Racists Have No Place in the Conservative Movement (ZO!)

For whatever my opinion might be worth, rusty is a good guy, dare I say it, a prince among thieves?

Thanks.

Please go back to rusty's post with all those New York Herald quotes.
Now remember the NY Herald was an anti-Republican, Democrat supporting, Dred-Scott excusing, Chris Matthews level "tingle up my leg" Slave-Power loving, Dough-Faced Northern partisan political organ.

Thanks for the comment. It may well be true that the Herald opposed anything the Republicans did. I also posted comments from the New York Times, the New York Evening Post, and the New York Day Book. The New York Times was a Republican paper, the Day Book was a business oriented paper, and the Evening Post was apparently Republican.

PeaRidge also supplied a tariff-related quote from the (Republican) New York Times [see Link].

x said business oriented papers with ties to the South could overplay the effects of the tariff. That is true. The New York Day Book article I posted showed what happened to New York businesses after the tariff had been in effect for a couple of months. On an inflation adjusted basis tariff revenue fell significantly during the war as the papers critical to the Morrill tariff had forecast even though the tariff rate kept being adjusted higher and higher during the war.

I checked the online Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper for further comments about the tariff. The Eagle had the largest circulation of any evening newspaper in the country back then. They said that opposition to the Morrill Tariff came from both Republicans and Democrats. Here are some comments they made about the tariff (caution, x, here is some more "junk"):

This measure is as loudly denounced by republicans as democrats. The Evening Post, the Courier and Enquirer denounce it as a measure destructive to their party, as well as commerce. The responsibility is with their party and they will have to meet it, as they will do, if the bill passes, in a fearful falling off of the revenue, which will be needed to carry on the operation of the Government. [February 7, 1861]

It is a bad sign to see a party on its advent to power favoring huge projects of one hand while on the other it pretends the absolute necessity of the government requires the imposition of a heavy tax on the industry of the people. ... It is not anticipated that the President will refuse to sign the bill should it pass both Houses. It is intended to benefit the iron interests of Pennsylvania, and the President’s last act almost can hardly be to defeat a project for the success of which his native state has long been contending. [February 27, 1861]

A Mr. Nettlefold of England obtained from this country machinery to make pointed screws, which at present rate of duty at 24 percent were imported. The Providence consolidated company [an American screw making monopoly formed from all American screw makers] sent an agent to England, who pays Mr. Nettlefold 5,000 [pound] sterling or twenty-five thousand dollars per annum not to file any orders for America. Recently, both in England [and] Germany, manufactories have been established for making pointed screws, and to head them off, this monster monopoly have now secured in the Morrill tariff a rate of duty for screws that will prove entirely prohibitory, and it will secure for them the control of the trade, as is plainly shown by the figures submitted, to wit: [Here the paper mentioned a number of different sizes of screws with new duty rates ranging from 31 percent, 51 percent, 56 percent, 75 percent, 84 percent, and 90 percent compared to the old 24 percent.] [February 13, 1861]

Thank you for holding me in similar regard to two such influential Americans....unless you were being sarcastic which is both childish and beneath you.

No, I don't profess to know the Constitution better than Hamilton or Jay - or even you for that matter. But in my attempt to better understand their view of secession I went out to the Internet in search of evidence to support your POV. I must confess that I didn't do very well.

Even dilorenzo only manages a weak opinion - and has to take Hamilton out of context to do it. Most who have written on it remark that Hamilton, a Federalist, recognized the inherent right of rebellion when subjected to tyranny (a condition that never existed in 1860 America) and otherwise opposed unilateral secession.

In truth Hamilton opposed secession. He opposed it in 1788, he opposed it during the Constitutional Convention, and he opposed it in 1804.

At the risk of alienating swing voters and losing on the ultimate ratification vote, Federalists emphatically opposed the compromise. In doing so, they made clear to everyone -- in New York and in the 12 other states where people were following the New York contest with interest -- that the Constitution did not permit unilateral state secession. Alexander Hamilton read aloud a letter at the Poughkeepsie convention that he had received from James Madison stating that "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever." Hamilton and John Jay then added their own words, which the New York press promptly reprinted: "a reservation of a right to withdraw" was "inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification.".

http://www.law.yale.edu/news/1850.htm

Hamilton's ideological foe was Jefferson and Hamilton's opposition to secession even figured into Hamilton's death in his duel with Aaron Burr.

Everything I find conforms to an understanding by Hamilton that the Union was perpetual and that, absent tyranny was inviolate. I do not see where your views and Hamilton's cross paths for more than an instant.

I applaud your investigative skills and appreciate your civil post.

The letter from Madison that Hamilton read to the New York Convention dealt with a conditional ratification that New York had proposed. New York wanted to ratify the Constitution with the condition that if certain amendments weren't made to the Constitution within a certain time period their ratification was no longer valid. Madison did not want such a conditional ratification.

Madison wrote that letter to Hamilton after having co-written and voted for the Virginia ratification which said:

"WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression ...

That very phrase was cited by the Virginia secession convention as support for secession since, in their opinion, the peoples of a number of Southern states had been injured. Madison in his later years still cited that injury or oppression way out of the Union, although he did not favor secession over the Tariff of Abominations in the late 1820s and early 1830s or secession for insignificant causes. Congress later was able to resolve the tariff issue only to have it rear its head again later with the Morrill Tariff.

Albert Bledsoe, in his 1865 book, "Is Davis a Traitor; or was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861" pointed out the flaws in the whole people of the country "resuming" governance that they, the whole people, never had (and still don't have).

The New York ratification convention of 1788 followed Madison's advice and removed the words "on condition" and replaced them with "In full confidence, nevertheless, that, until a convention shall be called and convened for proposing amendments to the said Constitution ..." The New York list of proposed amendments that followed their document did not include those that are now in the Bill of Rights. The NY ratifiers listed Bill of Rights type statements not as amendments but as clarification of what the Constitution they were ratifying meant and that such statements could not be abridged or violated. This is a clear statement of original intent. Hamilton and Jay voted for the ratification document that included the statement "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness;"

I think the reason that the New York and Virginia ratification conventions included such language was because there were more anti-federalists than federalists in both conventions. Some Virginia delegates were concerned Virginia's customs, procedures, and laws were at risk in a Union that had more Northern states than Southern states. I have read in one of the old newspapers that in order to get the number of votes necessary for Virginia to ratify the Constitution that a number of Federalists agreed to vote in favor of the ratification document that included a way to withdraw from the Union if Virginia were injured or oppressed. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that something similar happened at the New York ratification convention. The NY ratification document was probably a compromise for the Federalists in that it stated that it was consistent with the Constitution that the powers of government could be reassumed by the people. Voting for the document was perhaps the only way to get New York to ratify the Constitution.

I have asked on these threads before if the other states opposed the New York or Virginia ratifications which contained these statements. No one has ever said they did, and I haven't found any documentation that they did.

Once again, I am sorry I called your stuff junk. My reading comprehension is fine -- usually. I got several posts on the tariff, assumed they were from the same person, and responded to the wrong post, something that does happen to people from time to time.

And sometimes, a lot of us feel like the "face palm guy." For me it can happen when I hear about the Morrill Tariff for the umpteenth time and similar quotes are trotted out yet again. Maybe one reason why protective tariffs were scrapped is that voters just got tired of hearing about them all the time.

But you still haven't looked at how secessionist Southerners actually reacted to the tariff. Here is the Richmond Daily Dispatch positively gleeful about the new tariff:

If the friends of the South had been permitted to devise a machine that would enrich the South, impoverish the North, break down the Federal Government, and leave it impotent in its malice as a madman in his chains, they could not have devised as effectual an expedient as this Morrill Tariff. The first news from Europe, after the arrival of intelligence that the Morrill Tariff had passed Congress, is the first puff of a coming hurricane which is destined to hurl the old wreck of the Abolition Government high and dry among the breakers, and send the noble Confederate Ship of State' with swelling sails and flowing streamers, on a glorious and triumphant voyage.

Heady stuff. The new tariff was expected by the paper to bankrupt the North, enrich the South, drive the remaining slave states into the Confederacy, and turn Britain against the United States for once and for all. Maybe I exaggerate a little, but there were even voices in the South suggesting that New York City might secede in response to the tariff.

So was the tariff Lincoln's evil plan to provoke the South? Well, first of all an upward revision of the tariff was in the works for months. It wasn't something adopted on the spur of the moment for tactical reasons. Maybe it could have been stopped if it were felt that it would make a difference -- if the choice was between a tariff increase and secession -- but that offer doesn't appear to have been on the table to my knowledge. The bill may have been a mistake, but I'm not aware that anybody offered to cancel secession if it were defeated.

Secondly, we really don't know just how much the new tariff was Lincoln's and how much was Congress's or who had control of the provisions and the timing. You may like to think of Lincoln as a tyrant, but the Whig Party he'd belonged to for much of his career wasn't in favor of a strong executive and wanted to leave much up to Congress. You'd have to look into the matter a little more closely: relations between Congress and the White House were different in 1861 than they were a century later.

Thirdly, are you really trying to say that South Carolinians or the CSA regime fired on Sumter in response to the Morrill Tariff? They already considered themselves to be outside the union. As we've seen they welcomed the US protective tariff as something likely to turn Southerners against the federal government and into their own Confederacy, as something that would help them secure recognition by foreign governments, even as something that would divide the Northern states.

An interesting thing about the Southern papers of the day: after the initial complaints about the new tariff and speculation about its effects, the discussion, so far as I can tell, turned to what tariffs the Confederacy would have. In other words, secessionists weren't fuming very long about the US tariff. They had already chosen their path and were following it.

Fourthly, if resupplying the fort was some sort of horrible provocation to the rebel regime, wasn't it enough? Why would you want to offend potential supporters with a high tariff? Why not let the fools fire on your fort because of the resupply or even because of your simple refusal to evacuate it -- without helping them out with an offensive tariff that would win them support? Why make their regime stronger through one's own ineptitude?

In order to crush the rebels in a more convincing, more spectacular, more devastating fashion? Making the Confederacy stronger and stronger so that the thud when it fell would be deafening? Sorry, but that theory looks like something concocted after the fact. In 1861 it, let alone in some spectacular, devastating fashion. Needlessly alienating potential supporters before a shot was fired was something Lincoln wasn't very likely to do if he was expecting or desiring war.

So was it maybe part of some very long game? Talk about raising tariffs for months or years to drive the South to secession and administer the final blow with passage of the tariff? I guess -- if you just want to ignore everything that was actually going on at the time and everything that secessionists actually said. Whatever floats your boat. But you've already said that you didn't think that tariffs prompted secession. So why would higher tariffs in a country the secessionists had already renounced be a provocation to the new Confederacy?

Once again, I am sorry I called your stuff junk. My reading comprehension is fine -- usually. I got several posts on the tariff, assumed they were from the same person, and responded to the wrong post, something that does happen to people from time to time.

Your recent posts to me weren't sounding like the old x whose posts I used to archive to read. On the other hand, this post is fine and for that I thank you.

That is an interesting Richmond Daily Dispatch quote. I hadn't seen it before -- I hadn't looked on that web site because I was focused on how the Morrill Tariff was going to affect the North. Had the war and the blockade not started, I think the tariff would have been a major problem for the North and a boon to the South whose ports would get much more business. But that is speculation on my part.

I don't believe the South seceded because of the tariff. The tariff was a smoldering issue that moved some people, but the slavery issue was more effective in firing up the masses.

What I do believe is that the effect of the two tariffs (Morrill and Confederate) would have been a great problem for Lincoln. As PeaRidge pointed out in post 328, a committee of concerned New York merchants visited Lincoln and talked about the tariff issue and how it was destroying business. My quote from the New York Day Book about the number of businesses that had shut down confirmed that the difference in rates between the two tariffs was a serious problem.

How could Lincoln solve the tariff problem and at the same time provoke the South to fire first? I think Lincoln had already analyzed the problem before the merchants arrived and decided on his course of action. He was a smart man who thought outside of the box.

The following things I’m sure you know. Lincoln’s generals and cabinet had told him that Fox’s plan for sending supplies to Sumter would result in a clash of arms. Lamon had told Lincoln the same thing based on his trip to Charleston. On March 28 Lincoln told the Senate that he didn’t have anything important to tell them and they could adjourn (which they did). On the same day, Lincoln asked for a draft of secret orders to be prepared for the Sumter expedition, the expedition that would likely result in a shooting war.

One definition of an act of war is doing something that will cause the other side to start fighting. On that basis the Sumter expedition qualified as an act of war. When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.

Lincoln then did not reconvene Congress until July 4. During the intervening time he maneuvered the country onto a war footing, calling for forces to invade the South, calling for the blockade, extending the service period of some in the army. He probably thought he couldn’t do that if Congress was there interfering and muddying up his plans.

I would provide two short quotes to support my theory, if you don’t mind.

May 1, 1861, Lincoln to Fox, the leader of the Sumter expedition

You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.

The result, of course, was war. Then there is this from Lincoln’s secretaries, Nicolay and Hay:

President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to "send bread to Anderson"; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.

I had seen both of these quotes on these threads more than once. I’m sure you must have seen them too.

I see I’ve wandered off topic a bit, but I thought I would flesh out a little how the tariff might have played a role in Lincoln’s thinking and what he ended up doing that was consistent with neutering the tariff as an issue and provoking war with the South. I’ve Monday quarterbacked on these threads that the South would have been better off not to attack Sumter and let Lincoln try to stop foreign ships heading to Southern ports to collect his tariff. That would have been another act of war, this time against foreign countries. But who am I to say what should have been done?

Unfortunately, I will be traveling the next few days. I’ll respond to your other points when I return.

Sherman Logan post #340: "Would some part of imports previously absorbed by northern states be imported through the South?
Well, no, since the newly independent CSA would presumably place its own tariff on imports, let us say 10%."

rustbucket post #341: "On an inflation adjusted basis [Northern] tariff revenue fell significantly during the war as the papers critical to the Morrill tariff had forecast even though the tariff rate kept being adjusted higher and higher during the war."

First of all, according to this source, the Confederacy's anti-Morrill tariff was 15%, the same as the old US Tariff of 1857, except Confederates also taxed items previously "imported" duty-free from the Union.

Second, as shown here, annual US tariff revenues during the 1850s ran around $50 million, which was roughly 90% of total revenues.

Third, according to this source:

"Customs revenue from tariffs totaled $345 million from 1861 through 1865, or 43% of all federal tax revenue, while spending on the Army and Navy totaled $3,065 million."

In 1864 alone, the Morrill Tariff produced revenues over $100 million -- double the 1850s era averages.
Furthermore, tariffs remained very high for decades after the war, while the US economy grew at high rates not seen since then (you may remember recent Candidate Patrick Buchanan invoked this period to justify his call for higher protective tariffs).

Fourth, the Morrill Tariff was intended to protect not only Northern industry, but also agriculture nationwide, including Southern sugar growers.
That is why opposition to higher tariffs was not 100% among Democrats, or even throughout the South.

Indeed, fifth, there were more than enough House votes among Democrats and Southerners to defeat Morrill in 1860, if they had really stood united in opposition.
And there were enough Senators to block passage in 1860, if Confederates had not walked out of Congress.

Furthermore, sixth, Morrill was signed by Dough-Faced Northern Democrat President Buchanan just before leaving office.
Point is: neither Democrats as a whole, nor Southerners overwhelmingly, solidly opposed Morrill, certainly not strongly enough to make it a leading cause of secession.

Finally, we need to again stop and consider: the Confederacy reduced tariffs back to the old 15%, but also imposed new tariffs on "imports" from the Union, and then embargoed exports of their biggest single income source: cotton -- which meant Confederate citizens had no money to buy imports, regardless of how low their government set tariffs!

So efforts to float the idea that Confederacy was somehow all about "free trade" founder on rocks of ridiculousness, I'd say.

But who truly did care a lot about US tariff rates were: the Brits.
To Brits, US protective tariffs were matters of economic life-and-death, a fact which Southern propagandists played up in Britain hoping to win British recognition and support.
And they got a lot of it, notably from Britain's most popular author: Charles Dickens.

It just wasn't quite enough to overcome British natural revulsion to slavery, and so our British friends remained officially neutral, effectively pro-Union.

BJK: "Senators to block passage in 1860"

Should say: "...in early 1861."

Finally, we need to again stop and consider: the Confederacy reduced tariffs back to the old 15%, but also imposed new tariffs on "imports" from the Union, and then embargoed exports of their biggest single income source: cotton -- which meant Confederate citizens had no money to buy imports, regardless of how low their government set tariffs!

This is not entirely accurate. The Confederate government never officially put an embargo into effect. It was a purely voluntary effort by southerners, though the force of public opinion made compliance with it almost universal.

Most of the effect of the embargo was lost because of the immense cotton exports of previous years, which meant European warehouses were bulging with cotton. This raw material had to be used up before the South's longed-for "cotton famine" really hit home.

First of all, according to this source, the Confederacy's anti-Morrill tariff was 15%, the same as the old US Tariff of 1857, except Confederates also taxed items previously "imported" duty-free from the Union.

You know, I hadn't thought of that before.

This meant that Confederate citizens would now be paying tariff duty on almost everything they used aside from agricultural products. Leaving the Union peacefully would probably have meant that they would have paid more in tariffs than if they had stayed and paid the infamous Morrill duties.

I've been reading about the Tariff of Abominations. The neo-Confederates around here seem to be under the impression it was passed for the benefit of New England industrialists. This is more than a little out of the chronological sequence. In 1828 New England was by no means heavily industrial.

In fact, New England reps in the House voted 23 to 16 against the measure.

South voted 50 to 3 against.

Mid-Atlantic vote was 57 to 11 for.

The West voted 17 to 1 for.

The Southwest (KY and TN) 12 to 9 for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_1828

IOW, the voting did not even vaguely resemble the myth of a solid North using its numbers to crush and oppress a solid South.

The greatest support for the measure was in the West, not the Northeast. Which is kind of odd, since the West was still pretty solidly agricultural at this time.

This leaves out of the story that the passage of the bill was the result of a failed parliamentary maneuver by Calhoun and his cronies.

There were reasons for secession and reasons for Lincoln’s initiation of the war. But they were not the same.

The quotes were from speeches such as by Wilson and Roosevelt.

You said: “What I want to know is what a Declaration of War is required to say?”

That it was ratified by the Congress.

You presented two points in your post 327...both wrong.

You started the discussion about documents concerning the "reasons for secession" by referring to unofficial statements which were copies of speeches. Interesting reading but of no official value.

None of the original 7 ordinances mentioned slavery as a cause of their decision to leave the Union.

You would be more correct in your statements by looking at the Ordinances of Secession which are the official acts of the individual governments found here .

Your comments regarding the tariff are uninformed and wrong.

See posts 301 and 328.

I am not providing you the quotes in an effort to “quote one group of opinions as if they constituted official government policy”, but the editorials do reflect the facts of the days before the war.

My opinion on secession is governed by the founding documents. It in no way approaches what you described.

You know, I’ve asked a very simple question of you several times, and you still haven’t answered it.

You believe the South was justified in seceding, and you cite the oppressive tariffs as the primary cause for secession.

So what I’d still like to know is whether you believe secession, with its admitted at the time risk of war, was justified by a tariff rate.

You made a number of assumptions in you post #340, and offered up all sorts of rhetorical flourishes to simply avoid the obvious point.....with secession, European trade was headed to ports charging the least overhead.

By 1860, New Orleans had become the forth largest tonnage port in the country. The port city served as the staging and organizational point for the flow of wheat, flour, furs, corn, tobacco, minerals, and cotton flowing from Southern and Midwestern states and territories to the European markets.

A way to measure the value of the New Orleans port to the Union is that it was where the commodities of Midwestern and Southern agriculture went out to the world and the bulk commodities of industrialism came in. The commodity chain of the global cotton and European food industry largely started there, as did that of Southern industrialism. If these facilities were gone from the Union, more than the price of goods shifted: The very physical structure of the Union economy would have to be reshaped.

Port city interests in New York, Baltimore, Boston knew that if the Mississippi River was shut to Midwestern traffic resulting from secession, then the foundations of the Union economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories would not come in, and the agricultural wealth would not flow out under Federal control.

Compared to overland shipping, river transport was cheap, and most of the agricultural products had low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system serving the Midwest of the 1860s was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. If Louisiana left the Union, there were not enough wagons or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities — assuming that the economics could be managed, which they could not be.

The United States historically depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river could not be used.

Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.

Shipping interests from the North reminded Lincoln of this in their meetings with him prior to his orders to Gustavus Fox to initiate the expeditions to Charleston and Pensacola.

Port city interests in New York, Baltimore, Boston knew that if the Mississippi River was shut to Midwestern traffic resulting from secession, then the foundations of the Union economy would be shattered.

You are no doubt well aware of how utterly the Union economy disintegrated between April, 1861 and July, 1863 when the Mississippi River was unavailable for shipping.

The industrial minerals needed in the factories would not come in

I'm curious. What raw materials of industry, mineral or otherwise, did the USA import through New Orleans?

But thanks for recognizing that shutting off a nation from its access to the sea has historically been recognized as a casus belli.

Lots of other pro-Confederates try to claim the South would never have tried to use its possession of the mouth of the Mississippi to interfere with the trade of the Midwest. In actual fact it most certainly would have. Had the CSA been allowed to secede peacefully, what do you think would have happened the first time the return of a fugitive slave was refused? Close the Mississippi, of course

The reason I have not answered you is that you misrepresent my comments, and then ask questions with your own premise and not mine.

I would be willing to respond if you asked an honest question.

Thank you. I will try to avoid doing so. It is not intentional, I am just trying to understand your position.

So here’s a couple of questions I hope you can answer without being misrepresented.

Was the South justified in seceding?

Do you think the tariff rates in 1860, or the proposed tariff rates for 1861, were a or the major factor leading towards secession?

You said: “I'm curious. What raw materials of industry, mineral or otherwise, did the USA import through New Orleans?”

You will find that in Taussig’s book that you quoted earlier.

It is also in the import charts in Buchanan’s State of the Union report of 1860.

Good luck in your research.

“But thanks for recognizing that shutting off a nation from its access to the sea has historically been recognized as a casus belli.”

Yes, as was conducted by the Harriet Lane on April 11, 1861 in Charleston Harbor.

I am sure that rustbucket enjoyed your comments and was amused by your confusion.

By the way rustbucket, one of the ad mods told me a couple of years back that one of our posters on a WBTS thread had reported me as using more than one name to post. It would seem that x may be thinking that way (again).

x, I think that you must be exasperated with the volume of proofs that I present. They are usually on subject, honest commentary and quotes. I really don't spend much time presenting opinion, as do you, because I prefer the honesty of the people of the period rather than modern postulation.

However, I always enjoy watching your creative thinking and the bunny paths you travel on.