[FLT-bird]

Contrary to the laughable Northern propaganda posted here, "The Confederate States accounted for 70% of total US exports by dollar value. Cotton was the primary export, accounting for 75% of Southern trade in 1860." Stanley Lebergott Why the South Lost:Commercial Purpose in the Confederacy pp. 59–60

by 1860 the Southern states were paying in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs” The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, 2002, ISBN 0-7615-3641-8, page 135-126:

The following are what lawyers call "Statements Against Interest"...ie frank admissions by Northern newspapers at the time admitting that the Southern states are providing the overwhelming share of all exports/imports.

"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861

December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: "In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow." Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860

"It is not a war for Negro Liberty, but for national despotism. It is a tariff war, an aristocratic war, a pro-slavery war." Abolitionist George Basset May 1861 American Missionary Association

Even after the fact, Northerners were saying the same things:

"This question of tariffs and taxation, and not the negro question, keeps our country divided....the men of New York were called upon to keep out the Southern members because if they were admitted they would uphold [ie hold up or obstruct] our commercial greatness." Governor of New York Horatio Seymour on not readmitting Southern representatives to Congress 1866

Foreign sources noticed the same thing:

" If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived … The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union. So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862

But hey, who ya gonna believe - Observers on all sides at the time as well as economists and tax experts who have studied the period....or a PC Revisionist with his little fantasies about how taxes and the economy really work?

[x]

The following are what lawyers call "Statements Against Interest"...ie frank admissions by Northern newspapers at the time admitting that the Southern states are providing the overwhelming share of all exports/imports.

By no means. "The Chicago Times" was a Democrat pro-slavery paper. Their predictions were based on their Southern sympathies and free trade beliefs and did not come to pass.

George Bassett was a "Jeffersonian radical" or militant anti-statist, opposed to government in general (beyond a very minimal state perhaps). He wasn't an economist. He was venting his wrath against government.

The point of the "We must not let the South go" editorial in the Union Democrat was that concessions would bring the slave states back into the union, not that the union should fight to keep the Southern states in the union. They believed that the wealth of their city and the country rested on cotton and textiles, so their stand wasn't "contrary to interest." As it turns out all their predictions were wrong.

Our city owes its origin and growth to the Southern trade—to the Union. We cannot afford to "let the South go," if she may be retained by any fair compromise, as we believe she may be. If the time shall come when the people realize the fact that the Union is permanently dissolved, real estate will depreciate one half in a single year.—Our population will decrease with the decline of business, and matters will go on in geometrical progression from bad to worse—until all of us will be swamped in utter ruin. Let men consider—apply the laws of business, and see if they can reach any different conclusion.

No—we must not "let the South go." It is easy and honorable to keep her. Simply recognize in the neighborhood of states those principles of equity and courtesy which we would scorn to violate in our social relations at home—that is all. Let New Hampshire treat Virginia as we should treat our neighbors. Do we vilify them, watch for chances to annoy them, clear up to the line of the law, and sometimes beyond it, and encourage hostile raids against them? Is that good neighborhood? Then, let not one state practice it against another.

Business, real estate and population didn't fall as a result of secession.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Contrary to the laughable Northern propaganda posted here,

"The Confederate States accounted for 70% of total US exports by dollar value.
Cotton was the primary export, accounting for 75% of Southern trade in 1860."
Stanley Lebergott 'Why the South Lost:Commercial Purpose in the Confederacy' pp. 59–60"

So everyone can see the fake math at work, here's how you get from accurate, roughly 50% of US exports being "Southern Products", to the exaggerated 70% or more as claimed by our pro-Confederate propagandists:

1. $400 million actual total US exports in 1860
   minus $58 million net specie (gold & silver) exports
   = $342 million US merchandise exports

   $342 million is revised from $316 million as incompletely reported on earlier documents.

2. $229 million in claimed "Southern Products" exports
   including $11 million in manufactured cotton products -- Northern Products and
   including $12 million in tobacco produced (of $19 million total) in Union states like Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana.

3. $229 million "Southern Products" divided by $342 million total exports = 67%,
   or $229 million divided by originally reported $316 million = 72%.

That's how they arrive at 70%.
The true number is approximately 50%.

FLT-bird quoting:

"by 1860 the Southern states were paying in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs”
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, 2002, ISBN 0-7615-3641-8, page 135-126:"

That is so mind-bogglingly false, it deserves a Goebbels' Propaganda Award because, in fact:

1. No Southern state ever paid even one penny of any US tariff.

2. All tariffs were paid by citizens, not by states.
   Those citizens might live in the North, South, East or West, but none were acting as officials of their state governments.

3. Over 90% of import tariffs were paid in major Union ports like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Francisco.
   5% was paid at New Orleans, the largest Confederate state port
   1% was paid at all other Confederate ports combined.

4. Suggestions that, somehow, magically -- it was actually Southerners living in Union ports who "paid for" import tariffs -- that's not supported by any evidence or logic, especially when you consider, virtually all imports were bulk raw materials whose customers were manufacturers of woolen, cotton, silk, iron and food products, the vast majority of those in Union states.

5. How then, exactly, do our pro-Confederates claim "the South" paid for import tariffs?
   Well, obviously, you need exports to "pay for" imports, however "Southern products" "paid for" virtually no imports from overseas.

6. By all logic and evidence, nearly 100% of "Southern Products" export income was used to pay directly for "imports" from the North and Western US.

7. Southern "Imports" from the Union consisted mainly of "made in America" commodities:
   • Woolen manufactures
   • Shoes & other leather goods
   • Cotton manufactures
   • Silk products
   • Iron products -- i.e., stoves, farm equipment, railroad
   • Paper
   • Soap and candles
   • Tea
   • Smoked fish
   • Musical instruments
   • Furniture

8. However, in nearly every commodity, Southerners did their own manufacturing as well, including:
   • Flour Mills
   • Carpenters, builders, lumber & cabinet makers
   • Iron workers, including casters & forgers -- i.e., Tredegar (Richmond), Cumberland Furnace (Nashville) and E. Tennessee Iron (Chattanooga).
   • Clothing manufactures from cotton and woolens
   • Hemp products including rope, sacks and paper.
   • Shoes and other leather products

9. Additionally, Southerners "exported" many items to the North, including:
   • Raw cotton
   • Tobacco
   • Sugar
   • Rice
   • Turpentine and other naval stores
   • Hemp products including rope, cloth and paper
   • Livestock

Bottom line: in the years before 1861 there were huge volumes of interstate and inter-regional "exports" and "imports" which thoroughly mixed the earnings of one region with those of the others, such that there's no logical way to claim "The South" (or any other region) "paid for" Federal import tariffs which funded government in Washington, DC.

Finally, before we (thankfully) leave DiLorenzo entirely, we should notice that even he was so embarrassed by the laughable absurdity of this 80% claim that, in later versions of his book, he changed the wording to: Southern states "were paying the Lion's share of all tariffs".
So, it appears that even though DiLorenzo himself is too embarrassed to repeat his absurd 80% claim, our good FRiend FLT-bird is not.

FLT-bird: "The following are what lawyers call "Statements Against Interest"...ie frank admissions by Northern newspapers at the time admitting that the Southern states are providing the overwhelming share of all exports/imports."

In fact, those quotes do no such thing.

FLT-bird quoting: "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods.
What is our shipping without it?
Literally nothing.
The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade.
It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose.
No, we must not let the South go."
The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861"

There's no disputing that Southern cotton was important to New Hampshire textile mills, and so a New Hampshire newspaper will say whatever it needs to, to keep commerce flowing.
Of course, this had nothing directly to do with foreign exports or imports.

Further, typical propagandist -- has taken the quote out of context and so reversed its original meaning.
Here is the real point of that quote:

"No—we must not "let the South go."
It is easy and honorable to keep her.
Simply recognize in the neighborhood of states those principles of equity and courtesy which we would scorn to violate in our social relations at home—that is all.
Let New Hampshire treat Virginia as we should treat our neighbors.
Do we vilify them, watch for chances to annoy them, clear up to the line of the law, and sometimes beyond it, and encourage hostile raids against them?
Is that good neighborhood?
Then, let not one state practice it against another."

So, the Manchester, NH, newspaper wants Northerners to make nice with Southerners, a sentiment we all share.

FLT-bird: "December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce:

"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is.
Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands.
One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves.
We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits.
Our manufactories would be in utter ruins.
Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."
Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860"

Our FRiend x has already dealt with the fact that the Chicago Times was a pro-slavery, pro-South, Copperhead Democrat newspaper, which is here hardly advising "against interest".

Regardless of that, the Chicago Times in this quote exactly confirms my argument for many years that Southern exports accounted for roughly half of US total exports, not 70% or 80% or any other such ridiculous number.

FLT-bird quoting:

"It is not a war for Negro Liberty, but for national despotism.
It is a tariff war, an aristocratic war, a pro-slavery war."
Abolitionist George Basset May 1861 American Missionary Association"

This quote, if accurate (I can't confirm it), would be from Bassett's second pamphlet, "A Discourse on the Wickedness and Folly of the Present War, 24p., August 11, 1861".
Bassett was a rare combination of abolitionist and secessionist.
In 1860 there were several notable pro-secession abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greely.
After Fort Sumter in 1861, there were none that I can find beyond this George W. Bassett, and even he seem rather... ah... elusive.

FLT-bird: "Even after the fact, Northerners were saying the same things:

'This question of tariffs and taxation, and not the negro question, keeps our country divided....the men of New York were called upon to keep out the Southern members because if they were admitted they would uphold [ie hold up or obstruct] our commercial greatness.'
Governor of New York Horatio Seymour on not readmitting Southern representatives to Congress 1866"

This alleged proof-text doesn't seem to prove anything except, perhaps, that tariffs were always, politically as controversial as they were necessary.

FLT-bird: "Foreign sources noticed the same thing:

"If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …
Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance.
With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived …'
– Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862"

Charles Dickens is often quoted on these CW threads and almost as often it's noted that while Dickens opposed slavery in theory, he also hated Northerners (because they had cheated him of royalties) and admired aristocratic Southerners.
In this particular quote, Dickens ties secession to the election of Republican Lincoln, an action which was also threatened in the election of 1856, and for the same reasons -- "Black Republicans' " threats to slavery.

FLT-bird: "But hey, who ya gonna believe - Observers on all sides at the time as well as economists and tax experts who have studied the period....or a PC Revisionist with his little fantasies about how taxes and the economy really work?"

That "PC Revisionist" posting here under the screen name of FLT-bird?