Posted on 06/09/2009 8:47:35 AM PDT by Davy Buck
My oh my, what would the critics, the Civil War publications, publishers, and bloggers do if it weren't for the bad boys of the Confederacy and those who study them and also those who wish to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy?
(Excerpt) Read more at oldvirginiablog.blogspot.com ...
Oh please. "Lifeline of the Confederacy" quotes a government document that shows that during that period less than $25.5 million in imports were landed at the 6 busiest Southern ports - less that 1/4th of the total you claim. So where were the rest landed? And where were the tariffs collected? And why weren't they landed in the ports closest to the consumers?
Kettell also estimates that the North sent $240,000,000 in domestic goods to the South in 1859.
How did those domestic goods get there?
Yes.
You would agree that foreign imports are moved on board seagoing vessels, right?
Yes.
According to the "Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1860", there were tariff collection houses in places like Oswego, New York; Camden, New Jersey; Augusta, Georgia; Fernandina, Fl; Sandusky, Ohio; Detroit, MI; Cairo, IL; Milwaukee, WI; Knoxville, TN; and many others. So, if your statement of "Point of landing and point of tariff payment are the same" were true, then foreign imports were being direct shipped to places like Knoxville?
Oh it gets better than that. There were customs houses in St. Louis, Memphis, Cincinnati, a lot of places where you wouldn't expect. In all cases they were a post office/customs house and general federal building. And I'd be surprised if any of them collected any tariffs there. Probably sold a lot of stamps, though.
Correct. I've been on the submarine in Seawolf Park in Galveston, and it was a US sub. I've posted that before.
... there was no texas or even a confederate navy and the most powerful weapon on any of these boats was a hunting rifle that was the sole property of one of the crew.
I assume you mean there was no Texas Navy. There'll always be a Texas, LOL. Actually, you'll find there was a Texas Navy too back in the days of the Republic, if you Google it. They used to prey on Mexican shipping. The current day Texas Navy is a ceremonial organization.
I don't know whether Texas' cottonclad river or bayou steamers were part of the Texas Navy or Confederate Navy or just pressed into service when the need arose. Troops on such a steamer captured the Star of the West in Texas in April 1861. No port in Texas was deep enough for her draft, so the Star of the West was sent to the Mississippi River for Confederate naval service.
Two Texas cottonclads took on and captured the mighty Harriet Lane of Charleston fame in Galveston in early 1863. Sharpshooters fired from behind cotton bales on deck (two and three bales deep). The two cottonclads sported heavy guns in addition to the sharpshooters. The Bayou City carried a 32-pounder rifled gun (which exploded during the battle), and the Neptune carried two twenty-four pounder howitzers.
The Neptune was damaged after ramming the Lane and sank in 8 feet of water during the battle. Neptune's sharpshooters fired from the grounded ship at the Lane. The Bayou City was able to ram the Lane and tilt it over. During the ramming the anchor of the Lane deployed. A boarding party from the Bayou City quickly captured the crew of the Lane.
The Union fleet retreated leaving the Federal troops on shore to surrender. Union Admiral Farragut called the Union loss the most shameful incident in the history of the American navy.
Not bad for a bunch of cowboys in a nonexistent navy. I recommend for your reading pleasure, Battle on the Bay by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. This book describes the battle. From it, for example, I learned a piece of information for the long ago consul/diplomat wars of these threads -- there was a consul (a minor diplomatic trade agent) in Galveston before the Union arrived who represented the governments of "Austria, Saxony, Holland, and three other small nations."
.
In April, 1861, the Southern States were either in the Union or out of it.
If the ordinances of secession were not legally valid, then the President was limited by the acts of Congress, which, under the Constitution, had the whole military power.
The only act which authorized him to employ the militia or the regular army to suppress obstruction to the laws was the act of 1807, which required that he must "first observe all the prerequisites of law in that respect." These were the issuance of a writ by a United States judge and a call from the marshal, if he found it impossible to execute the writ. But no call was made upon Lincoln, and only Congress could supply defects in the law.
On the other hand, if the secession ordinances were valid, and the States were out of the Union, then his acts were acts of war, and he as plainly violated his oath, for only Congress can declare war and make the laws necessary thereto. "Abraham Lincoln: Hero or Hellion?" by Lyon Gardiner Tyler
That's easy. They were in it.
If the ordinances of secession were not legally valid, then the President was limited by the acts of Congress, which, under the Constitution, had the whole military power.
Hardly. The Constitution makes the President the commander of the military, not Congress. It is he who tells the military what to do.
The only act which authorized him to employ the militia or the regular army to suppress obstruction to the laws was the act of 1807, which required that he must "first observe all the prerequisites of law in that respect." These were the issuance of a writ by a United States judge and a call from the marshal, if he found it impossible to execute the writ. But no call was made upon Lincoln, and only Congress could supply defects in the law.
I think your confusing the Insurrection Act of 1807 with the 1795 suppliment to the militia acts. The Insurrection act states: "Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion." No need for a judge's order or the request of the state government. No need to get the approval of Congress. Just the authority to suppress insurrection regardless of where it is occuring.
On the other hand, if the secession ordinances were valid, and the States were out of the Union, then his acts were acts of war, and he as plainly violated his oath, for only Congress can declare war and make the laws necessary thereto.
Since they were not valid then the Southern states were not out of the Union. No declaration of war was needed, and Lincoln had authority to act under the laws in place at the time.
You said:"Nonsense is believing the two are unrelated.
You see, you are being absurd again. I did not say that they were unrelated,...I said that you could not define point of final consumption by looking at point of tariff collection.
For example, consider how the issue of import transhipment worked.
By the end of 1860, the city of New York had become a warehousing center of the hemisphere. Based on tariff records, the end of the decade marked the milestone that half of the commerce of the U. S. came through the Port of New York.
It stood at the crossroads of the Atlantic and Pacific, and had been supported by Federal Legislation in the form of the Warehousing Act of 1846.
This policy, which was modeled after a similar British one, acted as a major incentive for merchants to import at one location, warehouse their goods there, and distribute them elsewhere by inter coastal and inland methods at a later date.
It basically allowed merchants to unload their goods into a warehouse and store it there for up to three years without having to pay the tariff on it immediately. The tariff was then collected at a later date when the goods were removed from the warehouse and delivered to the buyer.
The merchant gained from this because he no longer had to provide payment for his cargo as he arrived in port. Before the warehousing act this was a problem because sometimes taxes on the cargo were paid by receipts from its sale after unloading it and merchants did not have excess reserves of cash to pay the tax.
Instead the merchant could simply warehouse it, ship it to buyers in segments, and use the money from each sale to pay the tariff when the good was removed from the warehouse.
After 1846 New York City quickly became the heaviest user of this new warehousing policy because it had the most extensive warehouse capacity and out shipping networks.
To take advantage of warehousing the merchants imported goods into New York City from all over the world not because the consumers were all in New York but because the warehouses were there. After they got to New York they were warehoused until a buyer was found and the tariff was paid.
Then they were loaded up and shipped out again all over the coast and nation.
As I told you, the tariff only raised $63.7 million in 1863.
The public debt of the United States treasury was $65 million in 1860. It passed ONE BILLION in 1863.
You do the math.
Which would be FY 1862 - July 1862 to June 1863. The $102 million figure that Lincoln quoted in his 1864 address to Congress, and which the Statistical Abstract also shows for 1864, was the FY 1863 figures that ended in June 1864.
The public debt of the United States treasury was $65 million in 1860. It passed ONE BILLION in 1863.
Yep. See, there was this rebellion going on at the time, and that sucked up a lot of money. Maybe you heard about it?
The Warehousing Act would explain how distribution points would develop in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia at the expense of ports like Portland, Newport, Dover, and New London. And why tariff collections at the smaller ports were low to non-existent. What it would not explain is why the warehouses were built in New York and Boston if those locations were hundreds of miles away from where the vast majority of those imports were destined. Why land them hundreds of miles away only to load them on ships again and send them South? If most imports were consumed by Southerners then why not warehouses in Charleston or New Orleans? Certainly not due to lack of space. After all, these were the same ports that exported hundreds of thousands of balse of cotton each year, certainly they could have handled imports as well and could have built warehouses to store them. And actually there were warehouses...some. Enough to handle the small demand for imports. But the large scale warehouses were built up North. Because that's where the demand for imported goods was.
It basically allowed merchants to unload their goods into a warehouse and store it there for up to three years without having to pay the tariff on it immediately. The tariff was then collected at a later date when the goods were removed from the warehouse and delivered to the buyer.
And if that buyer was in the South, as you claim, then wouldn't the tariffs be collected there? Upon receipt?
The merchant gained from this because he no longer had to provide payment for his cargo as he arrived in port. Before the warehousing act this was a problem because sometimes taxes on the cargo were paid by receipts from its sale after unloading it and merchants did not have excess reserves of cash to pay the tax.
But he did have to post a bond, which according to the law was twice what the expected duties on the goods were. And the bond was not returned until the goods were sent out of the port. So he did have money or securities tied up. This was not a cost-free system for the importer.
Instead the merchant could simply warehouse it, ship it to buyers in segments, and use the money from each sale to pay the tariff when the good was removed from the warehouse.
No he couldn't. According to the law: "...no merchandise shall be withdrawn from any warehouse in which it maybe deposited, in a less quantity than in an entire package, bale, cask, or box, unless in bulk, nor shall merchandise so imported in bulk be delivered except in the whole quantity of each, parcel, or in a quantity not less than one ton weight, unless by special authority of the Secretary of the Treasury." In other words, the goods had to leave the warehouse in the same quantity as they arrived in.
After 1846 New York City quickly became the heaviest user of this new warehousing policy because it had the most extensive warehouse capacity and out shipping networks.
New York gained from this because they built the warehouses to take advantage of it. These facilities didn't exist before the 1846 act, and could very well have been built in the South. Except that there wasn't the demand for the imports down there.
To take advantage of warehousing the merchants imported goods into New York City from all over the world not because the consumers were all in New York but because the warehouses were there. After they got to New York they were warehoused until a buyer was found and the tariff was paid.
And again, if these buyers were all in the South then wouldn't the tariff have been collected down there upon delivery? Yet it wasn't.
Supporting your Federal despotism again?
States had to consent to conditions as an antecedent to their re-admission to Congress with Senators and Representatives
But-—They never left?
"Deduct from these amounts.......derived from customs...." -- Lincoln Message to Congress, December 1864
The tariff data is incorrect for the purpose you post it.
The President presented the data from the annual departmental report from the Secretary of the Treasury which was cited on your Link.
The "customs" data was computed on gross revenues on all dutible products landing at all tariff houses.
As a matter of procedure, it contained all of the dutible products that were registered upon arrival, including reexport goods that were to be later shipped to other areas such as Central and South America. The Treasury did not subtract re export data, and therefore the information is inflated.
If you want the actual net tariff revenue to the treasury, that was published by the US Customs office. I will be glad to provide it to you if you are interested.
Just the facts.
States had to consent to conditions as an antecedent to their re-admission to Congress with Senators and Representatives. But-—They never left?
Nope, they never left. Never out of the Union. Never readmitted as states.
The revenue information corresponds with the figures quoted in the Statistical Abstract, your own source.
None of that made any sense at all.
At first you argued that Lincoln would not do such a thing.
Then you said....OK, he did it, but he could do exactly what he wanted.
Make up your mind.
None of what you offer in any changes the fact that Lincoln told Seward to take State Department funds to pay for a secret US Navy invasion of Charleston.
You said: "No, because Lincoln and Seward had the right to spend money appropriated by Congress for their budget as they saw fit."
Again, the money belonged to State, appropriated by Congress. You know that Lincoln did not have authority to either appropriate or move the money.
See: "Likewise the majority of imports were landed in Northern ports"
Your errors seem to be outside your level of consciousness.
Pick up a copy of Klein. He details it all for you.
You said: "Duties were collected where the goods were landed, and there were customs houses in any port where imports arrived."
How would they arrive in the places like these?
That is your understanding in today's world. It was different back then.
A quote from a man of the time:
" Now, it is idle for the honorable Senator to tell me that the importations at Charleston and Savannah were small. I know that the merchants have gone from those cities to New York, and bought goods there; that goods are imported into New York are bought there, and then are sent down and deposited at Charleston, New Orleans, and other places. But, in point of fact, here is an enormously large consumption of dutiable articles, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty million. These people make their own provisions mainly, and cotton to sell, and do very little in the way of manufactures. Their manufactured goods came from the United States, or from foreign countries. I put the question to the honorable Senator, how much duty does he think this Government is going to lose by the secession of those States, supposing, of course, that they do not pay us any duties; for if New England goods are to pay the same duty with those of Old England, and Belgium, and France, we all know that the New England goods will be excluded, unless they make up their minds to sell much cheaper than they have been heretofore doing? I was curious, the year before last, in going through Europe, to ascertain, as well as I could, the value of labor and the prices of articles, and I was astonished at the rate at which goods may be purchased all over the continent, compared with similar articles here. The reasons they are not furnished as cheap here, is partly due to the circuitous trade. For example: houses in England purchase up articles in Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy, and make a handsome profit; they then send them to New York, and handsome profits are made there by the wholesale dealers and, finally, they get down south, and in this way they are very high; but the tariff has also operated very largely. That Senator knows, as well as I do, and everybody knows, that if there be direct trade with Europe by these States; if goods are not to go around through New York, and not to pay duties ? and you may be sure they will not go there under his tariff, for nobody will pay a duty of fifty or seventy-five per cent. on what he imports, when he can send the goods to another port for fifteen or nineteen per cent. ? the result will be, that these States certainly will pay this Government no duties at all."
Pure nonsense.
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