Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

WFAA ^ | January 11, 2019 | Jason Whitely

[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.

[FLT-bird]

DoodleDawg: For example? I have seen no indication that there was a railroad grid that connected north with south, and southern railroads sole purpose was to connect the inland part of the state with a seaport.

http://railroads.unl.edu/views/sources/US%201861.jpg

DoodleDawg: True. But does nothing to answer the question I've been asking all along.

which is?

DoodleDawg: Yep. So how did the goods get from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia to the Mississippi?

you said just the Mississippi and Ohio. Hell forget the Ohio. Do you have any idea how much traffic flowed up and down the Mississippi?

DoodleDawg: Is it not your contention that the South paid the large majority of tariffs? "Vast amounts" is the term I believe you used. How did they pay it if they did not consume the vast majority of imports?

This is what I was saying before about how this has become an endlessly repetitive waste of time. The owners of the goods had to eat most of the cost of the tariff. They could not pass it on to their customers due to domestic ie Northern competitors who - once they'd been saddled with a tariff - were price competitive with them.

DoodleDawg: And you do? LOL!

Compared to you? LOL! I'm a font of knowledge.

DoodleDawg: I'm saying that Adams makes the same kind of unsupported claims that you do, apparently offering opinion as fact.

and I'm just saying Adams provides sources. You just refuse to accept them because they're inconvenient.

DoodleDawg: Answer the question. If there was a distribution system why was it one way?

It wasn't. Your question time is over. Now go read. For a change.

DoodleDawg: For example? I have seen no indication that there was a railroad grid that connected north with south, and southern railroads sole purpose was to connect the inland part of the state with a seaport.

see the pic I posted above

[jeffersondem]

“Of course, as a devoted Democrat you may not comprehend such a thing, but here's what you might “get”: no Founder, not even Jefferson, ever wrote words which expressly contradicted Madison's to Trist.”

One of the reasons Jefferson didn't contradict Madison's words written to Trist in 1830 may be because Jefferson died in 1826.

And it was not necessary for any founder to take Madison's words off the table. Madison did that himself - in the conclusion of the Trist letter.

Said Madison: “I have made no secret of my surprize and sorrow at the proceedings in S. Carolina, which are understood to assert a right to annul the Acts of Congress within the State, & even to secede from the Union itself. But I am unwilling to enter the political field with the “telum imbelle” which alone I could wield. The task of combating such unhappy aberrations belongs to other hands. A man whose years have but reached the canonical three-score-&-ten (and mine are much beyond the number) should distrust himself, whether distrusted by his friends or not, and should never forget that his arguments, whatever they may be will be answered by allusions to the date of his birth.”

Madison knew of his limitations in the last years. We have to respect that.

[x]

I am saying that whatever attitudes you object to in New York or San Francisco are spread across the country, so your attacks on those cities are foolish and outdated. As for the power of tech or social media companies, anti-trust proceedings could take care of that. Giant companies have a life cycle and tend to go under at some point. If they are abusive in the meantime there are ways of dealing with them. I don't lie awake at night thinking that there is nothing that can be done about such companies.

Exported a lot of stuff to Europe, did they? What exactly were they exporting to pay for their imports?

They could buy imports with the profits they made selling to the domestic market. Take an economics class.

The exports left from Southern Ports, but the *MONEY* came back through New York. New York had virtually total control of all Southern exports.

How can that be when so much of the cotton was shipped to Europe directly through Southern ports? I suspect you are wrong about that. New York banks played a role in the cotton trade, but there were plenty of Southern cotton brokers.

BroJoeK posted a link a long time ago in which it explained that virtually all the export traffic was controlled by New York.

That was actually your own idea and now you are distancing yourself from it. Interesting.

[FLT-bird]

BroJoeK:

Sorry, but that is simply a lie, regardless of how often you repeat it. You have no data -- none, zero, nada data -- to support it and there's lots to refute it.

nah. Your denial is the lie. There has been a ton of evidence posted. You just don't like it because it refutes what you want to believe. BroJoeK:

But nothing was "jiggered", it was simple economics: It cost a lot of money to buy and build a cotton plantation, money planters largely borrowed from Northern banks -- up to $300 million. It cost more money to run a plantation, money for imports of Northern manufactured goods, about $200 million per year. So why did so much of imports come through Northeastern cities? Because after "exporting" $200 million in manufactured goods to the South, that's where nearly all the buyers were.

the navigation acts were just simple economics? Tariffs were just simple economics? Grossly unequal government expenditures for corporate welfare and infrastructure with most going to the North...yes North of the Mason Dixon line were just economics? Don't bother trying the usual spin and lies here. Nobody's buying it. You've been provided with tons of sources which directly refute your little fantasy numbers. BroJoeK:

The New York metropolitan area has about 7% of the US population and produces about 8% of our GDP, giving them a per capita income roughly 15% higher than the national average. That 15% average higher income doesn't seem so much when you consider the overall higher prices people pay to live there. As for how much of New York's income comes from manufacturing, how much from trade, transportation, finance, media & communications, technology, fashion, entertainment & tourism, etc., etc., there's certainly a mix and all of it economically legitimate, much as some people don't like it. Then as now, NY doesn't "produce" nearly as much as the money that flows through there. That wealth is generated by the rest of the country. The finances just flow through New York. It was the same then. NY was the banking center and at the time an even larger port relative to others. The actual wealth was generated elsewhere - most of it in Southern cash crops. Without the tariffs, Southern exporters keep more of their money and everybody pays lower prices for manufactured goods. This particularly benefits the Southern states at the time since they have less manufacturing. If they are a separate country then they no longer are governed by the navigation acts and thus have no reason to use NY insurance companies, banks, middlemen, shipping companies etc. They also buy fewer Northern manufactured goods because now those foreign goods come in at a much lower tariff rate. Also, plenty of ship builders in the North are put out of work because they don't have nearly as much shipping business - ie yet more jobs and wealth staying home in the Southern states. In addition to all that, if Northerners want corporate welfare and infrastructure projects, they need to figure out how to pay for it themselves since they're now going to have to bear the costs rather than Southerners bearing the bulk of the costs. That is why Northern newspapers were filled with stories about how their Cash Cow - ie the Southern states - leaving would be such a disaster for the North. BroJoeK:

Now you sound like Barrack Obama: "you didn't build that!". So why are we getting Leftists propaganda on a conservative site?

the Leftist propaganda is what you've been spewing. PC Revisionism....something put forth in the last generation by a bunch of LEFTISTS in Academia.BroJoeK:

Now you guys are waging fierce battles against straw men, and winning! Amazing!

No we're not. This has been your argument. This is the economically illiterate argument made by James McPherson.BroJoeK:

Your Walmart container landing in Long Beach is a pretty good example -- who exactly do those goods belong to? Do they belong to cattle ranchers in Texas who shipped beef to China & Japan? Noooo… those ranchers were paid for their beef at the stockyards where they sold them. So ranchers don't own Walmart's containers, Walmart does. So who owns Walmart? Well, pretty much everybody who has a retirement plan or has a stake-holding there -- employees, customers, suppliers, banks, sub-contractors, neighbors, etc., all have at least some interest in that Walmart container. But the fact is ownership of a Walmart container is so diffuse there's no single person or even interest group who can lay claim to having "paid for" it.

in your long rambling response that only vaguely resembles an answer, you could have saved everybody a lot of time by simply admitting Wal-Mart owns that container and pays the tariff. WHERE the container ship docked makes no difference. Had it docked in New Orleans, Wal-Mart would have had to pay the tariff there.

Get it? The owner of the goods pays. Where they pay is IRRELEVANT.BroJoeK:

Just as in 1860, Southern planters cannot claim to have "paid for" US imports with their exports.

Once again, you demonstrate your gross ignorance of economics.

[FLT-bird]

BroJoeK:

Voluntary meaning by mutual consent. So all Founders did practice "secession" from necessity as in 1776 or from mutual consent as in 1788, but no Founder ever proposed or supported unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure.

False! I've posted the quotes. Go back and read,BroJoeK:

Of course they did. First, they acknowledged no unlimited "right of secession". Instead they did define "necessity" in their 1776 Declaration. And they defined "mutual consent" in their 1788 ratifications of the new Constitution.

No they didn't. Furthermore they never anywhere agreed that there was any authority above that of each state in the voluntary union to determine when a state could secede.BroJoeK:

Perhaps not, but they did clearly define "treason" and they provided for Federal responses to rebellions, insurrections, "domestic violence" and invasions all of which happened in 1861.

all of which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.BroJoeK:

Virginis: "...may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression..." That is not "at pleasure", but rather for material breach of compact. New York: "...may be reassumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness..." "Necessary" refers us to the 1776 Declaration which clearly spells out what that word implies. Rhode Island: "...may be resumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness..." There again, "necessary" as in 1776.

who determines necessity/necessary? Each State. Nobody else! There was no authority higher than theirs to determine that. ie the right of secession is unilateral.BroJoeK:

Right, because no state then ever demanded an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure. All understood that necessity and serious breech was required for disunion, just as they experienced in 1776.

It is up to each state to determine for itself when secession is necessary.BroJoeK:

So Federal government took no actions to stop secessions in 1860 or early 1861. Federal government was, however, granted powers against rebellion, insurrection, "domestic violence", invasion and treason.

Correct! The federal government acted unconstitutionally in 1861. It exercised a power - ie the power to prevent secession - it was nowhere delegated by the states in the Constitution.BroJoeK:

Hardly, since Madison's words clearly spell out Founders' Original Intent, which is a First Principle of conservatism. Of course, as a devoted Democrat you may not comprehend such a thing, but here's what you might "get": no Founder, not even Jefferson, ever wrote words which expressly contradicted Madison's to Trist.

Hardly. The parties to the constitution were the states and the newly created federal government. What Madison thought decades later is not important. What the states agreed to is. We can see what the states agreed to by looking at what Madison and the other federalists wrote in the Federalist Papers and we can see what the states agreed to as evidenced by their express provisos explicitly reserving their right to unilateral secession.BroJoeK:

So you deny that Madison is our recognized Father of the Constitution, whose opinions on what it means matter a lot? If so, that will be a huge disappointment to our FRiend jeffersondem, who holds Madison in the highest esteem, especially regarding the word "interposition".

No. I deny he was a party to the contract called the Constitution. I can nowhere find the words "James Madison" in the Constitution. I see a lot about the states and the specific powers delegated by the states to the newly created federal government.BroJoeK:

As already shown, no Founder ever directly contradicted Madison's 1830 words to Trist. And every Founding President dealt with issues of rebellion, insurrection, treason, "domestic violence", invasion or secession.

As has already been shown, you're wrong about that and in any event, it doesn't matter. What matters is what the states actually agreed to.BroJoeK:

That's why there was no military action taken by either of Presidents Buchanan or Lincoln to stop secession or forming the Confederacy. Hostile Union military response only became possible when Confederate actions were matters of rebellion, insurrection, "domestic violence", invasion and treason.

Lincoln denied their right to secede, expressed a demand for tax money and sent a heavily armed fleet into their territory. That is denying their right to unilateral secession and exercising a power the federal government was never delegated by the states in the constitution.BroJoeK:

The issue was permanently decided, sealed and closed once Confederates formally declared war on the United States, on May 6, 1861.

The issue was not decided. Might does not make right.

[FLT-bird]

BroJoeK:

OIFVeteran: "I would agree with you that the Republicans were the conservatives. For proof I offer this quote from the great George Washington in a letter to Mr. Mercer; 'It being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law. - Letter to John Mercer, September 9, 1786" Thanks for a great post so, much as it annoys FLT-bird, let me say again, "me too"!

Pure ignorance of history. The Democratic Party did not exist until Andrew Jackson. The Republican Party did not exist until the 1850s.

[sparklite2]

“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” === Abraham Lincoln

[FLT-bird]

DiogenesLamp

Which is why I often just skip over what BroJoeK and others write. They don't listen, and they don't learn. They simply regurgitate what they want to believe, and they dismiss any information that conflicts with what they wish to believe.

yeah this is what I eventually did last time. Then for literally weeks afterward they kept trying desperately to drag me back to the thread. I think they tried it at least 25-30 times. Clearly some of them must not have much going on in their lives to want to waste so much time on the same subject endlessly repeating the same nonsense for which they don't have any sources except their beloved Leftists in Academia. Good call. I think I'll just adopt the same policy. Anybody who wants to actually learn something can read the numerous facts, quotes and sources I've already posted. I'll just take to ignoring 2-3 of the usual trolls in this thread. They really have nothing to contribute.

[FLT-bird]

x: New York and Brooklyn, then a separate city, were major manufacturing cities in 19th century America. Plenty of wealth, apart from shipping and finance, was generated there, and the large population provided plenty of consumers. And yes, New York was the center of a distribution network, but it's easy to forget how much of that network was clustered around New York. Hartford, New Haven, Springfield, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Elmira, Paterson, Newark, Trenton, Scranton, Allentown, Reading: all were manufacturing centers which generated their own share of the country's wealth and bought much in imports, whether for business or for household use. New York was a major distribution center in good part because it was so close to so many industrial cities, and those cities were successful because they had access to the consumers and transportation facilities of New York City. Actually, there was direct transportation of cotton from Charleston and New Orleans directly to Britain and Europe. Fraser and Trenholm or John Fraser and Company or Trenholm Brothers was a major Charleston shipping firm with branches in Liverpool and New York City. But there were limits to how much in imports Charleston and other Southern cities could absorb, so it made sense that much business was done through New York. BTW I just found Ezekiel Donnell, Chronological and Statistical History of Cotton (New York: J. Sutton & Co. printers, 1872) online. He says that in 1853-1855 fully half of all cotton exported to Britain was shipped from New Orleans. The book gives statistics for other years. It looks like most of the cotton trade did not go through New York City. Most of the cotton from smaller ports, like those in Florida, made its way up the coast, most likely to New York, but New Orleans definitely was the major player, and became more dominant over time. So have we been arguing about nothing all this time?

New Orleans was indeed a major port - big enough to ship directly to and from. With the introduction of packet shipping lines especially, much of the cargo from other Southern ports like Pensacola, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, etc etc was carried up to New York, unloaded, warehoused, consolidated, repacked onto larger ocean going vessels and then sent off across the Atlantic.

What New York offered in addition to a large shipbuilding industry were a lot of export services like banking and insurance and the "Factors" (today we'd call them middlemen) who arranged a lot of the business side of exporting. The Northeast but specifically New York actually made more money from these business services than the Southern Planters made from producing the cash crops. The Imports flowed through the same channels in reverse. Plenty of those coastwise trade vessels carried cash crops north and manufactured goods South. The loss of this business in addition to the loss of tariff revenue and the loss of the Southern states as a captive market for manufactured goods would have been an utter disaster for the Northeast. This is why their editorials quickly turned extremely bellicose. Before the business "movers and shakers" got involved, there were plenty of Northern editorials saying essentially that they should let the Southern states go in peace.

[x]

Mobile was also a major port for direct shipment to Europe, as was Charleston. Smaller ports in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina did ship most of their cotton to other ports, most likely New York. That makes sense. There wasn't enough business from those ports to support direct trade with Britain or Europe.

If New Yorkers made more money from shipping than cotton growers did, a reason might be that they were also shipping many other goods to and from Europe, not just cotton. Another reason why New York prospered might be that the cotton growers could never be sure they'd have money when they needed it, so they were a market for loans and credit from New York banks, the economy of the cotton states being so dependent on cotton that Southern banks may not have had the money when the planters needed it.

New York and the Northeast did fine economically after the slave states seceded. Among those who were most inclined to let the secessionists go in peace were those who did business with the South. They assumed that, given peace, business relations would go on much as they had. They appear to have been more worried about the Southern states renouncing their debts than about tariffs or the South yanking away their business, and they weren't at all keen on war. The mayor of New York even wanted the city to secede from the United States and keep up the cotton trade with the Confederacy. The attack on Fort Sumter changed that. Source

[FLT-bird]

x Mobile was also a major port for direct shipment to Europe, as was Charleston. Smaller ports in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina did ship most of their cotton to other ports, most likely New York. That makes sense. There wasn't enough business from those ports to support direct trade with Britain or Europe. If New Yorkers made more money from shipping than cotton growers did, a reason might be that they were also shipping many other goods to and from Europe, not just cotton. Another reason why New York prospered might be that the cotton growers could never be sure they'd have money when they needed it, so they were a market for loans and credit from New York banks, the economy of the cotton states being so dependent on cotton that Southern banks may not have had the money when the planters needed it. New York and the Northeast did fine economically after the slave states seceded. Among those who were most inclined to let the secessionists go in peace were those who did business with the South. They assumed that, given peace, business relations would go on much as they had. They appear to have been more worried about the Southern states renouncing their debts than about tariffs or the South yanking away their business, and they weren't at all keen on war. The mayor of New York even wanted the city to secede from the United States and keep up the cotton trade with the Confederacy. The attack on Fort Sumter changed that. Source

Yeah I was aware of the secession sentiment in New York. One item you forgot to mention the Northeast had was illicit slave trading. The estimate in Complicity (backed up by research) was that New York was turning out two slaves ships per month through the mid 19th century....yes Northeastern slave trading was still that prevalent.

Its true that the Northeast's shipping industry did OK through the war but that was on the back of a lot of government spending for warships and imported goods for their war effort all financed by taxes and debts. Remember that they levied the first income tax (unconstitutionally) in American history during the war.

Anyway here are some interesting and cringeworthy editorials from Northern newspapers....before the business interests explained to everybody in the North just how much money they stood to lose if the Southern States left as well as their views on slavery:

"Evil and nothing but evil has ever followed in the track of this hideous monster, abolition. Let the slave alone and send him back to his master where he belongs." The Daily Chicago Times Dec 7 1860

....opposed abolition of slavery….. proposed slaves should be allowed to marry and taught to read and invest their money in savings accounts...which would "ameliorate rather than to abolish the slavery of the Southern States."...and would thus permit slavery to be "a very tolerable system." New York Times Jan 22 1861

Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.”

We have no more right to meddle with slavery in Georgia, than we have to meddle with monarchy in Europe. Providence Daily Post Feb 2 1861

"the immense increase in the numbers of slaves within so short a time speaks for the good treatment and happy, contented lot of the slaves. They are comfortably fed, housed and clothed, and seldom or never overworked." New York Herald (the largest newspaper in the country at the time) March 7, 1861

"If [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from the British empire of 3,000,000 of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." – New York Tribune, December 17, 1860

Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone."

A state coerced into the Union is "a subject province" and may never be "a co-equal member of the American Union." The New York Journal of Commerce editorialized on January 12

The New York Journal of Commerce editorialized on January 12, 1861, that opposing secession changes the nature of government "from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves" to the federal government.

this was the view of the majority of Northern newspapers at the time according to Howard Cecil Perkins, editor of the two-volume book, Northern Editorials on Secession.

There was also a vigorous secession movement in the "middle states" — Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York — in the late 1850s, as described by William C. Wright in The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States

Look at those dates. November through mostly February with one even in March. Now look below. You can see exactly when the business interests put their foot down and started clamoring for war:

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 till our pockets were touched." New York Times March 30, 1861.......note the Old Gray Lady's change in tone from January to the end of March

"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.......isn't it funny how these northern newspapers are saying the exact opposite of our resident PC Revisionists?

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.

[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

Similarly, the economic editor of the NY Times, who had maintained for months that secession would not injure Northern commerce or prosperity, changed his mind on 22 March 1861: "At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States."

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...."

gosh, I don't hear any soaring rhetoric about dying to make men free......

[jeffersondem]

“New York and the Northeast did fine economically after the slave states seceded.”

Of course not all the slave states seceded. Union slave states kept their property until the bitter end.

In fact, until after the Fort Sumter incident the union had more slave states than the Confederacy.

[jeffersondem]

Thanks for taking the time to post the extensive public record of the North's frank economic assessment of southern independence. I was generally aware the North was fighting for their economic and political best self-interest but I had not seen the volume of evidence in one place.

Again, thanks.

[x]

Always the same few quotes over and over. I wonder how representative they are. Given months of newspapers, all manner of topics were likely to be discussed from different points of view.

Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City wanted to let the South go and was talking about secession up until Sumter, when he supported the Union for a time before reverting to Copperheadism.

I have limited opportunities for research now, but I wonder if the New York Times editor who denied that secession would hurt the city's economy and then advocated shutting down Southern ports might not have been speaking from motives other than the purely commercial. I'd have to see more of the article to judge.

Also if Southern elites were only using slavery to motivate the masses - a daft idea, I know - maybe Northern newspaper writers were using economic fears to achieve some other end of their own. I'll be able to say more if I can get to a library that has the relevant books.

[Bull Snipe]

you forgot to mention that Lincoln had countermanded Porter’s orders to Pensacola and had redirected him to join the Sumter resupply operation. Porter received those orders the day he sailed for Pensacola. Porter chose to ignore the them because the orders were from Seward. Seward did not note that the orders were “by orders of the President of the United States.” Seward, for what ever reason, did not put that statement in the orders Porter received. Could it be that some of this issue was Seward’s doing, not Lincolns

[DiogenesLamp]

you forgot to mention that Lincoln had countermanded Porter’s orders to Pensacola and had redirected him to join the Sumter resupply operation.

Not so far as Porter knew. He had orders directly from the President in his hands, and according to him, one of the things he and Lincoln agreed upon was that the chain of command was to know nothing of what he was being sent to do.

Porter was acting on the orders he had hand carried from Washington, and his deliberate efforts at belligerence very much imply that those orders were to start a war with the Confederates.

Seward, for what ever reason, did not put that statement in the orders Porter received.

And Lincoln, curiously did not instruct him to do so. From what I recall of what I have read, Lincoln and Porter agreed that he would obey no ones orders but the President, and so if Lincoln instructed Seward to send orders to Porter without mentioning they came directly from Lincoln, it would seem that Lincoln very well knew Porter would continue on with his hand carried orders from the President.

And those orders seemed to be, "Don't let anyone see you sailing past the War fleet rendezvousing at Charleston, and when you get to Pensacola, attack the Confederates there. "

I believe Lincoln's order relieving Mercer of command, is part of the public record, but Porter never released his orders for the public to see, and he does not say what they were in any of his books.

He talks about firing shells and grapeshot at the Confederates though, and pretty much states that was what he was going to do if Captain Meigs hadn't stopped him.

I believe I've posted the salient parts on this for you before.

[DoodleDawg]

http://railroads.unl.edu/views/sources/US%201861.jpg

One line is your grid? One line with multiple junctions which may mean cargo had to be taken off one train and put on another? That's your grid?

which is?

If there was such a demand for imports down south why weren't those goods taken to their closest port like Charleston or New Orleans.

you said just the Mississippi and Ohio. Hell forget the Ohio. Do you have any idea how much traffic flowed up and down the Mississippi?

You're the one claiming there was a massive supply chain centered on New York. How did they get to the Mississippi?

This is what I was saying before about how this has become an endlessly repetitive waste of time. The owners of the goods had to eat most of the cost of the tariff. They could not pass it on to their customers due to domestic ie Northern competitors who - once they'd been saddled with a tariff - were price competitive with them.

Why couldn't they pass the price on?

Compared to you? LOL! I'm a font of knowledge.

A fountain of opinion. Long ago DiogenesLamp and I reached a sort of agreement where he believes I am and idiot and I concluded he is a moron. I think you and I are at the same point.

[DoodleDawg]

You clearly do not understand what was going on. "Coastal Packet." Do you speak it?

Which is a further indication that the quantity of imported goods demanded by the South was minute by comparison with the North. If there wasn't enough to justify bringing the goods directly to Charleston or New Orleans the coastal packets worked just fine. And that's what I've been saying all along; there was little demand for imports in the southern states.

[BroJoeK]

OIFVeteran: "They rebelled to restore their rights as Englishman, not to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery for all time."

FLT-bird: "That isn't what those who seceded in 1861 were seceding for.
Had that been their aim, they could have agreed to the North's "slavery forever" constitutional amendment.
They refused."

But they "refused" nothing because they were never asked.
And all Deep South "Reasons for Secession" documents clearly tell us slavery was their major concern, and for some their only concern.
Plus it was exactly fears that some Confederates might want to rejoin the Union that were behind Jefferson Davis' orders to start war at Fort Sumter.

For more explanation, see here and here.

FLT-bird: "Also, several political leaders and columnists in the South as well as several in the UK thought the parallels between 1861 and 1776 quite close."

Sure, there's no doubt that 1861 secessionists tried to wrap themselves in the mantle of 1776 Founders.
But it was totally bogus then, just as it is now.

FLT-bird: "There was no Republican Party in the 18th century or early 19th."

Here is the sequence:

1. Federalists supported ratifying the Constitution and 2/3 of Federalists were Northerners.

2. The old mostly Northern Federalist party fell apart in 1824.
   Federalists were succeeded by the National Republican Party in 1825.

3. In 1833 National Republicans became Whigs still about 2/3 Northern.

4. By 1854 Whigs were collapsing over slavery and their Northern wing became Republicans.

Those were all the same people, different party names.

FLT-bird: "Then (ie mid 19th century) just as now, support for big government, higher taxes, centralized power and the crushing of state's rights was the majority sentiment in the North.
Support for limited government, low expenditures, balanced budgets, decentralized power and states' rights was the majority sentiment in the South."

Complete nonsense, a total lie.

The fact is that throughout the years from 1792 through 1860 Federal government consistently averaged about 2% of US GDP -- whether mostly Northern Federalists or mostly Southern Democrats were in charge, no difference except in wartime when spending rose to 3%+.

The only minor exceptions were during the mostly Northern Whig years when, did Federal spending rise?
No, it fell to 1.5% under Harrison & Tyler then 1.8% under Taylor & Fillmore, compared to 2.1% under Democrat Polk, and 1.9% under both Democrats Pierce & Buchanan.

Point is, there's no historical evidence to support your "excessive Northern spending" meme.
As for "centralized power... crushing states rights", that was all done by Southern Democrats before 1861, for examples, with their 1850 Compromise, 1857 SCOTUS Dred Scott ruling and support for the 1857 Lecompton Constitution.

Of course it is the nature of you Democrats to accuse Republicans of your own worst acts, and that's all we're seeing here.

[BroJoeK]

DoodleDawg: "LOL! You think others are economically challenged? Really?"

FlT-bird: "McPherson certainly is as are any PC Revisionists who think that WHERE the cargo lands and thus the tariffs are paid somehow means that locality or state are paying the tariff."

Obviously FLT-bird is hoping to misdirect us again.
Nobody has ever suggested Federal tariffs were paid for by city or state governments, that's insane.
Tariffs were paid by the merchants who landed, warehoused and sold their merchandise, simple.

But what FLT-bird, DiogenesLamp and others desperately hope to confuse us about is: who physically owned the merchandise on which tariffs were paid?
They wish us to believe it was Southern planters, when that is clearly absurd, as the example of a Walmart container in Long Beach adequately demonstrates.
Do Texas ranchers who sold their beef to China & Japan somehow "own" the Walmart container and so magically "pay for" whatever tariffs it's charged?

No, of course not, that's ridiculous.
The Texas ranchers were paid market price for their produce, so they are settled up, free & clear, they own nothing except potential responsibility if the beef is later found to have, for example, Mad Cow.
Whatever those cattlemen do with their money is their business, however, they can't claim that any tariffs Walmart's customers paid on that container was somehow "owned" by Texas cattlemen.

And yet FLT-bird & others want us to think New York imports were "really" owned by cotton state planters.

FlT-bird: "So all those commentators at the time, all those politicians and newspapers as well as a tax expert who has written about it were wrong and you are right?
Because the US was importing things in the midst of a war that means it was the Northern states doing the exporting/importing and thus paying the tariff all along?
Please tell me that's not your argument."

Deep South cotton was about 50% of US total exports in, say, 1860, but for every dollar they exported, they also imported a dollar from the North.
This meant, when those ships arrived from Europe in New York, neither their owners nor their customers were Deep South planters, regardless of how hard our Lost Causers hope to confuse us otherwise.

FlT-bird: "If the CSA had gone its own way and was thus free of the Navigation Acts that all but monopolized trade through those areas that had a larger shipping industry to begin with...ie NY and New England, then yes I'm sure they would import in ports that were in their own country.
Rhett and others said as much when he said Charleston would quickly become a great metropolis once the Southern states seceded."

In fact neither Robert Rhett in his "Address to the Slaveholding States" (December 20, 1860) nor Alexander Stephens in his "Cornerstone Speech" (March 21, 1861) made any such comments.
Indeed, both discussed their concerns over slavery far more than any other subject.

So just who, exactly were these great Confederate mercantilists & industrialists who were going to transform the Deep South away from cotton and up to become a world manufacturing, trading & banking powerhouse to rival New York?

Why have we never heard their names, huh?

Rhett & Stephens: