Posted on 12/14/2004 11:21:25 AM PST by nickcarraway
The dwindling cadre of academics who try to hold the line on standards have a particularly rough time of it when choosing textbooks.
“Every semester I have to pick a new book and I have to pick the least bad book and it’s really depressing,” Suffolk County Community College professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. says. “You need a good stiff drink.”
“Other conservative academics from across the country have the same problem.”
Dr. Woods teaches history at Suffolk, which is affiliated with the State University of New York. His partial solution to the textbook dilemma was to write his own Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Regnery 2004).
The book traces America’s history from the pilgrims to the Clinton years, drawing on some rarely seen historical quotations. For example, Woods shows us that during the civil war, confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson thought slavery “a moral and political evil” while Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant took a surprisingly ambivalent view of the practice, bringing into question the manner in which that particular American conflict is typically taught.
For the most part, Woods tries to focus on those aspects of American history that most teachers ignore. “I think that most people know about Watergate but they don’t know how [former President] Lyndon Johnson stole his first election to the United States Senate,” Dr. Woods notes.
Of particular interest to Dr. Woods are the efforts of the former Soviet Union to influence United States government policies through communist agents. With the release of once-classified U. S. government documents and even the opening of the archives of the Communist International in Moscow, more is known about Soviet efforts at subversion in the United States than ever before.
“It takes a very long time for recent research to make it into textbooks so I wanted to get some of the recently-released material into print,” Dr. Woods says.
Nevertheless, despite the information available to serious researchers of Cold War history, the hunger for the story told by archival documents is noticeably absent in academe. Dr. Woods, with his interest in the material, is a rare example in the Ivory Tower today.
“It does seem that there is less than a stampede to get over there among academics,” Dr. Woods admits of the treasure trove of information in Moscow. “You can talk all you want to about communism and you will get no interest in academia.”
Dr. Woods started racking up his politically-incorrect bona fides even before the release of his Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. For instance, he is the editor of The Latin Mass, and an enthusiastic advocate of the Roman Catholic rite.
Surprisingly, this interest of his has netted the devout Catholic, if anything, benign curiosity in academia. His colleagues at Suffolk find the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church intriguing as an historical phenomenon. In an odd contrast, many Catholics in Catholic colleges and universities take a more hostile view of the return to this religious tradition.
“In mainstream-left Catholic circles, favoring the traditional Latin Mass is about the least popular position one can hold,” Dr. Woods observed. “There is virulent opposition to it.”
“In secular circles, though, few people feel particularly strongly about it one way or the other.”
At least one Christian academy has indicated that it wants to use Dr. Woods’ Politically Incorrect Guide to American History as a text. Additionally, conservative professors from around the country want to put it on their reading lists.
Dr. Woods remains optimistic about the hope of attaining more diversity on America’s campuses. He says conservatives contemplating an academic career should not abandon that aspiration.
“If you do good scholarly work, you will get recognized,” Dr. Woods told Campus Report Online. Dr. Woods himself matriculated from two bastions of the academic establishment—Harvard and Columbia.
Dr. Woods shares fond memories of every college and university he has ever studied in or taught at, including Columbia. At Columbia, Dr. Woods could claim Allen Brinkley, son of iconic newsman David, as his advisor.
Although identifiably liberal, Dr. Woods remembers receiving fair, gracious treatment from the history department advisor. Still, Dr. Woods admits, Columbia’s history department was so far left that his colleagues considered the liberal-leaning Brinkley a conservative merely because his politics were not as radical as those of his contemporaries.
What really drove the war between the North and the South was the Northern system of tariffs on exported cotton in favor of Free Trade which would have helped the South and British textile factories. The Northern tariff was imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through public works and by making English, French and German machinery expensive so that Northern machinery could be sold to the South at unfairly higher prices. Additionally, the steam ship companies were controlled to come into Northern ports with the European machinery where the tariffs could be collected. Meanwhile, Southern Cotton being exported to textile mills in Europe was taxed with excise tax, thus assuring a cheaper cotton price for Northern textile mills. This all had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods, get less for their cotton and pay a disproportionate tax to support the central (Federal) government. The South's trading relations with other parts of the world was seriously controlled and injured.
The US Government never imposed an Export Tax. It did impose Import Taxes on various goods as it's primary source of revenue. Some of those import tariffs were also protective in nature to protect US interests from cheaper imports. Those "duties" as they were called included items like machinery, iron and other manufactured goods that benefited US businesses mostly located in the Northern states, but they also included stiff duties on Rice, Sugar and Cotton that benefited southern growers. Admittedly, at times the rate of various import duties caused sectional disagreements, but the idea of tariffs by themselves were not a cause of dispute. Even at their highest, protective tariffs would have averaged a few dollars a year additional taxes on citizens in either the North or South. They were in no way the cause for secession and if you read the stated causes, tariffs are not mentioned. Slavery was.
Exports from either the North or South were not taxed. You're just being suckered in by another of the seemingly endless string of Lost Cause fables that attempt to minimize or exclude slavery as the the cause of the war. There were numerous sectional disagreements in that day as there are today. But slavery, and more accurately, the expansion of slavery into the territories, was the only dispute that lead to secession and war. It's beyond silly to even question that fact.
It is also interesting to note that the short lived Confederate Congress imposed nearly the same regimen of tariffs on imports to the Confederacy and they ALSO imposed taxes on shipped out of the South and also limited exports in a foolish attempt to pressure the British and French (their primary foreign customers) into support for their rebellion. They failed in that attempt.
Please give one example.
Prior to 1860, the Democrat party and by extension, the solid South, controlled every branch of the Federal Government, and had controlled it for all but a dozen years of the nation's history.
To say that Southern leaders were somehow concerned with the Federal government's "attitude" is to say that they were unhappy with their own control.
How would you classify the Fugitive Slave Act, which for the first time in our history brought Federal authority directly onto the backs of citizens by compelling them, under threat of imprisonment, to serve as "slave catchers" at the order of Federal magistrates?
The "Southern leadership pushed that Constitutional abomination through congress, and the southern dominated Supreme Court upheld it, rejecting all existing state personal liberty and due process laws. That act, in conjunction with the Tanney court's Dred Scott decision, which for the first time made race a legal classification of citizenship usurping state laws, were the most egregious overstepping of Federal authority in our history to that point, and the "Southern leadership" you seem to romantize as Constitutional defenders, championed both!
The breaking point came over opposition to the expansion of slavery which was the founding principle of the Free Soil (Republican) party. By contrast with southern inspired Federal userpation of states rights typified by the FSA and Scott, the authority of the Federal government to regulate the territories was a well established Constitutional principle dating to the very 1st Congress and the Framing of the Constitution.
Lincoln and the Republicans vowed to do one and only one thing in 1860 and that was to stop expansion. That, the Southern leadership would not tolerate.
Read the Party Platforms that year. The only major difference was over the issue of slavery expansion.
I never claimed to be a "great Civil War expert" and it doesn't take one to see through most of the tripe posted by the Defenders of Slaverocracy. There are probably thousands of books on that era which I haven't read. This is a dead issue for me so additional reading is not as important as on other subjects which aren't.
Selection of the primary material to include in an anthology is the crucial factor and if that selection is made to push a false view then the fact that it uses primary material is irrelevent.
If a whole "staff" can't figure out that tariffs apply to imports and not exports why should I create it for any knowledge of value?
I tried to warn you in my earlier post about dabbling in subjects you don't understand and economics is one of the easiest to get lost in. In that you succeded.
Besides any group that believes slavery was irrelevent to the War is too goofy for my time. You can spend your time at Crackpots R Us but I won't.
Minimizing the importance of slavery is a crucial factor in the DS argument. Another is to pretend that there was some "tyranny" in action against the South unrelated to slavery, a third is to pretend that secession was legal and a fourth is to pretend that Blacks were actually better off in the Land of the Whip and the Lash than in the North.
It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Slavery was 90%+ of the reason the Slavers revolted. Without that issue there would have been no war.
Dear Triumph,
Export tariffs were common in past centuries before economists determined that international trade was actually a good thing.
Scotland still tariffs Scotch designated for export.
The USA has imposed export tariffs on selected products in recent years at the behest of the WTO.
Nothing new here. Just because you never heard of it doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
And I never said slavery was irrelevant, it just wasn't a big deal to either side when you actually look at the facts.
But you don't care about that, you just want to flame people and then go run and tell your mommy what a man you are.
Go back to DU where all your friends call people "RACIST!" for citing facts instead of feelings.
There is no such thing as a tariff on exports and never has been. Tariffs are ONLY applicable to imports.
Apparently you are unaware of the explicit prohibition of taxation of exports in the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, paragraph 5 " No tax or duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State." In other words claims to the contrary are false and demonstrate the ignorance of those claiming this. But truth matters not to those swallowing the "slavery was not a big deal" garbage.
Triumph?
You wouldn't know a fact if it bit you in the Ass. That FACT is amply demonstrated by the crap you posted.
And the fact that you have that export tariffs never existed is...?
Schlemiel. Oh, excuse me, perhaps it is shikseh.
Of course, a "deal was made."
Reflecting the firm southern consensus on the revenue tariff, the Confederacy enacted tariff schedules within the 20 to 15 percent range. On February 9 (four days before the Virginia Secession Convention opened), the provisional Confederate Congress passed a tariff—almost identical to the U. S. Tariff of 1857—that imposed an ad valorem duty of 24 percent on most manufactured goods.Nine days later, the Confederate Congress amended this act to expand the free list of goods to include most food products as well as arms, ammunition, and gunpowder. On March 15—when the Virginia convention was still meeting—the Confederacy lowered the duty on pig iron and other iron products to 15 percent.
In May of 1861, after Virginia had joined the Confederacy, the Confederate Congress implemented a new tariff schedule with duties ranging from 25 percent to 5 percent. For the manufactured goods that that the Confederacy was most likely to import—iron products, textiles, boots and shoes, furniture, and wagons—the ad valorem duty was pegged at 15 percent.
Although significantly lower than the U. S. Tariff of 1857 and the Morrill Tariff of 1861, the Confederate tariff nevertheless fell far short of Unionist predictions of free trade.
There is good reason to believe that a peacetime Confederate tariff might have been even higher. Facing the imminent prospect of war, the Confederacy had little time to nurse infant industries to maturity.
To encourage the rapid importation of goods needed to win the war, the Confederacy lowered its duties for foodstuffs, iron plating, railroad equipment, and arms of all types.
Significantly, refined sugar and manufactured tobacco—products not related to the war effort and produced in great quantities in the Confederacy—had duties of 20 and 25 percent, respectively.
That type of protection might well have been more common if northerners had let the Confederacy part in peace. Regardless of the level of the tariff, there is little doubt that the Confederacy was prepared to collect duties on northern goods. Circulars issued by the Treasury department established revenue officers not only in Atlantic ports, but also in Norfolk (on the Mississippi River) and on various railroads that connected the Confederacy with the North.
The circulars created formidable bureaucratic regulations to collect the tariff, with those importing goods via railways facing particularly onerous requirements. The railroad conductor had to submit triplicate copies of a manifest at the nearest government revenue station, and then wait for the revenue guard to inspect the train to insure that “the goods described therein are placed in separate cars from which mails or passengers are conveyed.” The revenue agent then placed Confederate revenue locks on the freight cars, which could only be opened at specified Confederate revenue depots. Once at the revenue depot, the merchandise in question was then moved to “a warehouse of deposit.” After executing a bond guaranteeing the payment of duties, the importer was finally granted a “permit for inland transportation” so that the goods could finally reach their destination.
The treasury department even authorized Confederate revenue officers to inspect passenger baggage for dutiable goods. The Confederacy, of course, never had a chance to collect a tariff, but if the seceding states had been allowed to leave without war, the economic impact of the Confederate tariff would have been significant.
According to economist Thomas F. Huertas, the South imported $200 million worth of northern goods in 1860 (See Table 1). With an independent Confederacy, northern goods would have been transformed into dutiable foreign trade. Under Confederate tariff schedules passed in May 1861, imported manufacturing goods from the North and Europe would have yielded the Confederate treasury almost $34 million dollars.
The $34 million figure is undoubtedly an upper-bound estimate—consumers may have decided to buy fewer manufactured goods in the face of higher prices, and smugglers might have avoided some of the duties. Yet even if the Confederate government only collected $25 million in tariff revenue, free southerners would have paid $4.46 per capita in duties. In comparison, the entire United States in 1860 (both North and South) collected duties worth $53 million, or $1.94 per free resident.
Source: http://aghistory.ucdavis.edu/majewski.pdf
Yep. The South went to war over $1.94 a year, and the Slaves were all just happy little campers who loved their masters. < / sarcasm >
Think I will get a copy of this, I love history, but often enough, it's a chore to weed out the PC stuff.
It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Well said. Nice and concise.
Some of these people are convinced that Jefferson Davis and company were "just plain folks" or "people like us" who were fed up with taxes, while unionists and Republicans were the evil elite. In fact, the leaders of the rebellion were a ruling elite that had put a lot of effort into defending slavery and expanding its territory. If they'd won, those who are complaining now would just have something else to complain about, assuming they weren't members of this particularly oppressive and overbearing elite.
Woods's pals at lewrockwell.com are really talking up his book, as they did Lorenzo's. Watch and see if he comes out with a "study guide" to hit the rubes up for another $20. This thing is a racket that preys on the gullible. It's sad because plenty of them are just people who want to have pride in their region or do something conservative or patriotic, and they're being sold a pack of lies.
I'll submit to differing opinions on exactly what caused the war. Fine. But the little kid who got ahold of justshutupandtakeit's handle today is saying that the export tariff you cite and I cite NEVER existed and is a lie and anyone who thinks such a tariff ever existed is, and I quote, an "ass".
Can't wait to see what childish name he calls you for citing a tariff he's too stupid to find on Google all by himself.
I don't know what you think I cited, but the was no Export Tariff then or ever in the US. There were Import Tariffs, and some of them were Protectionist in nature, but there were no Export Tariffs. What I posted was the Import Tariffs imposed by the Confederate Congress -- some of them Protective in nature.
Go to Tax History 1816-1860 It gives a short and concise history of Federal Taxation in that period and the sectional interests that drove policy.
Moreover, the Deep South's opposition to protective tariffs (the Upper South was not uniformly opposed) had little or nothing to do with Constitutionality. It was about preserving the viability of the slave economy by stiffling the growth and spread of industry. The amount of money at stake via Federal Taxation in those days was trivial even for the average person.
Read the Constitution. Taxes on exports are EXPLICITLY forbidden. Taxes on exports are not called tariffs in any case that term is restricted to taxes or duties on imports.
Gesundheit.
There you go muddying up the place with facts rather than outrageous falsehoods and misinformation.
No crackpot academics with a bird's nest in his beard to quote?
Those of us with any conception of reality understand that the Slavers destroyed the South and brought one of the greatest catastrophes in history down on it condemning the region to a century of poverty and racism. Pride in the region should not mean that we are blind to the Slavers' shenanigans and evils. Southerners paid the highest price possible for following that leadership.
There has never been an aristocracy in this nation other than that of the South and it was as close-minded as all others determined never to allow progress to interfere with its prerogatives. Even its slaves considered the common folk white trash good only to die unquestioningly protecting the Masters' life style.
"Read the Constitution. Taxes on exports are EXPLICITLY forbidden. Taxes on exports are not called tariffs in any case that term is restricted to taxes or duties on imports."
I don't disagree with you on this point. The export tariff on cotton and other products was un-Constitutional. The problem was that the then-sitting Court allowed the tariff on international exports by refusing an appeal of a lower court decision saying that the proscription against tariffs only applied to interstate commerce. That reading had some weight as tariffs were the domain of Congress and a tool for Federal revenues - I don't agree with their interpretation, but I can understand how they got there.
When Congress repealed that section of the Tariff code in 1871 as an amendment to a bill concerning the silver mines in Nevada the matter was rendered moot for further litigation.
At the current time, the World Trade Organization has ordered the USA in several instances to impose what amount to export tariffs to create "fair trade" and the US has obliged with regulations and taxes on targeted industries that aren't specifically export tariffs, but they accomplish the same end.
Unless your information can be shown to be sounder than that you posted from the Southern Independence Party I will assume you are incorrect and accepting the claims of nutcases wrt export "tariffs" forced upon the South in 1860 or the United States now.
Using such sources will not pass muster with any patriots.
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