Posted on 05/29/2011 2:46:36 PM PDT by BigReb555
Very poor choice of words. You are engaging in the hyperbole of a teenager.
Why not present some new and interesting information that people can enjoy and that rockrr will admire and imitate.
You should know that the Morrill Tariff was a gigantic scheme to transfer Southern wealth to the North, the first true government redistribution plan.
If you read this, you will understand secession.
“Protectionist Tariffs and the Decline of the Southern Economy”
Many authors have fixated on the specific percentages of certain tariffs in order to draw conclusions of the relative impacts of the tariffs on different sections of the country.
Speculation on the percentages and their impact on secession vary widely, and are misleading.
The true cost of tariffs, and especially for protectionist ones like the proposed Morrill tariff as described in the Republican platform, and which was to be approved by the Republican government were measured not in the tax revenue it generated but the impact it had on (1) price and (2) trade.
Beginning with the impact on price, it was common knowledge that items that attracted protectionist policies were almost always goods that cost more domestically than the world price when they were imported from abroad. Therefore the tariff seeks to raise the import price with a tax, bringing it up to or higher than the domestic price and thereby turning the market over to the domestic producer.
But inherent to lower prices are certain benefits received by the consumer. When goods are cheap, consumer money goes further and can buy more. This benefit, called the consumer surplus, is lost and redistributed elsewhere when prices are raised by a tariff.
Part of it transfers over into the producer surplus in the protected domestic industry. The producer gets it as a benefit of the tariff, which shifts the market to his product over the cheaper import. Another part goes into the government in the form of tax collections. And the third part, the consumer surplus, is lost entirely as dead weight.
These three aspects of the tariff burden consumers, by way of higher prices, with an inescapably lesser benefit being returned to the producers, thus incurring a net loss. Naturally people attempt to minimize their personal burdens by passing their costs from the tariff onto others in higher prices elsewhere, so a tariff even on one item eventually spreads into a burden throughout the whole economy.
As costs of the tariff are passed through onto others they will eventually reach exporters as well. But since exporters must sell at the world price in order to get merchants from abroad to take their goods they cannot pass the tariff burden onto the merchants with higher prices of their own. Thus exporters end up bearing the heaviest weight of the tariff.
The Southern economy was entirely export-based and it alone accounted for some 75% of the entire nation's exports. In light of that fact it is of little wonder why they objected to higher tariffs and of little wonder why they complained of bearing the real costs of those same tariffs.
With regard to the issue of international trade, it was a two way street. As the businessmen imported goods, they paid for them in return, and to do so they exported goods of their own and/or offered credit as payment. As a result of this, imports and exports were inescapably intertwined and interdependent. When a barrier existed to impede one, the other stopped as well. That is how blockades work.
They knew that tariffs, and especially protective tariffs, also functioned economically in the same way that a blockade worked militarily. That is why higher tariff status, or sanctions, had been placed against countries as a tool of economic war. They were essentially barriers to importation because they imposed intentionally prohibitive taxes on imported goods in order to benefit the domestic producer of that same good.
The proposed Morrill tariff would do this at one of the highest levels ever to practically all major imports into the United States. But since trade was a two way street and since imports were heavily intertwined with and codependent with exports, the barrier on imports would harm exports and kill off trade in general.
To complicate things further, high import tariffs would have a way of provoking other countries to impose so-called retaliatory tariffs of their own against the United States. The moment this would happen a trade war would emerge and the former trade between those two countries would evaporate even further.
Every one knew the southern economy was almost entirely dependent upon exports. The Southerners knew what would happen to their export-dependent economy when trade would stop due to a barrier such as a high protective tariff.
When the trade dies off so does that economy, and thus a second major reason as to why the South hated tariffs so much. For all practical purposes the Morrill tariff would gut them not once but twice. It gutted them by way of prices since, as exporters, they were the least able of any sector of the economy when it comes to passing on the higher prices to others. It also gutted them by way of undermining international trade, upon which their economy was directly dependent.
Trade and tariff wars had existed for centuries, and had been a major reason for the ongoing wars between France and Great Britain. Ultimately, wisdom prevailed on the European continent, and all barriers to free trade had been eliminated.
Against the backdrop of the obvious advantages of free trade to the overall economy, the Republicans persisted in their efforts to pass the Morrill Tariff. Southern politicians knew how determined the Republicans were in their efforts to establish protectionist measures and they made every effort to resist until it became apparent that the election of 1860 was going to result in sufficient Congressional reapportionment to permit their defeat..
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” -—Thomas Jefferson
(courtesy GOPCapitalist)
Wasn’t GOPC such a crankpot that he ended up opussying himself out?
So why not vote against it? Many bad bills are killed. Why not vote against it, or threaten to vote against it, or filibuster? Why allow the bill to become law?
Because the promotion of slavery was the issue, and that shameful truth was so embarrassing that southern partisans see the need to muddy the water, even 150 years later.
Slavery had slowed the growth of the south, so that no immigrant wanted to go there, where he would compete with slave labor. Slavery depended on keeping slaves ignorant, so no modern industry, no modern farm methods were possible. Slavery put the South on a path to the 7th Century, on a par with what would have happened if they had converted to Islam.
I find it amusing that the slave drivers, who benefited from non=economic laws regarding slaves, that lowered the cost of production at the cost of the very humanity of the slaves, are horribly offended at the use of non-economic tariffs to raise domestic prices, and thus ‘unfairly’ recovered from the slave drivers some of their ill gotten profits.
Of course most tariff monies were collected in Northern ports, from goods that went to Northern workers, so their outrage at the unfairness of it all is not only laughable, but also factually incorrect.
No, I think you are talking about “WhiskeyCaca”
But you can't bring yourself to do anything except issue your senseless ad hominum attacks on everything Southern.
I see that fewer people here respond to your predictable tripe, so I am thinking of joining that group.
Actually you should find it amusing that the factory owner immigrant drivers, who benefited from non-economic laws regarding immigrants, that lowered the cost of production at the cost of the very humanity of the immigrants, were aggressively defending the use of non-economic tariffs to raise domestic prices, and thus ‘unfairly’ recovering from the Southern people excessive and ill gotten profits.
Glad that I was able to explain that to you in a way that you can understand and that reflects the truth of the time.
There were several old FR folks that did not understand the tariff system, but they eventually came around to processing the facts and developing an intelligent understanding of the unfair use of federal power that was used to promote Northern sections over Southern culture.
Let me present something that you might like:
The Morrill Tariff Issue
“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one
another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread
it has earned.” -—Thomas Jefferson
In the three decades between 1830 and 1860, non-protectionist tariffs were in place for a grand total of 14 years, or less than half of that period. The period began under the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which was restored to lower but still protectionist 1824 rates in 1832 and then to lower yet still protectionist rates in the 1833 compromise.
Heavy protectionism was reinstated with the Black Tariff in the early 1840’s. The 1846 Walker Tariff was the first true reduction and the first true non-protectionist tariff schedule that the U.S. had enacted since the War of 1812. It lasted 11 years until 1857 when it was reduced even further. That reduction lasted three years until the Morrill Tariff passed in May of 1860 and March of 1861.
3/1861 The Northern British Review, Edinburgh,
“The ‘Tariff’ question, again, enters largely (more largely than is commonly supposed) into the irritated and aggrieved feelings of the Southerners. And it cannot be denied that in this matter they have both a serious injury and an unconstitutional injustice to resent.
“... All Northern products are now protected: and the Morrill Tariff is a very masterpiece of folly and injustice. No wonder then that the citizens of the seceding States should feel for half a century they have sacrificed to enhance the powers and profits of the North; and should conclude, after much futile remonstrance, that only in secession could they hope to find redress.”
3/1861 By 1860 the protectionists had a solid majority in the House of Representatives. This majority was also strictly sectional. The northerners voted in near unanimity for the Morrill tariff while the southerners opposed it in equally unified form. The northerners outnumbered the southerners in the House, meaning it passed with a large majority.
The senate was a slightly different situation in 1860 but its tide had shifted by 1861.
Even if one assumes that every single seceded state's senators had (a) remained and (b) voted against the Morrill act, they still would not have been able to muster enough votes to defeat the thing.
In the absolute best case voting scenario that could have occurred under the senate that took office in 1861, the best that the southerners could manage would be a tie vote, in which case VP Hanibal Hamlin would cast a tiebreaker in favor of the north and the tariff would pass. The southerners recognized this fact almost immediately after the 1860 elections and publicly stated so.
It's certainly true that some Northerners, especially iron founders in Pennsylvania and Ohio, were very strongly pro tariff. So were Southern sugar and hemp growers. While it is always true that some protectionists existed in the south, the tide of southern opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the free trade position. Every single major trade vote in Congress from the era testifies to this fact by displaying virtual unanimity among the southerners in opposition to tariffs.
Senator Robert Hunter of Virginia was on the senate floor in 1861 fighting the passage of the Morrill Tariff. He admitted its passage was inevitable ever since Pennsylvania and the Republican Party united on the issue. He told his colleagues;
“I believe it has been generally understood that the adhesion of the State of Pennsylvania to the Republican party was upon the condition of the passage of this Morrill-tariff bill. Still, I owe it, perhaps, to those whose opinions I represented on this committee, and to my constituents, to expose, if I can, the shallow pretexts on which it is sought to adopt this measure, and strip it of those disguises in the shape of specific duties, under which its enormous taxation is hidden.”
3/2/1861 The Morrill Tariff was signed into law by outgoing President Buchanan.
Before the seats vacated in 1861 by the Southern congressmen were cold, the economic order of the United States was dramatically changed. The tariff took off on an upward trajectory that was far above any tariff in history
This tariff raised the taxation rate from an average of approximately 15% to 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items. This effectively tripled the taxation rate on imported goods. The law allowed a second additional rate averaging 47% for iron.
This was a major change in taxation. Having evolved from the low taxation rates of the early 1800’s, voters in certain sections of the country were in favor of higher tariffs to protect their manufacturing industries. Southerners, whose income came from agriculture, of course demanded low tariffs. They preferred buying European products, which were better and cheaper than those made in the United States.
Westerners, whose income also came from agriculture at first opposed high tariffs. But they came to accept the “American System” proposed by Representative Henry Clay of Kentucky. In 1824, Congress had boosted most tariffs as a result of Clay’s proposals.
Many people, especially Southerners protested the rising tariffs in 1828. Subsequent negotiations in the US Congress caused the tariffs to rise and fall intermittently during the 1840’s and 1850’s. Since the agricultural South needed more imported goods than the industrial North, the tariff highly affected the South while benefiting the manufacturing interests in the North. Most of the discretionary Federal spending was on Northern projects and infrastructure that did not encourage industrial development in the South.
When Morrill’s tax plan was introduced into debate in Congress in 1860, the Southerners felt betrayed when the West and North joined in support of the high tariffs.
Earlier in the year, the New Haven Daily Register said,
“There was never a more ill-timed, injudicious and destructive measure proposed, than the Morrill tariff bill, because while Congress is raising the duties for the Northern ports, the Southern Constitutional Convention is doing away with all import duties for the Southern ports, leaving more than three-fifths of the seafront of the Atlantic States…beyond the reach of our tariff…Southern ports would then invite the free trade of the world.”
The editor advised that the South be left alone, and the Morrill tariff be repealed.
The Republican Party and Lincoln’s major focus was on raising taxes, in particular raising and enforcing the tariff. His convention victory was particularly made possible by support from the Pennsylvania delegation.
Pennsylvania had long been the home and the political focus of the nation’s iron and steel industry which, ever since its inception during the War of 1812, had been chronically inefficient, and had therefore constantly been bartering its votes for high tariffs and, later, import quotas.
Virtually the first act of the Lincoln administration was in passing the Morrill protective tariff act, doubling existing tariff rates, and creating the highest tariff rates in American history
3/2/1861 The New York Evening Post stated:
“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources, which supply our treasury, will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.
"There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”
No I’m not.
Is that the best you have?
And so the southern senators bravely ran away. No filibuster. No vote against. Bravely, bravely ran away.
More insults. More insults. More brave insults from SUPER AD HOMINUM MAN.
So, if you consider secession “running away”, then why did brave Mr. Lincoln run after them?
The Senators ran away. They had no right to take the rest of the state with them. If your wife runs away, she may indeed have the legal authority to do so. If she steals the cars, empties the gun safe and cleans out the bank accounts, those are criminal acts.
That is why there are courts. In disputes between the states and the federal government, the court is the Supreme Court. The rebels did not file suit for redress of grievance, rather, they began with an illegal conspiracy, then progressed to stealing weapons from federal forts, and all the fun that thus ensued. Eventually they got to the point where they were firing on US soldiers performing their duty. At that point, all honest people knew who was in the wrong. Some through cowardice, thought that they would get away with it. Others, through cowardice, thought by helping them, they could avoid war.
Actually I have nothing but praise for southern valor, especially as demonstrated by the 40 regiments of southern men who fought for the Union, against treason. Further, I have nothing but praise for General Thomas, raised in Virginia, whose family couldn’t stand being caught in the wrong. I have significant praise for General Winfield Scott, raised in Virginia, who laid out the broad blueprint of direct pressure on Richmond, naval interdiction, and bisecting the rebellious section at the Mississippi. As modified by Grant, to early secure the pork producing sections of Tennessee, it served the country well.
If that was the real grievance, they should have had no problem with getting a constitutional amendment passed to prevent or restrict the tariff.
But the south rebelled before the change to the Tariff was passed. Their access to the territories with their slave property was about to be cut off. They would not be able to rape their concubines on their NY shopping trips. Well, sir, something more drastic than a constitutional amendment was needed!
The tariff is their complaint that they would have to do something like show up and vote against it. Not convincing to the rest of us.
Of course the Lincoln administration did not pass the Morill tariff act. That was signed into law by Buchanan, a friend of the South, though from Pennsylvania.
So it is your point that the immigrants in the north were more constrained from finding a better job than the slaves?
The way it worked is this: The first year or two you worked for someone else, the next year or two you worked for yourself, and after that you hired another to work with you. If things went well, you could hire more people to work for you.
By contrast, the slaves worked for another, period. Even if freed, you were constrained to work for your loving Massa, for depressed wages, so that you could purchase the freedom of a wife, or perhaps a favored child. Why were wages depressed? Because when you were hiring yourself out, you were in competition with the unfreed slaves.
That is why the northern states were growing fast, and southern states were not. No immigrant wanted to bring his talents to the south if he had to compete with slave labor. And so the south atrophied even as their hubris grew.
The perpetual union predated the Federalist papers. After the perpetual union, came the “more perfect” union under the current constitution.
A perpetual union, perfected, and the secession as practiced by the late rebellious states was of no legal effect, as determined by the Supreme Court under Texas v. White.
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