Evidence Builds for DeLorenzo's Lincoln

October 16, 2002 | Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

[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

[WhiskeyPapa]

Governor Pickens sends:

"In recent years there has been a powerful party organized upon principles of ambition and fanaticism, whose undisguised purpose is to divest the Federal Government from external, and turn its power upon the internal interests and domestic institutions of these States."

This as opposed to a powerful party that got the Fugitive Slave Act passed. That was directed internally too. Presumably, Governor Pickens favored the FSA -- even though -it- was the most intrusive piece of federal legislation. In fact, it may still remain the most intrusive, as it required citizens to involuntarily submit to be put on posses to catch slaves. Imagine a federal law that required one to leave one's home and submit to authority with no notice. People would freak out. Now, a conscription law might be a parallel. But it should be noted that the first such law was passed at the behest of those brave proponents of "states' rights."

What a joke.

Walt

[Tauzero]

Bump for the confederate constitution, a much superior framework.

[Cacique]

btt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Bump for the confederate constitution, a much superior framework.

What do you like especially about the CSA constitution vice the USA version?

Walt

[CWRWinger]

One will not know where they are going if they don't know where they have been. Face it. The South was right.

[CWRWinger]

...exactly how many members did the Abolition Party (percentage wise of entire population) have circa 1860 in the north?

Probably about the same as the Libertarian Party today (sarcasm).

[WhiskeyPapa]

Face it. The South was right.

In what way?

Walt

[rdb3]

One will not know where they are going if they don't know where they have been. Face it. The South was right.

You've lost your damned mind. Any nation that had slavery incorporated into its founding constitution was in no way correct. The CSA did exactly that. And it is the very definition of hypocrisy to say that a nation would be "free" while having laws that even set the price of slaves in its founding documents! That stain is indelible. That nation would not be free at all. It's like being "a little bit pregnant;" you either are or you are not.

So, please, you got what you wanted but you lost what you had. There's scant sympathy from me.

And, as I said, it's the 21^st century. The days of the 19^th are long gone. If as much time were spent discussing today's issues as there are being wasted on what happened well over 100 years ago, maybe there'd be some real solutions. The continuous fighting of a war that ended long ago is downright idiotic.

No mercy.
Coming soon: Tha SYNDICATE.
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[WhiskeyPapa]

In the end, however, one suspects larger agendas being advanced in this endless debate over the Civil War's causes. I fail to see why it is necessary to cleanse the Confederacy's moral stature to advance a true understanding of the need to return to a federalism approximating that envisioned by the Founding Fathers - a goal that all of us here share.

Good point.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

The continuous fighting of a war that ended long ago is downright idiotic.

Your frustration is well founded. Someone yesterday said that these endless ACW threads were like the energizer bunny. They just keep going and going. And no matter how much the record of the day is posted, the same old people will try and skew the perception to cleanse the slave power.

"Face it. The South was right."

That is grotesque.

This is all important to the degree that perception of the past affects our actions in the future. I don't think we can afford to yield the ground to the racist neo-rebs.

Also, it betrays the memory of the brave Union soldiers, black and white, north and south, if we let the lies continue.

It always strikes me funny that the neo-rebs pine over the oh-so-honorable Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and the rest, but then will tell the most bold faced lies about what happened before and during the ACW.

Walt

[stand watie]

the WBTS was about just ONE main cause: FREEDOM from the hateful, arrogant, self-righteous damnyankees.

the TRUE CAUSE is still about that one thing.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

the WBTS was about just ONE main cause: FREEDOM from the hateful, arrogant, self-righteous damnyankees.

the TRUE CAUSE is still about that one thing.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

it has forever been so.

free dixie,sw

[WhiskeyPapa]

Face it. The South was right.

"And yet again, there are in the United States and territories, including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks. At $500 per head they are worth over two hundred millions of dollars. How comes this vast amount of property to be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free cattle running at large. How is this? All these free blacks are the descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves, or they would be slaves now, but for something which has operated on their white owners, inducing them, at vast pecuniary sacrifices, to liberate them. What is that something? Is there any mistaking it?"

If the south was right, why were all these free blacks left running around without owners?

Walt

[Ditto]

BTW, since this was such a 'serious' concern, exactly how many members did the Abolition Party (percentage wise of entire population) have circa 1860 in the north?

Very few. Most Republicans, including Lincoln, were not abolitionists. They opposed slavery but did not demand abolition. They only sought to contain it where it existed. They were "Free Soilers".

Well considering tariffs had been on the forefront of national discord for over 40 years and the fact that slavery wasn't even broached by the Whig/Republicans seriously until the mid 1850s

Tariffs had not been a political issue for decades by 1860. That issue was resolved in 1833 and tariffs decreased every year afterward and were at their lowest level ever in 1860. Slavery became an issue in the 1850s because the slave powers pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It was followed by the Fugitive Slave Act, which trampled both states-rights, and individual rights and drove further wedges between the sections. It was again more 'in-your-face' overreaching by the slave powers. Those bills killed the ever-compromising Whigs as a national party and the free states reacted by creating the Republican party and it's free-soil platform. The Republicans would have never come into existence if the slave powers had not dominated the Democrat party and discarded all previous compromises.

The south, or more correctly, the Slaveocracy of the south who controlled all political power, made slavery an issue, not the north.

[stand watie]

ONCE MORE, the documents you and other damnyankee apologists keep talking about have at least the following problems:

1.the authors represented only themselves;they were elected by NOBODY &

2.almost nobody except the authors read the documents &

4. nobody in the general public cared what the aristocrats that wrote the documents said &

4.nobody in academia was even interested in the documents until the revisionists took over NE academia & started looking for a reason to say that slavery was the ONE, SINGLE CAUSE of the war.

this theory is simply an excuse for the WAR CRIMES committed by the "filth that came down from the north".

there is not enough whitewash in all the world to cover the damnyankees crimes against humanity & not enough soap to wash the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents from their hands.

free the south,sw

[rdb3]

the WBTS was about just ONE main cause: FREEDOM from the hateful, arrogant, self-righteous damnyankees.

I need to "damnyankee" my fist down your throat. What are you, FR's very own Boomhower?

"Dang ol' waiting for the dem damnyankees come put down my sacred South, man! My hot tub, man, dang ol' damnyankees stop me from the web surf in my hot tub, man! Dub-dub-dub, man, naked girlies on there man with a cold beer, man, long's none of 'em damnyankees, man, I could look all day, man!"

Very rarely do you see one post the most asinine and hateful posts as yours.

Hypocrite! You can't have it both ways. Your "sacred" country wrote slave laws into its constitution for crying out loud! How in the hell was that for "FREEDOM," all caps typer? You can't erase that.

Your so-called "FREEDOM" was to include the continuous bondage of others. So it was "FREEDOM" for some, but servitude for others. That's not freedom. That's hypocrisy, no matter how you slice, dice, puree, jullienne, sautee, poach, double-boil, bake, butter, broil, or fry it.

It was glaring hypocrisy. And to stand by it is indefensible.

No mercy.
Coming soon: Tha SYNDICATE.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.

[uncbob]

The Civil War had one and only one cause --- S-L-A-V-E-R-Y

NOT TRUE

You might say that the South Seceding had ONE cause ( but of course that is what is being argued here)Slavery

The WAR was fought because Lincoln wanted to Preserve the Union. He could have left the South go its way

[stand watie]

are you REALLY that dumb?

if you've read my posts over the years, you'll KNOW that the damnyankees had NO INTENTION of freeing THEIR SLAVES!

chattal slavery was written into the US constitution as well AND it was dying a natural & un-lamented death.absent the WBTS, i believe that the industrial revolution in agriculture would have ended slavery within 10-15 years, perhaps sooner.

lincoln, that GREAT bloodspiller, tyrant & damnfool said IN WRITING that he didn't care a damn about slavery. what lincoln & his cabal of thugs/crooks/cheap politicians DID want was $$$$$$$$$$$ & POWER. the radical republicans were about IMPERIALIST hemisphere-wide expansion. the CSA was the first victim;Canada was to be second; Mexico & latin america were to swiftly follow in their "grand design". thankfully a fellow named BOOTH ended lincoln's great dream of the "pax americana".

he also was in favor of getting rid of all the Indians in the USA, by killing or driving them away from white people. he hated roman catholics, jews,"muddy coloured" people, latinos & asians. other than being a stone racist & bigot, lincoln was a "great man"!

free dixie,sw

[CWRWinger]

Do you have a moral basis for slavery being wrong? If so I would like to see it, seriously.

Most quote their history teachers, their parents, the Washington Post, laws of the land, but these are political and legal reasons.