LOL. Yep, in another 30 years, it might have been as big as Boston.. New York… not a friggen chance in hell.
You Neo Confederates are a hoot.
Posted on 02/11/2026 10:47:43 AM PST by T Ruth
Director Steven Spielberg, whom I introduced last week [in 2012] at Gettysburg at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech, said he was deeply humbled to be delivering an address on that history-making spot.
***
… Daniel Day-Lewis gives the definitive portrayal of our time, perhaps ever, of Honest Abe.
For people like me, who have spent their lives studying Abraham Lincoln, the film is chilling — as if he’s really come to life.
Day-Lewis does it by avoiding the traps most Lincoln actors fall into, the stoic, “Hall of Presidents”-esque stereotype that probably most Americans imagine.
There are no moving pictures of Lincoln, no recordings of his voice. But after his death, everyone was Lincoln’s best friend, and there are descriptions of everything from his accent to his gait.
The most important thing is the voice. Far from having a stentorian, Gregory Peck-like bass, Lincoln’s was a high, piercing tenor. Those who attended his speeches even described it as shrill and unpleasant for the first 10 minutes, until he got warmed up (or his endless stories managed to cow them into submission).
***
Few great people are appreciated in their time. And it’s good to remember that, no matter how right the decisions seem now, they were hard-fought then.
“I wanted — impossibly — to bring Lincoln back from his sleep of one-and-a-half centuries,” Steven Spielberg said at Gettysburg, “even if only for two-and-one-half hours, and even if only in a cinematic dream.”
***
Harold Holzer is one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln. ...
[At the end of the article Holzer gives thumbnail reviews of all prior Lincoln films, ranking them from worst to best, which Holzer considers to be Spielberg’s.]
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
About 45 years ago in a college history course. In a college library, not on the internet. Factors or brokers are how most commodity industries operate particularly when dealing with small business. They did it back then and they still do it today. Just cause its new to you does not mean others are ignorant of it. The Factors serve as marketing, sales agents, bankers and advisors. And no, The Northern banks did not control the Southern planters and especially not their lunatic politicians. They did everything possible to protect them.
And you are still nuts.
I expect most people go through life having no need to ever learn how commodities work.
The Factors serve as marketing, sales agents, bankers and advisors. And no, The Northern banks did not control the Southern planters and especially not their lunatic politicians.
However you want to make it sound good to your ears, the North was making a *LOT* of money from slavery in the South.
Are you starting to grasp *WHY* they didn't want to let those states become independent?
Some Northern banks and a few textile companies made money from slavery. I don’t know what you think is a lot, but it was in no way vital to the economy of the Northern states. As to why they didn’t want them to leave it was simple patriotism, especially after they fired on Fort Sumter. I have always said that if the Southern states had put separation to a vote in Congress, they may well have been successful. But firing on the flag was just the stupidest thing they could have done. But the secessionists were very stupid men.
And you are still nuts.
There was 500 million per year in direct trade between the North and the South, and 200 million in trade from the South to Europe.
700 million in economic activity in a 4.5 billion economy (I think) is no small potatoes.
As to why they didn’t want them to leave it was simple patriotism,
and 700 million dollars, but mostly the 700 million dollars.
But firing on the flag was just the stupidest thing they could have done.
General Beauregard sent a messenger to Major Anderson seeking a truce. He informed Anderson that the Union Warships were arriving and that if an altercation commenced between Beauregard's forces and those warships, if Anderson would give his word that he would not fire on Beauregard's forces, Beauregard would give his word that he would not fire on Anderson's forces.
Anderson refused. He informed the messenger that if Beauregard's forces fired on any ship, he would use Fort Sumter's cannons to attack them.
Beauregard had been informed that the mission of those warships was to attack him. He had been told that very night that the Baltic was off the coast with a compliment of fighting men, and that the Harriet lane had started making it's way into the channel where it had fired at the Nashville and commanded it to stop and be boarded.
The warships orders had gone through regular military channels, and all the confederate spies had relayed what the orders were to the Confederates in the South.
Everyone knew those ships were coming and they knew they had orders to attack. This is why Beauregard sought a truce with Anderson. Anderson already knew the ships were coming because he had spoken with Gustavus Fox on the occasion of his visit some weeks earlier.
Anderson thought the plan was foolish and would almost certainly start a war. He even expressed his misgivings about how dishonorable it was to start a war in the manner it was being done by Lincoln.
But the secessionists were very stupid men.
Anything but. You are just repeating propaganda. Have you ever *READ* anything they wrote? They were very educated and articulate men. I found out the South had been trying to secede since 1816. They had secession conventions several times between 1816 and 1861.
Funny thing is, nobody tried to claim it was about slavery in these earlier secession attempts. In fact, the Union government backed down on the "tariffs of abominations" in 1833.
As a matter of fact, can’t think of anything significant. I have read some of Calhoon’s over the top speeches. Ditto for Davis and Stevens. Bueragard was a moron. And I can’t even think the rest were even literate. ;~))
For the majority of that $500 million it was food from the Midwest and clothing and shoes from New England. Throw in some iron from Pennsylvania and furniture from other northern states. The south sold rice, tobacco and cotton to the North.
Now the vast majority of the $200 million in cotton sales to Europe you have already admitted were not made by “Southerners”. It was the Cotton Factors, most of them really Northern banks. So that money from those sales ended up in the North after the Factors bought the cotton from the planters.
Why did the tariff collection occurs mostly in the North? Because that's who had the money. Your insistence that the South paid 72% of the taxes is complete and total BS.
I make a point to parse my words carefully on this point. I say "the South *PRODUCED* 72% of the taxes for the Federal government.
Now if I have slipped somewhere and said "paid", then it was just a matter of extending the point that the value came from the South.
With secession, all that money would have dried up anyway, so it amounts to the same motive for the North wanting to force the South to remain in the Union.
Why did the tariff collection occurs mostly in the North? Because that's who had the money.
Because the vast majority of the transatlantic shipping used New York as the main port. The packet ships carried the cargoes to their eventual destinations.
But that would have changed with secession.
With an extra 30% profit to be made due to lower tariffs, European and American shipping would have started using Southern ports and this would have badly hurt the New York shipping and other industry.
This was an issue of great concern in the North, and their newspapers wrote of it. FLT-Bird may have the quotes I am referring to regarding this.
As I understand it, New Orleans was becoming a much bigger deal by 1860. Steam ships running up and down the Mississippi. Railroads moving east and west to connect to the river. New Orleans sending more goods overseas. New York faced the possibility of getting completely cut out of the deal. The big money up North didn’t like that.
In 1840, New Orleans was the 3rd largest city in the US, after NYC and Baltimore, and the 4th busiest port in the world, after London, Liverpool, and New York.
By 1860, though, things had begun to turn. Construction of canals and then railroads meant that the Midwestern states could send their produce directly to the large East Coast markets rather than to New Orleans.
The Mississippi needed dredging to remain navigable. Ocean-going ships were becoming larger and couldn’t reach the city without dredging at the mouth of the river.
New York had rail connections to a much larger market. Shipping time to Europe was also less. NYC also took more time and trouble to develop the financial structures that international trade demanded.
More:
Thanks very much.
Yes. I've read newspaper articles and various commentary from that time period, and they absolutely did not like the idea of New Orleans not being under their control.
Allowing the South to secede peacefully would have been a financial disaster for the North. It also would have effectively repealed Union tariffs because of the wide porous borders between the Confederacy and the Union, and the fact the Mississippi reaches so deeply into Northern states.
Secession would have undermined their Federal income schemes and disabled most of their protectionist laws.
It would have cost them big money in the North.
It is no accident that they concentrated so much effort on taking Vicksburg and New Orleans in the war.
They say geography predicts destiny, and that location was destined to be as George Washington said "the seat of an empire."
"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
That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports.",/b> New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article "What Shall be Done for a Revenue?"
"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861.
On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: "If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against."
[demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] "a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls." The Philadelphia Press 18 March 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
"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
[the North relied on money from tariffs] “so even if the Southern states be allowed to depart in peace, the first question will be revenue. Now if the South have free trade, how can you collect revenues in eastern cities? Freight from New Orleans, to St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati and even Pittsburgh, would be about the same as by rail from New York and imported at New Orleans having no duties to pay, would undersell the East if they had to pay duties. Therefore if the South make good their confederation and their plan, The Northern Confederacy must do likewise or blockade. Then comes the question of foreign nations. So look on it in any view, I see no result but war and consequent change in the form of government." William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his brother Senator John Sherman 1861.
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."
"For the contest on the part of the North is now undisguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse provided only that the seceding states re-enter the Union.....Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!" London Quarterly Review 1862
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.” London Times, November 7, 1861
"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
"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states." --Charles Dickens, 1862
Correct.
"Down here they think they are going to have fine times. New Orleans a free port, whereby she can import Goods without limit or duties, and Sell to the up River Countries. But Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore will never consent that N. Orleans should be a Free Port, and they Subject to Duties." William T. Sherman
The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched." New York Times March 30, 1861
March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.
[the North relied on money from tariffs] “so even if the Southern states be allowed to depart in peace, the first question will be revenue. Now if the South have free trade, how can you collect revenues in eastern cities? Freight from New Orleans, to St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati and even Pittsburgh, would be about the same as by rail from New York and imported at New Orleans having no duties to pay, would undersell the East if they had to pay duties. Therefore if the South make good their confederation and their plan, The Northern Confederacy must do likewise or blockade. Then comes the question of foreign nations. So look on it in any view, I see no result but war and consequent change in the form of government. William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his brother Senator John Sherman 1861.
Thank you. You have a better ready reference than I do. :)
Squirm away. LOL.
LOL. Yep, in another 30 years, it might have been as big as Boston.. New York… not a friggen chance in hell.
You Neo Confederates are a hoot.
If it didn't produce trade revenue, it didn't pay for the Federal government. Only that 28% of the trade with Europe produced by the North paid any taxes. Northern business buying and selling each other's products did not create any Federal revenue.
Thank you for posting that map. It shows how much money the North was getting from the South. It shows why there was a war to keep the Southern states under Northern control.
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