Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

Look them up and report back to us - with a link to a credible source.

You were the one who claimed the British rates were lower than U.S. rates. You have nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.

Nothing puzzling about it. They were fighting for their freedom and needed all the resources and money they could get.

You claim any tariff over 10% was illegal and that the higher rates, though unconstitutional, were allowed. You offer nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.

It specified Revenue Tariff which by definition meant a maximum of 10%.

You claim a revenue tariff is defined at a maximum of 10%. You offer nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.

Especially since there was no demand for the imported goods.

And here is that cognitive dissonance again.

The people with money buy the goods. The demand may have come from Charleston, but the goods were dropped off in New York, and then an American coastal packet delivered them to the people who bought them, while taking a larger than warranted delivery charge.

New York was cleaning up both directions.

Then who took the cotton from Southern ports to Europe? U.S. ships?

I would imagine it was both American ships and Foreign ships, but probably mostly American ships.

New York was cleaning up both directions.

How? Imported goods came into New York but exports left the Southern ports, not New York.

I would imagine it was both American ships and Foreign ships, but probably mostly American ships.

Foreign or U.S., it would make more sense for those ships to arrive at the Southern ports loaded with those imported goods you claim the South demanded rather than arrive empty. The only reason for doing to do so is there wasn't any demand for the imports.

I have. So feel free to try and embarrass me. This should be fun.*****

You keep trying with this troll effort and you keep failing.

You were the one who claimed the British rates were lower than U.S. rates. You have nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.*****

OK let’s try a little experiment. I’ll provide one quote saying the same.

“Fate has indeed taken a malignant pleasure in flouting the admirers of the United States. It is not merely that their hopes of its universal empire have been disappointed; the mortification has been much deeper than this. Every theory to which they paid special homage has been successively repudiated by their favorite statesmen. They were Apostles of Free Trade: America has established a tariff, compared to which our heaviest protection-tariff has been flimsy. She has become a land of passports, of conscriptions, of press censorship and post-office espionage; of bastilles and lettres de cachet [this was a letter that bore an official seal which authorized the imprisonment, without trial of any person named in the letter] There was little difference between the government of Mr. Lincoln and the government of Napoleon III. There was the form of a legislative assembly, where scarcely any dared to oppose for fear of the charge of treason.” the Quarterly Review in Britain

Lemme guess....bad source....biased....can’t be true....if true its irrelevant....or because - reasons......Lay the excuse on me. I’m waiting for it.

Of course you’ll try to brush under the rug the fact that you asked for a source and I gave you one.

You claim any tariff over 10% was illegal and that the higher rates, though unconstitutional, were allowed. You offer nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.

It was a war measure. What about that do you not understand?

Note the line below about “no protective tariff was to be passed”

“The most remarkable features of the new instrument sprang from the purifying and reforming zeal of the delegates, who hoped to create a more guarded and virtuous government than that of Washington. The President was to hold office six years, and be ineligible for reelection. Expenditures were to be limited by a variety of careful provisions, and the President was given budgetary control over appropriations which Congress could break only by a two-thirds vote. Subordinate employees were protected against the forays of the spoils system. No bounties were ever to be paid out of the Treasury, no protective tariff was to be passed, and no post office deficit was to be permitted. The electoral college system was retained, but as a far-reaching innovation, Cabinet members were given seats in Congress for the discussion of departmental affairs. Some of these changes were unmistakable improvements, and the spirit behind all of them was an earnest desire to make government more honest and efficient.” (Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 435)

Note how this Northern newspaper is pointing out that the maximum tariff rate in the CSA was to be 10 percent?

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?”

Note how this one is saying something similar

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.”

and another:

[demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] “a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls.” The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861

and this one:

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

and this one:

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....”

There’s much more but any honest reader will have long since gotten the point.

You claim a revenue tariff is defined at a maximum of 10%. You offer nothing to back up your claim. Not at all surprising.****

You have either read nothing from the period or you are simply being dishonest - not at all surprising.

“Lee’s wife inherited slaves. Grant’s wife inherited slaves.”

Not really.
G.W.P. Custis, in his will did not leave the slaves to Mary Lee. He instructed the executor of his estate to retain the slaves until all of the debts and legacies of the estate were satisfied. But all slaves must be freed no later than 5 years after his death. Colonel R. E. Lee was the executor of the Custis estate.

Fredrick F Dent, Julia Dent Grant’s father died in Dec. 1873. Slavery ended in Missouri in January 1865. There were no slaves in his estate to will to her.

There seems to be some dispute about Julia Grant’s ownership of slaves. This is from her wikipedia page.

Julia grew up on a plantation with slaves and as a young woman had a slave known as “Jule” or “Black Julia.”[6][7] It is not clear if Jule ever legally belonged to Julia.[7] Historians still debate whether Julia’s father retained legal title to the four slaves his daughter claimed to own.[7] Julia’s father insisted they leave the slaves with him when the Grants lived in the North, fearing they would escape to freedom.[7]

Jule traveled with Julia Grant throughout the war. In January 1862, Abraham Lincoln received an anonymous letter from Cairo, decrying Grant’s drinking and his ‘secesh’ wife with her slave, but Lincoln took no action.[7] In her memoirs, Julia recalled “When I visited the General during the war, I nearly always had Jule with me as nurse. She came near being captured at Holly Springs.”[7]

According to Julia, “Eliza, Dan, Jule, and John belonged to me up to the time of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”

It seems she thought she owned those 4 slaves.

She thought so in her biography. she referred to them as “my slaves.” Whether they were legally her’s, per the law, is in doubt. She certainly did not inherit them through her fathers estate though.

OK let’s try a little experiment. I’ll provide one quote saying the same.

Or you might just provide the tariff rates to prove your point.

It was a war measure. What about that do you not understand?

The war measures part. The constitutional definition of a 10% tariff part. I provided the Confederate tariff bill outlining 25% tariffs and 20% tariffs and 15% tariffs and nowhere identifying those as a war measure. All you have offered is your own unsupported claim.

Note the line below about “no protective tariff was to be passed”

So? Where does it say that any tariff about 10% is protective?

Note how this Northern newspaper is pointing out that the maximum tariff rate in the CSA was to be 10 percent?

I notice it was written two months before the Confederate Congress passed their tariff laws. So I guess they showed the newspaper to be wrong, didn't they? Maybe they hadn't read that editorial down in Richmond?

There’s much more but any honest reader will have long since gotten the point.

A label that nobody would ever apply to you. But what say you to this quote?

"I have no idea that the duties will be as low as 10 per cent. My own opinion is that we shall have as high duty as is now charged by the General Government at Washington. If that matter is regarded as important by this Convention, why the door is open for negotiation with us. We have but a provisional and temporary government so far. If it be found that Virginia requires more protection than this upon any particular article of manufacture let her come in the spirit of a sister, to our Congress and say, we want more protection upon this or that article, and she will, I have no doubt, receive it. She will be met in the most fraternal and complying spirit." That was a promise made by one of the secession commissioners to the Virginia secession convention.

You have either read nothing from the period or you are simply being dishonest - not at all surprising.

I've read a lot on the period. Had you read anything at all you would be able to answer my questions. You can't. Not at all surprising.

She thought so in her biography. she referred to them as “my slaves.” Whether they were legally her’s, per the law, is in doubt. She certainly did not inherit them through her fathers estate though.****

Well.....like I said, she thought she got them from her Father. I don’t know where else she would have obtained those slaves.

Or you might just provide the tariff rates to prove your point.****

You challenged me to provide a source. I did.

The war measures part. The constitutional definition of a 10% tariff part. I provided the Confederate tariff bill outlining 25% tariffs and 20% tariffs and 15% tariffs and nowhere identifying those as a war measure. All you have offered is your own unsupported claim.****

False. I provided quote after quote after quote from numerous sources saying 10% was the maximum - before the government assumed emergency powers during the war.

So? Where does it say that any tariff about 10% is protective?*****

In numerous quotes I provided you. 10% was the common definition of the maximum for a revenue tariff.

I notice it was written two months before the Confederate Congress passed their tariff laws. So I guess they showed the newspaper to be wrong, didn’t they? Maybe they hadn’t read that editorial down in Richmond?****

I provided several sources which said this. Higher tariffs were an emergency power assumed due to the war.

A label that nobody would ever apply to you.****

Nah, it is you who is consistently dishonest here.

But what say you to this quote?

“I have no idea that the duties will be as low as 10 per cent. My own opinion is that we shall have as high duty as is now charged by the General Government at Washington. If that matter is regarded as important by this Convention, why the door is open for negotiation with us. We have but a provisional and temporary government so far. If it be found that Virginia requires more protection than this upon any particular article of manufacture let her come in the spirit of a sister, to our Congress and say, we want more protection upon this or that article, and she will, I have no doubt, receive it. She will be met in the most fraternal and complying spirit.” That was a promise made by one of the secession commissioners to the Virginia secession convention.*****

Yet in the Confederate Constitution they specified that only a tariff for revenue was to be allowed and not a protective tariff. It seems the commissioner at this one convention spoke out of turn.

I’ve read a lot on the period. Had you read anything at all you would be able to answer my questions. You can’t. Not at all surprising.****

Oh but I have you see and you’re being dishonest in denying it. Not at all surprising.

FLT-bird on % of slaveholder families: "Growing percentages?
I’d need to see evidence of that."

Thanks for making my point, your request for evidence here is legit and should not be met with me just blowing smoke at you, right?
Even if I've posted it before, there's nothing non-kosher about you asking for it again, right?
How about if you keep that thought in mind?

So take the example of Mississippi.
From 1820 to 1860 its white population multiplied 8 times, from 42,000 to 360,000.
At the same time its slave population multiplied 13 times, from 33,000 to 436,000.
So slaves grew from 44% of the population in 1820 to 55% in 1860.

That suggests, not only was the number of slaves growing, but also the percentage of slaves and very likely too, the percentage of slaveholders.
Certainly nothing in the numbers suggests falling numbers of slaveholders.

FLT-bird: "the evidence does not support that. Look at the US Census data."

Any reasonable estimate of average slaveholder family size (big families) and average number of slaveholders per family (probably just 1 or 1.1) leads to conclusions along the line of nearly half of some Deep South states families owning slaves.

FLT-bird: "Pure speculation on your part.
What we have is the Census data which shows the state with the highest percentage of the total free population owning slaves was South Carolina at 8.82%. "

Not just speculation, simple common sense.
And yet you wish us to believe none of those 9% of slaveholders had wives & children, or that if Dad owned slaves, so did all of them?
Sounds unrealistic to me.
More realistic would be average slaveholder family of, say, 5 means 45% of white South Carolinians lived in slaveholding households.

Is there evidence to support any other conclusion?

FLT-bird on 25% of Confederate soldiers slaveholders: "That may have been true in a few areas but is certainly a high estimate in others."

Well... you might say that since slave ownership was much less in Upper South and Border States, those units would have fewer slaveholders.
However, those states also contributed fewer soldiers to the Confederacy and more to the Union army, so there was a self-selection action at work.
In regions with fewer slaveholders -- i.e., Eastern Tennessee -- more soldiers served the Union and only slaveholding troops served as Confederates.

In other words, because of self-selection, that 25% estimate was likely to remain constant across most units.

FLT-bird: "Au contraire"

Now there's a powerful argument, no doubt, since it's in French, how can anybody defeat it?

FLT-bird: "Pure BS.
A fantasy constructed in your own mind.
If Southerners controlled Washington as you claim, tariffs would have been much lower, expenditures far more balanced between the regions and the federal govenrment would not have usurped all kinds of powers the states never delegated to it in the constitution."

Look, I "get" that you are in the grip of your Lost Cause myth, a fact free, common sense-free zone, but don't you wonder, once in a while, what truth might look like?

"...tariffs would have been much lower,"

Tariffs were much lower in 1860 than in, say, 1830, by a factor of half to third.
That's because Democrats ruled in Washington and Southerners ruled Democrats.

"...expenditures far more balanced between the regions."

Expenditures were perfectly balanced between the regions as this link shows, Fire Eater propaganda not withstanding.

"...federal govenrment would not have usurped all kinds of powers the states never delegated to it in the constitution"

The only power "usurped" by 1860 was Federal responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws, something slave states insisted on.

Or do you wish to include President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and support for the National Road?
And Jefferson was from which Northern state, did you say?

FLT-bird quoting: " 'The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north …
The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue,' John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question,” March 4, 1850"

Well... if Calhoun said it, it must be true, no arguing that, right?
But the fact is that Calhoun was wrong on both sides of his equation.
First of all Calhoun's Deep South exported only one commodity of significance, cotton, which represented roughly 50% of total exports, not the 75% number we often see.
Of course 50% is a lot, but it still means the US had plenty of other exports, including gold & silver.

But a key point Calhoun doesn't realize is that for every dollar the South exported, they also imported a dollar's worth of goods produced in the US North & West, so their export earnings quickly made their way to other parts of the country,

And what Calhoun calls "Federal revenue disbursements" were not, in fact skewed towards the North, unless you include as "North" all states "North" of South Carolina!

In fact, data shows Federal revenues were disbursed pretty evenly between slave and non-slave states.

Enough for now, more later...

FLT-bird: "Charles Beard was correct that both sides were really motivated by money - as people pretty much always are - no matter what grand noble cause they claim is their motivation."

Summary of Civil War historiography
It appears you're a fan or follower of Beard, so let's take some time to look closer at him:

Charles Beard (1874-1948) is described as "one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century"
" His works included a radical re-evaluation of the founding fathers of the United States, who he believed were motivated more by economics than by philosophical principles.
Beard's most influential book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), has been the subject of great controversy ever since its publication."
"An icon of the progressive school of historical interpretation, his reputation suffered during the Cold War era when the assumption of economic class conflict was dropped by most historians.
Richard Hofstadter (a consensus historian) concluded in 1968: 'Today Beard's reputation stands like an imposing ruin in the landscape of American historiography.
What was once the grandest house in the province is now a ravaged survival'.[5]"
"Denis W Brogan believed that Beard lost favour in the Cold War not because his views had been proven to be wrong, but because Americans were less willing to hear them.
In 1965 he wrote; 'The suggestion that the Constitution had been a successful attempt to restrain excessive democracy, that it had been a triumph for property (and) big business seemed blasphemy to many and an act of near treason in the dangerous crisis through which American political faith and practice were passing'.[6]"
"Beard's interpretation of the Civil War was highly influential among historians and the general public from its publication in 1927 until well into the civil rights era of the late 1950s."
"The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality.
They ignored constitutional issues of states rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war.
Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event.
Charles Ramsdell says the Beards emphasized that the Civil War was caused by economic issues, and was not basically about the right or wrong of slavery.[37]"
That is exactly the version of the Civil War I learned as a young man.
"Thomas J. Pressly says that the Beards fought against the prevailing nationalist interpretation that depicted, 'a conflict between rival section-nations rooted in social, economic, cultural, and ideological differences.'
Pressly said the Beards instead portrayed a, 'struggle between two economic economies having its origins in divergent material interests.'[38]
Much more important was the calculus of class conflict.
The Beards announced that the Civil War was really a 'social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South'.[39] "

Of course Beard would never agree to be called a "Lost Causer", but it does seem that our own Lost Causers have embraced Beard with a vengeance -- Beard the progressivist, economic determinist, Marxist dialectician is now also a Source of our own Lost Causer interpretations.

So now let's contrast Beard to a leader of the "Comparative School" which has FLT-bird & others so agitated & opposed:

"one leader of the Comparative School, which does emphasize slavery, was Eugene Genovese who in the last decades of his life became a solid Southern conservative."

Bottom line: Lost Cause icon Charles Beard = Progressive Marxist.
Comparative School leader Eugene Genovese = Conservative Southerner.

You challenged me to provide a source. I did.

I provide you with information and you provide opinions.

False. I provided quote after quote after quote from numerous sources saying 10% was the maximum - before the government assumed emergency powers during the war.

Quote after quote after quote from Northern editorials. Nothing from Confederate sources saying tariffs would be 10% and no more.

In numerous quotes I provided you. 10% was the common definition of the maximum for a revenue tariff.

Again, you provided nothing from the Confederate government defining 10% as the maximum tariff or no legal opinion that 10% defined a revenue tariff.

I provided several sources which said this. Higher tariffs were an emergency power assumed due to the war.

Can you point me to your source from the Confederate government defining those higher tariffs as war measures? The legislation itself doesn't do that.

Yet in the Confederate Constitution they specified that only a tariff for revenue was to be allowed and not a protective tariff. It seems the commissioner at this one convention spoke out of turn.

And according to you they promptly ignored it. Do you imagine that the higher tariff might have been struck down by the Confederate Supreme Court? If Davis and the Confederate Congress hadn't also ignored the requirement to establish that branch of government as well?

Oh but I have you see...

Not so much, no.

FLT-bird quoting: "...Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North.
The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.” – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862"

Dickens hated slavery, but hated Northerners more because he thought them only interested in cheating him out of money.
So it was a very small leap to universalize his own experiences onto the Union as a whole.

But I think it's fair to say that in his travels in America before 1867, Dickens never met a Republican.
His critique here, similar to our own Lost Causers, is of the Democrats who cheated him.
Regarding Dickens last 1867 trip to the US:

"During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America.
His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April [1868], when he promised never to denounce America again. "

It appears obvious to me that in 1867 Dickens finally met some Republicans.

FLT-bird quoting: "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)

Sure, Boston Democrats can be expected to see everything through their own economic prisms, and ignore the importance of slavery to Southerners.
But one man's "pretext" is another's "sincere reason" and visa versa.
The fact is, as this editorial reports, that the majority of average Southerners were unmoved by issues like tariffs, or "Northeastern power brokers" or "Money flows from Europe", but were vitally concerned about any attacks on slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism.” -- Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election"

This is a similar theme that Fire Eater Robert Rhett expressed in his December 1860 "Address to the Slaveholding States":

"The one great evil from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.
The Government of the United States is no longer the government of a confederate republic, but of a consolidated democracy."

But remember, this was after 60 years of nearly continuous Democrat rule in Washington, DC, during which years Southerners were more than happy with conditions they controlled.
So what both Rhett and the Charleston Mercury are telling us is that, like all Democrats, they cannot stand to be governed by the same rules they applied while in power.

FLT-bird quoting: "They [the South] know that it is their import [sic] trade that draws from the people’s pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....
These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union.” The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

That was a lie in 1861 and is still a lie today.
In fact, virtually everything Southerners "imported" they imported from the North.
That's where Northerners got the money to purchase foreign imports, tariffs on which supplied Federal revenues.

And what exactly were those foreign imports producing Federal revenues?
The top items were woolens, brown sugar, cotton, silks, iron & coffee.
About 85% of these imports went to Northern ports, especially New York, about 15% to Southern ports.

That's the truth of this matter, regardless of Fire Eater propaganda.

FLT-bird: "I can go on and on posting similar quotes.
By the way...this is exactly the kind of quotes, facts, sources, etc you claim I have not posted."

No problem, your quotes make your points.
They can also make my points.

FLT-bird: "...did somebody else pay those tariffs.
Gosh...who do you think that might have been?
Hint: Where the ship unloads its cargo is irrelevant."

Tariffs were paid at the point of ships unloading and warehousing.
But our Lost Causer claims that they were really "paid for" by "Southern exports" are totally bogus.
At most, cotton would "pay for" half of imports.
But in reality, virtually all cotton export earnings went to pay for imports from the North and very little left over for foreign imports.

So, that map is a valid representation of Federal tariff revenue sources.

Thanks for making my point, your request for evidence here is legit and should not be met with me just blowing smoke at you, right?

Even if I’ve posted it before, there’s nothing non-kosher about you asking for it again, right?
How about if you keep that thought in mind?****

If you had actually provided evidence for it as I have numerous times including in this thread.....

So take the example of Mississippi.
From 1820 to 1860 its white population multiplied 8 times, from 42,000 to 360,000. At the same time its slave population multiplied 13 times, from 33,000 to 436,000.
So slaves grew from 44% of the population in 1820 to 55% in 1860.

That suggests, not only was the number of slaves growing, but also the percentage of slaves and very likely too, the percentage of slaveholders. Certainly nothing in the numbers suggests falling numbers of slaveholders.****

Granted there was growth like that in Mississippi. I’d suggest however that A) Mississippi was frontier territory in 1820 and as it became settled between 1820 and 1860 it was not unreasonable that more people brought their slaves in as they established farms/plantations etc. I’d also add that the Mississippi Delta is an area that is particularly well suited for cotton growing and this attracted more slave owners to the area and encouraged those there to buy more slaves so as to increase cotton production.

I don’t think these factors hold for all states even in the Deep South.

Any reasonable estimate of average slaveholder family size (big families) and average number of slaveholders per family (probably just 1 or 1.1) leads to conclusions along the line of nearly half of some Deep South states families owning slaves.

No it doesn’t.

Total Free Population Total # of Slaveholders % of Free population owning slaves

Alabama 529,121 33,730 6.37%
Arkansas 324,335 11,481 3.54%
Florida 78,679 5,152 6.55%
Georgia 595,088 41,084 6.90%
Louisiana 376,276 22,033 5.86%
Mississippi 354,674 30,943 8.72%
Missouri
North Carolina 661,583 34,658 5.24%
South Carolina 301,302 26,701 8.86%
Tennessee 834,082 36,844 4.42%
Texas 421,649 21,878 5.19%
Virginia 1,105,453 52,128 4.72%

Total 5,582,242 316,632 5.67%

Excuse the formatting. As you can see the total percentage of the free population owning slaves in these states did not exceed 9% even in Mississippi and South Carolina which had the highest rates of slave owning.

You are trying to claim that there could be only one slave owner per family when we have lots of anecdotal evidence that there were often several in families that owned more than a few slaves and you are trying to claim families were extra large so as to inflate the percentage of families owning slaves. You have no evidence for either assumption. What we do know is that the rate of slave ownership did not exceed 9% in even Mississippi or South Carolina according to the 1860 US census.

Not just speculation, simple common sense.
And yet you wish us to believe none of those 9% of slaveholders had wives & children, or that if Dad owned slaves, so did all of them? Sounds unrealistic to me.****

Now you’re combining speculation with straw man arguments.

More realistic would be average slaveholder family of, say, 5 means 45% of white South Carolinians lived in slaveholding households.

Is there evidence to support any other conclusion?

and none of those families had more than 1 slaveowner? You don’t know that. You’re trying just as hard as you can to pump up the percentages on nothing more than wishful thinking. Oh, and it wasn’t 9%.

However, those states also contributed fewer soldiers to the Confederacy and more to the Union army, so there was a self-selection action at work.

In regions with fewer slaveholders — i.e., Eastern Tennessee — more soldiers served the Union and only slaveholding troops served as Confederates.*****

Virginia and North Carolina contributed the most troops and they were both in the Upper South and had a lower percentage of the population who were slaveowners. Also you have zero evidence that “only slaveholding troops” served as Confederates.

In other words, because of self-selection, that 25% estimate was likely to remain constant across most units.****

You have no evidence for that - only your self serving assumptions.

Look, I “get” that you are in the grip of your Lost Cause myth, a fact free, common sense-free zone, but don’t you wonder, once in a while, what truth might look like?****

I would say exactly the same of your anti-historical PC Revisionist dogma in which inconvenient facts are ignored and self serving speculation substitutes for actual data.

Tariffs were much lower in 1860 than in, say, 1830, by a factor of half to third. That’s because Democrats ruled in Washington and Southerners ruled Democrats.****

That’s because in 1830 there was the ruinously high Tariff of Abominations.

Expenditures were perfectly balanced between the regions as this link shows, Fire Eater propaganda not withstanding.*****

Simply false.

The only power “usurped” by 1860 was Federal responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws, something slave states insisted on.****

Wrong. The federal government was steadily encroaching on states’ sovereign rights. Show me where in the constitution, the USSC is granted the power of Judicial Review. That’s just one example. Huge stretching of the “elastic clause” of the commerce clause was another. Huge expansion of the “general welfare” clause was another.

Well... if Calhoun said it, it must be true, no arguing that, right?
But the fact is that Calhoun was wrong on both sides of his equation. First of all Calhoun’s Deep South exported only one commodity of significance, cotton, which represented roughly 50% of total exports, not the 75% number we often see. Of course 50% is a lot, but it still means the US had plenty of other exports, including gold & silver.

Firstly...wrong. Cotton was far from the only major export from the South. Other cash crops included Indigo, Rice, Sugar and of course Tobacco. Also Calhoun was FAR from alone in saying either that expenditures were unbalanced OR that the South had provided the vast majority of exports. I already included several sources for this in this thread including Northern sources which said the same thing.

But a key point Calhoun doesn’t realize is that for every dollar the South exported, they also imported a dollar’s worth of goods produced in the US North & West, so their export earnings quickly made their way to other parts of the country,

Well....again, False. The South bought manufactured goods. That is true since its economy was geared toward agricultural exports. Those manufactured goods - at least many of them - came from the UK and France. It was to squeeze the lower priced foreign competition out and simultaneously raise prices that Northern Manufacturers kept clamoring for the highest tariffs they could get.

And what Calhoun calls “Federal revenue disbursements” were not, in fact skewed towards the North, unless you include as “North” all states “North” of South Carolina!****

False. As once again, I have provided many sources in this thread which all showed.

In fact, data shows Federal revenues were disbursed pretty evenly between slave and non-slave states.****

False. Once again I quickly grow tired of this. You and a few others just LIVE to post the same BS in these threads day after day multiple times a day. You have no sources, you just spew BS. Repetitively

Its boring.

Summary of Civil War historiography
It appears you’re a fan or follower of Beard, so let’s take some time to look closer at him:****

I’m not a fan of his. I DO think he was right in saying that the War for Southern Independence - like the vast majority of all wars - was driven primarily by money/economic concerns. Of course there were other issues like very different interpretations of the balance between the federal and state governments as well as slavery, as well as cultural differences between North and South. Those were all significant issues - but money/economics was the real driving force.

Of course Beard would never agree to be called a “Lost Causer”, but it does seem that our own Lost Causers have embraced Beard with a vengeance — Beard the progressivist, economic determinist, Marxist dialectician is now also a Source of our own Lost Causer interpretations.****

Its funny you say that. Shall we explore Howard Zinn and James McPherson and the profs who current are tenured on liberal arts faculties who are all PC Revisionists? I’ve got news for you. They’re all hard hard HARDCORE Leftists. PC Revisionism and the whole “it was all about slavery” myth are products of the Left.

So now let’s contrast Beard to a leader of the “Comparative School” which has FLT-bird & others so agitated & opposed:

my post #483: “one leader of the Comparative School, which does emphasize slavery, was Eugene Genovese who in the last decades of his life became a solid Southern conservative.”

Bottom line: Lost Cause icon Charles Beard = Progressive Marxist.
Comparative School leader Eugene Genovese = Conservative Southerner.****

See? This is what you do. You find ONE GUY who was not even the most influential of PC Revisionists, note that he later became conservative and then try to paint PC Revisionism as a product of the Right.

WRONG WRONG WRONG. The vast majority of PC Revisionists proponents have been and still are today, radical Leftists. You are embracing radical Leftists ideology when you spew all the falsehoods of PC Revisionist dogma.

quoting BJK: "I emphasize Fire Eater because those were the people who lead the charge for secession, so their opinions matter here more than most.****"

FLT-bird: "No it doesn’t.
The laws of economics have not changed in the last 150 years.
High margins attract competitors which drive down those margins.
Always has been the case, always will be the case.
Everybody could see the enormous power of industrialization by the mid 19th century."

You'd think, right?
But in fact, that's not what Confederates said at the time, which means you've let your sympathies and overactive imagination overrule basic historical facts.

quoting BJK: "Yes, Rhett did complain (falsely) that:

'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.'****"

FLT-bird: "No, he was correct about that."

Rhett's and other similar complaints (i.e., Calhoun's) are only possibly valid if by "the North" they meant every state North of South Carolina.

Otherwise, the facts show that Federal spending was pretty well distributed whenever it didn't outright favor the South.

FLT-bird on Rhett's address: "He did not say industrialization no, but others could see what was coming.
It wasn’t some far off mystery."

But those "others" were not political leaders or newspaper editorialists, they were industrialists themselves and most likely Unionists.

FLT-bird: "The Upper South was rapidly industrializing by 1861...and slavery was starting to die out just as it had in other places that industrialized"

Sure, and even more so in Border States like Maryland & Missouri.
But the cause for slavery's decline in Border States was not "industrialization", but rather precisely the prosperity and huge demand for slaves in Deep South cotton states.
Cotton almost literally sucked slaves out of Border States where slavery was less profitable and into cotton states where it was hugely profitable.
At the same time many Northern immigrants moved into states like Maryland and Missouri, thus tilting the pro-slavery electorate more & more towards abolition.

That's why those states refused to join the Confederacy, even in the face of declared war on the United States.

FLT-bird: "Rhett was also correctly pointing out just how miserable things were for people at the bottom of the social order up North....and he was right about that.
The complete lack of tort law, OSHA, child labor laws, workmen’s comp, etc etc led to horrible abuses - the backlash against with spawned the labor unions which still plague much of the North."

True enough and an active debate at the time -- whether Northern factory workers or Southern slaves were worse treated?
A case could be made for either, but the key fact remained that Northern workers always could, and often did, pick up and move on to better lives elsewhere, out West for example.

FLT-bird: "The Southerners could cite a long train of abuses and usurpations which they detailed at great length in 1861 and which they had been detailing for quite some time."

But it was totally bogus because nothing, noooooothing in 1860 remotely resembled conditions in 1776.
What those alleged "abuses" really amounted to was Democrats being voted out of power in 1860.
Just as today, loss of power drove Democrats berserk.

FLT-bird: "The Founders believed that government derived its legitimacy from the consent of the governed.
That was THE central point of the Declaration of Secession....err...Independence (same thing)."

"Consent of the governed" means constitutional elections, which were held in 1860 just as they had been in every election year for the past 72 years.
No Founder ever proposed or supported unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, but that is just what Fire Eaters did in 1860-1.

FLT-bird: "So did this guy:

“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better." --

In fact, of the four living former Presidents -- Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore & Pierce, only Virginian Tyler thought there was an unrestricted "right of secession".
Neither Democrat President Buchanan nor Republican Lincoln believed Fire Eaters had legitimate cause to secede, but both believed the Union could not stop them militarily, until, unless, except when... secessionists started war and that would make it a rebellion which the Union could constitutionally defeat.

FLT-bird: "Yes Yes I know.
Here is where you’ll come up with some desperate excuses as to why the plain words Lincoln spoke then did not mean what they actually meant and there were all kinds of conditions - which he errrr....forgot to name - that rendered the Southern states doing EXACTLY what he himself advocated a dozen years prior somehow not legitimate.
Go ahead.
I’m waiting for it with baited breath."

Sorry, FRiend, but facts are facts, regardless of whether you like them.
Even the young, naïve Congressman Lincoln in 1848 added a restrainer, "having the power", implying he did not expect every declaration of independence to go peacefully.

But in his March 1861 Inaugural President Lincoln did promise to remain peaceful with secessionists, saying they could only have a war if they themselves started it.

Confederate editorials of the time called that a "declaration of war".

Quote after quote after quote from Northern editorials. Nothing from Confederate sources saying tariffs would be 10% and no more.****

LOL! Exactly as predicted. I provided numerous quotes and sources. I noted the Confederate Constitution said Revenue Tariff and not Protective tariff and you try to tap dance here and claim I need to provide Confederate Sources saying 10%.

This is part of your standard trolling game. Demand sources. Get provide voluminous sources that show exactly what you were told....then you just claim you need more and different. No source will ever be good enough if it shows something you don’t like.

Again, you provided nothing from the Confederate government defining 10% as the maximum tariff or no legal opinion that 10% defined a revenue tariff.****

Again, you are trying to troll here. I provided plenty of information to back up exactly what I said.

Can you point me to your source from the Confederate government defining those higher tariffs as war measures? The legislation itself doesn’t do that.****

I provided the Confederate Constitution which stated revenue tariff rather than protective tariff. You are just trying to troll here. You’ve been shown plenty of evidence that anybody who was intellectually honest would admit proves the point.

And according to you they promptly ignored it. Do you imagine that the higher tariff might have been struck down by the Confederate Supreme Court? If Davis and the Confederate Congress hadn’t also ignored the requirement to establish that branch of government as well?****

Gosh, I wonder if President Davis and the Confederate Congress might have been preoccupied with any other issue at this time?

Not so much, no.****

Yes I have.

Dickens hated slavery, but hated Northerners more because he thought them only interested in cheating him out of money.
So it was a very small leap to universalize his own experiences onto the Union as a whole.*****

Ah so anybody who says something you don’t like is not credible because.....errr......reasons.

But I think it’s fair to say that in his travels in America before 1867, Dickens never met a Republican. His critique here, similar to our own Lost Causers, is of the Democrats who cheated him.****

He traveled all over the country. I’m sure he met plenty of Republicans.

Regarding Dickens last 1867 trip to the US:

“During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America.
His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico’s on 18 April [1868], when he promised never to denounce America again. “

It appears obvious to me that in 1867 Dickens finally met some Republicans.****

LOL! It appears obvious to me that the Federals had won the war and held all the power and the money at that point, and Dickens did not want to alienate a significant source of his income.

Sure, Boston Democrats can be expected to see everything through their own economic prisms, and ignore the importance of slavery to Southerners. But one man’s “pretext” is another’s “sincere reason” and visa versa.****

They were not alone in seeing it this way. Several Northern sources also said the same thing.

The fact is, as this editorial reports, that the majority of average Southerners were unmoved by issues like tariffs, or “Northeastern power brokers” or “Money flows from Europe”, but were vitally concerned about any attacks on slavery.****

It says in essence that Calhoun couldn’t move the needle by only making an economic argument (though note that the economics were a major issue even in 1850) but instead needed to fire people up over the slavery issue.

By the way, the slavery issue also meant things like the Northern states violating the constitution quite openly. It meant financiers in the North providing money for domestic terrorists sent into the South to try to start a bloodbath (see Harper’s Ferry) AND the Northern states then not making any real attempt to punish the financiers of terrorism so long as it was directed against Southerners - be they slave owners or not.

This is a similar theme that Fire Eater Robert Rhett expressed in his December 1860 “Address to the Slaveholding States”:

“The one great evil from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.
The Government of the United States is no longer the government of a confederate republic, but of a consolidated democracy.”

But remember, this was after 60 years of nearly continuous Democrat rule in Washington, DC, during which years Southerners were more than happy with conditions they controlled.****

Stop right there! No, Southerners were NOT “more than happy with conditions” and they did not “control” the federal government no matter how many times you try to claim they did. That makes zero sense. The Southern states were in the minority. The federal government enacted several policies they hated. That would hardly have happened had they been in control.

That was a lie in 1861 and is still a lie today.*

Nope! It was just as true then as it is today. It also shows the importance of the economic argument here - something you and the other PC Revisionists are trying to gloss over.

In fact, virtually everything Southerners “imported” they imported from the North.***

False. They imported manufactured goods from Britain and France on a large scale. That was precisely what Northern business interests were trying to crush with the high tariffs.

That’s where Northerners got the money to purchase foreign imports, tariffs on which supplied Federal revenues.****

The North’s main sources of revenue were manufactured goods which they sold in competition with foreign suppliers as well as the shipping industry over which they held a virtual monopoly thanks to the navigation laws, as well servicing Southern exports (insurance, banking, merchants, shipbuilding, etc). Oh and let’s not forget the thriving illicit slave trading they were engaged in.

The North had made a LOT of money from slave trading and servicing goods produced in significant part, by slave labor.

And what exactly were those foreign imports producing Federal revenues? The top items were woolens, brown sugar, cotton, silks, iron & coffee.****

Textiles, agricultural equipment and various household goods were the major imports. Yes, include Coffee too.

About 85% of these imports went to Northern ports, especially New York, about 15% to Southern ports.

That’s the truth of this matter, regardless of Fire Eater propaganda.*****

Right, and as I’ve explained to you multiple times already, the port, the city, the state does not pay the tariff. The owner of the goods does. That owner either directly or indirectly was overwhelmingly the Southern exporter.

Tariffs were paid at the point of ships unloading and warehousing. But our Lost Causer claims that they were really “paid for” by “Southern exports” are totally bogus.
At most, cotton would “pay for” half of imports.****

Again, WHERE they were paid is irrelevant. WHO paid is what is relevant. It was the Southern exporters either directly or indirectly who owned those manufactured goods and who paid the tariff. That’s something you PC Revisionists cannot face up to. James McPherson made a complete fool of himself trying to argue this. All he showed was that like most Leftists, he doesn’t have a clue about economics.

But in reality, virtually all cotton export earnings went to pay for imports from the North and very little left over for foreign imports.*****

False. It was precisely because Northern manufacturers were finding it so difficult to compete with foreign goods that they screamed for protective tariffs.

So, that map is a valid representation of Federal tariff revenue sources.*****

Not even close.