Posted on 01/11/2019 5:16:40 AM PST by TexasGunLover
AUSTIN, Texas — A historically inaccurate brass plaque honoring confederate veterans will come down after a vote this morning, WFAA has learned.
The State Preservation Board, which is in charge of the capitol building and grounds, meets this morning at 10:30 a.m. to officially decide the fate of the metal plate.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
This explains the entire “spread of slavery” question:
in 1860, in the New Mexico Territory, an area which encompassed the area presently occupied by the States of New Mexico and Arizona, that there were a grand total of 22 slaves, only 12 of whom were actually domiciled there. If the South intended to be a “Slave Power,” spreading its labor system across the entire continent, it was doing a pretty poor job of it. Commenting on this fact, an English publication in 1861 said, “When, therefore, so little pains are taken to propagate slavery outside the circle of the existing slave states, it cannot be that the extension of slavery is desired by the South on social or commercial grounds directly, and still less from any love for the thing itself for its own sake. But the value of New Mexico and Arizona politically is very great! In the Senate they would count as 4 votes with the South or with the North according as they ranked in the category of slave holding or Free soil states”.
Notice that when the Southern states seceded, they left with only their own sovereign territory. They made no claim to territories owned by the US. If they were on some holy crusade to spread slavery for its own sake, why then was their solution to forego any chance of spreading slavery? The answer is simple. It was all a power struggle. What they were really after prior to 1861 was votes in the Senate. They needed those votes to protect themselves from Northern business interests pushing economic policies that were very harmful to the South. Once they had left, they no longer needed to be concerned about votes in the Senate. Thus the territories were of no great concern to them.
Yes, but elevating the Kansas statehood slavery issue to a really big crisis was unwise to say the least.
There were people who noted - correctly - that investments in cotton production did yield the highest ROI to that point in time. Thus the Southern states specialized in its production. But Southerns did not fail to notice that since returns on cotton production were good, it was attracting others - most notably the British Empire - to follow suit and indeed Britain’s empire ramped up cotton production considerably thus driving down the margins. Southerners well understood from observing their chief customer Britain and others that industrialization was the way forward. The Upper South was industrializing at a pretty rapid rate by 1860.
That perception was confined to an elite part of the elite, a few wealthy and educated people who closely followed economics and shared a minority opinion about the future of the economy. For the rest - even or especially the rest of the elite - cotton was king, and the idea that Britain could replace the South as its main supply of cotton was unheard of. That's why the secessionists were so confident that they would win. If they really thought cotton would eventually go bust, why secede at all? Why not share in the increasing wealth of a united America?
And as I said before, those industrialists of the Upper South that you mention were not driving the secession movement. Once the new country was formed, they were determined to serve it, but most of them had been more than happy in the good old United States.
Hint: compensated emancipation was not seen as a threat by the vast majority of slave owners. Indeed it was how the British Empire and others had gotten rid of slavery and if slavery were to go - which many realized it would eventually - a compensated emancipation scheme was the most equitable way to do it.
Most educated Southerners in 1780 thought slavery would go away eventually. Many still thought so in 1830. By 1860, there was so much pressure to unify behind the "peculiar institution" that it was hard to maintain such a position in public, or even in private. The Fire-eaters, the fire-brands of the secessionist revolution, did not even want to consider the idea of gradual compensated emancipation. It was seen as a weakening of the united front of the South. Every slaveowner who sold out was one less supporter of the existing Southern Way of Life. The CSA might have initiated its own program of gradual compensated emancipation sooner or later, but that wasn't apparent in 1861.
Baloney. The collection costs were miniscule and would have been easily covered by a low single digit rate.
You said 10% would be an acceptable tariff rate. Add to that a low single digit rate necessary to pay for the collection of the tariff and you get about 17%, which was the overall tariff rate adopted in 1857. On some goods it was as low as 15%. On others it was higher. Still, tariffs in the late 1850s weren't much to complain about.
Someone who's done the math says the average free American resident paid $1.94 in tariffs in 1860. If the Confederacy had been able to collect its own tariffs, including those on goods from the Northern states, free Confederate citizens would have had to pay $4.46 annually in tariffs. That certainly could have gotten Southern industry going, but how would the large agricultural interest have liked paying more in tariffs?
As for infrastructure spending that had massively skewed toward the Northern states as had corporate subsidies. There are any of a number of sources for this ranging from the Pennsylvanian Buchanan to Thomas Jefferson to John C Calhoun to various Newspapers including Northern ones to the Georgia declaration of causes to Rhett’s address attached to South Carolina’s declaration of causes and issued along with it.
Once again, you cite the fiery, ignorant rhetoric, but don't name the actual laws and measures that constituted "massive corporate subsidies." Which laws constituted massive corporate subsidies? And bear in mind, you said “corporate.” Anything that might have benefited a poor fisherman probably doesn’t qualify as massive or corporate.
New England was THE hub of the slave trade industry for the entire western hemisphere from that point on.
New England ships ran slaves to Cuba and Brazil. Spanish and Portuguese ships ran slaves to the American South. The British and the other powers were also still involved. Many of the foreign ships that carried slaves used the American flag because they knew that the ships would not be searched by the British. As the trade was illegal, marginal, and frowned upon, and slavers spent little time in their original home waters, talk about a hub or epicenter is probably out of place.
The VAST MAJORITY of illicit slave trading was carried out by those who had always carried it out - Yankees.
“Yankees” alone, no. Throw in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilians with them and you would be right. What you’re not saying is that in the last years, ships taking slaves illegally to the Southern states tended to be owned by Southerners.
But beyond that, who's to say that slavery wasn't a real issue? Who's to say that concentration camps or Chinese prison labor or religious persecution or torture or abortion aren't real issues?
You do realize “industry” in that first quote is ambiguous, that is, it can be read in two different ways - both as manufacturing and as industriousness - don’t you? See Jefferson Davis’s Boston speech where he clearly states: “Your interest is to remain a manufacturing and ours to remain an agricultural people.” Once again, there’s nothing ambiguous there. Your second quote comes close to saying the same thing, “The people of the Southern States, whose almost exclusive occupation was agriculture ….” Davis doesn’t mention any desire on his part to change that. As President, Davis obviously had to play catch-up with the North industrially, but he was no proponent of Southern industrialization prior to the war.
You’re spinning now. I can include more. This is from Rhett’s Address which was attached to South Carolina’s declaration of causes and sent out along with it.
“And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures..........
The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected, three fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others, connected with the operation of the General Government, has made the cities of the South provincial. Their growth is paralyzed; they are mere suburbs of Northern cities. The agricultural productions of the South are the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade, is almost annihilated……”
The Southern states wanted to be free to set low tariffs, keep far more of the profits their products generated and use the money to build up their own industry rather than being taxed to pay the cost to build up Northern industry. That the cost of industrialization was born primarily by agriculture was not uncommon. It happened that way in most countries. That large regions were so heavily specialized such that the burden fell overwhelmingly on one while the benefits flowed overwhelmingly to another was highly unusual.
That perception was confined to an elite part of the elite, a few wealthy and educated people who closely followed economics and shared a minority opinion about the future of the economy. For the rest - even or especially the rest of the elite - cotton was king, and the idea that Britain could replace the South as its main supply of cotton was unheard of. That’s why the secessionists were so confident that they would win. If they really thought cotton would eventually go bust, why secede at all? Why not share in the increasing wealth of a united America?
I disagree. Firstly most understood that industrialization was the way forward. They could hardly fail to notice the direction the whole western world had been going in over the first half of the 19th century. Secondly, it was not that the British Empire would entirely replace Southern cotton. It was that with an alternative source of supply - India, Egypt, etc - they would not need anywhere near as much. When you have more of a commodity on the world market, the price/margin for it drops. That is exactly what happened.
They were not “sharing in the wealth of a united America” as you put it. They, with good reason, saw themselves as being taxed for others’ benefit just as their grandparents had seen themselves being taxed for others’ benefit when they seceded from the British Empire.
Most educated Southerners in 1780 thought slavery would go away eventually. Many still thought so in 1830. By 1860, there was so much pressure to unify behind the “peculiar institution” that it was hard to maintain such a position in public, or even in private. The Fire-eaters, the fire-brands of the secessionist revolution, did not even want to consider the idea of gradual compensated emancipation. It was seen as a weakening of the united front of the South. Every slaveowner who sold out was one less supporter of the existing Southern Way of Life. The CSA might have initiated its own program of gradual compensated emancipation sooner or later, but that wasn’t apparent in 1861.
On the whole I disagree. Many saw that it was going away. They could hardly fail to notice what had been happening in the rest of the Western World including the Northern states over the first half of the 19th century as industrialization came in and slavery went out. Northern abolitionists who took a very accusatory and hateful tone toward Southerners preferring to condemn them rather than discuss ways to deal with the problem of slavery....doing things like urging violence and bitterly opposing any compensated emancipation proposals DID wash the ground out from under many more moderate Southerners such that they did not want to be seen as sympathizing in any way with those mid 19th century SJWs....but they well understood slavery’s days were numbered. It was already starting to die out in the Upper South which was further down the road toward industrialization than the Deep South.
You said 10% would be an acceptable tariff rate.
No, I said 10% would be the MAXIMUM rate allowed. The Confederate constitution specified revenue tariff rather than protectionist tariff.
Add to that a low single digit rate necessary to pay for the collection of the tariff and you get about 17%, which was the overall tariff rate adopted in 1857. On some goods it was as low as 15%. On others it was higher. Still, tariffs in the late 1850s weren’t much to complain about.
17% was still quite a bit higher than the Southern states would have set. It was probably more than double the rate they’d have set if given the choice. They were discussing much much lower tariff rates when the Confederate Government was being formed.
Someone who’s done the math says the average free American resident paid $1.94 in tariffs in 1860. If the Confederacy had been able to collect its own tariffs, including those on goods from the Northern states, free Confederate citizens would have had to pay $4.46 annually in tariffs. That certainly could have gotten Southern industry going, but how would the large agricultural interest have liked paying more in tariffs?
I have not seen a study of the exact amounts and would need to see the source material to have a good idea. There is no dispute however that the CSA was set to have a MUCH LOWER tariff rate than the US had had or was going to have under the Morill tariff. Northern newspapers were filled with horror stories about how it would cripple the North to not get all the money it was making from the tariff and from servicing the export of Southern cash crops. This did a lot to stoke war fever in the North.
Once again, you cite the fiery, ignorant rhetoric, but don’t name the actual laws and measures that constituted “massive corporate subsidies.” Which laws constituted massive corporate subsidies? And bear in mind, you said “corporate.” Anything that might have benefited a poor fisherman probably doesn’t qualify as massive or corporate.
No, I cite people at the time...a wide range of them. I can cite Georgia’s Declarations of causes, a whole slew of Northern newspapers as well as a slew of political leaders. Subsidies to mail carriers, fisherman, miners, etc. Federal spending on Canals, roads, Railroads, etc - the overwhelming majority of it in the North even though the overwhelming majority of the tariff was paid by Southerners.
New England ships ran slaves to Cuba and Brazil. Spanish and Portuguese ships ran slaves to the American South.
Uhh no. There was very little importation of slaves to the Southern states. The climate was far healthier than in the Caribbean or Brazil and they were not used in the brutal sugar industry which saw lots of slaves die and get maimed by the very dangerous machinery. As a result of the much lower mortality, the Southern states did not need nearly as many imported slaves and what slaves were imported were usually imported by Yankees.
The British and the other powers were also still involved.
Not much after the late 18th century.
Many ships that carried slaves used the American flag because they knew that the ships would not be searched by the British. As the trade was illegal, marginal, and frowned upon, and slavers spent little time in their original home waters, talk about a hub or epicenter is probably out of place.
Not at all. The scale of slaving operations out of New England was enormous as were the profits. Those slave trading profits undergirded many corporations that were founded there and most deliciously of all, the ENTIRE Ivy League. Yes that’s right Lefty Yankee snowflakes! YOUR most treasure/precious universities...your indoctrination centers were founded with....with....wait for it....SLAVE TRADING PROFITS!
“Yankees” alone, no. Throw in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilians with them and you would be right. What you’re not saying is that in the last years, ships taking slaves illegally to the Southern states tended to be owned by Southerners.
Overwhelmingly by Yankees. There were incredibly few slave traders based in the South or from the South. Slave Trading was a New England industry along with the rest of the shipping industry.
Also my point in referencing the constitutional convention is to show that slavery was an issue even at the founding of our new government. Even Thomas Jefferson realized that slavery could be the rock that would tear the ship of state asunder.
Don't know if you have ever visited the Jefferson Memorial in D.C. but there is a quote on there of his. But it is only a fragment from a much larger passage. Here is the passage in its entirety;
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. …The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances … if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is to be born to live and labor for another or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him … Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.
The costs of industrialization did not fall on Southerners or farmers in the years before the Civil War. Southern slaveowners made out very well, and no, they didn't pay the lion's share of the tariff.
Few Southerners saw that the cotton bonanza would end. If they thought it would, they wouldn't have said "Cotton is King!" and they wouldn't have been so insistent on secession. For every Southerner leader who saw industry as the way forward there was at least one who thought providing raw materials for foreign industry was the way to wealth.
How much you pay in tariffs depends on how much imported goods you buy. Southerners bought a lot of Northern goods before the Civil War. Those weren't foreign goods. They didn't pay tariffs on them. If the South became an independent country and bought the same amount of Northern goods, they would pay four times the amount of money in tariffs, even at the lower CSA tariff rate.
Subsidies to mail carriers and fishermen were quite minimal. Federal spending on roads and railroads before the Civil War was negligible. The big rail subsidies came after the Civil War. And before the war, Southerners were also angling for the transcontinental railroad money (that wouldn't come through until the war had already started).
Most of the money made off the slave trade came to New England when that trade was still legal. That's when colleges got money from slavery. Afterwards, the slave trade was illegal and clandestine. Harvard, Yale and Brown weren't getting money out of the trade then. And there weren't that many slave ships sailing out of New England ports by that point.
You can search a database of slave ships. It's true that most went to Brazil (or Cuba), especially after 1808. It's also true that the names of most of the ships and captains are Portuguese (or Spanish), especially after 1808. Earlier most of the names were British or Dutch, but they dry up as time goes on. Possibly there were many illegal New England slave ships, but it's unlikely that they could ever match the number of Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish slave ships running at the time.
If you still want to find a center of illegal slave trading in the North, you'd do better to look to New York. Some of the last slave ships were registered in New York, rather than in any New England port. That makes sense, actually, since New York was the largest port in the country and there were so many ships that none stood out much. But the Clotilda and the Wanderer the last slave ships to reach the US were owned by Southerners, and plenty of the later slavers sailed from New Orleans or Charleston.
But you believe what you want to believe. You've constructed an alternative reality that you feel happy in, and I don't think anybody's going to be able to convince you of anything different.
You disagree. You disagree. You disagree. Because you believe what you want to believe.
I would say precisely the same of you.
You want to assume that Southerners of 1860 were more like people today than they actually were.
You want to believe they were somehow uniquely morally inferior to Northerners then or anybody today. They weren’t.
The costs of industrialization did not fall on Southerners or farmers in the years before the Civil War. Southern slaveowners made out very well, and no, they didn’t pay the lion’s share of the tariff.
False. Just patently false.
Few Southerners saw that the cotton bonanza would end. If they thought it would, they wouldn’t have said “Cotton is King!” and they wouldn’t have been so insistent on secession. For every Southerner leader who saw industry as the way forward there was at least one who thought providing raw materials for foreign industry was the way to wealth.
Again, I disagree with this. Most realized fat profits from cotton would not go on forever. The seceded because they saw themselves being overwhelmed by the larger populations of the North and the very greedy business interests of the North which saw the South as little more than a cash cow.
How much you pay in tariffs depends on how much imported goods you buy. Southerners bought a lot of Northern goods before the Civil War. Those weren’t foreign goods. They didn’t pay tariffs on them.
You fundamentally misunderstand how things worked. Southerners were chartering the ships and paying the insurance and the crews’ salaries for those ships. They were exchanging their cash crops for manufactured goods because having those ships sail back across the Atlantic with their holds empty would have been hugely wasteful. They owned those manufactured goods. As the owners of the goods they were the ones who had to pay those tariffs. This meant they had less money to spend at home. It also meant all the small farmers that surrounded their large plantations whom they were acting as wholesalers for got less money for each bail of cotton because the profitability of the whole trip was lowered with those high tariffs. It also meant they all had to pay more for manufactured goods because with the foreign goods now more expensive, Northern manufacturers could raise their prices too.
If the South became an independent country and bought the same amount of Northern goods, they would pay four times the amount of money in tariffs, even at the lower CSA tariff rate.
Firstly I would need to see the data to back up that claim. Secondly, why would they buy the same amount of Northern goods with foreign goods now considerably cheaper by virtue of not having to pay such a high import tariff?
Subsidies to mail carriers and fishermen were quite minimal. Federal spending on roads and railroads before the Civil War was negligible. The big rail subsidies came after the Civil War. And before the war, Southerners were also angling for the transcontinental railroad money (that wouldn’t come through until the war had already started).
All of this is debatable. What you call minimal, the people at the time certainly didn’t consider minimal. There were plenty of big rail subsidies before the war. Here is a sampling of what some Northern newspapers were saying about this:
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now “the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade....”
“Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern Heart’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review (Boston October 1862)
The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. WE WERE DIVIDED AND CONFUSED UNTIL OUR POCKETS WERE TOUCHED.” New York Times March 30, 1861
“The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go.” The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861
That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. 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....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports.” New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article “What Shall be Done for a Revenue?”
On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.”
December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: “In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow.”Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860
“The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.” - Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860
Most of the money made off the slave trade came to New England when that trade was still legal. That’s when colleges got money from slavery. Afterwards, the slave trade was illegal and clandestine. Harvard, Yale and Brown weren’t getting money out of the trade then. And there weren’t that many slave ships sailing out of New England ports by that point.
LOL! False. Again, you need to do some reading here. I’ve already named the NY Times Best seller Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery. It was written by 3 New England journalists. Its OK really. You can actually believe it since it was not said by Southerners (even though Southerners had been saying the same thing for over 150 years).
If you still want to find a center of illegal slave trading in the North, you’d do better to look to New York. Some of the last slave ships were registered in New York, rather than in any New England port. That makes sense, actually, since New York was the largest port in the country and there were so many ships that none stood out much. But the Clotilda and the Wanderer the last slave ships to reach the US were owned by Southerners, and plenty of the later slavers sailed from New Orleans or Charleston.
Yes New York was estimated to be outfitting 2 slave ships per month in the 19th century - long after the ban but it certainly was not limited to New York. Rhode Island and Connecticut were major slave trading bases as well. It was not unknown in Philadelphia either.
You want another source? OK. The following is a rather long passage but is directly on point:
“On the eve of the Revolution, the slave trade “formed the very basis of the economic life of New England.”[2] It wove itself into the entire regional economy of New England. The Massachusetts slave trade gave work to coopers, tanners, sailmakers, and ropemakers. Countless agents, insurers, lawyers, clerks, and scriveners handled the paperwork for slave merchants. Upper New England loggers, Grand Banks fishermen, and livestock farmers provided the raw materials shipped to the West Indies on that leg of the slave trade. Colonial newspapers drew much of their income from advertisements of slaves for sale or hire. New England-made rum, trinkets, and bar iron were exchanged for slaves. When the British in 1763 proposed a tax on sugar and molasses, Massachusetts merchants pointed out that these were staples of the slave trade, and the loss of that would throw 5,000 seamen out of work in the colony and idle almost 700 ships.
The connection between molasses and the slave trade was rum. Millions of gallons of cheap rum, manufactured in New England, went to Africa and bought black people. Tiny Rhode Island had more than 30 distilleries, 22 of them in Newport. In Massachusetts, 63 distilleries produced 2.7 million gallons of rum in 1774. Some was for local use: rum was ubiquitous in lumber camps and on fishing ships. “But primarily rum was linked with the Negro trade, and immense quantities of the raw liquor were sent to Africa and exchanged for slaves. So important was rum on the Guinea Coast that by 1723 it had surpassed French and Holland brandy, English gin, trinkets and dry goods as a medium of barter.”[3] Slaves costing the equivalent of £4 or £5 in rum or bar iron in West Africa were sold in the West Indies in 1746 for £30 to £80. New England thrift made the rum cheaply — production cost was as low as 5½ pence a gallon — and the same spirit of Yankee thrift discovered that the slave ships were most economical with only 3 feet 3 inches of vertical space to a deck and 13 inches of surface area per slave, the human cargo laid in carefully like spoons in a silverware case.
A list of the leading slave merchants is almost identical with a list of the region’s prominent families: the Fanueils, Royalls, and Cabots of Massachusetts; the Wantons, Browns, and Champlins of Rhode Island; the Whipples of New Hampshire; the Eastons of Connecticut; Willing & Morris of Philadelphia. To this day, it’s difficult to find an old North institution of any antiquity that isn’t tainted by slavery. Ezra Stiles imported slaves while president of Yale. Six slave merchants served as mayor of Philadelphia. Even a liberal bastion like Brown University has the shameful blot on its escutcheon. It is named for the Brown brothers, Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses, manufacturers and traders who shipped salt, lumber, meat — and slaves. And like many business families of the time, the Browns had indirect connections to slavery via rum distilling. John Brown, who paid half the cost of the college’s first library, became the first Rhode Islander prosecuted under the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794 and had to forfeit his slave ship. Historical evidence also indicates that slaves were used at the family’s candle factory in Providence, its ironworks in Scituate, and to build Brown’s University Hall.[4]
Even after slavery was outlawed in the North, ships out of New England continued to carry thousands of Africans to the American South. Some 156,000 slaves were brought to the United States in the period 1801-08, almost all of them on ships that sailed from New England ports that had recently outlawed slavery. Rhode Island slavers alone imported an average of 6,400 Africans annually into the U.S. in the years 1805 and 1806. The financial base of New England’s antebellum manufacturing boom was money it had made in shipping. And that shipping money was largely acquired directly or indirectly from slavery, whether by importing Africans to the Americas, transporting slave-grown cotton to England, or hauling Pennsylvania wheat and Rhode Island rum to the slave-labor colonies of the Caribbean.
Northerners profited from slavery in many ways, right up to the eve of the Civil War. The decline of slavery in the upper South is well documented, as is the sale of slaves from Virginia and Maryland to the cotton plantations of the Deep South. But someone had to get them there, and the U.S. coastal trade was firmly in Northern hands. William Lloyd Garrison made his first mark as an anti-slavery man by printing attacks on New England merchants who shipped slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans.
Long after the U.S. slave trade officially ended, the more extensive movement of Africans to Brazil and Cuba continued. The U.S. Navy never was assiduous in hunting down slave traders. The much larger British Navy was more aggressive, and it attempted a blockade of the slave coast of Africa, but the U.S. was one of the few nations that did not permit British patrols to search its vessels, so slave traders continuing to bring human cargo to Brazil and Cuba generally did so under the U.S. flag. They also did so in ships built for the purpose by Northern shipyards, in ventures financed by Northern manufacturers.”
http://slavenorth.com/profits.htm
By the way....let’s not think this is limited to Brown University. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, etc etc. Name one. They’re ALL buried up to their eyeballs in slave trading profits right from their very beginnings.
But let’s talk about that bastion of SJW Leftists Hahhhhvahd because...well hell, because its just so delicious. It seems the Leftist Yankees in Ivy League Academia have made a shocking discovery lately. Those things Southerners had been telling them about how their hands were dirty, about how they themselves were founded with blood money from Slavery and how they had never disgorged any of that unjust enrichment were all true! Who would have ever guessed that the people who were long condemned for buying and owning slaves correctly remembered the people doing the finger pointing were the very ones who sold them the slaves in the first place?
“At least two of Harvard’s early presidents brought slaves to live and work on campus, historians said. Some of the school’s major donors made their fortunes through slave labor or the slave trade. The university invested in merchant voyages trading crops produced by slaves. The 19th century Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz promoted theories about race that were used to justify slavery.”
“Some of our most esteemed educational institutions are also the product of some of the most horrific violence that has ever descended on any group of people,” said Sven Beckert, a Harvard history professor who has studied the school’s slavery ties.”
At Harvard, the topic reached a crescendo last year after students demanded the law school abandon its coat of arms, which was taken from the family crest of a slave-owner who helped found the school.
The law school eventually agreed to drop the shield, and weeks later Faust called on further exploration of the school’s past relationship with slavery.
But there’s still debate at Harvard about how to reconcile for past wrongdoings. At the conference, writer and keynote speaker Ta-Nehisi Coates drew applause when he suggested colleges make some sort of financial reparations for their role in slavery.
“I don’t know how you conduct research that shows that your very existence is rooted in a great crime, and you just, well, shrug, and maybe at best say I’m sorry,” said Coates, who writes for The Atlantic magazine. “You have to do the right thing and try to make some amends.”
https://www.apnews.com/6b25d83deacd4133ba6a723442958916
Shocking stuff....if you’ve been refusing to listen when Southerners told you all of this over and over again for 175 years or so.
There’s more:
“The release last week of a Brown University report detailing the school’s historical ties to slavery has brought to light slave money that other elite universities, including Harvard, took centuries ago.”
“Another major Ivy League recipient of slave money was Yale University.”
“Deadria C. Farmer-Paellmann, a reparations activist who filed suit in 2002 against companies she alleges profited from slavery, claims in her suit that “money from the slave trade financed Yale University’s first endowed professorship, its first endowed scholarship, and its first endowed library fund.”
“A frequently cited case of Harvard’s slavery ties is that of the original benefactor of Harvard Law School (HLS).
The school was formed in 1817 “with the money left to Harvard by an Antiguan slave owner and planter, Isaac Royall,” Boston College law professor Daniel R. Coquillette said in a 2001 speech at HLS.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/10/27/beneath-the-ivy-a-legacy-of/
It goes on and on. New England especially was at the heart of the slave trade and then derived enormous profits again by servicing Southern cash crops produced at least in part from slave labor.
THEN they tried to cast off all blame for slavery by projecting it exclusively onto Southerners while of course never parting with so much as a nickel of the all the enormous profits they made from it.
Nonsense. I think they were very much like anyone else would be in their situation. They promoted what they thought was their interest. Where I differ from you is that I don't believe that they had all the knowledge and foresight that we would have if we suddenly transported back then.
Most realized fat profits from cotton would not go on forever. The seceded because they saw themselves being overwhelmed by the larger populations of the North and the very greedy business interests of the North which saw the South as little more than a cash cow.
Read what they were saying at the time. Read James Hammond's "Cotton is King" speech. He was wrong about the tariffs, but his speech clearly reflects the delusions of his day.
You are obsessed with victim thinking that developed after the war. Southerners had grievances before the war - real or imagined - but the secessionists were very assertive about the importance of cotton to the world economy and very confident about their future.
Why would they buy the same amount of Northern goods with foreign goods now considerably cheaper by virtue of not having to pay such a high import tariff?
If they bought the same quantities of goods from overseas as they did from the North, there wouldn't be all that much of a savings either in their spending or in the tariffs paid. Remember, the 1857 tariff wasn't that far from what the Confederates would impose. Include shipping costs and the difference would be nominal.
You fundamentally misunderstand how things worked. Southerners were chartering the ships and paying the insurance and the crews’ salaries for those ships. They were exchanging their cash crops for manufactured goods because having those ships sail back across the Atlantic with their holds empty would have been hugely wasteful. They owned those manufactured goods. As the owners of the goods they were the ones who had to pay those tariffs. This meant they had less money to spend at home.
Not at all. There were large transatlantic trading firms with offices in New York, London or Liverpool, and Charleston or New Orleans, who bought the cotton and shipped it across the Atlantic. Some of the cotton was shipped from Charleston or New Orleans, but much of it was shipped to New York and then from there across the Atlantic.
When the ships came back, they brought manufactured goods, most often to New York, where there was a large population and access to a much larger population by rail or canal or steamboat. If they shipped the goods to a smaller Southern port it could be hard to sell the goods or the ships might be mostly empty.
The tariffs were not paid by the cotton growers, but by the merchants, who ultimately passed the cost on to the consumers of imported goods. There were more free, employed people in the North and more industry there as well, so Northerners bought more imports and paid most of the tariff. Alexander Stephens, who became Vice President of the Confederacy, even admitted that Northerners paid most of the tariff, but Southern firebrands ignored that.
What you call minimal, the people at the time certainly didn’t consider minimal. There were plenty of big rail subsidies before the war.
There were federal land grants to railroads before the Civil War. Railroads had to have a right of way to be built and if the land was owned by the federal government, the railroads sometimes received the land. That happened in the South as well as in the North. There was no reason for Southerners to complain. And the land grants didn't compare in size to what came after the Civil War.
I don't have the time to look into all the quotes you've cut and pasted into your post. Somebody somewhere did a very good job cherry-picking quotes to prove some very questionable arguments.
I do notice that the North American Review article could make the secessionists look worse than one might have thought. If - as they say when you read more of the article - it was a war fought purely for the political and economic ambitions of a small group of powerful secessionist radicals, it didn't make the Confederacy look much better, but arguably, worse. The Chicago Times was a Doughface, Copperhead paper that could be counted on to mouth pro-Southern, pro-slavery sentiments.
As for the rest, you are just indulging yourself and practicing misdirection. No one doubts that the slave trade was important in New England in the Eighteenth Century, or that colleges founded then benefited from the profits of slavery. Why would the North be any different from the South? But you are using that to support a claim that the illegal slave trade was more important to 19th century New England than it actually was, and also letting loose a lot of overheated emotionality. How things were in 1750 and how they were in 1850 weren't necessarily the same.
Sorry for the long delay in replying. I have been fighting flu and subsequent bronchitis for four weeks now. Every now and then I’d think I was getting well, only to have the constant coughing return. I’m getting better now by taking amoxcillin.
I think a little context is necessary here. Lincoln offered the Secretary of State post to Seward on December 13, 1860. Seward accepted it on December 28. On December 16, Seward wrote Lincoln that Weed was going to come talk with Lincoln and that he, Seward, would talk with Weed before the trip and talk with Weed after he returned from Springfield, which Seward did.
Here is Seward's Dec 26, 1861 letter to Lincoln describing what happened, only part of which was summarized in your link. You can find Seward’s letter at Nicolay and Hay's book, Abraham Lincoln: A History, Volume 3, page 262. [Link]. From the letter (my bold below):
I had only the opportunity for conferring with Mr. Weed which was afforded by our journeying together on the railroad from Syracuse to Albany.
He gave me verbally the substance of the suggestion you prepared for he consideration of the Republican members, but not the written proposition. This morning I received the latter from him, and also information for the first time of your expectation that I would write you concerning the temper of the parties and public here.
I met on Monday my Republican associates on the Committee of Thirteen, and afterwards the whole Committee. With the unanimous consent of our section I offered three propositions that seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you through Mr. Weed as I understood it.
First. That the constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the States. This was accepted."
Second. That the Fugitive slave law should be amended by granting a jury trial to the fugitive. . . . '' This in opposition to our votes was amended so as to give the jury in the State from which the fugitive fled, and so amended was voted down by our own votes. The Committee had already agreed to Mr. Crittenden’s amendment concerning the fees of the commissioner, making them the same when the fugitive is returned to slavery as when he is discharged.
Our Third resolution was that Congress recommend to all the States to revise their legislation concerning persons recently resident in other States, and to repeal all such laws which contravene the Constitution of the United States, or any law of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. This was rejected by the pro-slavery vote of the Committee.
To-day we have had another meeting. I offered, with the concurrence of my political associates, a fourth proposition, viz.: That Congress should pass a law to punish invasions of our States and conspiracies to effect such invasions, but the latter only in the State and district where the acts of such complicity were committed. This by the votes of our opponents was amended so as practically to carry out Mr. Douglas’s suggestion of last winter for the revival of the old Sedition law of John Adams’s time, and then was rejected by our own votes.
The first and fourth propositions discussed above were basically consistent with the 1860 Republican platform, that I imagine Lincoln ran on. Here is Item 4 of the platform:
4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state, to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
The first proposition above that the Committee of Thirteen considered was rephrased from that of the platform to address slavery specifically and to say essentially that the Constitution should not be altered (i.e., amended) to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the States. Republican Representative Corwin later achieved the goal of the first proposition through the Corwin Amendment.
Interestingly, the first proposition got the votes of all the Republican members of the Committee of Thirteen and all but two of the Democrat members. The Democrat members of the Committee of Thirteen were often the ones who voted against the Republican propositions presented to them. The Democrat members included Powell, Hunter, Toombs, Douglas, Davis, Bigler, and Rice.
In his first inaugural speech Lincoln addresses slavery and, in fact, quotes Item 4 of the Republican platform that I listed above:
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
You are correct that the written propositions that Lincoln gave Weed were discussed later with the Republican members of the Committee according to Seward’s letter to Lincoln. The Republican members decided not to offer Lincoln’s written proposals to the full Committee:
This evening the Republican members of the Committee with Judge Trumbull and Mr. Fessenden met at my house to consider your written suggestion and determine whether it shall be offered. While we think the ground has already been covered [rb: by the four propositions above and the discussions relative to them, I think] we find that in the form you give it, it would divide our friends not only in the Committee but in Congress; a portion being unwilling to give up their old opinion that the duty of executing the constitutional provisions concerning fugitives from service belongs to the States, and not at all to Congress. But we shall confer --- and act wisely as we can.''
Nonsense. I think they were very much like anyone else would be in their situation. They promoted what they thought was their interest. Where I differ from you is that I don’t believe that they had all the knowledge and foresight that we would have if we suddenly transported back then.
I don’t either but it was pretty obvious what direction the world was going in by the mid 19th century. One didn’t have to have a crystal ball to see industrialization was coming in and slavery was going out.
Read what they were saying at the time. Read James Hammond’s “Cotton is King” speech. He was wrong about the tariffs, but his speech clearly reflects the delusions of his day.
I’ve read it and much more. Hammond did overestimate how much leverage the Southern states would have with cotton. He was right about the tariffs though. He was also right in his calculations about how much more the South was paying for the tariff than the North and he was right about how unequal federal expenditures were.
You are obsessed with victim thinking that developed after the war. Southerners had grievances before the war - real or imagined - but the secessionists were very assertive about the importance of cotton to the world economy and very confident about their future.
No, I’m realistic about both sides. Both were motivated by economic concerns as people almost always are. It was never some grand moral crusade against slavery or some grand immoral crusade to preserve slavery as Yankee propagandists at the time and as today’s PC Revisionists would have it.
If they bought the same quantities of goods from overseas as they did from the North, there wouldn’t be all that much of a savings either in their spending or in the tariffs paid. Remember, the 1857 tariff wasn’t that far from what the Confederates would impose. Include shipping costs and the difference would be nominal.
Yes it was. It was still 17% under the Walker Tariff. The CSA was going to set their rate under and probably well under 10%. Of course the tariff rate in the US was set to double right away under the Morill tariff and everybody knew it wouldn’t stop there. The difference would be huge.
Not at all. There were large transatlantic trading firms with offices in New York, London or Liverpool, and Charleston or New Orleans, who bought the cotton and shipped it across the Atlantic. Some of the cotton was shipped from Charleston or New Orleans, but much of it was shipped to New York and then from there across the Atlantic.
When the ships came back, they brought manufactured goods, most often to New York, where there was a large population and access to a much larger population by rail or canal or steamboat. If they shipped the goods to a smaller Southern port it could be hard to sell the goods or the ships might be mostly empty.
The tariffs were not paid by the cotton growers, but by the merchants, who ultimately passed the cost on to the consumers of imported goods. There were more free, employed people in the North and more industry there as well, so Northerners bought more imports and paid most of the tariff. Alexander Stephens, who became Vice President of the Confederacy, even admitted that Northerners paid most of the tariff, but Southern firebrands ignored that.
No. You have it wrong. Whether Southern planters kept ownership of the cotton and exchanged it for manufactured goods OR merchants bought the cotton and exchanged it for manufactured goods, the profit those manufactured goods could earn was directly reflected in the price the cotton (or other cash crop) could be sold for. In other words if the profitability of the return journey was slashed, then more of the cost of the shipping would have to be borne by the outward journey....which meant lower cotton prices. Either way, it was the supplier of the cash crop (ie Southerners) who bore the costs. It certainly was not the end consumer who bought the goods. Northern manufacturers could simply undercut them on price (as was intended) so the importer had to eat a lot of the cost.
There were federal land grants to railroads before the Civil War. Railroads had to have a right of way to be built and if the land was owned by the federal government, the railroads sometimes received the land. That happened in the South as well as in the North. There was no reason for Southerners to complain. And the land grants didn’t compare in size to what came after the Civil War.
You think all the infrastructure spending was just land grants? It definitely wasn’t. The federal government paid a lot of money for railroads, roads, canals, waterworks, etc etc.
I don’t have the time to look into all the quotes you’ve cut and pasted into your post. Somebody somewhere did a very good job cherry-picking quotes to prove some very questionable arguments.
LOL! This is what PC Revisionists always claim. Present them with some damning quotes from Northern sources and they try to claim “cherrypicking”.
I do notice that the North American Review article could make the secessionists look worse than one might have thought. If - as they say when you read more of the article - it was a war fought purely for the political and economic ambitions of a small group of powerful secessionist radicals, it didn’t make the Confederacy look much better, but arguably, worse. The Chicago Times was a Doughface, Copperhead paper that could be counted on to mouth pro-Southern, pro-slavery sentiments.
I dispute the first paper’s claim that it was just a small group of Southerners but I have never denied that the South’s real motivation was financial concerns. They were in it for the money just as the North was in it for the money. As for the Chicago Times, they did not say anything lots of other Northern newspapers did not say so your attempt to smear them rather than address what they had to say fails miserably.
As for the rest, you are just indulging yourself and practicing misdirection. No one doubts that the slave trade was important in New England in the Eighteenth Century, or that colleges founded then benefited from the profits of slavery. Why would the North be any different from the South? But you are using that to support a claim that the illegal slave trade was more important to 19th century New England than it actually was, and also letting loose a lot of overheated emotionality. How things were in 1750 and how they were in 1850 weren’t necessarily the same.
You’re just being defensive and desperately trying to obfuscate here. You PC Revisionists will cling to the myth of the virtuous North at all costs and in the face of all evidence. The facts are these:
- New England was involved in the slave trade up to their eyeballs. They were from the start and they continued to engage in the slave trade illegally on a large scale right up until 1861.
- the Northeast was involved in servicing goods produced in substantial part by slave labor right up until 1861.
- They derived enormous profits from both
- They were fully prepared to protect slavery effectively forever by constitutional amendment.
- Once their cash cow ie the Southern States made a bid to go independent THEN they magically discovered it was really all about slavery AND discovered that they were oh so morally superior for being opposed to slavery. They didn’t make this discovery until 2 years into the war, but they’ve clung to it doggedly as an article of faith ever since then.
FLT-bird: “Troll 101”
Maybe, but for this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources.
If you are going to make extraordinary claims, then you’ll need to keep your sources & quotes handy and be very generous with posting them.
Once or twice may not be enough, several times may be necessary.
As for your source’s legitimacy, just expect that to be challenged and be ready with answers.
The fact is that virtually everything under the category of “Lost Cause Myth” is suspect, challenged and often dismissed by serious historians precisely because it’s never been fully confirmed.
So who’s the “troll” if you’re posting data you can’t really certify, even when challenged on it?
Diogeneslamp: ***”You don’t want to admit that Lincoln started the war when he sent those warships with their defacto orders to began an assault against the Confederates who were blocking them.”***
Except that regardless of how hard you try to spin it, sending ships to resupply you troops in their own fort, ships with orders saying “no first use of force*, that is not an act of war, ever.
By contrast, firing on troops to force their surrender, that is an act of war, always.
So you can post “Lincoln tricked Davis” all you want, but the fact is Lincoln wasn’t that smart and Davis wasn’t that stupid.
Both knew exactly what they were doing.
Maybe, but for this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources. If you are going to make extraordinary claims, then you’ll need to keep your sources & quotes handy and be very generous with posting them. Once or twice may not be enough, several times may be
necessary.
I already have both in this thread and in response to him before as well as to you and others before. Several times before.
As for your source’s legitimacy, just expect that to be challenged and be ready with answers.
We’ve all been through that drill several times already.
The fact is that virtually everything under the category of “Lost Cause Myth” is suspect, challenged and often dismissed by serious historians precisely because it’s never been fully confirmed.
The fact is that virtually everything under the category of PC Revisionist Myth is supsect challenged and often dismissed by serious historians. Most of it was wartime propaganda and its immediate aftermath which was not “rediscovered” until the current crop of 60’s Leftists started the long march through the institutions. It emerged when they started to be tenured professors in the 1980s.
So who’s the “troll” if you’re posting data you can’t really certify, even when challenged on it?
Oh but I have - several times. The troll is the one who tries to keep playing the same game I outlined above - as though we’d never seen trolling before and were going to fall for that one.
Was it not the position of Lincoln that the South could not leave the Union, and therefore all those states remained part of the Union throughout the entire war?
>To repeat my position (which finds me uncomfortably in the middle on this thread): invading the south in order to preserve the union was not a moral position. Invading the south in order to free the slaves was. The Emancipation Proclamation changed the moral basis of the war.
Jones v Texas is often cited as claiming that the U.S. is indivisible. In that decision, the Supreme Court said that states could not unilaterally secede. The Court argued that the people of the United States have become so entangled with each other, that it would be practically impossible to disentangle them. We have become “a people,” with a shared heritage, culture and destiny. But, this entire argument is about practical considerations. Should the states voluntary agree to a dissolution, or should one or more states prevail in a war of secession, there could be a division. The decision says these things also.
The U.S. Declaration lays out sound justification of secession. To that reasoning I would add the following practical consideration: an identifiable people in an identifiable place.
So, are the people of East Timor an identifiable people in an identifiable place; or, the people of Kosovo; or, the people of South Sudan? And, do they suffer from a long train of abuses? If so, these places can and should be allowed to secede.
This kind of reasoning applies, maybe, to Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia, the U.K. relative to the E.U., and maybe to Alberta and the red states of the U.S. They may apply to Crimea and some counties in east Ukraine. Nobody should be held in subjugation. Not any race, nor any people. The progressive socialists want to subjugate us. They brazenly express their hatred of us. Their culture is increasingly alien. It is some kind of paganistic, atheistic, anti-scientific, utopian nightmare. They are rapidly marginalizing us and we might have to disentangle ourselves from them. However, I’m not yet giving up on this country. We dodged a bullet in 2016. That was our Antietam. They have now re-loaded and we need to win in 2020. 2020 will be our Gettysburg. Lincoln had Grant, not a perfect man. We have Trump.
Getting back to borders. There is nothing sacrosanct about borders. Sovereignty lies in the people, recognizing that there are practical issues to borders and that you shouldn’t mess with borders for trivial matters. (Understood this way, states’ rights are derivative of individual rights. As the Declaration says, nations gain their just powers from the consent of the governed.)
In former times, another pragmatic consideration concerning borders was defendability. Was the border itself defendable, and was the nation defined by the border at least potentially strong enough to defend itself? Another was access to international seas, or at least to trade routes.
With functioning military alliances and functioning trade agreements, these considerations are not as compelling as they once were. So, we should care whether NAFTA, NATO, etc., actually work. As it was (in the case of NAFTA) and is (in the case of NATO), they’re cruel jokes on us who bear practically the entire cost. Bad international agreements weaken the cause of peace and freedom in the world. We should be anxious to reform international agreements for the sake of the world as well as for our own sake.
Regarding tariffs. When it was founded, the federal government wanted a source of revenue, but the states didn’t want it to have the power to levy a direct tax. So, they allowed the federal government to have a tariff (tax on imports) and also excise taxes (principally, the Feds taxed alcohol).
Consider the Democrats’ problem when they sought to lower tariffs and enact prohibition under Woodrow Wilson. The federal government would need a direct tax. Hence, the 16th Amendment. I don’t think that shift in taxation worked out well.
The experiment with shifting from indirect to direct taxes was conducted by the Republic of Texas, under its first President, Mirabeau Lamar. It was a disaster. The second President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, switched back to a tariff and enacted other fiscal reforms to right the ship.
The State of Alabama had a different idea: not have any taxes at all. It was going to run itself on the monopoly-like profits of a state bank. This experiment didn’t work; but, what if it had? Maybe we could run government on monopoly-like profits from alcohol, marijuana, gambling and prostitution, and do away with taxes entirely, or at least do away with taxes for all but the rich.
There was a strategy to having the federal government rely mainly on a tariff. If the tariff was set too high, it would cut off imports entirely, and there’d be no revenue. So, for most of the history of the tariff, it was set at a level that involved only a moderate degree of protectionism. Yes, this did benefit northern manufacturers, but it wasn’t as bad a deal for the rest of the country as some have argued.
Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote
Better hide your history books;
THEY’RE NEXT!
BJK: “who’s the “troll” if you’re posting data you can’t really certify, even when challenged on it?”
FLT-bird: ***”Oh but I have - several times.
The troll is the one who tries to keep playing the same game I outlined above - as though we’d never seen trolling before and were going to fall for that one.”***
I’ve seen many places on this thread where FLT-bird claimed to have posted data, quotes, etc.
I can’t recall any place where you actually did, or even posted a reference back to your previous quote posting, i.e., “See my post # 123 above”.
As the poet said, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
FLT-bird: ***”The fact is that virtually everything under the category of PC Revisionist Myth is supsect challenged and often dismissed by serious historians.
Most of it was wartime propaganda and its immediate aftermath which was not “rediscovered” until the current crop of 60’s Leftists started the long march through the institutions.”***
Noooooo, the Civil War is the most written about subject in America, with litterally libraries full of books these past 150+ years.
How many support Lost Cause Myths, is it 1% or .1%?
A small number.
The rest use credible sources to write real history, from the beginning.
That’s not to say some historians don’t disagree, of course they do, always will.
But the pack of lies which falls in the category of “Lost Cause Myth” is not history, never was, never will be.
And here’s why: whatever parts are true are real history, whatever is lies is Lost Cause Myth.
FLT-bird: ***”Notice that when the Southern states seceded, they left with only their own sovereign territory.
They made no claim to territories owned by the US.”***
I’d say that crosses the line from myth to outright lie.
Confederates claimed & sent forces into Union territories of New Mexico and Oklahoma, as well as Union Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Confederates also invaded Union Maryland, Pennsylvania, ohio, Indiana & Kansas and had guerrillas in California, Colorado & Vermont among others.
So all Lost Cause claims that Confederates “just wanted to be left aline” are pure nonsense.
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