Posted on 12/22/2019 4:23:47 AM PST by Bull Snipe
“The founding fathers revolted, they never claimed anything else or expected England to just let them go. So did the southern rebels but they claimed to be legally leaving by secession. A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution.”
That is an interesting comment.
Can you show me in the Declaration of Independence where you find the word revolted? Or rebellion?
Their wrong and Your wrong. You don’t have to replace an entire government in a revolution. From Merriam-Webster.
Revolution-a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system.
Once the founding fathers won their rebellion they replaced the English system with the articles of confederation and then the constitution. The southern rebels would have replaced the US Constitution with the Confederate Constitution.
You sound like Clinton, it depends on what the definition of is is.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,”
Throwing off a government is a violent act.
Can you show me in the Declaration of Independence where they use the word secession or that they expected England to just let them go?
That is a great answer to some question, but not to the question I have asked you.
Again, can you show me in the Declaration of Independence where you find the word revolted? Or rebellion?
What government were they trying to overthrow? And i'm using the word "overthrow" in the context of Napoleon overthrowing Louis XVI, or Lenin overthrowing Tsar Nicholas II.
Meaning the "overthrown" end up dead once the "overthrowing" is complete. You know, like in an actual "revolution."
What government were they trying to "overthrow"?
The southern rebels would have replaced the US Constitution with the Confederate Constitution.
I don't think they had any intention of making New York, Massachusetts or any of the other Northern states live under the Confederate constitution. They could continue living under the US constitution so long as they wished. Therefore the US Constitution would not have been "replaced." It would still be in effect for those states that wanted it.
i answered it. Not my fault you cant see it. can you show me in the DoI, ir in any founding fathers writings at the time of the revolution that they used used the word secession?
Fortunately Erik von Klinkbat doesn’t call the shots.
Read the definition. Or social system in favor of a new one. The US Constitution was the social order in the southern states, they wished to replace it with the confederate constitution. It’s not a hard concept.
The founding fathers believed they had a right to independence and went so far as to create and publish something called the Declaration of Independence.
The founding fathers asserted in the Declaration “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . .”
They asserted they had “certain unalienable Rights . . .”
They spoke of the “Right of the People to alter or to abolish it(government) . . .”
Further, “the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . .”
Comes now Brother OIFVeteran to assert the founding fathers had no right to call it the Declaration of Independence. “There is no natural right to independence,” posted Brother OIFVeteran.
I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of automatically accepting everything I read on the internet.
You are saying that by leaving the control of Washington DC, they would "change" the social order in the South?
What was going to change? What was going to be different than the way things were while they were part of the US?
That would be tariffs and taxes. The historical record has been sanitized, so it is understandable that most have never heard of the crony-capitalist-corruption of the Whigs. I certainly had not.
There is no doubt our nation has suffered from such schemes, even today; but few understand that the corruption began with Alexander Hamilton, progressed under Henry Clay, and exploded under Lincoln.
I will repost some of the historical evidence. We will begin with portions of the Georgia Secession Declaration:
"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day.
"Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency.
"The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence.
"These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country. But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded—the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all."
["Georgia Secession Declaration." Avalon Project, Jan 29, 1861]
The unfair crony schemes were mostly eliminated under the Polk administration; but the Morrill Tariff returned the economy to Northern-targeted cronyism, as explained here in this short history lesson:
"As president [James Polk, who defeated the protectionist Henry Clay,] delivered on his promise in 1846 when, under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Robert J. Walker, Congress adopted a comprehensive overhaul of the tariff system featuring a moderate downward revision of rates and, importantly, the standardization of tariff categories on a tiered ad valorem schedule.
"This final feature was intended to improve the transparency of the tariff system by consolidating the somewhat convoluted list of tariff items, itself the product of many decades of lobbying and the carving out of highly specialized categories as political favors for specific companies and industries. By converting the tariff from a system that relied primarily on itemized specific duties or individually assigned ad valorem rates to a formal tiered schedule of ad valorem categories in which tariffs were assessed as a percentage of the import 's declared dollar value, Walker further limited the ability of special interests of all stripes to disguise tariff favoritism in units of volume and measurement—different tariff rates assessed by tons of iron, gallons of alcohol, yards of cord and so forth.
"The Walker reforms helped to stabilize many years of fluctuating tariff politics by instituting a moderately free trade Tariff-for-revenue system that lasted, subject to a further uniform reduction of rates in 1857, until the eve of the Civil War…
"Between December 1858 and March 1860, Morrill was inundated with letters from manufacturers and industrialists requesting favorable protective tariff rates against their foreign competitors. Many of these petitions were copied verbatim into the text of the tariff bill. The Morrill schedule also replaced the ad valorem schedule system of Walker with the reintroduction of item-by-item rates. The new schedule utilized an ad hoc mixture of individual ad valorem rates and specific duties, assessed by import units rather than volume, making its administration less transparent. While it is difficult to measure the full effect of the revisions given this change of assessment, Morrill 's equivalent rates pushed most items well above the 1846 schedule and, in several instances, to near-parity with the Black Tariff levels of 1842."
[Phillip W. Magness, "Tariffs and the American Civil War." Essential Civil War Curriculum, 2017, pp.6,8]
As aforementioned, that corrupt scheme of patronage was/is implemented by a method commonly known as "lobbying," a term supposedly coined by President Grant. Under that scheme, the beneficiaries are both the corrupt politicians, and the clients of the lobbyists who make deals with those politicians (, and, of course, the lobbyists themselves.)
As I now understand it, Southern growers, who were mostly exporters, could not benefit under the protection scheme due to Constitutional restrictions on export tariffs, while the bulk of federal expenditures of tax/tariff revenue went to the Northern states. It was a lose-lose situation.
Mr. Kalamata
I have only recently (last three years) had an interest in Civil War matters, and I did not initially recognize what was going on. It was the discovery of the map showing the tariff collections in the United States, coupled with a chart I had found from the book "Southern Wealth and Northern Profit" that made me realize something didn't make sense.
It took me a year or so to realize it, but what I did realize is that the Northern coalition had rigged congressional laws to funnel all the South's trade income through their hands. They were making 60% of the profits from all Southern production.
It took me a little longer to figure out that the businessmen behind all these profits had the ear of the Corporate Lawyer who became President, and they could get him to act on their interests, which was at that time to keep the Southern money funneling through their pockets.
Slavery they did not care about. They cared that the money flow remained as it was. This explains why Lincoln had no problem accepting the Corwin amendment, even though that greatly contradicts what he was later known for in abolishing slavery.
What explains all this? Crony Capitalism. The sort of which I had never heard or contemplated til the corrupt Obama (The other race obsessed Liberal lawyer from Illinois) got into office and started feathering the nests of all his friends and connections.
My point, to which I have finally gotten, is that I arrived at the "Crony Capitalism" explanation for the Civil war, independently of you, and independently of anyone influencing me in this direction. I realized it just by looking at the trade and tariff data coupled with other things that didn't make sense. (Such as Lincoln supporting the Corwin amendment.)
And this corrupt system is still running Washington DC today, and it explains why all the New York based media are heavily propagandizing for the other side.
Trump is fighting the "Crony Capitalists" and he's interfering with their graft schemes, and this is why they hate him so very much.
What direct taxes were levied by the Federal Government on Southern states?
One can easily find the Treasury Department reports for the period before the Civil War, and I challenge you to point to the bulk of the government spending going to the north. In 1859, the government took in $82 million (and had $6 million left from the year before). They spent $4.7 million on the Interior Department, which they specify as "Indians and pensions." $23 million to the Army, the bulk of which at the time was in the west, specifically in Texas. Another $17 million to the Navy. Another $17 million was service on debt. $6 million supported the entire bureaucracy of the US--executive, legislative, and judiciary, including the territories. $1 million went to supporting embassies abroad (there's also a line item of $10,000 for "Expensess in acknowledging the services of masters and crews of foreign vessels in rescuing American citizens &c., from shipwreck"). A lot of the rest was spent on odds and ends like surveying the Florida Keys and California Islands, surveying the borders of the US, and building an insane asylum and penitentiary in DC.
This tale that the north was getting all the government spending simply does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Jeffersondem, have you ever read this?
LINCOLN'S LEGAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST SECESSION
Lincoln set forth his views on secession mainly in his First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861), and his Special Message to Congress (4 July 1861). In the first speech, Lincoln made primarily political arguments against secession, apparently hoping to persuade secessionists with his arguments. However, with secession already accomplished by 4 July 1861, Lincoln's Special Address to Congress focused on the alleged illegality of secession, to establish the legitimacy of his intended military resistance to it. This paper will therefore first consider the Special Message's legal arguments against secession, then the First Inaugural's political arguments against secession.
In his Special Message to Congress, President Lincoln called the doctrine of the secessionists "an insidious debauching of the public mind." He said,
"They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other state.
Ironically, it was not "fire-eating" southern rebels who had originated this "sophism," but the man Lincoln called "the most distinguished politician in our history"—Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who called Virginia his "country," planted the seeds of the secession doctrine when he wrote his Kentucky Resolution of 1798, in protest to the Alien and Sedition laws:
"The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for general purposes, delegated to that government certain powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect.
Hannis Taylor called Jefferson's compact doctrine the "Pandora's Box" out of which flew the "closely related doctrines of nullification and secession," which he notes, with less than perfect foresight, "were extinguished once and forever by the Civil War." Jefferson's biographer, Willard Sterne Randall agrees:
"[Jefferson] forthrightly held that where the national government exercised powers not specifically delegated to it, each state "has an equal right to judge... the mode and measure of redress."... He was, he assured Madison, "confident in the good sense of the American people," but if they did not rally round "the true principles of our federal compact," he was "determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness."
Lincoln, in reply to this "insidious debauching of the public mind," constructs a straw-man secessionist argument:
"This sophism derives much-perhaps the whole-of its currency, from the assumption, that there is some omnipotent, and sacred supremacy, pertaining to a State-to each State of our Federal Union."
No secessionist, including Jefferson, ever made such an argument, though it sounds ominously like a description of Lincoln's own feelings about the Union. Since the states created the Union, Lincoln's denigration of the states and glorification of the Union is paradoxical.
Lincoln challenges the claim of reserved state powers by asserting that no state, except Texas, had ever "been a State out of the Union." In fact, Lincoln argues that the states "passed into the Union" even before 1776; united to declare their independence in 1776; declared a "perpetual" union in the Articles of Confederation two years later; and finally created the present Union by ratifying the Constitution in 1788. There are many problems with his argument.
Lincoln confuses no fewer than four different concepts of union. Prior to 4 July 1776, the colonies were united by their increasing concern over the violation of their rights by the British government. Their representatives met in a Continental Congress which ultimately issued the Declaration of Independence and organized the Revolutionary War effort. Prior to 1776, no issue of secession from a union could have arisen because the colonies still considered themselves part of Great Britain. Neither were there any legal documents agreed to by the Continental Congress which directly or indirectly addressed the issue of secession. Thus, any union that existed prior to 1776 is of no importance at all to the issue of secession.
Next comes the union created by the Declaration of Independence. The most notable fact in this context is that the Declaration announces a lawful secession by the colonies from Great Britain based on the right of the people to alter or abolish their form of government. It is thus apparent that the Declaration of Independence establishes that the right of secession is among the inalienable rights of men. The Declaration is, therefore, literally the last place on earth one would hope to find legal justification for a war against secession. It was adopted by representatives of the thirteen colonies, and declared that those colonies had become "Free and Independent States." However, the Declaration was not a constitution, establishing any particular type of union among the states, or specifying any duties binding on them other than a moral commitment to mutually defend their newly declared independence.
Ironically, the past "train of abuses" Thomas Jefferson cited in support of secession reads like a checklist of the tactics Lincoln and his successors used against the South to prevent secession:
"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.... He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone.... He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world. For imposing Taxes on us without consent. For depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by Jury. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coast, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny."
The next union cited by Lincoln is the government established by the Articles of Confederation, which were ratified on 1 March 1781. Perhaps the most significant fact about the Articles is that they specify, both in the preamble and in the body, that the union thus created is "perpetual." Article XIII states:
"The Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united states, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state.
In contrast, however, Article II makes clear that "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." This sentence is divided into two clauses, the first speaking of states retaining their sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and the second reserving to the states those powers and rights not expressly delegated to the United States.
Resolving the apparent conflict between Article II and Article XIII as it respects the issue of secession is unnecessary for our purposes. Suffice it to say that the Articles expressed a desire for perpetual union, while recognizing the independence of states, and omitting any clear mandate or enforcement mechanism that prevents state secession. They also established a decentralized federal system without a strong executive power which apparently failed to arouse any secessionist impulses in its short tenure.
The union established by the Articles of Confederation, in spite of its exhortation of perpetuity, was terminated by nothing other than a secession! The proposed Constitution provided that it would take effect upon ratification by nine states. On 21 June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify. On that date, a new union was formed, exclusive of Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island, which had not yet ratified. That new union seceded from the union formed by the Articles of Confederation in violation of Article XIII, which barred any alteration in the Articles save by unanimous consent.
Significantly, the exhortation of perpetuity from the Articles—which was repeated five times—was dropped by the new Constitution. In response to this embarrassing fact, Lincoln argues that the phrase "a more perfect union" in the preamble implies at least the perpetuity of the Articles. Evidently, the Framers either disagreed or chose to be silent on the matter. (Indeed, common sense suggests that perpetual-forced-unions are less perfect than consensual ones, about which more later.) Their omission is especially significant since the term "perpetuity" was part of the full name of the Articles: "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union." Thus, the Framers could not have missed the term.
More importantly, a comparison of the two texts reveals, contrary to popular thought, that much copying was done by the Framers of the Constitution. Entire clauses from the Articles were imported virtually word for word into the Constitution. Examples include the following clauses: privileges and immunities, extradition, full faith and credit, congressional immunity while in session, ban on state treaties, and ban on state imposts and duties. The Framers were clearly conversant with the text of the Articles, yet no mention of perpetuity appears in the Constitution.
Neither does the Constitution explicitly say anything about state secession. The word "secession" does not appear in the Constitution. The Constitution neither prohibits a state from leaving the union nor explicitly authorizes a state to do so. Nor does it explicitly authorize the federal government to forcibly retain a state that has seceded.
Secession was apparently not discussed at the Constitutional Convention. This may have been a deliberate omission:
"It would have been inexpedient to have forced this issue in 1787, when the fate of any sort of a central government was doubtful. But [this] subject [was] probably not even seriously considered at that time.
President Buchanan later argued that if states had the right to secede, all that anti-federalist concern about potential federal tyranny was pointless. This is a clever, but strange, legal argument. It uses circumstantial evidence to establish what certain opponents of the Constitution might have thought it meant on a point which was not widely discussed or considered at that time. Such a method of constitutional interpretation is tertiary at best. This article relies primarily on textual analysis and secondarily on consideration of the purposes of the drafters and ratifiers and their historical circumstances. It is not at all clear why what opponents of the Constitution might have thought it meant should be a criterion of interpretation.
Even if it is considered important, however, there are still problems with the argument, since many historians have concluded that most people of the time believed the states retained the right to secede. Since the Constitution expanded the powers of the federal government, omission from it of any mention of secession or perpetuity certainly removes a potential source of opposition to ratification.
Another problem with Buchanan's argument is that its initial premise is dubious. That is, it assumes that if a right to secession existed under the proposed Constitution, opposition to it would have been less severe. However, even if the Constitution explicitly allowed states to secede, opponents of a strong federal government nevertheless had strong incentive to oppose it for the simple reason that the new Constitution meant the death of the minimalist Articles of Confederation. Finally, even if antifederalists believed that the states retained the right to secede under the new Constitution, they could well have thought-with perfect foresight-that the federal government would nevertheless ignore that right, and use military force to prevent such a lawful secession. Thus, Buchanan's argument is mere sophistry.
This review of the legal history of the states contradicts Lincoln's claim that the states had always been part of a superior union which implicitly forbade secession. In fact, such a claim is preposterous. At various times, the states had been loosely joined for their common defense without a constitution, while at other times, certain states had been left entirely out of the union. The very birth of the states as independent entities took place when they ratified a Declaration of Independence which enshrined a right of secession as an inalienable right of the people of each of the states."
[James Ostrowski, "Was The Union Army's Invasion Of The confederate States A Lawful Act? an Analysis Of President Lincoln's legal Arguments Against Secession," in David Gordon (editor,) "Secession, State, and Liberty." Transaction Publishers, 1998, pp.159-164]
I highly recommend that book, and in particular the remainder of Ostrowski's 35-page article (pages 155-190.) Other topics in the article include, "Was the Invasion Justified by the Seizure of Fort Sumter?"; "A Thought Experiment"; "Lincoln's Political Arguments Against Secession"; and "Legal Developments Since 1861."
Mr. Kalamata
Thanks for mentioning that book! It is pre-Civil War (which makes it difficult to "scrub,") and it can be freely downloaded here:
Mr. Kalamata
The year of 1859 was in what could be considered a "grace period," between the Polk and Morrill tariffs -- a period of rather free trade, and less government surplus. But rather than quibble over context, check out this publication by the aforementioned Northern political economist:
"From the earliest period of the government the federal revenues have been derived from duties on goods imported. The duties have not been levied with a single view to revenue, but have been so adjusted as to afford the largest protection to Northern manufactures. In other words, to tax the consumers of goods West and South for the support of Eastern manufactures. The amount of customs so collected in the past 70 years reaches 1100 millions of dollars, a large portion of which was disbursed at the North. This sum has been paid mostly by the South and West into the federal treasury, on goods imported. The sum of these may be 20 per cent, of the quantity home manufactured, and the value of which has been increased in the ratio of the duty. If, however, it is assumed that the home-made goods have been enhanced in value only to the extent of the customs revenue, then the Eastern manufacturers have obtained 1100 millions of dollars as tribute from the South and West. That large sum has been taken from agricultural industry and added to manufacturing industry. The fisheries of the Eastern States drew $5,000,000 as bounties paid to those engaged in them, out of the federal treasury, to the date of the abolition of those bounties. The North enjoyed a monopoly of the carrying trade, foreign vessels being excluded. These, and other circumstances drew the surplus capital from the agriculturist into the coffers of the manufacturer. The accumulation of capital thus brought about, became invested in stocks, banks, insurance companies, all of which drew large profits on credits granted to the other sections. The North has $600,000,000 so invested, of which $356,318,000 are in banks alone, which draws $60,000,000 per annum from the earnings of the other sections. The frequent pilgrimages from all sections to the Eastern cities for the purchase of goods, and in pursuit of pleasure, form a large item of cost charged upon goods, that is paid by the consumer."
[Thomas Prentice Kettell, "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits - as exhibited in statistical facts and official figures, showing the necessity of union to the future prosperity and welfare of the Republic." George W. and John A. Wood, 1860, pp.126-127]
Kettle was a highly-respected economist in those days.
BTW, public works expenditures overwhelmingly favored the North.
Mr. Kalamata
I am not sure if there were any direct taxes. The Constitution allowed a direct tax based on population, via a census (Article I.2.3, I.9.4;) but I have no source that implies they were collected on a continuous basis. The chief revenue tool was the tariff. It appears the South also considered the increase in the cost of goods sold, such as "carrying trade," to be a tax:
"By mere supineness, the people of the South have permitted the Yankees to monopolize the carrying trade, with its immense profits. We have yielded to them the manufacturing business, in all its departments, without an effort, until recently, to become manufacturers ourselves. We have acquiesced in the claims of the North to do all the importing, and most of the exporting business, for the whole Union. Thus, the North has been aggrandised, in a most astonishing degree, at the expense of the South. It is no wonder that their villages have grown into magnificent cities. It is not strange that they have 'merchant princes, ' dwelling in gorgeous palaces and reveling in luxuries transcending the luxurious appliances of the East! How could it be otherwise? New York city, like a mighty queen of commerce, sits proudly upon her island throne, sparkling in jewels and waving an undisputed commercial scepter over the South. By means of her railways and navigable streams, she sends out her long arms to the extreme South; and, with an avidity rarely equaled, grasps our gains and transfers them to herself—taxing us at every step—and depleting us as extensively as possible without actually destroying us. Meantime, the South remains passive—in a state of torpidity—making cotton bales for the North to manufacture, and constantly exerting ourselves to increase the production as much as possible. We have no ships in the foreign carrying trade, or very few indeed… Lastly, let us at once begin the business of direct importation and direct exportation, and thus keep at home the millions of dollars which we annually pay to the North. The business of direct importation and direct exportation would, of course, build up, as if by the wand of a magician, splendid Southern cities of commercial grandeur and opulence; and thus we might become the most happy, prosperous, wealthy and intelligent people upon whom the sun has ever smiled. All this we should do—not in spitefulness— not in a spirit of envy—not with a view of breaking the ties of national Union—not with a design of engendering sectional animosity, but in obedience merely to the dictates of enlightened sectional policy, and in obedience to that universal principle, so well understood and acted upon by our Yankee friends, of consulting our own pecuniary interests, and adding to our general and individual pecuniary emoluments."
[Vicksburg Daily Whig, January 18, 1860, in Dwight Lowell Dummond, "Southern Editorials on Secession." The Century Co., 1931, pp. 13-14, 15]
This one also alludes to a federally-promoted Northern monopoly on "carrying trade" (transportation of goods,) but also mentions bounties and other factors:
"[W]e think it can be easily shown, though not within the narrow limits of a newspaper article, that the whole policy of the Federal Government, from the beginning has been to build up and enrich the North at Southern expense. In this business that monster engine, a high Protective Tariff, has been the chief instrument. It has enabled the North to do nearly all the importing and exporting business of the country, with immense profit. Besides the Tariff, we have fishing bounties, and navigation laws, and the giving away the public lands, millions of acres at a time, all of which tend to aggrandize the Northern section of the Union."
[New Orleans Daily Crescent, June 15, 1860, in Dwight Lowell Dummond, "Southern Editorials on Secession." The Century Co., 1931, p.127]
This Northern editorial focused exclusively on the protective tariff:
"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."
[Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860, in Howard Ceil Perkins, "Northern Editorials on Secession." American Historical Association, 1942, P.573]
This one from early 1861 implies a blockade of Southern ports was in order to protect Northern revenue, mentioning changes in both interstate trade, as well as the tariff:
"One of the most important benefits which the Federal Government has conferred upon the nation is unrestricted trade between many prosperous States with divers productions and industrial pursuits. But now, since the Montgomery [Confederate] Congress has passed a new tariff, and duties are exacted upon Northern goods sent to ports in the Cotton States, the traffic between the two sections will be materially decreased.... Another, and a more serious difficulty arises out of our foreign commerce, and the different rates of duty established by the two tariffs which will soon be in force..."
"The General Government,... to prevent the serious diminution of its revenues, will be compelled to blockade the Southern ports... and prevent the importation of foreign goods into them, or to put another expensive guard upon the frontiers to prevent smuggling into the Union States. Even if the independence of the seceding Commonwealths should be recognized, and two distinct nations thus established, we should still experience all the vexations, and be subjected to all the expenses and annoyances which the people of Europe have long suffered, on account of their numerous Governments, and many inland lines of custom-houses. Thus, trade of all kinds, which has already been seriously crippled would be permanently embarrassed..."
"It is easy for men to deride and underestimate the value of the Union, but its destruction would speedily be followed by fearful proofs of its importance to the whole American people."
[Philadelphia Press, March 18, 1861, in Stampp, Kenneth M., "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69]
That is only a small fraction of the narrative from those days; but, in general, it was understood that the tariff and "tax" burden was one-sided, in favor of the North.
Mr. Kalamata
Okay, if you say so. The Annual Treasury Reports are available for every year in US history. Pick one and show the vast expenditures going exclusively to benefit the north.
BTW, public works expenditures overwhelmingly favored the North.
Well, that should be easy for you to show from the Treasury Reports.
So what you are saying is that there was no legally mandated direct tax against Southern states.
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