New York - $35,155,452.75
Boston - $5,133,414.55
Philadelphia - $2,262,349.57
New Orleans - $2,120,058.76
Charleston - $299,339.43
Mobile - $118,027.99
Galveston - $92,417.72
Savannah - $89,157.18
Norfolk - $70,897.73
Richmond - $47,763.63
Wilmington, N.C. - $33,104.67
Pensacola - $3,577.60
How can you continue to make the claim that the south paid the majority of the tariff when some 95% of all revenues were collected up North? And the reason the collections were so small had nothing to do with an inability of ports to handle imports. In his same book Wise points out that New Orleans exported almost 1.8 million bales of cotton to overseas destinations in the year prior to the war. Mobile exported almost half a million bales, Charleston over a quarter of a million bales. The capacity to handle imports was there, the reason why comparatively few goods were imported through these ports was that demand for the imported goods was not. Had the south been the largest consumer of imported goods then the financial incentive to ship those goods directly to the market would have guaranteed that New Orleans would have been collection the lions share of revenue and New York would have been deserted. The fact that it was the other way around shows that the demand for the imports was in the North and the overwhelming majority of the tariff was paid by Northerners.
PANIC of 1857
In the 1840s and 1850s, the North greatly expanded, using money that had originated from tariffs charged to the South. In 1846, these tariffs were reduced, but the North spending money like a drunken sailor on leave, continued to operate, as if the same quanity of money was being generated by these tariffs. In 1857, the well ran dry. There was no longer sufficent funds to support Northern extravagance and expansionism.
"During August 1857, the economic boom started turning to bust. The New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, which had $5 million to $7 million in debts, could not meet its obligations because its cashier had embezzled its assets. A panic struck the financial community, stock and commodity prices collapsed, and bankruptcies triggered a succession of additional bankruptcies. A brief recovery seemed to shape up early in September, then panic began anew as depositors made runs on banks. By mid-month, every bank in the city was forced to close its doors. Banks in Boston and Philadelphia soon followed, and then those in Baltimore and the Midwest collapsed. In short order, the notes of fourteen hundred state banks became worthless, five thousand businesses failed, and western railroads went broke. And, in a reversal of the usual pattern, wherein financial dislocations in Europe set off panics in America, the panic of 1857 spread to Europe.
The economic depression that followed was long and harsh. In New England, cotton and woolen textile mills were idle, and workers, laid off by the thousands, were plunged into poverty throughout the country, railroad construction, which had carried a great deal of the boom, stopped. Values of land collapsed, breaking tens of thousands of farmers who had borrowed to invest in acreage that they could no longer pay for. Female factory workers in Chicago and Chicopee, Massachusetts, kept their jobs but were paid a meager $1.40 a week. In Cincinnati, half of the twenty-five thousand workers in the clothing industry were unemployed. A majority of the country's furnaces and iron mills were shut. Lumbermen in Michigan and Wisconsin, fired with almost no warning, verged on starvation. Two hundred fifty ships were tied up in Boston; a little relief to shippers came from a demand by arriving immigrants to be taken back home. Private charitable instrumentalities were inadequate to relieve the suf-fering, and municipalities did not have the wherewithal. The major of New York proposed public works projects to employ the jobless unskilled laborers, but the city council's response was minimal."
Anger permeated the ranks of midwestern farmers, who sought and readily found scapegoats in the form of eastern "jobbers and speculators." From Ohio to Kansas, they blamed their troubles on manipulators in the eastern cities. Farmers in central Illinois held a convention and adopted bitter resolutions condemning "trading combinations," railroads, and banks. Other conventions alleged that stockyards and grain markets robbed the farmers, and they demanded government action. No action was forthcoming, and nothing would have helped anyway, for the farmers' plight was due to forces over which governments had no control."
Northern Manufacturers were also angry, attributing their woes to excessive importation made possible by the low import duties of the 1846 tariff and by a tariff adjustment enacted the day before Buchanan took office.
Ironmasters were especially bitter, for the United States obviously had the natural resources necessary for a great iron industry, yet Britain was consistently able to undersell American produc-ers in American markets. Textile manufacturers joined in clamoring for protective tariffs. Since 1846, imports of British printed and dyed cottons had increased eightfold to tenfold. To make matters worse, the 1857 tariff revisions had actually reduced the duties on cottons and woolens. Northern Manufacturers across the board organized and contributed money to elect Republicans to Congress and thereby to reinstitute the protective tariff system, in order to restore Northern Prosperity, at the expense of the South."
SOUTH UNTOUCHED BY NORTHERN MISMANAGEMENT
The cotton kingdom was almost untouched by the panic and depression. The price of cotton did drop from sixteen cents a pound in September (seasonally the peak) to nine cents by the end of 1857, but growers could wait for the rise-which came soon. Moreover, the 1857 crop was nearly a record and production during the last three years of the decade soared ever higher, while prices ranged up-ward from twelve cents a pound. Southerners, meanwhile, had not imported as lavishly as northerners, and thus they were essentially debt free. The prosperity of the South convinced southerners that cotton was king, that "our wealth;' as De Bow's Review crowed, "is permanent and real, while that of the North is fictitious.""
And at just this time, southerners were being powerfully reminded of how much better off they would be if they were not shackled in a union with the North. Thomas Prentice Long. former editor of the Democratic Review, published a book called Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, which proved something southerners suspected: that the South produced vast wealth, but the North took most of it. Using copious tables, Long reached the conclusion that the North took annually from the South, $253 million in profits by means of protective tariffs, fishing bounties, commissions of brokers, interest paid to bankers, and freightage paid to shippers. Others echoed the sentiment and announced that an independent South would be a more prosperous South. "We must separate," wrote the Virginia agricultural reformer Edmund Ruffin, "and the sooner it is done, the greater will be the relative strength of the Southern party and the more sure will be the success of the movement ""'
Forrest McDonald - Research Professor of History - University of Alabama
Forrest McDonald
Distinguished University Professor
(Ph.D., Texas)
U.S. constitutional; economic and business; South
BORN Orange, Texas, January 7, 1927. Graduated Orange High School, 1943. Served U.S. Navy, 1945-46. Married. Five children.
Education: B.A., 1949; M.A., 1949; Ph.D., 1955--University of Texas, Austin.
Professional Employment:
University ot Texas, Teaching Fellow, 1950-51
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1953-58
Brown University, Associate Professor, 1959-64;
Professor, 1964-67
Wayne State University, Professor, 1967-76
University of Alabama, Professor, 1976-87; Distinguished University Research Professor, 1987--
Visiting Professorships:
Columbia (1962); Duke (1963); N.Y.U. (1966); University of West Florida (1975); James Pinckney Harrison Professor, College of William and Mary (1986-87)
Honors and Fellowships:
Social Science Research Council, Research Training Fellow, 1951-53
Master of Arts, Honorary Degree, Brown University, 1962
Guggenheim Fellow, 1962-63
Volker Fund Fellowship, 1962-63
Relm Foundation Fellowship, 1965
Earhart Fellowships, 1969, 1976, 1984
American Council of Learned Societies, Research Grant, 1975
Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award, Wayne State University, 1975
George Washington Medal (Freedom's Foundation), 1980
Fraunces Tavern Book Award, for Alexander Hamilton, 1980
Outstanding Scholar Award, University of Alabama, 1980
First Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award, University of Alabama, 1980
Mortar Board, Honorary Membership, 1982
Board of Foreign Scholarships (Presidential Appointment), 1985-87
Finalist, Pulitzer Prize, for Novus Ordo Seclorum, 1986
American Revolution Round Table Book Award, 1986
Benchmark Book Award, 1986
National Endowment for the Humanities, 16th Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities, 1987
Doctor of Humane Letters, Honorary Degree, SUNY-Geneseo, 1989
Ingersoll Prize, Richard M. Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters, 1990
Heritage Foundation, Salvatori Award for Academic Excellence, 1992
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Henry J. Salvatori Award for The American Presidency, 1994
Frederick Moody Blackmon--Sarah McCorkle Moody Outstanding Professor Award, University of Alabama, 1995
Alabama Library Association 1996 Nonfiction Book Award
The Templeton Honor Tolls for Education in a Free Society, 1997-1998:
Professors; Scholarly Books, We The People
Mount Vernon Society in conjunction with the Organization of American Historians selected The Presidency of George Washington one of the Ten Great Books on George Washington, 1998
Advisory and professional services:
Rovensky Fellowship Selection Committee, 1965-88
National Review, Contributor, 1978--
Continuity, Board of Editors, 1980-
Richard M. Weaver Fellowship Selection Committee, 1980--
Encyclopedia Britannica Editorial Review Board, 1981-82, 1998
The Southern Historian, Faculty Advisor, 1983-89
Bicentennial of the Constitution, Claremont Advisory Board, 1983-89
Intercollegiate Review, Board of Editors, 1984--
Department of Education, Reader, Graduate Fellow Program, 1985, 1986
National Humanities Institute, Academic Board, 1985--
Constitution magazine, Advisory Board, 1988-94
National Legal Center for the Public Interest, Academic Council, 1988-94
Campus: America's Student Newspaper, Advisory Board, 1990--
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, Editorial Board, 1990-92
Rockford Institute, Board of Directors, 1990-94
Birmingham Federalist Society, Board of Directors, 1990-St. George Tucker Society, Secretary of the Publications Committee, 1991-92
Heritage Foundation, Salvatori Center Advisory Council, 1992--
Center for the Study of Interactive Learning, Advisory Council, 1992-96
Philadelphia Society, President, 1988-90, Trustee, 1983-86, 1988-91, 1994-97
Earhart Foundation, Academic Sponsor Fellowship Program, 1993-94, 1998-99
Adair Prize Committee, Selection Committee, 1995-96
Grady Mcwhiney Research Foundation, Senior Fellow, 1997--
Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Lady Thatcher Essay Competition, 1997
Presidential Studies Quarterly, Board of Editors, 1998--
Biographical and historiographic articles about Forrest McDonald:
"Forrest McDonald," by Justus Doenecke, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 17, Detroit, 1983
"If Jefferson et al Could See Us Now," by Leslie Maitland Werner, New York Times, February 12, 1987
"Forrest McDonald, the 1987 Jefferson Lecturer," by Linda Blanken, Humanities, March-April, 1987
"Historian Calls for Sustained Adherence to the Framers' Precepts," by Angus Paul, The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 1987
Who's Who in America, starting in the 45th edition, 1988
Also listed in "The World Who's Who of Authors," 1975--; "Dictionary of International Biography," 1976--; "Directory of American Scholars," 6th edition--, "The Jnternational Authors and Writers Who's Who," 8th edition--; "Men of Achievement," 5th edition; "Community Leaders and Noteworthy Americans," 9th and 11th editions; "International Who's Who in Education," 1980; "International Who's Who in Community Service," 3rd edition; "Who's Who in the South and Southwest," 17th edition--.
FORREST MCDONALD PUBLICATIONS:
1. Books:
Let There Be Light: The Electric Utility Industry in Wisconsin (Madison: American History Research Center, 1957)
We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; new ed. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992)
Insull (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)
E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965; new ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979)
The Presidency of George Washington (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974, paperback ed., 1985)
The Phaeton Ride: The Crisis of American Success (New York: Doubleday, 1974)
The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1976; paperback ed., 1987)