Better question: would we want to? 
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
Would you bother to read a history of the Democratic party written from the Democratic party's point of view?
Once the Northern culture began to deteriorate, through several causes, their minds began to shrink. They used the sin of the South (slavery) against them, and have been in the process of trying to make the Blacks the subhumans they accuse Southerners of deeming them. By the way, using someone's sin to promote one's own heinous sin is the vilest thing one can do. They won the war, and now the minds of all Americans have been shrinking ever since. Their advocates on this forum show up the ugliness of those shrunken minds. Go to Jersey, go to St. Paul, go to Baja Jersey (Miami) and you see those small, withered minds, cussing people out in whiny, nasal voices because their boredom with life, due to their tiny, dysfunctional minds, makes them peevish and cranky.
More was at stake in that conflict than my Confederate fathers even realized, I am sure. I doubt they could clearly forsee the degradation caused by the triumph of the putrid Yankee culture.
All we can say is, Deo vindice!
First tell the class how the north did anything to violate the rights of any southern person or state, and then explain how the Fugitive Slave Act was so faithful to the Bill of Rights.
What are you --- some kind of damnyankee commie? I won't have you talking about sainted Little Alec that way.
If you buy into the Lost Cause Myths, you are doing exactly that. The Myths were invented a century ago by the Democrat Party to make the Democrats palitable to Northerners who didn't know any better.
Lots of things change over centuries, but one constant is that the Democrats will tell any lie they can to get votes.
The fact that you consistently attribute only the basest and worst possible motives to those whom you are opposing hardly does much to inspire confidence in your credibility.
Thankfully, Patriotic Southerners have made efforts to keep out the evil Yankees' genes, if not their backward culture. Its best to keep one's genes to one's family. Thank Gawd All Mighty for sisters.
Can Yankees actually mate with humans?
Hmmm, wonder where you live, and wonder in what culture you were raised...
Of course not! By definition, species cannot interbreed, and are morphologically distinct.
I must admit, if my fellow southerners don't slow down obesity among us, we will be morphilogically distinct, as well as not being able to interbreed with apes and Yankees.
I was born, raised and educated in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I was only responding in kind to an asinine statement of utmost prejudice. Or maybe you think that referring to "putrid Yankee culture" is an exercise in civil discourse? You reap what you sow.
Your small mind is showing
Not only are you unintelligent, but you are a hypocrite to boot.
Better question: would we want to?
Tell us exactly how the Federal government was "extorting taxes" from the profits of southern labor? Was not southern "labor" devoted almost exclusively to the production and export of cash crops? There was no tax on exports, only imports.
See post #30. Even your Vice President admitted that while Southerners (slave states) made up 40% of the population, they only paid 25% of the taxes while consuming 50% of the federal budget! (And in 1860, the Federal budget was economically inconsequential --- less than 2% of GDP)
If you think any federal tax is extortion, it was the south extorting the north!
There is a very good reason you can't find any reference to tariffs being an issue in the 1860 debates. It's because the Democrat Party propaganda machine did not invent that myth until the 1890s!
Or each other. Some things become anatomically impossible, even if you can muster the desire to try. ;~))
More was at stake in that conflict than my Confederate fathers even realized, I am sure. I doubt they could clearly forsee the degradation caused by the triumph of the putrid Yankee culture.
That's a pretty good example of what turns people off about neo-confederate rants. You almost come to the point of some idea of a master race or a superior culture. Then there's the whole cultic dimension that's also scary. And you get so involved in maintaining Southern self-esteem that you subordinate everything, including stubborn historical facts, to it.
But it's not a question of North against South. The question is rather whether we are better off as one country or would better have been divided in 1860. Most Americans rightly agree that national unity has been a good idea. Most of us would gladly leave the war in the past and work for the best for our country in the present.
Sounds like a guy with a little ----.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.