see 294
OK, let's look at 294 for a moment. A series of editorials and quotes that seem to make two claims. One, the south paid the lions share of tariffs - three quarters of the total if Adams is to be believed. And two, the imports were totally dependent on southern exports. Without exports our import market would dry up. Can we agree on this?
If the claims of Adams et. al. are true then how do you explain the following? In the year prior to the rebellion tariff income totalled about $53 million dollars. If Adams is to be believed only about $13 million of that came from Northern consumers. In December 1864 Lincoln delivered his annual message to Congress. In it he stated the total tariff revenue for the fiscal year ending June 1864 came to $102.3 million dollars. Receipts multiplied to almost twice of what they were 4 years earlier, and almost 8 times over what Adams said the Northern share was in 1860. This was without southern consumers importing goods and without southern exports fueling the economy and in the middle of a war. So how do you account for that? What could account for such a massive increase? Inflation? Depending on who you read, the price index in the North increase between 75% and 125% during the entire war, so that can't be the cause. War materials being imported? What country in it's right mind would tax itself on the goods it needs to fight a war? The Morill Tariff? True the tariff rates did go up by a considerable percentage, but any economist will tell you that the purpose of a protective tariff is to discourage imports, not encourage them. So by rights the Morill Tariff should have driven revenues down as people turned away from the suddenly more expensive imported goods in favor of the less expensive domestic goods. And even so, a 40-odd percent increase in tariff should not generate an 8-fold increase in revenue, should it? It may bump up the total by the same percentage of the increase at best. And would more likely decrease it. No, factor in the inflation and the increase in tariff and the only possible way to explain the increase in tariff revenue between 1860 and 1864 is if it was the North that was generating the overwhelming majority of tariff revenue all along. That the North was the massive consumer of imports. And that Adams and DiLorenzo and that ilk are incorrect when they claim the south paid a disproportionate amount of the tariffs prior to the rebellion. What alternative explanation can you offer?