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
Really.
Where have I told any lies?
Please make a family oriented answer if you can.
Walt
It's explained here. The clause was repealed in the 1920s. The recent measure was just intended to remove the remaining "racial language" from the state constitution.
The Linclonized federal government seizes property everyday from citizens of this country for non-constitutional purposes. I know this timeframe is not relevant to you because if it doesn't take place in the 19th century, your "eyes glaze over". Good way to distance yourself from Walt though.
You accuse me of supporting Hitler and then want me to find "family oriented" language to tell you what you are? Do you think that the use of a trivial vulgarity like "shit" in any way compares to the offensiveness of your insults? Is it possible that you are so incredibly stupid as not to understand how far over the line such a remark was? I am curious about how serious your pathology is, but I don't expect you to have enough insight to provide an answer.
There is no reason for me to communicate further with you. You have nothing to offer but imbecilities and gratuitous insults. You can go to hell.
The wicked flee when no man pursueth.
Walt
You are probably under the illusion that that was a clever response. But you will have to learn to make relevent responses before you can aspire to make clever ones.
Actually, the first hostile act was when Lincoln's ship, the Harriet Lane, fired upon the steamer Nashville as it was entering Charleston harbor on April 11, 1861 the day before the Sumter bombardment.
As for Virginia, the issue being discussed was the reason of its secession. I noted earlier that the fact it was being blockaded didn't exactly encourage it to stay in the union when secession came up for a vote. Another poster disputed this suggesting that Lincoln did not blockade the state until after it left, which was simply not true.
Speaking of fleeing, is there any particular reason why you've backed away from any further discussion of your earlier statements of yesterday? Not the least among them was blaming George Bush for 9/11 and denying the socialist wing nature of Hitler's ideology.
Thank you for your kind words. It seems that many people have lost their perspective, especially historical perspective.
Some of the more radical League of the South supporters keep ignoring the historical record to promote a modern political agenda which does not fit with the reocrd of Southern history.
Neo-Confeds keep claiming they want today's South to be free of "yankee" socialism. While socialism is certainly something to be despised, claiming the record of the Confederacy would be unwise. Although founded on a doctrine of state's rights, the Confederate Government of President Davis instituted a tremendous ammount of socialism in practice such as: CS Government ownership of a majority of the South's factories, the first national military draft in American history, as well as confiscating the property of thousands of civilians whether Unionist or Confederate for the war effort.
So as not to be accused of "damnyankeeness" I will state that the Union Government under Lincoln did much of the same. My problem is in accusing one section of the United States with political heresies that are prevelant in the other. In the United States today, conservatives tend to live in the rural and suburban areas, while liberals tend to thrive in the cities. Thus rural Pennsylvania and Alabama are conservative, while urban New York and New Orleans are liberal. Remember where Huey Long was from? It's silly to have North/South sectionalism in 2002.
Slavery was the dominant issue of the war. Southerners must accept this. That's not to say that it was the only issue or a moral crusade of good Northerners versus bad Southerners. The James McPherson position is outdated and over simplified. The truth is that the slavery issue was too complicated to fix on moral, social, religious, and economic grounds (even for the Founders), and thus led to a tragic war.
Another Neo-Confed myth is that the South was unified during the War. In areas where slavery was strongest (coastal SC, Mississippi) secession was popular. In areas of the South where slavery was weakest (Kentucky, West VA, East Tenn) secession was unpopular. That is as good evidence as any for the slavery issue to be coupled with secession. I repsect any Southerner or other American who stands up for protecting battlefields, symbols, and heroes like RE Lee and Cleburne. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and a better argument to combat the McPherson's of the world, the true damnyankees. Radicals like DiLorenzo do more harm than good.
Great points Mudboy. That's an "effe-ciant" way to summarize what I have been saying all along.
I'll also agree that rural Pennsylvania is in some places every bit as conservative as rural Virginia. I would add though that the rural presence is much stronger in the south than the increasingly urbanized megapolis known as the northeast coast. The product has been felt both in the urban rat holes and the increasingly liberalized suburbs. Most of them still elect Republicans, but a suburban yankee republican is often politically comparable to some southern rural Democrats, hence the problem there.
As far as DiLorenzo goes, I do not believe his role is as you state it. To me, DiLorenzo fills a void by providing "the other half" of the McPherson/Sandburg/Von Holst/Marx/you-name-it story, and especially so to the public at large. By its very nature his book is marketted to mass culture for popular sales. He's there to argue a side that has been willfully neglected for years in the form of all the McPhersons out there. To pretend that DiLorenzo is the absolute treatise on all things pro-confederate is silly, but as a popular-oriented overview of some of the major problems with The Lincoln, it serves its role reasonably well. We must continue the debate on the confederacy as a whole in scholarly circles as that is the other role to combatting the McPherson noble lie, but without something there to make the case on a popular front as well, that task is severely compromised if not impossible.
That is certainly an oversimplified version of our conversation. After the convention voted to secede militia units were mustered and federal facilities at Harper's Ferry and Norfolk seized. The rebellion had already begun in Virginia. The state government was behind it, and the referendum was only a confirmation of what had already become a fait accompli.
But to return to your original statement. Does anyone really think that if Lincoln had not extended the blockade to Virginia the referendum would have gone the other way? It's a cute debating point, but it doesn't stand up as a real hypothesis. Was secession the more justified because of the blockade? It doesn't matter so much, if the blockade was a justifiable response to the actions of the state government.
In what way? You stated that Lincoln issued the blockade after Virginia seceded. You did this in post 578. This was factually incorrect as I pointed out. Your response was not to recognize this fact, which was the matter our discussion, but to divert into the issue of arsenal seizures and the sort.
That latter issue is nice and all, but does not change my original point nor the fact that Lincoln installed a blockade against states that were not officially seceded.
Does anyone really think that if Lincoln had not extended the blockade to Virginia the referendum would have gone the other way?
Speculation on events that never happened is a poor way to debate events that did happen. My own suspicion is that it would have effected North Carolina fairly heavily, which was very closely divided on the secession issue a few months prior to their withdrawal from the union.
Was secession the more justified because of the blockade? It doesn't matter so much, if the blockade was a justifiable response to the actions of the state government.
Sure it does, as a blockade on foreign commerce isn't exactly responsive to a militia siezure of an arsenal hundreds of miles inland, or even a fort or two on the coast.
Because I don't put up a post every ten minutes?
Football was on.
Hitler was not for socialism, Hitler was for Hitler. As Andy Card pointed out, Hitler played everybody against everybody. It hurt him later on.But socialism and nationalism are opposites. It's a joke for you to say otherwise.
This has been very illuminating though. Maybe you don't give a fig for secession and all that crap. You just want to argue.
Walt
Too bad it has no basis in fact.
Walt
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