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
"It is hoped that by a due poise and partition of powers between the General and particular governments, we have found the secret of extending the benign blessings of republicanism over still greater tracts of country than we possess, and that a subdivision may be avoided for ages, if not forever."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1791
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom."
--Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801.
"The preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."
--Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801.
"It is of immense consequence that the States retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the shelter of a foreign jurisdiction is so subversive of order and so pregnant of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of praemunire [a punishable offense against government] should be revised and modified, against all citizens who attempt to carry their causes before any other than the State courts, in cases where those other courts have no right to their cognizance."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:424
It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States. The people, to whom all authority belongs, have divided the powers of government into two distinct departments, the leading characters of which are foreign and domestic; and they have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These they have made coordinate, checking and balancing each other like the three cardinal departments in the individual States; each equally supreme as to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized ultimately to decide what belongs to itself or to its coparcener in government. As independent, in fact, as different nations."
--Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:328
"The spirit of concord [amongst] sister States... alone carried us successfully through the revolutionary war, and finally placed us under that national government, which constitutes the safety of every part, by uniting for its protection the powers of the whole."
--Thomas Jefferson to William Eustis, 1809. ME 12:227
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1785. ME 5:14, Papers 8:229
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties."
--Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1060.htm
Walt
Yeppers. :)
Walt
Walt
I concur.
Didn't need no welfare state...
Everybody pulled his weight....
Gee, our old La Salle ran great.....
Those were the daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays....
:-)
Walt
President Lincoln said that he had no political ideas that didn't spring from the Declaration of Independence. He proved that when he advocated voting rights for blacks.
That's why Booth shot him.
Walt
Chief Justice Renquist, who has written extensively about this very issue, strongly disagrees with you. He said quite plainly that the power of the President to suspend the writ in times of emergency is still undecided by the courts. Ergo, the rest of your argument is your opinion only.
As for this case, the ruling was the highest standing court decision on the matter upon its issue. If The Lincoln disputed it or wished not to follow it, he had to appeal it to the full supreme court.
Was the full court in session?
He refused to do so and instead simply ignored it. That in itself is a violation of the judicial process by The Lincoln.
As is his constitutional prerogative to do so. The Supreme Court, by design, has no enforcement power over the executive branch. Congress is the final authority on the actions of a President, not the courts, and Congress affirmed his acts!. Read The US constitution, not the one that Jeff Davis ignored for 4 years by never even appointing a court.
That they consented to an already-committed unconstitutional act in late 1861 in no way makes that act constitutional as it is not their call to make.
The fact that Congress was not in session in April of 1861, (timing that I'm sure was planned by the Confederates when they ratcheted tensions by firing on Sumter) allows the President to invoke the Militia Act. Members of congress were scattered across the continent from Maine to California and Oregon in April of 1861 and with transportation and communication of the day, and Congress only in session for 3 months a year, it was impossible to assemble them in time to deal with an emergency. That is why the first congress passed the Militia Act which gave the President very broad powers in a state of emergency. Calling the militia into the field to suppress a civil disturbance also invokes martial law. Although the militia act does not specifically mention the writ, a state of martial law presupposes a suspension of normal constitutional law.
Be honest about it. Jeff Davis and his coconspirators in Maryland knew the ways of Washington very well. They made a bet that with Congress away the "Country Bumkin" Lincoln would be paralyzed into inaction and Washington would be theirs in a cakewalk. They made the same stupid mistake that their descendent Rats make today in dealing with the "moron" Bush. Never underestimate a plainspoken man.
Hmmm. Well, in that case, up 'til now I've been laboring under the misapprehension that Booth thought, along with many of his fellows, that the participation of states in this Union of ours was on a voluntary basis, and could be withdrawn. That would have made Lincoln's forcible de-secession of the confederate states a usurpation of power; such a notion would be consistent with Booth's reported utterance upon completing the deed, which was "Sic semper tyrannus" if I remember correctly... meaning "Thus always to tyrants."
Of course, I'm not much of a student of the history of those times, so I'm eager to hear what you have to say on that point.
Congress would not normally have reconvened until September. Lincoln called them back on the 4th of July. That was probably pushing it. GOPCap sort of neglects the idea that armed troops had trouble getting through Baltimore streets en masse; imagine what what the mob could have done to individual Congressmen -- especially with the Baltimore mayor and police chief as avowed secessionists.
The sesesh probably thought they'd have the whole deal sewed up by September. The sesesh SURELY thought they had the perfect patsy in Abraham Lincoln. He'd never held an executive position unless you count a two person law firm. And Lincoln said that he hired his partner Herndon because he was well organized!
When you think about Lincoln's resume, and J. Davis's, it really is a hoot. Davis a graduate of West Point with active service in the Mexican war, secretary of War, senator.
But Lincoln foxed him and the other traitors at every turn.
All GOPCap's rant is -- is sour grapes.
Mean old Lincoln kicked his heroes' butts.
Kingdom Coming:
Blacks folks, have you seen the massah with a mustache on his face?
Went down the road this morning and left very sudden like he gwine to leave the place.
He seen the smoke up the river where the Lincum gunboats lay...
Grabbed his hat and lef very sudden and I 'spect he's run away...
The massah run away, ha ha.
The black folk stay, ho ho.
It must be Kingdom comin' in the year of Jubilo!
Walt
The Supreme Court said no, repeatedly and often, as early as 1793. The Militia Act of 1792, as I posted earlier today, requires that U.S. law operate in all the states.
When Lincoln gave his public address on April 11, 1865 in which he supported black voting rights, Booth urged one of his acomplices to shoot Lincoln on the spot, but he refused.
Booth shot Lincoln, of course, three days later.
Walt
Wrong. Booth was above all, a white supremacist. He had sympathy with the Confederacy, although not nearly enough to make him stop his lucrative acting career to wear a gray uniform. Above all, he feared and hated the idea of free blacks. His earlier bizarre conspiracy, which fell through, was a scheme to kidnap Lincoln. It was not until Lincoln called for voting rights for blacks in a speech in Washington on April 11, 1865 that Booth vowed to kill Lincoln. He kept his promise 2 days later.
Rehnquist may disagree, and it is my understanding that he holds personally that the issue is debatable, but to say that the court has not ruled on it is to deny court precedent.
"The decision that the individual shall be imprisoned must always precede the application for a writ of habeas corpus, and this writ must always be for the purpose of revision that decision, and therefore appellate in its nature. But this point also is decided in Hamilton's case and in Burford's case. If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide. Until the legislative will be expressed, this court can only see its duty, and must obey the laws." - John Marshall for the majority, Ex Parte Bollman & Swartwout (1807)
Was the full court in session?
If you mean for Merryman, the ruling was a circuit court one. If you mean the supreme court, I do not know though the court can and has acted in extraordinary circumstances on appeals needing immediate attention, as would have been the case in this one.
As is his constitutional prerogative to do so.
It is his constitutional duty to operate within the constitutional process if he does not like a check imposed on his actions by another branch. That means having to appeal the decision. The Lincoln did not do so and therefore violated the constitutional process of the judiciary. The Supreme Court, by design, has no enforcement power over the executive branch.
The Supreme Court has no enforcement power per se over anything. It only rules on the matter. But it does have the authority to rule on the actions of the congress or the executive when they are in breach of the constitution.
The fact that Congress was not in session in April of 1861, (timing that I'm sure was planned by the Confederates when they ratcheted tensions by firing on Sumter) allows the President to invoke the Militia Act.
The militia act does not permit the president to suspend habeas corpus. Try again.
Members of congress were scattered across the continent from Maine to California and Oregon in April of 1861 and with transportation and communication of the day, and Congress only in session for 3 months a year, it was impossible to assemble them in time to deal with an emergency.
Difficult yes, but not impossible. Only two small population states were beyond a relatively easy journey to Washington, California and Oregon. The rest could have made it there.
That is why the first congress passed the Militia Act which gave the President very broad powers in a state of emergency.
But not the power to suspend habeas corpus, which standing court precedent says is for the legislature to decide including in times "the public safety should require the suspension" of the writ.
Nonsense. You stated that I'd "probably like to have the EP made null and void too." To which I replied "If it's illegal yes." Which in no way shape or form implies that I am against equality, only that if it were illegal then Lincoln exercised unConstitutional power. That being the case the only proper method of correction is via amendment - not by illegal actions.
To the best of my knowledge, I 've never expressed the racist sentiments you ascribe, primarily because I do believe that all men are created equal. Especially as a Christian - I believe that God created man and women - Adam & Eve, and from them descended ALL men and women. Try again.
All things considered, Lincoln did a pathetic job. You'd have to say that too--if you loved the Constitution.
And that's what separates us - you favor trashing the Constitution and the protections it contains - I agree with the justice cited in my #1348, and with the decision in ex parte Milligan, that the Constitution applies at ALL times - EQUALLY in war and peace.
Regarding the "victory" being a butt-whipping - that might be true if it were decided on the field of battle against MILITARY tagets and combatants. Considering the South was starved into submission, her women and children left destitute, take pride is your "victory" - it is fitting evidence of the complete lack of morals and honour that you possess.
Nonsense. Secession is the act of a state, exercising reserved powers (that part if the Constitution you overlook). The suspension is a delegated power to the legislative branch, not to the executive. Your reading and understanding is just as bad as Lincoln's - besides co-mingling powers, your version has the federal goverment possessing all powers not prohibited to the states - not what the 10th states.
So what happened to the Articles? Was it amended or did a revolution occur? It only took 9 states to create the new union - not 13.
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