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
Let's just say this confederate sypathizer is already himself turned off. I'm through trying to reason with the unreasonable. They already know all they care to know, and the Yankee culture of which I wrote cares nothing about anything but their own pathetic lives. They have proven themselves to me to not give a damn about our posterity. The cities are full of them, and they are flooding the South and enacting their collectivist, shallow-minded views.
And what's this "neo" stuff? What does it mean? Our families have always been Southern patriots - there's nothing "neo" about it. Neo-Nazis are a new brand of nazis. Neo-conservatives are a new brand of conservatives. This meaningless term neo-confederate is just something y'all like to throw around, because it has a negative ring to it.
But my words will have no meaning to you, because you won't them to, so I don't know why I'm spending my time like this.
One of the major causes of 9/11 is the widespread modern belief that no culture is any better than any other culture. Of course, no one really believes this, but one is supposed to feign belief in it, and chastise anyone who suggests that some cultures are better than others.
The South indeed, and if you had enough economic background to take a look at export figures around 1860, you would know why.
As far as direct taxation, the CSA did it too
Tu quoque excuse making does not escape the problem of yankee direct taxation or that Wigfall's prediction came true. Surely you know the fallacy in your attempted diversion, do you not?
Your true colors come through. Needless to say, are you now holding that the Articles of Confederation are the document by which our country should be run?
That you are unable to hold your own against me in substantive argument is no reason to call for a mouth washing.
He's talking about the southern treasury, you boob.
Yeah, in the paragraph BEFORE that. He switches over to the NORTH's situation in the paragraph I quoted. He says "when YOU have lost YOUR market," not "we" but "you" in reference to the North. Did you simply not read it, or are you ignoring it because it says something you do not want to hear?
The southern war chest, the southern almight dollar, the southern tariff. Not the Northern one.
Why would a southerner refer to his own as "you," "you," "you," "your," "your," "your," and "you" in succession after just referring to himself as "I" and to the south as "we"? The answer is he wouldn't. He was talking about the North and directing his comments at the North:
"You suppose that numbers constitute the strength of government in this day. I tell you that it is not blood; it is the military chest; it is the almighty dollar. When you have lost your market; when your operatives are turned out; when your capitalists are broken, will you go to direct taxation?"
Sorry Non-Seq, but as usual you are just plain wrong.
Nowhere in that speech does he talk about a Northern tariff driving the south away.
Yes he does. Look at that passage you just incorrectly claimed was directed at the South even though he repeatedly referred to the person he was directing the comments at as "you" rather than "we," which he used elsewhere referring to the South.
Yet there are references to servitude under the law in what is undeniably a recognition of slavery in clauses pertaining to slavery. Slavery is indisputably in that document and your buddy made a fool of himself by claiming that any country with a constitution containing anything that recognized the institution of slavery could not be good in any way.
Right here where you remarked "The Georgia secession document even mentions "the free trade environment now prevailing" or words to that effect" in order to argue that the protectionist movement was not a cause.
We is eddjicated.
You sure "is," though where I know not. Based on their respective products I do believe a strong case could be made for dissolution of each institution on the grounds of failure though.
Now, where did I even -suggest- that protectionists were a non-issue?
Right here: "The Georgia secession document even mentions "the free trade environment now prevailing" or words to that effect."
Hey, wouldn't it be better to say "protectionism"?
No, because referencing a protectionist indicates the individual and tangible nature of the person promoting protectionism. The Lincoln was a protectionist and calling him that denies you the opportunity to argue his escape from it by generalizing the protectionist movement into the economic theory of protectionism.
It -would- suck to have some little skulldugger of a protectionist pulling at ye pant leg.
From what you've suggested to be your case, he's hanging on your wall in a position of your personal adoration.
Actually, I grew up in a small town in Halifax County, right on the NC border and about as far from the NOVA suburbs as you can possibly get and still be in the Commonwealth.
Thought so...
Well, then, chalk this up as just another of the many subjects on which you're embarrasingly wrong.
I grew up in the South. I haven't been back to my hometown in nearly forty years. What does that tell you?
A LOT! About you. Really.
Yes, Often conservative economists (like Walter Williams) have tried to make this point. You could make an economic argument for the Confederates case on tariffs and a minimalist Federal government. You would probably get at the root of the position of well educated southerners such as Calhoun or Jefferson Davis. However you would miss the long term causes of America's greatest war. Economists often do not look at the political and social issues that fuel wars, rebellions, and revolutions.
I could rightly point out that New England fishermen had it in their interest to rebel against Britain because they could ship their products to the West Indies and to the French and Dutch (which they were doing illegally already) without England's Navigation Acts on their backs. But please...the real underlying cause of the American Revolution was the fact that Americans by 1760 had identified themselves by language, custom, and culture as distinctly different than the parent country. They felt the parent country was interfering with American customs of local government (which were quite distinct locally from the British model), and felt slighted on diplomatic and cultural fronts.( i.e. Treatment during F&I War, taxes without representation, quartering of troops, crass royalist appointments. )These threatened America's manifest destiny to spread to the west. "if these people do no understand us, we must break away to secure our identity".
Likewise 80 years after the U.S. was born we find that the South is in much the same position. The South, which despite its low population, had previously held an enormous amount of clout in the Federal Govt. During the early 19th century Southerners had held 1/2 the Senate, most of the Supreme Court justices, and over half the presidents. By 1850 this power or equality of sectional power that had come out of the Constitutional process of 1787 (big states, small states, 3/5 slaves counted in representation, abolishment of slave trade) was continued in 1820 (Missouri) and 1850's (California, Wilmot proviso, etc.). It is at this point that a growing radical abolitionist movement in the Northeast begins questioning the South's "over representation". Southerners begin to feel threatened ideologically, and begin to identify themselves as distinct from their Northern brethren. A moderate Northern position (and some upper South Whigs) of popular sovereignty completely fails because the radical elements of both North and South squash it.
Politics becomes volatile at this point. Tariffs like any economic issues today rarely incite anger or violence. Allan Greenspan, Enron, and the deficit may decide elections among the informed electorate of both parties, but they do not cause people to fight in the streets. Today such hot button issues would include abortion, affirmative action, gun laws, immigration, and the death penalty. These are the issues that start internal violence. As excitable as these issues are, they do not cause civil war today because they do not divide Americans on regional lines. Believe me if the West Coast had abortion and East Coast did not, and one side or the other dominated the government, it could cause some real extreme violence.
Thus slavery is the only issue to so fundamentally divide 19th century Americans. It defined the political compromises of the 1787 Constitution, and the sectional balance of power juggling act, which Southerners by the 1850's keenly felt was threatened for the first time. Slavery also defined the entire social structure of the South. Most dangerously it led to the terrorism of 19th century bin Ladens such as John Brown and Nat Turner. It caused Southern defensiveness and radicalism to overcome moderate Southern Unionsim, and likewise Northern radicalism to counter it. It was the issue that caused the protestant churches to split by section, which caused charges of blasphemy. It caused books to be banned, and challenges of abuse of the First Amendment. In politics, slavery caused duels, pistol whippings in Congress, and ranting demogaugeric speeches. This is the cause of the Civil War.
But I implore Southerners and conservatives not to deny slavery as the big issue because it is so obviously morally wrong to us today. The South was constitutionally and morally justified to protect slavery if you understand the nature of 19th century life and government. Any Southerner who was alive at the time would willingly announce to you the connection of constitutional government and slavery. It seems harsh to us today but that was what the South thought it was getting in 1787. When slavery was threatened they developed an distinct Southern identity much the same as the Colonials of the 1760's. A rebellion is simply a failed revolution. The official name of the Civil War is still the War of the Rebellion. Calhoun himself said that slavery was justifiable in the American Republic because it allowed all white men to be equal. (Thus Jefferson in 1776 as a slave-owner is not being hypocritical) Even the great ancients such as Cicero and Cato whom the American republicans looked to were slave-owners themselves. As contradictory as slavery and the republic seem today, it was not an unnatural position for our forefathers to take.
Finally, it is historically naive to charge Lincoln with Clinton style liberalism. You really do not have that type of view of Government until FDR. Roosevelt (and to an extent Wilson) is the father of the modern Clinton big Government president. Lincoln certainly violated the Constitution but I would argue far less than what our "good" conservative modern presidents do today. Likewise, in American political history it is silly to paint Jefferson as a Reaganite and Hamilton as a Clintonite. The parties of 200 years ago were much different than today. Oddly then the big Government party was also anti-immigration and pro-Christian, while the small Government party was for more immigration and for deism.
Always be careful of "history" books not written by historians. In professional history you are cautioned about making these kinds of modern analogy leaps of faith. DiLorenzo may be a conservative but sadly he is our own version of Doris Kearns Goodwin or Ken Burns. Lincoln is by no means a saint, but if you attack him with books of this ilk you WILL BE CRUSHED in a debate with a Lincoln historian. For better ammunition read Emory Thomas' work of the Confederate Nation (1976).
My own belief is that every part of the country is capable of so much idiocy on its own, that we're better off hanging together, and letting our mistakes balance out.
I respectfully disagree in that the various positions of the causes of the War differ. The same history told by different folks will vary. I'll bet Japanese historians have a different account of Pearl Harbor than American historians. Read some accounts of the WBTS from Great Britain - they are pretty interesting.
By limiting your sources to those only written by "historians" you might miss other important information/perspectives.
Consider all opinions and accounts such as soldiers, commanders, aides, widows, economists, reporters, politicians, children, slaves, photographers, etc. Each is unique. Each has his/her agenda or purpose. A sample of these accounts may lend more credence to understanding what actually happened and why much more than a college historian's account.
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