Posted on 07/11/2015 9:54:21 AM PDT by golux
The Confederate Flag Needs To Be Raised, Not Lowered
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that what we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience.
In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant dead as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.
History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States, characterizing them as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers, traitors, etc. You know, the same way that people in our federal government and news media attempt to characterize Christians, patriots, war veterans, constitutionalists, et al. today.
Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did NOT have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans. To say that southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from Great Britain. One cannot be right and the other wrong. If one is right, both are right. How can we celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then turn around and condemn the Declaration of Independence of the Confederacy in 1861? Talk about hypocrisy!
In fact, Southern states were not the only states that talked about secession. After the Southern states seceded, the State of Maryland fully intended to join them. In September of 1861, Lincoln sent federal troops to the State capital and seized the legislature by force in order to prevent them from voting. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested Democrats and anyone else who believed in secession. A special furlough was granted to Maryland troops so they could go home and vote against secession. Judges who tried to inquire into the phony elections were arrested and thrown into military prisons. There is your great “emancipator,” folks.
And before the South seceded, several Northern states had also threatened secession. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island had threatened secession as far back as James Madison’s administration. In addition, the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were threatening secession during the first half of the nineteenth century--long before the Southern states even considered such a thing.
People say constantly that Lincoln “saved” the Union. Lincoln didn’t save the Union; he subjugated the Union. There is a huge difference. A union that is not voluntary is not a union. Does a man have a right to force a woman to marry him or to force a woman to stay married to him? In the eyes of God, a union of husband and wife is far superior to a union of states. If God recognizes the right of husbands and wives to separate (and He does), to try and suggest that states do not have the right to lawfully (under Natural and divine right) separate is the most preposterous proposition imaginable.
People say that Lincoln freed the slaves. Lincoln did NOT free a single slave. But what he did do was enslave free men. His so-called Emancipation Proclamation had NO AUTHORITY in the Southern states, as they had separated into another country. Imagine a President today signing a proclamation to free folks in, say, China or Saudi Arabia. He would be laughed out of Washington. Lincoln had no authority over the Confederate States of America, and he knew it.
Do you not find it interesting that Lincoln’s proclamation did NOT free a single slave in the United States, the country in which he DID have authority? That’s right. The Emancipation Proclamation deliberately ignored slavery in the North. Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army? Check it out.
One of those Northern slaveholders was General (and later U.S. President) Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, he maintained possession of his slaves even after the War Between the States concluded. Recall that his counterpart, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, freed his slaves BEFORE hostilities between North and South ever broke out. When asked why he refused to free his slaves, Grant said, “Good help is hard to find these days.”
The institution of slavery did not end until the 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865.
Speaking of the 13th Amendment, did you know that Lincoln authored his own 13th Amendment? It is the only amendment to the Constitution ever proposed by a sitting U.S. President. Here is Lincoln’s proposed amendment: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that a person's held to labor or service by laws of said State.”
You read it right. Lincoln proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution PRESERVING the institution of slavery. This proposed amendment was written in March of 1861, a month BEFORE the shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
The State of South Carolina was particularly incensed at the tariffs enacted in 1828 and 1832. The Tariff of 1828 was disdainfully called, “The Tariff of Abominations” by the State of South Carolina. Accordingly, the South Carolina legislature declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were “unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.”
Think, folks: why would the Southern states secede from the Union over slavery when President Abraham Lincoln had offered an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the PRESERVATION of slavery? That makes no sense. If the issue was predominantly slavery, all the South needed to do was to go along with Lincoln, and his proposed 13th Amendment would have permanently preserved slavery among the Southern (and Northern) states. Does that sound like a body of people who were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men on the battlefield over saving slavery? What nonsense!
The problem was Lincoln wanted the Southern states to pay the Union a 40% tariff on their exports. The South considered this outrageous and refused to pay. By the time hostilities broke out in 1861, the South was paying up to, and perhaps exceeding, 70% of the nation’s taxes. Before the war, the South was very prosperous and productive. And Washington, D.C., kept raising the taxes and tariffs on them. You know, the way Washington, D.C., keeps raising the taxes on prosperous American citizens today.
This is much the same story of the way the colonies refused to pay the demanded tariffs of the British Crown--albeit the tariffs of the Crown were MUCH lower than those demanded by Lincoln. Lincoln’s proposed 13th Amendment was an attempt to entice the South into paying the tariffs by being willing to permanently ensconce the institution of slavery into the Constitution. AND THE SOUTH SAID NO!
In addition, the Congressional Record of the United States forever obliterates the notion that the North fought the War Between the States over slavery. Read it for yourself. This resolution was passed unanimously in the U.S. Congress on July 23, 1861, “The War is waged by the government of the United States not in the spirit of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions of the states, but to defend and protect the Union.”
What could be clearer? The U.S. Congress declared that the war against the South was NOT an attempt to overthrow or interfere with the “institutions” of the states, but to keep the Union intact (by force). The “institutions” implied most certainly included the institution of slavery.
Hear it loudly and clearly: Lincoln’s war against the South had NOTHING to do with ending slavery--so said the U.S. Congress by unanimous resolution in 1861.
Abraham Lincoln, himself, said it was NEVER his intention to end the institution of slavery. In a letter to Alexander Stevens who later became the Vice President of the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote this, “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.”
Again, what could be clearer? Lincoln, himself, said the Southern states had nothing to fear from him in regard to abolishing slavery.
Hear Lincoln again: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” He also said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do so.”
The idea that the Confederate flag (actually there were five of them) stood for racism, bigotry, hatred, and slavery is just so much hogwash. In fact, if one truly wants to discover who the racist was in 1861, just read the words of Mr. Lincoln.
On August 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln invited a group of black people to the White House. In his address to them, he told them of his plans to colonize them all back to Africa. Listen to what he told these folks: “Why should the people of your race be colonized and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You here are freemen, I suppose? Perhaps you have been long free, or all your lives. Your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of our race.”
Did you hear what Lincoln said? He said that black people would NEVER be equal with white people--even if they all obtained their freedom from slavery. If that isn’t a racist statement, I’ve never heard one.
Lincoln’s statement above is not isolated. In Charleston, Illinois, in 1858, Lincoln said in a speech, “I am not, nor have ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on social or political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white.”
Ladies and gentlemen, in his own words, Abraham Lincoln declared himself to be a white supremacist. Why don’t our history books and news media tell the American people the truth about Lincoln and about the War Between the States?
It’s simple: if people would study the meanings and history of the flag, symbols, and statues of the Confederacy and Confederate leaders, they might begin to awaken to the tyrannical policies of Washington, D.C., that precluded Southern independence--policies that have only escalated since the defeat of the Confederacy--and they might have a notion to again resist.
By the time Lincoln penned his Emancipation Proclamation, the war had been going on for two years without resolution. In fact, the North was losing the war. Even though the South was outmanned and out-equipped, the genius of the Southern generals and fighting acumen of the Southern men had put the northern armies on their heels. Many people in the North never saw the legitimacy of Lincoln’s war in the first place, and many of them actively campaigned against it. These people were affectionately called “Copperheads” by people in the South.
I urge you to watch Ron Maxwell’s accurate depiction of those people in the North who favored the Southern cause as depicted in his motion picture, “Copperhead.” For that matter, I consider his movie, “Gods And Generals” to be the greatest “Civil War” movie ever made. It is the most accurate and fairest depiction of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson ever produced. In my opinion, actor Stephen Lang should have received an Oscar for his performance as General Jackson. But, can you imagine?
That’s another thing: the war fought from 1861 to 1865 was NOT a “civil war.” Civil war suggests two sides fighting for control of the same capital and country. The South didn’t want to take over Washington, D.C., no more than their forebears wanted to take over London. They wanted to separate from Washington, D.C., just as America’s Founding Fathers wanted to separate from Great Britain. The proper names for that war are either, “The War Between the States” or, “The War of Southern Independence,” or, more fittingly, “The War of Northern Aggression.”
Had the South wanted to take over Washington, D.C., they could have done so with the very first battle of the “Civil War.” When Lincoln ordered federal troops to invade Virginia in the First Battle of Manassas (called the “First Battle of Bull Run” by the North), Confederate troops sent the Yankees running for their lives all the way back to Washington. Had the Confederates pursued them, they could have easily taken the city of Washington, D.C., seized Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps ended the war before it really began. But General Beauregard and the others had no intention of fighting an aggressive war against the North. They merely wanted to defend the South against the aggression of the North.
In order to rally people in the North, Lincoln needed a moral crusade. That’s what his Emancipation Proclamation was all about. This explains why his proclamation was not penned until 1863, after two years of fruitless fighting. He was counting on people in the North to stop resisting his war against the South if they thought it was some kind of “holy” war. Plus, Lincoln was hoping that his proclamation would incite blacks in the South to insurrect against Southern whites. If thousands of blacks would begin to wage war against their white neighbors, the fighting men of the Southern armies would have to leave the battlefields and go home to defend their families. THIS NEVER HAPPENED.
Not only did blacks not riot against the whites of the South, many black men volunteered to fight alongside their white friends and neighbors in the Confederate army. Unlike the blacks in the North, who were conscripted by Lincoln and forced to fight in segregated units, thousands of blacks in the South fought of their own free will in a fully-integrated Southern army. I bet your history book never told you about that.
If one wants to ban a racist flag, one would have to ban the British flag. Ships bearing the Union Jack shipped over 5 million African slaves to countries all over the world, including the British colonies in North America. Other slave ships flew the Dutch flag and the Portuguese flag and the Spanish flag, and, yes, the U.S. flag. But not one single slave ship flew the Confederate flag. NOT ONE!
By the time Lincoln launched his war against the Southern states, slavery was already a dying institution. The entire country, including the South, recognized the moral evil of slavery and wanted it to end. Only a small fraction of Southerners even owned slaves. The slave trade had ended in 1808, per the U.S. Constitution, and the practice of slavery was quickly dying, too. In another few years, with the advent of agricultural machinery, slavery would have ended peacefully--just like it had in England. It didn’t take a national war and the deaths of over a half million men to end slavery in Great Britain. America’s so-called “Civil War” was absolutely unnecessary. The greed of Lincoln’s radical Republicans in the North, combined with the cold, calloused heart of Lincoln himself is responsible for the tragedy of the “Civil War.”
And look at what is happening now: in one instant--after one deranged young man killed nine black people and who ostensibly photo-shopped a picture of himself with a Confederate flag--the entire political and media establishments in the country go on an all-out crusade to remove all semblances of the Confederacy. The speed in which all of this has happened suggests that this was a planned, orchestrated event by the Powers That Be (PTB). And is it a mere coincidence that this took place at the exact same time that the U.S. Supreme Court decided to legalize same-sex marriage? I think not.
The Confederate Battle Flag flies the Saint Andrews cross. Of course, Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus Christ, brother of Simon Peter, and Christian martyr who was crucified on an X-shaped cross at around the age of 90. Andrew is the patron saint of both Russia and Scotland.
In the 1800s, up to 75% of people in the South were either Scotch or Scotch-Irish. The Confederate Battle Flag is predicated on the national flag of Scotland. It is a symbol of the Christian faith and heritage of the Celtic race.
Pastor John Weaver rightly observed, “Even the Confederate States motto, ‘Deovendickia,’ (The Lord is our Vindicator), illustrates the sovereignty and the righteousness of God. The Saint Andrews cross is also known as the Greek letter CHIA (KEE) and has historically been used to represent Jesus Christ. Why do you think people write Merry X-mas, just to give you an illustration? The ‘X’ is the Greek letter CHIA and it has been historically used for Christ. Moreover, its importance was understood by educated and uneducated people alike. When an uneducated man, one that could not write, needed to sign his name please tell me what letter he made? An ‘X,’ why? Because he was saying I am taking an oath under God. I am recognizing the sovereignty of God, the providence of God and I am pledging my faith. May I tell you the Confederate Flag is indeed a Christian flag because it has the cross of Saint Andrew, who was a Christian martyr, and the letter ‘X’ has always been used to represent Christ, and to attack the flag is to deny the sovereignty, the majesty, and the might of the Lord Jesus Christ and his divine role in our history, culture, and life.”
Many of the facts that I reference in this column were included in a message delivered several years ago by Pastor John Weaver. I want to thank John for preaching such a powerful and needed message. Read or watch Pastor Weaver’s sermon “The Truth About The Confederate Battle Flag” here:
The Truth About The Confederate Battle Flag
Combine the current attacks against Biblical and traditional marriage, the attacks against all things Confederate, the attacks against all things Christian, and the attacks against all things constitutional and what we are witnessing is a heightened example of why the Confederate Battle Flag was created to begin with. Virtually every act of federal usurpation of liberty that we are witnessing today, and have been witnessing for much of the twentieth century, is the result of Lincoln’s war against the South. Truly, we are living in Lincoln’s America, not Washington and Jefferson’s America. Washington and Jefferson’s America died at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Instead of lowering the Confederate flag, we should be raising it.
© Chuck Baldwin
So, your support for your contention that the Declaration of Independance takes precedence over the Constitution is “ It is the Mother of the two succeeding documents. It is empowered by God.” Not sure what the two documents are, as I don’t think the Articles of Confederation are in contention here. As far as the “empowered by God” thing, you really need to add “based on my interpretation”. Other people had different interpretations. Why is yours right? If you had the Grace of God on your side, why did you lose?
I’m still confused on the whole comparison to the Revolutionary War, and the fact that the US didn’t win the war. We are only a country due to the British quitting. Still seems to me that you are essentially insulting the courage of the American patriots (you didn’t win - they quit). I think you are also ignoring the fact that the Colonies had the support of the second most powerful nation in the world (France). There were over 8,000 French regulars at Yorktown, and a significant portion of the French fleet at the Battle of the Capes. I also fail to see the significance of your point. The Colonies started the Revolutionary War to gain their freedom from Great Britain. It ended with our freedom from Great Britain. How is this not a win? It really sounds like you’re an apologist for the reign of George III.
As far as the bloodshed of the Civil War, all of it could have been avoided if the South had not seceded. Why was the right to own other people worth the deaths of 600,000 Americans?
Unfortunately, that was one resolution passed by the Mississippi legislature among dozens passed at the time of secession.
I can find no record of the vote...perhaps you have it. But it was nothing more than a publication from the printing office, and not official law.
You do not know what was in their minds.
Use it as you will, but it is narrow in historical context.
You seem to be quick to overlook history and insert mockery. Here are some of the comments...see if you can feel the emotion...
We confess that we intend to trample on the Constitution of this country. We of New England are not a law-abiding community, God be thanked for it! We are disunionists; we want to get rid of this Union.
-- Wendell Phillips, Boston, May 1849.
A great many people raise a cry about the Union and the Constitution. The truth is, it is the Constitution that is the trouble; the Constitution has been the foundaton of our trouble.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
No act of ours do we regard with higher satisfaction than when several years ago, on the rth of July, in the presence of a great assembly, we committed to the flames the Constitution of the United States and burned it to ashes.
-- The Boston Liberator, April 24, 1863
Resolved, That we seek the dissolution of this Union, and that we hereby declare ourselves the friends of a new Confederacy of States, and for a dissolution of the Union.
-- Meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, January 2-4, 1854.
If the church is against disunion, I pronounce the church of the devil! Up with the flag of disunion!
-- William Lloyd Garrison
A dissolution of the Union is what a large portion of the Republicans are driving at.
-- Parson Brownlow, 1858
Why preserve the Union? It is not worth preserving. I hate the Union as I hate hell!
-- Mr. Langdon of Ohio
All this twaddle about preserving the Union is too silly and sickening for anything.
-- The True American, Republican newspaper of Erie, Pennsylvania.
Let us sweep away this remnant which we call a Union.
-- Senator Wade of Ohio, 1855.
Disunion is the sweetest music! What if a State has no right to secede? Of what consequence is that? A Union is made up of willing States, not of conquerors and conquered. Confederacies invariably tend to dismemberment. The Union was a wall built up hastily; its cement has crumbled hastily. Why should we seek to stop seceded States? Merely to show we can? Let the south go in peace.
-- Wendell Phillips, after the first state had seceded, 1860.
From this time forth I consecrate the labor of my life to the dissolution of the Union, nd I care not whether the bolt that rends it shall come from heaven or from hell!
-- Frederick Douglass
In 1848, Seward voted to receive a petition to dissolve the Union.
In 1854, John P. Hale, Chase and Seward voted to receive and consider a petition demanding the dissolution of the Union.
August 23rd, 1851, the New Hampton, Massachusetts Gazette announced that a petition was circulating in that region for the dissolution of the Union, nd that more than one hundred and fifty names of legal voters had signed it. In 1854 New England sent to Congress a petition, numerously signed, prayer for the dissolution of the Union, using these words:
We earnestly request Congress to take measures for the speedy, peaceful, equitable dissolution of the Union.
This is strong evidence that those that would accuse Southern state legislatures of seceding over the single issue of slavery ignore the fact that sectional pressure to conform or expect vitriol, and soon enough violence, was known, accepted, and expected in Southern political circles.
In regards to the vote on the Mississippi Articles of Secession, it was 83 for secession, and 15 against.
Your characterization of this as “nothing more than a publication from the printing office” really minimizes it. You make it sound like a disgruntled employee gained access to the printing press one night and ran this off. In fact, it was an official convention of the state of Mississippi convened “IN accordance with an Act of the Legislature, approved November 29th, 1861, entitled “An Act to provide for a Convention of the people of Mississippi”. Sounds like more than “a publication from the printing office, and not official law.”
You say that I do not know what was in their minds, when in fact I do, because they printed it.
Don’t see how this is narrow in a historical context. It is an official document from the state of Mississippi as to why they seceded, and the reason was (say it with me), slavery.
And as regards to your statement that this was “one resolution passed by the Mississippi legislature among dozens passed at the time of secession.”, that is a true statement. It is, however the most important and definitive one as regards Mississippi, and it’s reason for secession. I have read all of the others and South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and Florida were all clear in that their reason for secession was slavery. Of the others, most did not give a reason at all.
So, a lot of people (and, in many cases, influential people) said mean things about the South in the paper. Definitely a reason to start a war that killed 600,000 people.
How does this do anything but prove my point that one of the reasons the South seceded was because mean people in the North hurt their little fe-fe’s? Is your point that they were really, really mean? Again, how does this arise to the point of starting a war?
Actually the PERRY, the WABASH, and the ATLANTIC all sailed days before Lt. Talbot appeared in Charleston.
Are you sure on that? Because according to Wikipedia (I know, I know) the Wabash was not commissioned for service in the Civil war until May 16, 1861, the Perry until April 23, 1861, and I couldn't find anything on a USS Atlantic. Weren't the ships in the Sumter resupply effort the Baltic, the Pawnee, the Pocahontas, the Harriet Lane, and the Powhatan?
Well, if you had read my earlier posts you’d have seen that GB was just waiting to see how the CW was going before it declared one way or the other. You will note that during the CW Great Britain was officially neutral.
They were officially neutral, but there was a lot of sympathy for the South in the upper class. A couple of commerce raiders were fitted out in British ports, with no great attempts at secrecy.
You said in an earlier post that Great Britain would not recognize the Confederacy because of slavery.
Yet, in 1824, after Brazil had achieved its independence from Portugal, and a national constitution was introduced, solidifying the government as a constitutional monarchy, the United States became the first nation to recognize the Brazilian Empire, and Portugal and Great Britain followed the United States in recognizing Brazil’s sovereignty in 1825.
And Britain did not stop recognizing Brazil, even though Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888.
Britain recognized many nations that practiced slavery. So your comment that Britain would not recognize the CSA because of slavery just does not hold water.
“OK so let’s start there. In spite of the fact that I know other posters have provided information that tariff collections in the North outstripped tariff collections in the South by something like 15:1 or 20:1 you all keep clinging to that claim.”
There is a major difference between tariff collection points and who pays the tariffs. I don’t live in Missouri, but my federal income taxes are paid (or collected) in Missouri. Southern interests purchased the goods from (primarily) Europe, and those Southern purchasers had to pay the tariffs to the federal treasury (at whichever tariff collection point it was determined applied).
“How could it be that even after losing the South, and all that revenue you claim they provided, that in his 1864 message to Congress Lincoln mentions that tariff revenue had more than doubled since the beginning of the war? How would that be possible if you are correct?”
Simple. The Lincoln administration levied huge taxes and tariffs on the Northern citizens and business interests. Also, Lincoln included loans as revenues. Prior to secession it is fact that Southern interests paid the majority of the tariffs, and that the majority of the federal revenue was spent up north (especially on railroads and on the growing Northern mercantile and industrial projects). The South believed — and rightfully — that it was getting screwed economically staying in the Union.
It sounds like you have a case. Except....
Brazil achieved independance in 1825. Slavery was legal in the British Empire until abolished by the aptly named Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. This act outlawed slavery in the United Kingdom, with the exceptions of St Helena, Ceylon, and those territories controlled by the East India Company. These exceptions were removed in 1843.
So it comes as no surprise that the British Empire had no problem with slavery in 1825. However, we’re talking about the 1860s, and during that time the British DID have a problem with slavery.
I think my contention does, in fact, hold water.
Tariffs are paid at the place where they are unloaded into the country. If all those goods are destined for Southern purchasers then why are they being unloaded in New York or Boston?
The Lincoln administration levied huge taxes and tariffs on the Northern citizens and business interests.
Tariffs are meant to discourage imports, not promote them, because they are supposed to make domestic goods more cost effective. Tariffs as high as the Morill Tariffs were should have led to a decrease in imports not an increase. Adding to that the fact that supposedly the South consumed the vast majority of imported goods and tariff revenue should have been way below 1860 levels and not considerably higher.
Yes, I am sure. All three of those ships were not commissioned US naval ships at the time but privately owned and operated. They were rented for the mission from private owners.
A good question would be WHY and how was this financed.
The ATLANTIC was a civilian transport that was quickly outfitted and loaded with troops.
Regarding the ships you mentioned, there were many more, eleven in fact, that were ordered to sea.
I have come to realize that this event was not only one of the most notorious events leading to war but the greatest example of the administration’s abuse of power.
So you agree. That's nice.
That is the vote on the Ordinance ratification. The question was how many voted for the acceptance on the causes narrative.
Don’t know, and don’t really care to spend the time researching, but what’s your point? Are you implying that a large percentage of the Mississippeans didn’t want to secede and go to war? Or are you back to the lone printer theory (there’s got to be agrassy knoll around here somewhere)?
I do not think you will find that the Mississippi document is anything more than a press release.
You seem to think these ghost documents represent majority thinking while ignoring the fact that in your only remaining issues they show the very first grievance in both the South Carolina and Georgia documents describes the failure of the Northern states to respect the Constitution. Texas not withstanding.
“I think my contention does, in fact, hold water.”
No, it doesn’t. Your premise was that Great Britain would not recognize CSA because of slavery. My whole point is whether CSA did or did not practice slavery was immaterial to whether or not GB would recognize it, because GB continued to recognize many countries that had and continued to have slavery. One would think that GB would have withdrawn recognition of those nations in 1833 when GB abolished slavery from its Empire (but history shows that was abolishing slavery in name only; because GB continued to practice what amounted to slavery in, for example, India and Africa).
“Tariffs are paid at the place where they are unloaded into the country. If all those goods are destined for Southern purchasers then why are they being unloaded in New York or Boston?”
You’re joking, right? For one thing, tariffs are not exclusively paid at the point of unloading. For another thing, shipping goods from Europe to America is a lot quicker — and cheaper — if they are unloaded or delivered to a northern port, because delivering them to, say, Mobile or New Orleans or Galveston is twice the distance and would take twice the time and would double the cost.
Even today, goods manufactured in Asia are almost exclusively shipped to the American west coast, even if the purchaser of the goods is a company in Maine.
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