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
Should have, could have, would have. There was no right to unilateral secession and to even maintain that position in the face of direct statements of the framers is to see those framers as hopelessly naive pontificators with no sense of political reality. The Constitution was written and ratified with all the means and authority necessary for the congress and executive to compel allegiance through force.
The south could have easily withdrawn from the union if they had followed constitutional procedures. But that would have entailed treaties establishing recognized national borders and no small expense upon the departing states to make their sister states whole for the common investments. The south's intention was not a peaceful separation but the establishment of a government with sufficient military strength to repudiate debts and to claim western lands for the expansion of slavery that they could not get through the electoral process. They sought to do with force and threats of force what they could not achieve at the polling place. That, by any definition, is a common rebellion.
The secessionists thought the yankees couldn't/wouldn't fight. But they ordered up an army of 100,000 just to make sure they could duck out on their obligations.
Walt
After the court had adjourned, I went up to the bench and thanked Judge Taney for thus upholding, in its integrity, the writ of habeas corpus. He replied, “Mr. Brown, I am an old man, a very old man” (he had completed his eighty-fourth year), “but perhaps I was preserved for this occasion.” I replied, “Sir, I thank God that you were.”He then told me that he knew that his own imprisonment had been a matter of consultation, but that the danger had passed, and he warned me, from information he had received, that my time would come.
George William Brown, Baltimore and the nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, Baltimore, N. Murray, Publication Agent, Johns Hopkins University, 1887, p. 90.
In the Life of Benjamin R. Curtis [Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States], Vol. I, p. 240, his biographer says, speaking of Chief Justice Taney, with reference to the case of Merryman, "If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus and the dignity and authority of his office against a rash minister of State, who, in the pride of a fancied executive power, came near to the commission of a great crime, will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty so long as our institutions shall endure." The crime referred to was the intended imprisonment of the Chief Justice.Three justices, Taney, Brown (Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, and Mayor of the City in 1861) and Curtis - thought Taney was to be arrested. So much for it being a "myth".
ibid., p. 91.
Oh, I'd say Dred Scott would be up at the top of Taney's accomplishments. After all, he had such respect for states rights and the Bill of Rights that he found that a class of people have no citizenship and no rights under any circumstances and regardless of what state laws may say. < / sarcasm >
It seems to me that Taney's integrety and love for the Constitution was highly selective.
Curtis was not a Justice. He resigned in 1857.
Even in the excerpt you provide, there is no evidence that a warrant was issued.
Lincoln didn't have to have Taney arrested. Taney was powerless, and irrelevant.
Taney was powerless in some ways simply because of the way he dscredited himself with decisions like Dred Scott, which was clearly wrong based on the record -- it was, as I have said before, as surely an attempt at judicial activism as Roe v. Wade was. And Dred Scott helped bring on the war. Thanks, Roger.
It should be noted that Merryman did actually take part in burning bridges in Maryland. The District of Columbia, or course, nestles between VA and MD. Virginia was in process of going for treason and secession. Lincoln absolutely could not wait for Congress to come into session -- that was not scheduled until September, 1861. Lincoln's actions were entirely properly and necessary. Taney was leaning towards treason himself simply by opposing Lincoln's actions. His ruling in Dred Scott shows he cared not a fig for the law.
I was thinking about something else today that I will append here.
Lincoln's extensive defense of his Habeas Corpus actions was made in June, 1863, over two years after the events in Maryland. I posted that defense on FR not long after 9/11. There was a very boistrous discussion of civil liberties during the ACW -- at least in the north. Nothing like that has really ensued since 9/11. It all blew over pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure this Juan Padilla who was arrested, is still held without access to counsel. He is an American citizen and none of the circumstances Lincoln faced then are extant now.
Walt
You're just jealous.
Walt
What would a thoroughly dishonourable liar like you know about honour?
What would a thoroughly dishonourable liar like you know about honour?
ROFL!!!
I thought you weren't going to post any more to me. :)
And I see that you've adopted the Dixienet spelling. They're a hate group, you know.
Walt
The matter of equitable disposition of costs is secondary to the issue of the existence of the right of secession.
Care to expound on how you can walk on just debts incurred in your name?
The "right" or privilege, of secession surely has an inherent aspect regarding the resolution of debt. Let's forget the ACW, that is all past. The federal debt today is $6.2 trillion or some such. Secession --today-- whether you like it or not, would involve some arrangement regarding this money.
If you stop and think about secession today, it is even more pie in the sky than it was in 1860. You'd have to do it at gun point. There's no other way.
Walt
I happen to be a member; they are not a hate group. Do you ever post anything that is not a vicious, scurrilous, slanderous lie?
If you understood English and were honest you would not suggest that saying the debts were a secondary issue in any way amounted to saying that they should not be honoured. Since you constantly misinterpret the statements that others make, and always in a way tending to put your opponent in a bad light, I suspect it is more a matter of dishonesty than of your ignorance of the language, considerable though the latter may be.
You are a one person hate group youself.
I happen to be a member; they are not a hate group. Do you ever post anything that is not a vicious, scurrilous, slanderous lie?
ROFLMAO!!
I KNEW IT!
The League of the South has definitely been called a hate group, and not just by me, either.
Now, as you know, they are seeking every "honourable" way to destroy the Union. How are you going to do that unless you divvy up the debt?
Walt
Why?
How could that be "honourable"?
Walt
Hey, Marcus Aurelius Dixieneticus.
Are you going to let Ditto off scot free? Ain't he lyin' too?
Walt
So far as I know they have only been called that by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a bunch of haters and liars like yourself. The SPLC has repeatedly been exposed in the main stream media for the fraud that they are, and you know it.
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