Evidence Builds for DeLorenzo's Lincoln

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.

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

"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.

I enjoy reading your posts.
When reading "the law" and while recognizing that the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court decisions represent the supreme law of the land, I am wondering if there has ever been any precedent in the law whereby the Declaration of Independence was interpreted as "the law" or is that document only used to determine "the intent" of the law (as in what the "framers" were "thinkng")?

In my reading I find it unfortunate that several items in the Declaration of Independence were never addressed or inadequately addressed within the Constitution. One of those inadequately addressed issues was this one:

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of 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; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.-- And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

"All you pro-slavers out there..."

The gratuitous slander is also too reminiscent of WhiskeyPapa.

One WhiskeyPapa on this forum is already one too many, so I hope you can at least understand why I am annoyed at seeing the same unpleasant characteristics that are manifested by him being manifested by you. These include: the obviously unsupported gratuitous slander; the silly self-congratulatory comments; the bogus attempts to establish a superior authority for oneself on the subject under discussion.

Your post #1,203 bears no discernable relation to the post of mine to which you are ostensibly responding. Also a common trait of WhiskeyPapa!

Could you be WP posting under another screen name?

Let me at least congratulate you on the account of your having managed to make a post without an ostentatous reference to the fact that you have managed to get your name in print.

"I certainly don't understand what your post means."

Then you are even less intelligent than I had estimated.

"It's pretty garbled."

No it isn't. It isn't in the least garbled - and wouldn't appear so to an intelligent person. In any case, if you couldn't understand the post, why did you respond with the completely irrelevent comment:

"As I say, you sink deeper into the neo-Confederate, pro-slave verbiage with every post."

which had no bearing whatever on my post. It makes you appear to have a pretty scrambled brain. Your continued references to slavery, which seems to be an obsession of yours, have no bearing whatever on anything that I have posted here. Your attempt to tar me with slavery has no justifying basis whatever and betrays a mind that is not only vicious but totally confused, perhaps outright dysfunctional.

I hope to meet WhiskyPapa, though, because he sure has your undies in a bunch. "

No he doesn't, not in the least. He is quite annoying but makes up for it in the comic relief that he provides. It is beginning to look as if you might have even more potential in that department.

"Well, then, I hope I can keep you pro-slavers entertained."

If you post to me again, please begin your message with whatever you think could possibly justify your repeated slanderous characterization of me as a pto-slaver. Unless you can provide some actual basis for such a suggestion (and you will be unable) your total lack of credibility will be evident to all.

"Meanwhile, your post was a mess."

As to that, people with more objectivity in the matter than you can make their own judgement.

If you are, as you apparently have been, defending the slave south, then apparently you are in favor of slavery. Calhoun was. Fitzhugh was. Jeff Davis was.

Moreover, all of them, contrary to Lincoln, thought slavery should be expanded. Now, stop your "this is slanderous" whining and state clearly that you oppose slavery; that the South was wrong; and that Lincoln was right, and all will be well.

One can be totally opposed to slavery (including Lincoln's enslavement of the people of the Confederacy) without believing that the South did not have the right to secede or that Lincoln was right to attempt to suppress that secession.

Not to recognize that is indicative of a serious incapacity for logical thought on your part. Your attempt to justify your vicious slander is based on an absurd fallacy.

FYI, two days after this ludicrous decision, Massachusetts Senator Sedgwick introduced the legislation that became the 11th Amendment.

Yeah, the 11th amendment doesn't say a word about state sovereignty. The Justices made some pretty strong statements that seem to have gone unchallenged entirely. I would suggest this was because the failures of the Articles were still pretty fresh in people's minds and no one was ready to throw out the new security promised by the Constitution. The text you provide -- very interesting -- the Georgians were pretty exercised over all thing, to threaten to hang someone without even the benefit of clergy. But even their language doesn't deny what the Justices said.

Walt

Good. We agree on slavery.

I don't know of any rebellious state in history where the rebels were treated any more kindly than by Lincoln. Name me another rebellion where the leaders were not only eventually restored to full citizenship but did not have their property completely confiscated---and not just their so-called "slave property."

Based on history, for Lincoln to have been "just" to the rebels, he would have shot or imprisoned all the leaders, confiscated all plantation and/or Confederate property and distributed it to the freedmen, and prohibited anyone ever associated with the Confederacy from voting again. (see: Carthage, for example).

I am happy to be able to continue the discussion on more friendly terms. But, in my opinion, and I emphasize that this is opinion, the seceding states believed that they had every right to secede, inasmuch as the spirit of liberty that supposedly underlay the foundation of the country would have been contradicted had they not enjoyed that right. They did not view their action as a "rebellion". The only way that Lincoln could have acted justly, in my view, would have been to permit them to secede peacefully in the first place. Carthage was a nation founded on an entirely different concept and can hardly be taken as a basis of comparison.

Although it is only a movie, there is a line in "Gettysburg" that completely captures the reason the "constitutional legitimacy" arugment for the South fails: Tom Berenger as Longstreet says "what we should have done is free the slaves FIRST, then secede." But that goes to the nub of it: the only purpose for secession was not "constitutional rights," or even "freedom," but "freedom to enslave," and there is no such freedom implied in the Constitution, in that the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Amendments ALL de facto prohibited slavery. I admit that the Constitution contained some contradictions but the weight of everything else IN the Constitution is for human liberty, not slavery (qua property).

Further, perceived PRECISELY that the Constitution was no good without the Declaration, and that it was only "law" so long as it was "dedicated to the proposition" that "all men are created equal." Without that proposition, it was no law at all, merely contradictions. The Civil War was about whose interpretation of the Constitution was right---Calhoun's, who said that the property clause superceded the liberty clauses---or Lincoln, who said that all the liberty clauses DEFINED the property clause.

Thus, it was impossible for the South to "free the slaves first," because the war was not about rights, or the Constitution, but ABOUT THE SLAVES.

That is not a fact. It is a legal/constitutional opinion not shared by Andrew Jackson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, or, of course, Lincoln. It depends totally on the interpretation of the constitutional convention as a "compact," which most respected historians specializing in that era---John C. Miller, Gordon Wood, for example---reject. Most of the Founders (though not all---such as George Mason) held a view of society that could be called "organic": once a constitution put a "body" together, no "part" could secede from another. That is why Madison forcefully rejected the Hartford Convention's claims and Jackson rejected SC's claims in the Tariff of Abominations.

So to understand the context of the ratification, you have to analyze what these Founders thought "ratification" to imply---and to all but a few (at times Jefferson and Madison, at times, not)---this meant "organic." The South could no more secede than an arm can secede from a body without the blood loss killing it.

It is a myth of the "neo-confederate" historians that the "compact" theory was the one the Founders subscribed to.

Note, for example, that as far back as the DECLARATION (which is the foundational document for the constitution), even JEFFERSON did not say that the "colonies" were the final authority in seceding from England, but the "people" because the Americans were no longer English, but a different people.

"That is not a fact."

I was careless in my usage. Let me restate.

I am very strongly of the opinion that if peaceful unilateral secession from the federation formed is 1789 was not an option then that federation was in total contradiction to the spirit that ostensibly underlay its foundation. Instead while the federation had no person as king, the federal government was in reality a corporate king with claim to divine rights and with subjects - owned by that corporate royalty and from whom unquestioning loyaly was demanded - rather than free citizens. That is how I see it.

Ok, that may be how you see it. But that is not how the FOUNDERS saw it, and that is the context in which we must measure all laws, especially the Constitution, or we are right in the lap of the liberals with their "living document" tripe about the constitution and their definitions of "militia" as "national guard." I don't think you want that!

We have come to the end of our discussion. Like all of the Union apologists you appear to favor a government which is strong on authority and coercion and weak in the protection of liberty. In short, a government which is a master of the people rather than a servant. I don't understand what makes people such as you tick and find that the value of interchange of ideas with them is rather limited.

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