THE SOUTHERN REBELLION: EVERYTHING QUIET AT CHARLESTON; THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY: ITS INNATE IMPOSSIBILITY (1/12/1861)

New York Times archives – Times Machine ^ | 1/12/1861

[Homer_J_Simpson]

The excitement here has somewhat abated, in consequence of pacific news from Washington. The enlistment of soldiers goes on, but all is quiet. The Legislature did nothing to-day.

The steamship Marion will resume her regular trips, to New-York.

HENRY W. CONNER, a member of the South Carolina Convention, died at 6 o'clock this evening. He was a banker, doing business at Charleston and New-Orleans.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

https://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:homerjsimpson/index?tab=articles

To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.

Link to previous New York Times thread

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3923912/posts

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

The Southern Rebellion: Everything Quiet at Charleston – 2-4
Our Washington Dispatches – 4-6
The Southern Confederacy: Its Innate Impossibility – 6-7
The Negro Plot in Alabama – 7-8
Murder by a Negro in Brooklyn – 8
Editorial: The Cabinet a Unit! – 8
Editorial: Southern Free-Trade and Drawback Duties – 8
Editorial: Duty of the Border States – 8-9
Editorial: Destitution at the North – 9-10
Editorial: The Star of the West – 10
Reliance of the South on Foreign Powers – 10-11
Provisions in Charleston – 11
Editorial: The Duty of Providing for the Poor – 11

[PGalt]

MAGAHOMERKAG

[PGalt]

If we don’t know our own history, then we simply will have to endure all of the same mistakes, all of the same sacrifices, all of the same absurdities over again - times ten. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[L,TOWM]

160 years ago and yet...

[BroJoeK]

"Editorial: Southern Free-Trade and Drawback Duties – 8"

Over several years now, and many threads, we have argued long and hard about the threat and consequences of potential Confederate "free trade".
Some claim this was the "real reason" for Lincoln's "war fleet" to Charleston -- to collect tariffs and insure there'd never be "free trade" with the Confederacy.

So it is most interesting to notice that people in January 1860 were also pondering what Confederate "free trade" might mean, and they were not as yet overawed by it.
Here is a sample from the above editorial:

"It is well known that under our drawback laws we import through New York a very large proportion of English goods consumed in Canada, which can be imported through our merchants much more conveniently, expeditiously, and cheaply than by direct trade.
The same rule will apply, and with much greater force, to the "new Southern Confederacy" as soon as it may be formed, for the reason that it has no ships, and never can have any, while the Canadians are eminently a commercial people.

"Throughout the world, commerce tends irresistibly to concentration in grand centres, and it is obvious enough that the importations for all North America will continue to converge towards New-York, because they have increasingly done so hitherto.
The reasons for this are numerous and well understood by merchants -- intelligent men.
Not one of these reasons will lose its force by the working of secession.
The Southern merchant will be bound by the same considerations of economy as now, to select from the concentrated imports of all the world, massed in New York, what he wants for his limited local market.
It will only be by such a system of bounties as would speedily bankrupt the guaranteeing Governments, or by a discriminating legislation against imports through New York, that this powerful tendency of foreign trade could be resisted or deflected.
Such discriminations would be half hostile in character, and too unfriendly in spirit and costly in practice to be long maintained.
Trade having freely found its most advantageous channels, every forced departure therefrom will be at the cost of Southern buyers, who will soon find that they are taxing themselves overmuch by every measure restraining the cheapest buying of what they want, and the dearest selling of their surplus products.

"The share of Northern manufactures hitherto sold in southern markets, will, for a time at least, be seriously curtailed by secession and the animosities incident to it; though not nearly so much as Southern people seem to believe.
The bare fact that New York will remain their best market for buying imports will powerfully favor the simultaneous sale of home manufactures to Southern merchants.
A large part of Northern manufactures are quite able now to compete with foreign goods on equal terms, and without duties, as the amount of exported United States manufactures shows.
The single fact that Northern products are originally in the great American market without importation and shipment expenses, will give quite protection enough to enable most of them to hold their place in Southern markets, even under free-trade rule.
On the whole, secession, if peaceful, will, we opine, work very little permanent change in the course of trade, unless it be by the destruction of Southern credit throughout the world.

Admittedly, this is an optimistic view, with some important caveats, however please notice that New York editorial writers do not here think military force at all necessary to maintain New York's preeminent commercial positions.

[DiogenesLamp]

I mostly stay away from the Homer J. Simpson threads because they are terrible to load and take forever. It's just too hard to have any sort of discussion when the page loading takes forever.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

It got a lot better for me after I upgraded my equipment.

[x]

Interesting speculation by the newspaper that the secessionists did not want the border states. That goes against what actually happened in the war, when the Confederate Army moved into Kentucky, but the Times' logic was that the secessionists would want a buffer layer of slave states. Slaves escaping from the South wouldn't automatically become free, but would be subject to being captured by slavers in Kentucky and Maryland. That's also questionable, but it does go against the idea expressed a few years back that slavery would die in the Confederacy because slaves only needed to cross the Ohio rather than the Canadian border to be free.

Also, interesting snippet about Susan B. Anthony and a women's movement meeting declaring support for the Union and being broken up by a mob.

[DiogenesLamp]

I don't have high speed internet. I work through an RF link system and I think the top speed they guarantee is like 135 kbps.

Large pages load slow. I find your threads interesting, but they take forever to load.

[FLT-bird]

The pathetic obsession continues.....