Posted on 03/28/2008 12:15:10 PM PDT by cowboyway
Over the last few months, celebrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday have drawn attention to the Kentucky native's life and his legacy as president. But the 200-year anniversary of another Kentucky president's birth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is receiving mixed reviews.
"I'll say it this way - winners write history," said Ron Bryant, a Lexington historian writing a book on Davis. "We need heroes, we need villains. Lincoln became a hero and Davis a villain."
Davis was born in what is now Todd County, Ky., in 1808, one year before Lincoln. Davis served as the only president of the 11 southern states that seceded from the Union between 1861 and 1865. The Confederate States of America surrendered in 1865, and Davis was locked in prison the same year.
Despite being denounced by many civil rights groups, signs of Davis' legacy can still be found throughout the state.
In Southwest Kentucky, a structure resembling the Washington Monument stands in memory of Davis. At 351 feet tall, the Jefferson Davis Monument is the fourth largest freestanding obelisk in the world, according to Kentucky State Parks.
Although Kentucky never seceded from the Union, a statue of Davis stands in the rotunda in the state's Capitol building.
"The Civil War is still very much alive in many places," said Cliff Howard, a Jefferson Davis impersonator. "Kentucky was on both sides of the fence. It still is."
Having heard of Kentucky's reputation for "being a little backward," integrated strategic communications senior James Davidson Jr. was not surprised about Davis' statue in the Capitol building.
Davidson, first-vice president of UK's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said a statue of Davis leaves a bad impression.
"What is Frankfort saying to the rest of Kentucky with it being there?" Davidson said. "I respect everyone's heritage and Southern tradition, but given the history, I think it shouldn't be there."
The statue of Davis, installed in 1936, is one of five statues in the Capitol building. Lincoln is the largest in the center, and Davis stands in the corner behind his right shoulder. Former Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay, physician and drafter of the state constitution Ephraim McDowell and former Vice President Alben Barkley also stand in the rotunda.
The last time Davis' statue came into debate was 2003, when a coalition of African-American groups protested its presence in the Capitol building. A state advisory committee left the issue up to former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who took no action during his term.
Gov. Steve Beshear does not plan to remove the statue because Davis is a historical figure who represents part of Kentucky's cultural history, a spokeswoman said.
Student Government President Nick Phelps said his feelings on the statue in the Capitol building resembled how he felt during a controversy two years ago about a 46-foot mural in Memorial Hall depicting the history of Lexington and its surrounding area. The mural, which some said stereotyped American Indians and blacks, was not removed.
"I was not in support of removing the mural, so I would not support removing Jefferson Davis," Phelps said. "I don't think we should remove history. I think it removes the question, 'Who is he?' "
Many students might ask the same question about Davis.
In Kentucky, the Civil War is part of the middle school curriculum. Unless students take an advanced placement history course in high school, that's usually the last time they focus on 19th century American history, said Nayasha Owens-Morton, a U.S. history and African-American history teacher at Bryan Station Traditional High School.
William Campbell has taught a class on Lincoln at UK for about 10 years as an English and honors professor. Students going into his class know little about the confederate president, he said.
"About Jefferson Davis, Kentuckians tend to know that he was from our state, that there's a memorial dedicated to him somewhere in the state, and that he was the president of the Confederacy," Campbell said. "Of Lincoln's writings, most have read only the Gettysburg Address. Of Davis's writings, most have read nothing."
States rights does not include the right of a state to violate the Constitution. The Constitution called for the return of fugitive slaves to their home state -- or technically speaking the return of people owing service in another state. Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
States rights refers to powers not delegated in the Constitution to the Federal government or items that were not specified in the Constitution. The return of fugitive slaves as specified in the Constitution was agreed to by the states ratifying the Constitution.
This bill [Morrill Tariff] did not precipitate secession. It was a result of secession.
It was a factor in secession though not nearly as much as slavery. The Republican-dominated House passed the Morrill Tariff in the Spring of 1860, and Lincoln was for the high protective tariff. The election of 1860 gave the North enough votes in the Senate to pass the Morrill Tariff even if all Southern Senators were present, at least according to the December 1860 post-election vote calculation of Senator Wigall of Texas. The tariff increase was a foregone conclusion.
You are correct that the Morrill Tariff never extracted money from the South. The South left before it could. The Morrill Tariff greatly depressed imports. Imports to the Port of New York (by far the largest port for imports) averaged about $20,000,000 a month in 1860. They started out at $26,000,000 in January 1861, but the last six months averaged about $10,000,000 a month. [Source: Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia for the Year 1865]
" ... The United States thus had a low-tariff policy that favored the South until the Civil War began in 1861." Wikipedia.
Favored the South? That is a misstatement. Thank you for citing the source. You have to be careful of Wikipedia, as I'm sure you know. If I might, let me provide you with a couple of other interpretations from the time.
Even at the relatively low rates in effect, the tariff did extract money from the South and transferred it to Northern manufacturers. As the Daily Chicago Times editorialized on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
Or from another source, the book, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, by Thomas Prentice Kettell, New York, 1860:
The South manufactures nearly as much per head, of the white population, as does the West. Both these sections hold, however, a provincial position in relation to the East. As we have seen, heretofore, the first accumulations of capital in the country were at the East, from the earnings of navigation and the slave-trade. These were invested in "manufactures," "protected" by the tariffs imposed by the federal government. The operation of these tariffs was to tax consumers in the South and West, pro rata upon what manufactures they purchased of the East, and, by so doing, to increase Eastern capital at the expense of these two sections. The articles mostly protected, and of which the cost is enhanced to the consumers, in proportion to the duties, are manufactured in the East to the extent of $320,000,000, of which $200,000,000 are sold South and West. This gives an annual drain of $50,000,000 from the consumers of those sections, as a bonus or protection to the capital employed in manufacturing at the North.
I'm curious. Had secession won, the Confederacy would have had to pay for a separate government structure, and a military establishment probably much more expensive than that maintained by the Union before 1860. It would have to do this from about 1/4 the population of the 1860 Union.
Based on 1856 Treasury reports and 1850 census figures, Kettell estimates that the South consumed one third of the imports to the US. If that consumption continued unimpeded, the Confederacy would have obtained revenue from those imports plus any imports diverted from Northern ports with their higher tariff.
The South would have had to pay for a government that serviced fewer people and had less Western Border to protect. The Southerner who imported goods would have had to pay less in tariff by buying cheaper European goods imported directly to the South and less in effective tariff by switching from Northern goods whose price was propped up by the Morrill Tariff to European goods. Perhaps enough would be saved to pay for any increases in the per capita cost of government that you suggested.
The North would have had to lower the price of their goods in order to compete with Europe. This would have played havoc with the Northern economy and import revenue to the North would go down. Bear Sterns failure is a piker compared to this.
Not familiar with this one, but I'll take your word on it. It's only fair to point out that Texans raided into Mexico just about as much as Mexicans raided into Texas.
I'm not familiar with the Texas raids into Mexico. Could you provide me a source, please? I am aware that Texas Rangers under RIP Ford chased Mexican raiders led by Cortina into Mexico and defeated them there. My great great grandfather served under Ford during the war and fought Cortina.
From the Austin, Texas, State Gazette of November 12, 1859:
We are informed by friends from the Rio Grande, that at last dates, Cortenas [sic] was on this side of the Rio Grande, with a force variously estimated from two to six hundred; that he had complete control of all the country except the city of Brownsville, and this was guarded day and night by the citizens.
His parties are scouring the country, robbing and destroying property and farms and residences of the American population. That he has destroyed Nealsville, and had stolen 150 beeves from different owners – That the life of an American citizen is unsafe outside of Brownsville, and not very safe in it. That the American families had fled for protection to Matamoras in Mexico; and that the company of Mexican troops was still in Fort Brown giving a protectorate to Texas. They are subsisted by the citizens of Brownsville, whose Committee of Safety raised the means by private subscription.
BTW, I thought conservatives were supposed to be opposed to Supreme Court rulings where the justices impose their own values on the rest of society. The Scott decision was the first and still the most egregious of these. It was wrong constitutionally, morally and historically.
Slavery was the law of the land back then, and it was legal. Slaves were considered property. They were even considered real estate in Kentucky. The Dred Scott ruling was based on property rights rather than human rights.
Posters often refer to "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence at this point. If you are inclined to do so, please remember the rest of the Declaration where it says of the king, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us ..." The insurrections referred to the freeing of blacks (and indentured servants) who would escape and serve the king against the American colonists. Look up Lord Dunmore's Proclamation sometime. In other words, the Declaration said all men are equal but leave our slaves alone.
I think Taney's reasoning was wrong in the Scott ruling. Blacks fought for our side in the Revolution (but more fought for the British). If Taney wasn't willing to accord them full citizenship on a human rights basis, he should have recognized that blacks who fought for us earned their right to be treated as first class citizens.
And by the way, Taney freed his slaves in the 1820s.
"While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."
Many of that time interpreted Lincoln's First Inaugural speech as meaning nothing but war. I've posted a thread about newspaper editorials on this speech and how polarized the country had become. See: Lincoln's first inaugural.
Sorry for being so long winded in this reply, but you raised points that needed a response. Thank you.
In most instances resupply against a treaty stipulation is a cause for war.
On the twenty-ninth of March, Lincoln had ordered that three ships — the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane — together with three hundred men and provisions be made ready to sail for the Charleston harbor. Lincoln to Cameron, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 226; Enclosure No. 1, op. cit., page 227.
These orders were all marked private. On the first of April, he sent a message to Commandant Andrew H. Foote at Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York to “fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment under sealed orders.”Lincoln to Andrew H. Foote, in op. cit., page 229
These instructions were confirmed with another telegram which contained these words: “You will fit out the Powhatan without delay. Lieutenant Porter will relieve Captain Mercer in command of her. She is bound on secret service; and you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out.” In all, consisted of eight warships, carrying twenty-six guns and one thousand, four hundred men.
Fort Sumter Relief Force...On Its Way Four Warships, 25 guns, 300 (additional) seamen, 200 artillerist U.S.S. Powhatan 2415 Tons Armament*- 3 (Three 12-pounders) Carrying 300 additional seamen to assist in the resupply/reinforcement effort. (Never arrived.)Smug note; By a quirk of fate Lincoln had previously ordered the Powhatan to the aid of Ft. Pickens and it had already set sail to Florida. U.S.S. Pawnee 1289 Tons Armament*- 10 (Eight 9-inch guns, Two 12-pounders) U.S.S. Pocahontas 694 Tons Armament*- 6 (Four 32-pounders, One 10-inch rifle, One 20-pounder Parrott) U.S.S. Harriet Lane (revenue cutter) 600 Tons Armament*- 2 (Two 32-pounders) Baltic (transport) Armament- None Carrying 200 troops (artillerist) for the re-inforcement of Fort Sumter. Gunboats Thomas Freeborn 269 Tons Armament*- 2 (Two 32-pounders) (Never arrived.) Uncle Ben Captured by pro-secessionists off the coast of North Carolina. Yankee 328 Tons Armament*- 2 (Two 32-pounders) *earliest report in proximity to the time of Fort Sumter
The day this flotilla set sail the CSA received copies of these orders, and this set in motion the reduction of Sumter.
On the twenty-eighth of March the Senate asked Lincoln if he had anything of note to tell them before they adjourned. He said no. From the Congressional Globe:
Mr. Powell, from the committee appointed to wait on the President of the United States and notify him that unless he has some further communication to make, the Senate is ready to adjourn, reported that the committee had waited on the President, and been informed by him that he had no further communication to make to the Senate.
Lincoln apparently wanted the Congress out of the way before he took action that his own advisers had warned him would result in a shooting war.
It is of course inaccurate to refer to the informal and apparently verbal agreement between the Buchanan administration and South Carolina as "a treaty." Treaties require that the Senate "advise and consent."
Lincoln publicly notified South Carolina on April 06 that he would attempt to reprovision the fort, but not to bring in reinforcements or armaments unless the Fort or the expedition was attacked, which would from his point of view break the informal truce.
The CSA could have chosen to view the attempt to reprovision as maintenance of the status quo and allowed it to proceed. Or for that matter they could have reprovisioned the fort themselves, leaving a couple hundred men stranded indefinitely in a position where they could accomplish nothing militarily. This would have been a magnificent gesture of contempt.
They chose instead to launch an attack. I believe it to be fairly obvious that this decision was made to force the remainng slave states to "get off the fence." This decision may have been partially precipitated by a vote on April 04 of 80 to 45 against secession in the Virginia Convention, leading the CSA cabinet to worry that perhaps the tide of opinion was turning against them in the Upper South and that something must be done to break the stalemate.
The entire cabinet was in agreement with the decision to attack Sumter except Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State. He said, "Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal." With the advantage of hindsight it is pretty obvious that his remarks were correct.
military status should remain as it was at the time of this understanding, viz., on December 9, 1860
I am unclear whether an attempt to reprovision but not to reinforce or resupply armaments is usually considered to be changing "military status." Since it creates no alteration in the balance of forces, I assume that from the generic use of the terms it would not. However, the term "military status" may have specific meanings with which I am unfamiliar.
I would also like to point out that if an alteration in the supply of provisions constitutes a change in military status, the South made that change when they cut off provisions to the fort on April 07.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 29, 1861.
Honorable SECRETARY OF WAR:
SIR: I desire that an expedition, to move by sea, be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April next, the whole according to memorandum attached, and that you co-operate with the Secretary of the Navy for that object.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
[Inclosure Numbers 1.]
NAVY DEPARTMENT. Preliminary orders.-Steamers Pocahontas at Norfolk, Pawnee at Washington, Harriet Lane at New York (Treasury Department), to be under sailing orders for sea, with stores, &c., for one month. Three hundred men to be kept ready for departure from on board the receiving ships at New York.
[Inclosure Numbers 2.]
WAR DEPARTMENT. Preliminary.-Two hundred men to be ready to leave Governor's Island in New York. Supplies for twelve months for one hundred men to be put in portable shape, ready for instant shipping. A large steamer and three tugs conditionally engaged.
MARCH 28, 1861.
Honest Abe?
States rights does not include the right of a state to violate the Constitution.
Nope. But certain actions taken by the federeal government to enforce a constitutional provision could be a violation of states' rights. The clause you quote contains no prescribed enforcement mechanism other than presumably for State 1 to sue State 2 in federal court.
The election of 1860 gave the North enough votes in the Senate to pass the Morrill Tariff even if all Southern Senators were present, at least according to the December 1860 post-election vote calculation of Senator Wigall of Texas.
No doubt there were enough northern senators to pass the law, if all northern senators voted for it, which seems unlikely since it was a Republican issue. Since only 31 of the 68 senators were Republican, they would have been in a minority and unable to pass the bill without Democrat party support, which would have no doubt watered down any terms significantly. This is leaving filibustering and other parliamentary maneuvers out of the equation. Bottom line - the Morrill tariff has been used as a southern excuse for secession ever since secession failed. It was hardly used at all in this way at the time, as with rare exceptions the southerners themselves cited threats to the institution of slavery as their reason for seceding.
The operation of these tariffs was to tax consumers in the South and West, pro rata upon what manufactures they purchased of the East, and, by so doing, to increase Eastern capital at the expense of these two sections.
I'm not an economist, so I'm not able to poke the appropriate holes in this argument. I suspect, however, that it is ridiculously simplistic.
I would also like to point out that southern apologists can hardly be considered more reliable to prove a point than Wikipedia. Also, the very quote you use shows that the Northwest was affected as much by the tariff as was the South. All non-manufacturers were equally affected, throughout the Union. A New England farmer paid the same "tax" to his New England manufacturer neighbor as a South Carolina planter.
If tariffs were not used to raise money, some other system of taxation would have had to be used. What did southerners of the time propose as a more equitable system of taxation?
Protective tariffs were first promoted by Henry Clay (a southerner and slaveowner) during and after the War of 1812. The Union was severely embarassed during this war by the fact that so many manufactures had been imported from the enemy, hampering the war effort. I find it highly amusing that most of the pro-south apologists of today think protective tariffs were an abomination in 1860, when US manufactures were less competitive, but somehow are just the ticket today.
The agreement between Washington and SC occurred on 12/9/1860. Sumter was attacked on 4/12/1861. Anderson knew for 5 months that he wasn't supposed to reinforce Sumter. Why he suddenly chose to reinforce is obvious. To carry out Lincoln's desire for hostilities.
Please explain how this problem would be more efficiently handled without violence over an international than a state boundary.
It's called a 'treaty'.
Of course, I doubt the north would have honored any treaty struck with the Confederacy. The American Indians can tell you all about that.......
Any decisions about whether to reinforce Sumter were made in DC by the President and Cabinet. All Anderson could do was wait to be informed about decisions made by others.
Of course, I doubt the north would have honored any treaty struck with the Confederacy. The American Indians can tell you all about that.......
I've noticed this oddity about southern apologists before. The North is held responsible for all the violated treaties before 1861, even though the Union was disproportionately controlled by southerners during this period, and that the most egregious violations of treaties occurred in the South, at southern insistence and to placate southerners, and under Jackson, a slaveowner himself.
Jackson even refused to obey a Supreme Court ruling that the treaties with the Cherokee must be obeyed.
Yet somehow southern apologists consider the South completely innocent of the broken treaties, with the assumption that the Confederacy would have always honored any treaties it made.
This is remarkably similar to modern liberals. When American liberals did wrong things in the past, it is defined as America's fault, not the fault of liberals. Thus liberals (or southerners) have never done anything wrong in our entire history.
Can you provide something to back that up? I've seen other sites - Link - that say adjusted for inflation imports remained about the same. What you posted seems to be talking about net imports over exports.
Hardly. Fugitive slave laws were federal laws, and it was up to the federal government to enforce. Individual states could not be made to enforce them, and Congress granted federal authorities all the powers they needed for enforcement.
Northern congress critters passed the Morrill Tariff that extracted money from the South to pay for Northern jobs and protect Northern industry.
The Morrill Tariff hit the South no harder than it hit the North. And would not have been passsed in the first place had the South not gone off and rebelled.
The Federal government was not adequately protecting Texas from indians or invasion from Mexico, constitutionally the job of the Federal government.
Considering that
For more than ten years prior to the rebellion the Secretary of War had been a Southerner - Charles Conrad, Jefferson Davis, and John Floyd. For 9 of the 11 years the Speaker of the House had been a Southerner - Howell Cobb, Linn Boyd, James Orr. Half the presidents had been Southerners, and the other two had Southern sympathies. Most committees were headed by Southerners. If Texas did not have adequate protection then they have only Southern leaders to blame.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary, the North wanted to reserve the territories to free white settlers (Lincoln's words as I remember), the constituents of Northern politicians.
A gross misstatement. Southerners were fine with blacks in the territories so long as they were property. They weren't thrilled with free blacks anywhere.
It is easy to see the North's interest in retaining the South in the Union despite there being no Constitutional prohibition against secession.
But as the Supreme Court pointed out there is a Constitutional prohibition against unilateral secession.
Don't be upset. Random insults directed at people who dare disagree with him is the cowboy way.
They didn't. Their rebellion failed.
That's called War...
Indeed it is. And war, as the wise man once said, is hell. So why are you bitching and complaining because the war the South began came back to them?
What do you mean by the "so-called Confederacy"? Is this another example of denial?
I believe he's talking about the confederacy, small 'c'. Since it wasn't a country then it isn't a proper noun.
Leaving aside the financial squeeze fairy take, when, exactly, did Lincoln or any other Northern leader threaten the South with the abolition of it's slavery?
The Constitution is not a suicide pact and if you are indeed 'wideawake', then you need to wrap your mind around that.
It's not a license to steal, either.
So by your own admission the rebel attempts to starve the fort into surrender violated this alleged agreement.
Except that it wasn't their soil to begin with.
They fired on more than one ship before that, yet no cause for war.
Third time was a charm for them.
A lot of that going around:
"Firing on that fort will inagurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen...At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend in the North...You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong; it is fatal." - Robert Toombs, April 1861.
Which was violated by the South when they seized Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinkney, and the Charleston armory later that same month.
I have a lot of sympathy for the vanquished who lost their human chattel to the agression of the north.
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