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In praise of (three) modern Doughface Northerners
vanity | 3/17/2012 | BroJoeK

Posted on 03/17/2012 4:12:31 AM PDT by BroJoeK

Has anyone else noticed that all three of our non-Romney Republican candidates for President grew up in Southern Pennsylvania?
Does anyone suppose this is a historical coincidence?
It's not.

Unless you are some kind of history nut, you've never even heard the term "doughface Northerner", since it hasn't been politically current in 150 years.
And if you have heard it, then you know it was an old term of mocking and scorn -- for Northerners who loved the ante-bellum South and supported the South's legal, ahem, "institutions".

Indeed, the term itself, "doughface" was derisively coined by Southerners to describe their northern allies, and may well have originally been intended to mean "doe face", a reference to a skittish, easily frightened deer.

Northern doughfaces were essential to making the great Southern Slave Power a dominant political force in all the decades before 1860.
And of all the doughfaces, perhaps the epitomy, the highest achievement of that art-form was Abraham Lincoln's predecessor: Democrat President James Buchanan from Chambersburg, in south-central Pennsylvania.

Buchanan loved the South, and staunchly supported its values, including the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scott decision which made it more difficult to effectively outlaw slavery in non-slave states.
When the Deep South began to secede in late 1860, outgoing President Buchanan recommended against secession, but took no actions to stop it.

So, in the long arc or history, Doughface Northerners were essential to Southern Slave Power and thus to preserving the Union itself.
Indeed, it was precisely the moment in time when Doughfaces were overthrown in the North, with the election of Lincoln's Republicans, that the Deep South chose to begin seceding.

But remember, this happened in 1860, after the North's population and economy had grown overwhelmingly dominant.
Had the South seceded earlier in, say, 1830 and been lead by the likes of, say, Andrew Jackson, the North could not have defeated them militarily.
Of course, Jackson himself opposed secession, but then Jackson never imagined the government in Washington might subvert slavery.

So Doughface Northerners are the reason Southern Slave Power did not feel seriously threatened before the Republican election victory in 1860.
Historically, they served the vital function of keeping the South in the Union, until the North grew strong enough for military victory.

Now, for purposes of this analysis, I equate the old Democrat Slave Power with today's Democrat Progressive agenda -- yes an outrageous idea, until you think about it...
Both the Old and Modern Democrats used the force of law to grant special privileges to selected groups based on race, or some other group identifier -- gender, ethnicity, economic "class", sexual orientation, you name it.
Indeed, arguably, modern equivalents of "slaves" are the economically vigorous producers of wealth, and our Master Class are politicians who redistribute the wealth of others to their own favored supporters.
So we are becoming, in a sense, one big plantation with its great Plantation House in Washington, DC.

In today's upside down world, the Old South most strongly supports our traditional Christian values, devotion to constitutionally limited government, private enterprise and equal justice under the law as opposed to special privileges for the politically connected.
As such the Old South is today's heart and soul of Conservatism and essential to any Republican strategy for election victories.
But now, as always, the South needs allies they can trust, and who can they trust more than modern-day Doughface Northerners?
And where do you find real Doughfaces, who grew up in the North and love the South?

Why, just as in times past, in Southern Pennsylvania, of course.
And so today we have an abundance of non-Romney candidates who grew up in Southern Pennsylvania and are hoping to appeal to enough conservative Southerners to overturn the votes of more traditional Northern "establishment" Republicans.

Oh? You didn't know the non-Romney's are all Southern Pennsylvanians?

Ron Paul: born and raised in Pittsburg, southwestern Pennsylvania.
Rick Santorum: born in Virginia, raised in Butler, near Pittsburg, represented southwestern Pennsylvania in Congress.
Newt Gingrich: born in Harrisburg, south central Pennsylvania, raised in nearby Hummelstown.

All modern-day Southern Pennsylvania "Doughface Northerners" who love the South, it's people and it's conservative values.

God bless them one and all.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: history; politics; vanity
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To: Ditter

;-)


161 posted on 04/01/2012 4:40:43 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
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To: Pelham
That's not the quotation.

John C. Calhoun to Percy Walker, October 23, 1847, in Robert L. Meriwether, et.al., ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 25 vols. (Columbia: USC Press, 1959), 24:617. During the debate over the Wilmot Proviso, Calhoun said "I go farther [than merely insisting on national protection of slave property] and hold that if we have a right to hold our slaves, we have the right to hold them in peace and quiet and that the toleration in the non-slaveholding States of the establishment of societies and presses, and the delivery of lectures, with the express intention of calling into question our right to our slaves [and enticing runaways and abolition are] not only a violation of [my interjection here: AHEM!] international laws but also the Federal compact."

Now, for a moment, just consider this breath-taking order of events---that the great Calhoun, defender of the Constitution, Neo-Confederates would have him be, appeals FIRST to international law, then to the "federal compact"!!! Second, there is no wiggle room in this statement. Calhoun makes it absolutely and totally clear that not only is slavery to be protected in its practice, but it must be shielded from any and all public criticism or utterance, including newspapers and speeches. Here is that great defender of "liberty," which of course we really know means the liberty of a white man to hold a black man as property, insisting that to protect slavery requires enslaving whites to his speech codes. Sounds like communism and liberalism to me.

Moreover, if you would but substitute "homosexual marriage" for "slavery," I think you would see clearly what Calhoun had in mind: the public ban on any criticism of an institution that some (many? most?) find utterly immoral and deplorable.

Finally, while I don't expect you to take my word for anything, I'd advise that you stop running to Wikipedia or online Liberty Fund (which I have spoken to and written for many times) sources but do some real historical research. If you had bothered to consult any of the sources sources I've posted here throughout this debate---which apparently few have done (and I'll refresh your memories: Loewenberg's "Freedom's Despots," my own "Brothers in Chains" article, James Huston's "Calculating the Value of the Union,") you'd find a non-Hofstadterian interpretation of Calhoun and Fitzhugh that is internally consistent.

162 posted on 04/01/2012 5:37:32 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually (Hendrix))
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To: Pelham
I think you'd be better off consulting Robert Lowenberg's article, "John Locke and the Antebellum Defense of Slavery," for one. It doesn't matter that Fitzhugh shrouds his pro-slavery arguments as "family centered paternalism"---the question is what WERE the arguments?

You and others keep wanting to somehow deflect from Fitzhugh and Calhoun the reality of their socialist, pro-slavery (same thing) positions on the grounds that either someone else (Marx) held them later, or someone else (Filmer) may have held them earlier. When evaluating them in historical context, this is appropriate. When evaluating their ideas as "philosophers" or theorists, it is totally inappropriate and misleading.

For example, one can evaluate Hitler's race hatred in historical context of the 1920s Weimar Republic---a reasonable thing to do---but it does not in any way change or exculpate his actual disgusting theories, which he continued to stand by. So when Fitzhugh says (to which none of you have a denial) that slavery is the ultimate form of socialism, or when Calhoun says that we must not only have guarantees that protect the ownership of slaves in principle but which PROHIBIT all criticism of slavery as an institution, then we have to take those as political/economic principles and evaluate them on their face.

163 posted on 04/01/2012 5:44:09 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually (Hendrix))
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To: Pelham; LS; donmeaker
LS: " “Improper meddling,” such as the barring of any anti-slave commentary, publications, or public speech so that, as he said, the south could hold its slaves “in peace?” "

Pelham: "It is part of a lengthy discussion about the unfairness of the tariff to agricultural States.
There is no mention of slavery at all:"

donmeaker (from post #160): "The tariff amounts paid by the south were not exorbitant."

In fact, Calhoun's views, especially regarding slavery are well known.
"Improper meddling" would be Calhoun's response to any Federal actions against slavery.

For those not 100% familiar with Calhoun, here are the basics:

From Wiki

On Tariffs:

The key points to remember are that tariff's were the Federal government's major income source, and rates went up and down over the years.

The following comes from this link:
For examples:

So the take-away here is that a lot of political philosophising over the "injustice" of high tariffs did not correspond to the actual tariffs then in effect.

164 posted on 04/01/2012 5:46:07 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
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To: BroJoeK
Instead, I mean Northerners who share the South's commitment to true conservative principles.

Maybe it's the other way around. Instead of a Wallace or a Thurmond, someone with deep Southern roots, Southern states are going for guys from Pennsylvania (though both have Southern ties).

Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum as a spokesman for "Southern conservative principles" may be an indication of how much things have changed in fifty years or so. Of course, the fact that these guys are a lot less likely to carry states like Pennsylvania does tend to cloud things.

165 posted on 04/01/2012 11:33:51 AM PDT by x
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To: donmeaker

“The tariff amounts paid by the south were not exorbitant. In fact the amount of tariff paid in southern ports was a small fraction of the amount paid in northern ports.”

You have it exactly backwards.

The industrial north wasn’t importing manufactured goods, they were producing them. Their industries were protected from lower priced European competition by the tariff. Their wages and profits benefited from the tariff.

The agricultural south purchased its manufactured goods from outside the south. The tariff raised the cost to them of imported European manufactures, or if they bought from the north required them to pay the higher prices that northern industries could command due to the protection rendered by the tariff.

Go try to sell your tariff theory to some libertarians, they’ll give you a lesson in how tariffs work.


166 posted on 04/01/2012 8:20:37 PM PDT by Pelham (Marco Rubio, la raza trojan horse.)
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To: LS

“That’s not the quotation.”

Not the quotation? Who are you kidding? The quotation I posted comes from directly from Marco Bassani’s Arator article:

““improper intermeddling of the Government with the private pursuits of individuals, who must understand their own interests better than the Government”

and he footnotes his source:

Calhoun’s “South Carolina Exposition, Rough Draft”.

That’s not the Wilmot Proviso debate, which is completely irrelevant to Calhoun’s ‘Exposition’.

It’s not that tough to check footnotes. I’ll bet even the Liberty Fund knows how to look up footnotes, which seems to be difficult for some of their critics.


167 posted on 04/01/2012 8:58:52 PM PDT by Pelham (Marco Rubio, la raza trojan horse.)
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To: LS

What you are doing is “asserting the premise”.

Your premise is that Calhoun and Fitzhugh were socialists or marxists. But rather than making a case for this premise you simply write as if this were established fact. You assemble a series of facts where Calhoun and Fitzhugh appear to be in concord with Marxist belief and run with it.

In order to do so you ignore other sources of political thought that were known to influence these men (Filmer in Fitzhugh’s particular case), and you likewise ignore how their own positions contradict the positions of socialism. You ignore the fact that Marxism sees capitalism as a phase leading to socialism, while Fitzhugh was a critic of industrial capitalism entirely. The socialists weren’t trying to hold on to the pre-capitalist world of the ante-bellum South. Fitzhugh was.

Where do you find Marx or any other socialist of the 19th century defending slavery? You don’t. Not only that, but Marx was demonstrably a fan of Abraham Lincoln and the Union side in the Civil War. He was the author of that fan mail letter the First International sent to Lincoln.

Now I suppose it’s possible to cherry-pick Lincoln in order to show that Lincoln was a “Communist” at heart. Lincoln shut down newspapers in the North to control political thought, and jailed a few thousand political opponents without trial.

Like Marx he was a promoter of centralized, consolidated government. Marx advocated the income tax and Lincoln implemented one. Lincoln’s war against southern secession prefigured the Brezhnev Doctrine, once in you’re in you can’t get out. He waged a terrible war on his own country, something highly typical of the communist world.

So it’s not so hard to play this game. Look for the apparent similarities, ignore the inconvenient differences. The trouble is Lincoln never joined a socialist movement. Neither did Calhoun or Fitzhugh.


168 posted on 04/01/2012 9:39:14 PM PDT by Pelham (Marco Rubio, la raza trojan horse.)
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To: Pelham

I find Marx’ articles on the American Civil War fascinating! They were written for the New York Tribune and the Vienna Presse. He wrote private letters on the topic as well. Absolutely remarkable!


169 posted on 04/01/2012 9:49:48 PM PDT by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: Pelham

It’s not a game. It’s an easy adage. If it walks like a marxist and quacks labor theory of value like a marxist, it’s a marxist-—whenever it occured.


170 posted on 04/02/2012 9:15:14 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually (Hendrix))
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To: Pelham
I meant, "That's not the quoation I was referring to" that you apparently tried to disprove.

And as for checking footnotes, you appear to have some difficulty staying on topic, which isn't surprising as the subject is not favorable to your perspective.

So, enjoy your neo-Confederate romance with the marxist/socialist Calhoun, the slave owner who would BAN all free speech to protect his black property. If you think that in any way aligns you with the cause of liberty, you are deluded to the max and clearly above my reason. You are in the old "spam" basket from here on out. Feel free to post your "oh yeah?" I won't be reading any more of your posts.

171 posted on 04/02/2012 9:19:08 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually (Hendrix))
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To: x
Your comments were irrelevant to the discussion.

We were addressing Calhoun's powerful 1848 speech that called for legislative action underpinned by the Constitution and the concept of liberty instead of the misinterpreted notions of egalitarianism.

Remember Calhoun's words: ....(The issue) Has the northern States the power which they claim, to exclude the southern from emigrating freely, with their property, into Territories belonging to the United States, and to monopolize them for their exclusive benefit?....

If he (historians studying the failure of the Constitution) should possess a philosophical turn of mind, and be disposed to look at more remote and recondite causes, he will trace it to a proposition which originated in a hypothetical truism, but which, as now expressed and now understood, is the most false and dangerous of all political error.

The proposition to which I allude has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily, from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is, that “all men are born free and equal.” I am not afraid to attack error, however deeply it may be intrenched, or however widely extended, whenever it becomes my duty to do so, as I believe it to be on this subject and occasion.

172 posted on 04/02/2012 1:57:15 PM PDT by PeaRidge
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To: donmeaker

“Up to the states”...........and that was the fundamental concept that guided the development of the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.

It was also the fundamental underpinning of the Confederate Constitution.


173 posted on 04/02/2012 2:01:51 PM PDT by PeaRidge
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To: donmeaker

“...thus enslaving poor whites to support the rich.”

Any source for that notion?


174 posted on 04/02/2012 2:04:18 PM PDT by PeaRidge
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To: PeaRidge
Your comments were irrelevant to the discussion.

Who did you kill to become the judge of what's relevant and what's not?

You are one of those annoying people who keep posting quotes that they can't or won't discuss or analyze or defend.

If someone claims to defend liberty by attacking the idea that all people have liberties from birth or nature and advocates the idea that some people have liberties and others don't, that person is no true friend of liberty.

Or do you really think that denying some whole class of people basic civil and human rights somehow furthers the cause of freedom? Because that's what's at stake here.

Could you deal with that point? Try to engage it in some way -- agree, disagree, analyze -- or stop making asinine posts to me.

175 posted on 04/02/2012 2:47:24 PM PDT by x
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To: Pelham

Lesson not needed. The southern slaves were not much into luxury goods, or much into the manufactured products that were converted from imported raw materials.

The smaller southern population, and the even smaller share of people who consumed manufactured products at a high rate means that tariffs were paid mostly by the people of the north.


176 posted on 04/02/2012 9:42:34 PM PDT by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: PeaRidge

Glad you agree that your previous position that the Federal constitution barred classes of people from the vote was false.


177 posted on 04/02/2012 10:00:31 PM PDT by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: PeaRidge

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000634299
has a good reference on the slave patrol system.


178 posted on 04/02/2012 11:35:03 PM PDT by donmeaker (Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)
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To: LS

Well someone here may not know how to check footnotes, but it isn’t me.

I read Bassani’s footnote and then looked up the original Calhoun source it referred to. You should try doing that sometime.

The fact that your reply to me quoted some of Calhoun’s words, and then tried to pass them off as coming from a wholly unrelated work is a lesson for anyone curious about the quality of your scholarship.

It’s apparent that you are willing to play fast and loose with your sources, if that furthers the hobbyhorse you are currently riding.

” You are in the old “spam” basket from here on out. Feel free to post your “oh yeah?” I won’t be reading any more of your posts.”

How will I ever endure such a fate?!

But I congratulate you on having such a policy. It keeps you from having to answer critics who poke holes in your goofier revisionist theories.


179 posted on 04/03/2012 12:48:22 PM PDT by Pelham (Marco Rubio, la raza trojan horse.)
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To: Pelham; LS
How will I ever endure such a fate?!

My guess is with your usual sanctimony...

180 posted on 04/03/2012 1:33:45 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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