Posted on 01/19/2014 5:51:53 AM PST by BigReb555
Show me one reputable link that shows the south had to ship on northern ships.
Why didn't the south build their own ships?
“Show me one reputable link that shows the south had to ship on northern ships”
You need to read the tariff act to find out whats in it. I thought you were a big expert on all things tariff.
Take a few minutes and consult with Sherm/you. :-)
“Why didn’t the south build their own ships?”
Bwahahaha!!! Are you kidding me? How many times have you and sherm/you told everyone that the South had no industry. You were right genuis. Bwahahaa!!!!
This is too easy.
I've said I've had to look at the tariff issue to see what the hell you guys are talking about. I'm no expert and haven't claimed to be one. All I have done is read the facts and post them. And then asked for facts from you, and you have never provided them.
The tariff was passed in 1828. Are you saying the south went from 1828 to 1853 angry that they didn't have ships and never thought to build any?
The tax on cotton was passed by Congress on July 1 1861. It did not become effective until October 1 1862. By the time the tax was passed by Congress, all Southern States had seceded and the war had started.
That tax was passed by Congress 1 July 1861, after the war had started.
It still generated 3 million dollars before the war ended. I guess from border states? Not sure.
tariffs are paid on imports, not exports. There was no “export” tax on cotton. Congress did pass a cotton tax law in July 1861, by that time war had already started
So there were no American ships sailing out of Chesapeake bay in Virginia, Wilmington NC, Charleston SC, Savannah Ga.
Mobile Al, New Orleans La. or Houston Tx.
Not sure either, large areas of TN,&VA and lower LA were occupied by Union forces early in the war, maybe cotton production in these areas produced that much tax money. The states of MO,KY and MD did not produce that much cotton.
should be "claiming"
It passed the Senate by 25 to 14, but only after the seven initial CSA states had seceded
Strictly speaking, the seventh state to secede, Texas, did not officially secede until the specified date of March 2, 1861 (Texas Independence Day, the date of the victory over Santa Ana at San Jacinto) and after Texas voters overwhelmingly approved secession on February 23. The Senate vote you cite was on February 20, before Texas voters, the sovereign voice of the state, approved secession.
Another possible problem comes to mind if Senators from states that had already seceded stayed and blocked the passage of the tariff at least temporarily until the new Senate was sworn in. Would Northern senators have accepted the blockage of the bill by Senators whose states had already seceded. Texas Senator Wigfall stayed in the Senate after March 2 with the excuse that he was waiting for official notification from Texas that they had seceded. There were complaints on the Senate floor that he should no longer be there since his state had seceded. If he had succeeded in blocking something they really wanted (little chance of that) I suspect they would have booted him out. For all I know Wigfall might have left the Senate in March of 1861 under threat of expulsion.
It is also interesting that the measure was signed by Buchanan two days before leaving office. He was, of course, a Democrat.
He was a Democrat from Pennsylvania, a state whose industry would benefit from protective tariffs. That and the fact that he was leaving office is probably why Buchanan signed the bill. A more perverse reason might have been that he may have wanted to stick Lincoln with the tariff because of the later huge problem of loss of federal revenue that arose because of the later differences between the Northern and Southern tariffs. But I doubt he could see that far ahead or was that partisan.
Which one? Is it the Tariff Act of 1790? Tariff Act of 1792? Or 1816? Was it in the Tariff of Abominations in 1828 or the earlier 1824 tariff act? Or was it in one of the others? I'll defer to your expertise on all things tariff and ask that you narrow it down.
Houston didn't become a major port until the 20th century when they dredged out Bufalo Bayou and made the Houston Ship Channel. As a boy I remember seeing all of the old cotton warehouses in the port of Galveston. I think Galveston was the major Texas port when the war started. Galveston was blockaded by the feds during the war. There may have been other blockades of smaller Texas ports as well later in the war.
Prior to the war a lot of cotton (but not all) was shipped from Southern ports in American coastal vessels (mostly Northern owned; foreign vessels could not participate in the coastal trade) to New York, from where it was shipped across the Atlantic or used in Northern mills.
I suspect it was probably more lucrative for Southerners to invest in cotton production than in the shipping trade where the North had long held the dominant position. However, prior to the war there were some shipping firms co-owned by Northerners and Southerners. I'm thinking of a line co-owned by Savannahians and NYC investors. When the war started the North seized or impressed into federal service the ships of that line that were in Northern ports and the South did the same for a ship of that line in the port of Savannah.
Don’t you have school today? Oh I forgot school’s out for MLK day. :-)
May Robert E. Lee’s Memory be Eternal!!!!
I object to the unexamined assumption that had the Morrill Tariff indeed passed prior to secession it would have been a valid justification for seceding.
Any intelligent person at the time knew that secession, while it might not guarantee war, certainly risked it to an extreme degree. So do relatively minor differences in effects of taxation on different sections really justify secession and thereby war that, when it came, eventually killed somewhere over 700k Americans?
If Lincoln and the Union were not justified in waging war to protect this revenue stream, assuming for the moment that was indeed their motivation, was the South justified in risking or precipitating war over the same relatively small amount of money?
Prior to the War the United States as a whole was among the lowest taxed nations in history. If I remember correctly, United States GDP in 1860 was around $12B. Federal government budget that year was $60M. Or about .5% of GDP.
Compare to upwards of 20% today. Was the federal government really that massive or intrusive or expensive with such a budget that secession was essential to protect liberty?
Was the budget going from .5% to .6% or .7% really a valid justification for war?
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