Posted on 11/11/2002 1:23:27 PM PST by l8pilot
Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions
So did the Soviets in Poland. Does that mean they weren't socialists?
That is only partially correct. In the U.S. and most western countries, labor unions are almost entirely of the political left and approach very closely to the socialist movement. Many historical labor union leaders have been themselves socialist leaders and the sort. That being said, the labor union is to them only a means of moving toward socialism and achieving it. When pure socialism is achieved or is in sight, they say, the unions are rendered useless or no longer needed.
That is why communist states don't have western-style labor unions - they don't need them, and having them around is only another power to question their authoritarian ways. Therefore when unions emerge in these countries they are often outlawed, opposed, crushed, or eliminated. Unions opposed the Soviet puppet regime in Poland. They opposed the Vietcong in Vietnam, and in fact several international union organizations came in there to work with the South Vietnamese government to create a labor union buffer to Ho Chi Minh's communism before the country fell.
I'm pretty sure that Hitler wanted to not blow his brains out more than he wanted not to lose Africa.
Walt
Now, now. Liars go to Hell, remember.
Walt
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the *States* respectively, or to the *people*. Amen!
Congress is delegated the power to provide for the commmon defense.
Walt
So did the Soviets in Poland. Does that mean they weren't socialists?
Well, if their party was called the "Soviet Socialist party", and they abolished unions right after they seized power, they sure would be big meanies, wouldn't they?
Walt
Again, my math may be off, but wouldn't a united south with say a total of 22 senators been able to filibuster any bill they wanted to death?
But looking back on the events and writings of the day, the tariff did not seem to get any special notice. All the commotion through the 1860 political season, both North and South, was over the expansion of slavery. I have never come across any speeches or newspaper editorials either advocating or lamenting the tariff act. It seemed to be very much a side issue. The south did not secede over tariffs.
If you honestly believed that the “Supreme Court -is- the final arbiter of the law in this country,” I had assumed you would respect their rulings – and your comments regarding Dredd Scott were hardly respectful. On the other hand, perhaps you’re like a serf living under an absolute monarchy, dictatorship, or judicial junta: you believe your masters possess a completely legitimate and unbounded authority to issue any command whatsoever, but you whine and complain about their “rulings” anyway.
;>)
You don't like their rulings on ACW issues, hence your blue smoke and mirrors.
LOL! It is your argument, not mine, that is completely dependent on court “opinions.” By way of contrast, I consider ‘the Constitution supreme over the court,’ not ‘the court supreme over the Constitution.’ Therefore, “their rulings on ACW issues” are completely irrelevant, insofar as they are unsupported by the Constitution. And the Constitution nowhere prohibits secession.
Moreover, the ratification documents of the States, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of Jefferson and Madison, Madison’s Report on the Virginia Resolutions, Jefferson’s Declaration of 1825, and numerous other official public documents from the early days of the Republic (all of which you apparently consider “blue smoke and mirrors” ;>) make clear that the States, not the federal courts, have the final say in constitutional matters...
I keep the text I need handy. Why don't you?
What did the seceding states say publicly was the reason for their secession?
Allow me to correct you: you keep carefully selected texts handy. You cite carefully selected portions from five carefully selected texts. (Gosh, Walt – I thought there were more than five States in the Confederacy! Were there really only five?) Let’s take a look at a few you omitted:
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Therefore we, the people of the State of Arkansas, in convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain...[that] the union now subsisting between the State of Arkansas and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby forever dissolved.
And another:
An act declaring the political ties heretofore existing between the State of Missouri and the United States of America dissolved.
Whereas the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and
Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof: Now, therefore,
Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Missouri, That all political ties of every character new existing between the Government of the United States of America and the people and government of the State of Missouri are hereby dissolved...
And another:
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government:
Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State...
And of course you neglected to mention this little gem:
Resolved by the General Assembly of Virginia, That the Union being formed by the assent of the sovereign States respectively, and being consistent only with freedom and the republican institutions guaranteed to each, cannot and ought not to be maintained by force.
That the government of the Union has no power to declare or make war against any of the States which have been its constituent members.
Resolved, That when any one or more of the States has determined, or shall determine, under existing circumstances, to withdraw from the Union, we are unalterably opposed to any attempt on the part of the federal government to coerce the same into reunion or submission, and that we will resist the same by all the means in our power.
[Acts of Virginia, 1861, 337.]
Ten days after the passage of the above quoted resolution by the Virginia legislature, "the people of Tennessee” declared that they would “as one man resist such invasion of the soil of the South at any hazard and to the last extremity." (Acts of Tenn., 1861, 46.) One author also notes that “Texas, Feb. 1, and Missouri, Feb. 21, declared that if coercion was attempted they would make common cause with ‘their southern brethren’ in resisting ‘such unconstitutional violence and tyrannical usurpation of power.’ (Texas, copy in Va. Docs., 1861, No. 33, p. 7; Laws of Mo., 1860-61, 773.) Kentucky also condemned coercion as ‘tending to the destruction of our common country.’ (Acts of Ky., 1861, 49.)”
“What did the seceding states say publicly was the reason for their secession,” you ask? Gosh, friend Walt – it looks like several specifically cited the use of federal military force to coerce the States! The references are everywhere! How on earth did you ever miss them?
;>)
You can say the cause wasn't slavery until the cows come home. It doesn't mean a thing.
I can quite safely say, with ample documentation to prove the point beyond any shadow of a doubt, that “the Civil War” did NOT have “one and only one cause --- S-L-A-V-E-R-Y.” But then, I look at the actual historical record, not just the carefully selected sources you prefer...
Enjoy!
;>)
...or typical socialists. You're intentionally avoiding the issue, Walt. Abolishing labor unions does not make one anti-socialist, and in fact historical socialists are very prone to abolishing labor unions.
Potentially for a while, but not indefinately. If you've got the north in the Senate against you, the House against you, and the White House pressuring you non stop and making the thing its top issue, it's only a matter of time.
But looking back on the events and writings of the day
Sorry, but you would not know the events and writings of the day if they were a nuclear submarine lodged in your forehead, Walt.
the tariff did not seem to get any special notice.
The events of the day say otherwise. I have never come across any speeches or newspaper editorials either advocating or lamenting the tariff act.
Sure you have and in fact I've posted some excerpts of their writings for you. But coming across them and actually reading them are two different things and we all know that as a rule you simply do not read what you do not want to see.
Whatever you say.
Free trade versus protection was a great staple of 19th century political debate. While there's much to be said for free trade, I don't think an abstract mathematical answer can answer the question in all cases. Specifically, in 19th Century America there was the concern about escaping a colonial situation in which America provided raw goods to Britain and imported British finished products. There was a desire to escape the situation of subordinate, resource providing economies that the Caribbean islands had fallen into.
In time, it's likely that free trade might have made it possible to overcome the colonial situtation. But it wasn't clear that 19th century Americans would have that time, or that free trade was the wave of the future. For some countries, development would wait until protected "free trade zones" like the EU were created. For others, economic development never really took off. In any event, I don't think one can give one and only one answer for all times, peoples and situations. Even if one could, blaming people for not following as yet unproven theories that they didn't know and couldn't understand looks like a low way of proceeding, particularly if one excuses far worse moral failings.
A dynamic, free labor, free market economy contributed to ending slavery and segregation. The agrarian, colonial economy promoted by many Southern free traders would not have done so. Looking at the situation with the eyes of a mid-nineteenth century American, there was something to be said for protection, industrial development, federalism, and free labor, that couldn't be said of the free trade, agrarian, state's rights, slave side of the question. Today the situtation is different and the options are bundled differently, but at the time, protectionists had nothing to be ashamed of.
It's comical the way that libertarians and anarcho-capitalists look for forebears among those, like Taylor and Calhoun, who despised everything about their world view and way of life, and neglect those like Hamilton, Clay and Lincoln, who helped to create capitalist America.
The war makes it hard to judge that, but the authors of the journal article take a look at it in the form of the first two confederate tariff schedules. The first was the low rate pre-Morrill US schedule, and the second was a confederate modification. Both suggest themselves to be revenue tariffs.
While there's much to be said for free trade, I don't think an abstract mathematical answer can answer the question in all cases.
It cannot answer the professed reasons for any given tariff nor does it purport to, but for what that tariff will do and what the alternative is, the answer is pretty cut and dried.
Specifically, in 19th Century America there was the concern about escaping a colonial situation in which America provided raw goods to Britain and imported British finished products.
Yes. You've said that repeatedly. It is still no justification for tariffs though as the belief that tariffs are the way out of such a situation is debunked economic nonsense. Comparative advantage and free trade are the way to go because it lets the market decide, not some preset artificially imposed expectation.
In time, it's likely that free trade might have made it possible to overcome the colonial situtation.
It's certainly more likely a possibility than attempting to force it into a predecided system by tariffs and regulation.
But it wasn't clear that 19th century Americans would have that time, or that free trade was the wave of the future.
And that is the heart of the problem. Southerners had long argued that free trade was the way to go. The protectionists, who earned their livlihood on the artificial constructs of a government policy designed to benefit them to the cost of everyone else, thought otherwise. Even if one could, blaming people for not following as yet unproven theories that they didn't know and couldn't understand looks like a low way of proceeding, particularly if one excuses far worse moral failings.
David Ricardo understood it back in 1820 and provided theoretical proofs of his theory back in 1820. Why couldn't they have understood it in 1861? America had taken the free trade course from the late 1840's to 1860 with economic success. Why couldn't they have seen how it works in 1861? You are severely underestimating the intellectual abilities of the people at that time by suggesting some sort of ignorance of a taxation system that was arguably better known to them than it is to the overwhelming majority of us today. As for your moral objections over slavery compared to taxation, relativist comparisons will get you nowhere. Exploiting the American political system to build a petty industrial empire for onesself by raping the entirity of the rest of the nation of its core livlihood through means of government policy is no better than the wretched sin of slavery itself.
You have also said that repeatedly. Rightly or wrongly, many 19th century Americans did not want to be relegated to the position of Spain or Jamaica, Australia or Argentina: that of a provider of raw goods for British industry.
Exploiting the American political system to build a petty industrial empire for onesself by raping the entirity of the rest of the nation of its core livlihood through means of government policy is no better than the wretched sin of slavery itself.
Well, that says it all. Agree with it or not, I don't think Hamilton's or Lincoln's tariff policy can be compared to slavery. For one thing, political policies can always be changed when those who are adversely effected vote against them. That wasn't the case for the condition of the slaves, who had not vote. For another thing, free men and women can move to more economically advantageous regions or trades. Slaves could not.
Moreover, it's not clear that tariffs were as destructive as you claim. Even without tariffs, the development of technology and the opening of new lands made agriculture increasingly less profitable and industrial development advisible. There is always some discomfort and conflict when agriculture becomes unprofitable or ceases to provide people's needs and wants.
(LOL!!! ;>)
It's curious that arguments that minimize the role of slavery aren't "relativist" and those that put the controversy over tariffs into perspective are.
When I say that many people were, "rightly or wrongly," understandably protectionists, I'm not slighting morality. I mean correctly or incorrectly according to the current state of economics.
Many people of the time, even if they had read or heard of Ricardo, would probably find Henry C. Carey more persuasive. Correctly or incorrectly, Ricardo and Malthus with their "iron laws" repelled as many people as they attracted.
The relativism is contained entirely in your comparisons of the sort. You brought up the slavery issue and framed it in a situation of comparative morality. Don't blame me for what you've started or for pointing it out to you.
When I say that many people were, "rightly or wrongly," understandably protectionists, I'm not slighting morality.
Yet you pulled in slavery doing exactly that.
Many people of the time, even if they had read or heard of Ricardo, would probably find Henry C. Carey more persuasive.
Only those who wanted to hear it. Carey was fundamentally unqualified to even weigh in on the issue and his theories were economic nonsense, but to those who made their livelihoods off of government perks through protection, it was exactly what they wanted to hear.
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