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 ...
"And I'd be surprised if any of them collected any tariffs there.
Actually, tariffs were collected at all of those locations as well as dozens of others. That comes from the same source that Wise uses in "Lifeline of the Confederacy."
But the question remains, how did the goods arrive at these locations, since you claim that New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were the only places where imports landed.
“Just the facts.”
By whom? King Lincoln cultist
“Nope, they never left. Never out of the Union. Never readmitted as states.”
Next your going to tell us how the Easter bunny really does hide them eggs.
Never left the Union? The why readmit them?
I've never said anything different. It is you who said Lincoln violated the Constitution in the way he funded the Sumter resupply effort. I disagreed with you from the very first and have stated why. Nothing in the Constitution requires Congressional approval on every detail of how the individual branches of government spend the money Congress appropriates for them. Lincoln could not appropriate more money. He could spend money already appropriated.
Again, the money belonged to State, appropriated by Congress. You know that Lincoln did not have authority to either appropriate or move the money.
Ah, so now you're changing your story. First it was appropriate, then move. OK, so I agree that Constitutionally Lincoln could not appropriate money. But show me the clause in the Constitution that says he couldn't move it?
Now you know how I feel reading your posts.
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers are two ways. The Great Lakes are another. I'd be willing to wager that not much in the way of tariffs were collected.
An unsubstantiated quote from a man of the time...
Kettell's claims? Agreed.
They were not "readmitted" to the the Union under the terms of Article III, Sec. 3 of the US Constitution because secession was never recognized so their original admission remained valid.
You are confusing admission to the Union with the US Congress agreeing to seat members from those states after the reconstructed state governments had complied with terms dictated by congress.
Legally, they were never out of the Union, but they were out of the Congress.
How much? Just curious.
As to why any tariffs were collected there at all, you yourself posted the reason - the Warehousing Act of 1846. Good landed in New Orleans and placed in bond could then be sent on to their ultimate customer and the tariff paid at that point. Cairo, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Nashville, all had river traffic. But I doubt that the amount collected came to much.
But the question remains, how did the goods arrive at these locations, since you claim that New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were the only places where imports landed.
You need to go back and reread my posts. I said that the overwhelming majority of imports were landed at those three ports, not 100% of them.
Knoxville looks out of place. Here's what wikipedia has to say about Knoxville's Old Custom House:
The U.S. Customs House was built at a time when Congress was petitioned by cities across the country to provide courtrooms and post offices. Congress was reluctant to provide funding for buildings that only contained judicial and postal functions, so the title Customs House was added. Congress was viewed as more agreeable to providing construction funding if excise taxes collected from foreign imports were linked to projects, since taxes generated revenue.
That may also be true of Cairo and Sandusky.
It appears that the United States Congress was not as sure then as you are now.
Congress had to pass this in July, 90 days after he insituted the invasion and blockades, to provide Lincoln cover:
http://books.google.com/books?id=CM8iAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA440&lpg=PA440&dq=july+1861+%22whenever,+by+reason+of+unlawful+obstructions,+combinations,+or+assemblages+%22&source=bl&ots=txfRxEN6nr&sig=57-lz5wKFc7xSTrG4lYzDfuq8sY&hl=en&ei=eVNWSsiIKOG_twf419HWAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
Legally, They left the Union
The Constitution is a VOLANTARY compact formed by the States.....
Whether them leaving unilateral is a violation of that agreement was vacated by Lincoln choosing force...
And on what page does Klein talk about the Powhatan being disguised?
Incidentally, since you seem to be a big fan of Klein, tariffs get precisely one mention as a cause of sectional tension, clumped together with a couple of others in one sentence. He then spends about 40 pages going over the slavery issue.
Why would you suggest that the ordinances of secession were not 'valid?' And by 'valid,' do you mean constitutional, or do you have some other criterion (or criteria, many of which we've seen you mention, in passing, on previous occasions) that you are applying with regard to this post?
;>)
James Madison observed as much, on May 31, 1787, prior to the ratification of the Constitution, during the debates in the federal convention (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_531.asp):
"Mr. MADISON, observed that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually. -A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
"[S]ectional tension" and tariffs? Has the following been addressed?
"Whereas the Congress of the United States, by various acts, purporting to be acts laying duties and imposts on foreign imports... And, whereas the said Congress, exceeding its just power to impose taxes and collect revenue for the purpose of effecting and accomplishing the specific objects and purposes which the Constitution of the United States authorizes it to effect and accomplish... We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... [That these acts] ... are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers, or citizens... And we, the People of South Carolina, to the end that it may be fully understood by the Government of the United States, and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to maintain this, our Ordinance and Declaration, at every hazard, Do further Declare that we will not submit to the application of force, on the part of the Federal Government, to reduce this State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage, by Congress, of any act ... to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce, or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union: and that the people of this State will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connexion with the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right to do."
- The People of South Carolina, November 24, 1832 (http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/cw/cw207.htm)
The issue of federal tariffs nearly resulted in State secession, almost 30 years prior to 1860. It was a longstanding issue of contention between the southern States and an overreaching federal government. "[S]ectional tension?" Tariffs provided it, in spades, for decades preceding the actual rupture...
In 1833, Mr. Madison spoke much more directly.
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.
Source here
Madison's statement always leads to the forever unanswered question of what the intolerable abuses were in 1860 which lead to secession.
At any rate, my reply to Idabilly was to point out the legal differences between Congress refusing to seat Representatives from a State vs. the Constitutional requirements for state admission in Article III Section 3. The Confederate states were not readmitted to the Union. Their Representatives were readmitted to Congress.
It seems that both of you did not grasp the difference.
Nonsense. Federal property and troops were absolutely federal BEFORE secession, and ANY acts of force against them by definition were "rebellion," "insurrection" and/or "domestic violence." After secession, those properties and troops would no more automatically belong to Southern states than would, for example property owned by a citizen of France.
Federal efforts to reinforce those forts might be problematic, but nearly all had no troops to speak of, and no federal reinforcements were sent by President Buchanan. So their illegal possession by Southern forces constitutes "rebellion," "insurrection" or "domestic violence."
By the way, to my knowledge there were no Southerners of the time who objected to the term "rebellion." But if I'm wrong about that, then just who was "Johnny Reb," and what was a "rebel yell"? ;-)
Nonsense. Seizures of Federal forts BEFORE secession were necessarily illegal acts of rebellion, insurrection or domestic violence -- however they were orchestrated.
The fact that President Buchanan did little or nothing to defend those forts only reflects his earnest intent to avoid bloodshed. It makes the acts themselves no more legitimate than, for example, cooperating with airplane hijackers today makes the hijacking legal.
By contrast, Major Anderson transferring his command from one Federal Fort Moultree to another, Fort Sumter, is of no consequence in this debate.
Again, your argument that those Federal forts necessarily became Southern property on secession is no more valid than saying, for example, that property of a citizen of France automatically became Southern on secession. It does not follow.
If you are going to seriously argue that it was, and rightly should have been "constitutional" to hold slaves in the South, but "unconstitutional" to free runaway slaves in the North, and that the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision was a good one, then I'd suggest you don't belong on Free Republic.
Go post your lunacies where they belong: on Aryan Nation, or some Neo-Nazi site.
The correct answer here is that slavery had to be defeated, period, and that the South's refusal to accept this in any form was the cause and motivation for the Civil War.
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