventually increased rates to TRIPLE what they were and left those rates sky high until the passage of the federal income tax.
Did you see the word "eventually"?
That means they did not it all at once.
There were multiple rounds of rate hikes which everybody knew was coming once the initial tariff rate hikes went through."

Those additional tariff hikes were all caused by the Civil War.
So, for you to ridiculously claim Southerners knew those further increases were coming, they would have to have known in advance that their secession would lead to war.
And your evidence for that is what?

FLT-bird: "Once again you resort to your lying denials of the facts and once again the sources at the time all back up what I'm saying and all you have are your own cockamamie back of the envelope masturbating with numbers calculations to claim otherwise."

And yet, in all this time you've posted not even one fact to support even one of your ridiculous claims.
And so, lacking facts you do what any Democrat naturally does -- you hurl insults.

FLT-bird: "LOL at you actually trying to sell this BS.
Firstly, the money raised by the tariffs was not needed to pay for government.
These were not revenue tariffs, they were protective tariffs."

Seriously, do you understand anything real?
Do you understand why Democrat Pres. Andrew Jackson supported the 1828 Tariff of Abominations?
Do you think he was just being evil and mean?
No, it was because he used that extra money to pay off the national debt -- not just pay it down, he paid off the debt.
Then, when the debt was paid off, in 1836, then Democrats began seriously reducing tariffs, notably in the 1846 Walker Tariff and again in the 1857 Democrats' Tariff.

Reduced tariff rates did not, by themselves, reduce Federal revenues, which under the Walker Tariff rose from $32 million in 1846 to $84 million in 1854.
The problem was, being Democrats, they would not control their spending and so the national debt rose from zero in 1836 to $16 million in $1846, to $63 million in 1849 (for the Mexican War).
Under Whig Pres. Fillmore and Democrat Pres. Pierce, with rising revenues, the national debt was wrestled back down to $28 million in 1857.

So again in 1857, Democrats reduced tariffs to their lowest rates since 1820, around 17% overall.
The results were, revenues fell from $83 million in 1857 to $71 million in 1858 and remained low into the 1860s.
At the same time, Democrat spending under Pres. Buchanan rose from $79 million in 1857 to $87 million in 1858 and remained higher than revenues until 1867.
So, even before the Civil War, Democrats had more than doubled the national debt, from $29 million in 1857 to $65 million in 1860.

That is the factual reality behind the ridiculous claims you've made.

Democrats' spending -- not Whigs, not Republicans -- doubled the national debt between 1857 and 1860.
There was no excess of revenues over what Democrats believed was necessary to satisfy their voters.

FLT-bird: "Secondly, Southern cash crops did not need protection.
Southerners wanted LOW tariffs, remember?
They were in no danger of being undercut by foreign competition.
It was Northern manufacturers who were constantly clamoring for higher tariffs because they could not compete on price."

And yet, facts remain facts, however much you deny them.

25% 1846 Walker Tariff on COTTON, reduced to 19% in 1857, increased back to 25% under Morrill
30% 1846 Walker Tariff on SUGAR, reduced to 24% in 1857, increased back to 26% under Morrill
40% 1846 Walker Tariff on TOBACCO, reduced to 30% in 1857, reduced to 25% under Morrill

So Southern products were just as highly protected by tariffs as any Northern products.

FLT-bird: "Everybody knew the first round of tariff rate increases proposed by the Morrill Tariff were not going to be the end of the matter.
That was merely going to be the first bite of the apple.
Once they proved they could push the first round through, it was always going to be a one way ratchet - with rates only ever going up up up.
That's exactly what happened.
You claim it was because of the war.
No.
That was just the fig leaf put on it.
Those sky high rates stayed in place for over 60 years."

So, if supposedly, "everybody knew", then you must have lots and lots of quotes from all sides -- Democrats, Republicans, Southerners, Northerners, everybody, right? -- quotes which say exactly what you claim, "everybody knew", right?

In 1860 the National debt and Federal spending were both around 2% of US GDP.
During the Civil War the National debt rose to 31% and spending to 13% of GDP.
After the war both numbers fell very slowly, the National debt reaching a low of 7% of GDP in 1907 before beginning its inexorable rise to today's astronomical heights.
Federal spending, which included national debt reductions, also fell slowly, first reaching around 2% of GDP in 1889.

Overall tariffs (the blue line below), fell steadily after 1870, only rising temporarily to help pay for the Spanish American War, World War One and Smoot-Hawley.
By about 1914, after 50 years, overall tariffs had returned to the lowest levels achieved after 30 years in 1860.
The Civil War was vastly more expensive than the War of 1812 and the Mexican War combined, and so it took much longer for the government to recover economically.

quoting BJK's source: "Some historians in recent decades have minimized the tariff issue as a cause of the war, noting that few people in 1860–61 said it was of central importance to them."

FLT-bird: "Yes.
We call those historians PC Revisionists."

Sorry, no, by definition, "revisionists" are Lost Causers like FLT-bird who put words into the mouths of Confederates which Confederates themselves never even dreamed of saying.

Look it up, you'll see I'm right.

FLT-bird: "Let's see......compromises were offered but the one thing they did not offer to compromise on was the tariff.
The compromise effort failed.
Gosh....maybe if they had offered to compromise on the tariff.....after all, that's exactly what ended the Nullification Crisis a generation earlier......"

And yet... and yet... no Confederate "Reasons for Secession" document mentioned the Morrill Tariff.
When Mississippi's Democrat Senator Jefferson Davis was asked to concoct a "compromise bill" to keep Mississippi in the Union, his "compromise" said nothing about tariffs.
It was all about slavery, and that's a fact, deny it as loudly and often as you like, facts remain facts.