Posted on 05/01/2002 4:26:35 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
One thing that can never be admitted in polite academic company is the notion that economics had anything to do with the American War between the States.
A straw man the author puts forth to criticize a critic.
“You remember we once had a national bank . . . the Supreme Court decided that the bank was unconstitutional. The whole Democratic party revolted against that decision. General Jackson himself asserted that he, as president, would not be bound to hold a national bank to be constitutional, even though the court had decided to do so. He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and acted upon it under official oath, in vetoing a charter for a national bank.”
A very interesting comment on an early conflict (1820's) between the executive and judicial branches. Required reading for those who think "loose interpretation" of the Constitution is a recent Leftist perversion.
One hardly knows where to begin.
Perhaps reading the whole of Donald's chapter 6, "The Radicals and Lincoln," in Lincoln Reconsidered would help. Donald is, in the section DiLorenzo cites, presenting a school of historians with whom he disagrees, at least in part. See esp. pp 109, 110 and 245 in the Bibliographical Essay.
Donald does not think any one of the "Radicals" [his term for Sumner, Sherman, Wade, Greeley, etc.,] speaks for Lincoln, the Party, or the Administration, and when he translates Sherman's remarks, cited in the article, he is imitating the voice of T. Harry Williams, J. G. Randall, and the like.
But setting aside DiLorenzo's always crude reading of texts, there is no doubt that the tarrif and other economic matters figured in the election of 1860, and even in the secession movement.
As with all historical matters, one has to use judgment and see the whole. And the best way to do that, in the present case, is to look at the words of the leaders of the secession cause in the states, both in 1860-1, and in the period in which the crisis developed, roughly 1846-60. That evidence points, overwhelmingly, to slavery. Slavery in the territories, Dres Scott, the fugitve slave law, fear of slave insurrection, defense of slavery as a positive good, and so forth.
Cheers,
Richard F.
We are going to make tax slaves out of you by tripling the rate of taxation, and as long as you collect these taxes there will be no military invasion. He was not going to back down to the South Carolinian nullifiers, as Andrew Jackson did.
This DiLorenzo guy is such a hoot! Where in the world does he get this stuff? Old Hickory told the Charleston idiots he would personally lead the Army and crush them. (see Jackson's message to the People of South Carolina) The fire-eating morons in Charleston backed down. Andrew Jackson never "backed down" from any man or any thing.
It will suffice to say here, in conclusion of this subject, that the passage of the Force Bill, and the energetic preparations of the President, deterred the nullifiers. The President had declared in his proclamation that as chief magistrate of the country he could not, if he would, avoid performing his duty; that the laws must be executed; that all opposition to their execution must be repelled, and by force, if necessary. That Jackson meant all that he said no one for a moment questioned, and South Carolina hastened to "nullify" her hostile action, though still loudly advocating her favorite doctrine of "State rights."The tariff difficulty, which had led to this controversy, was for the time quieted by another "compromise bill," offered by Henry Clay. This provided for the gradual reduction of duties till 1843, when they were to reach a general level of twenty per cent. This bill was accepted by Calhoun and his friends as a practical concession to their doctrines, and as enabling them to retire with some dignity from the discreditable attitude into which they had forced their State.
For DiLorenzo to say that Jackson "backed down" is ..... well.... typical of DiLorenzo.
Like one moron was telling me the other day about the slaves in the North AFTER the war. lol.
Of course, he also believed that the skirmish at Sabin Pass was the equivalent of Thermopylae.
Wlat must still be in bed with his teddy bear and pacifier.
"In all this I can see but the doom of slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance." - April 19, 1861, in a letter to his father-in-law, Frederick Dent.
"My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all Constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go." - November 27, 1861, in a letter to his father.
"I never was an abolitionist, not even what could be called anti-slavery, but I try to judge fairly and honestly and it became patent in my mind early in the rebellion that the North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace established, I would not therefore be willing to see any settlement until the question is forever settled." - August 30, 1863, in a letter to Elihu Washburne.
"As soon as slavery fired upon the flag, it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle... there had to be an end to slavery." -In a conversation with Bismarck, 1878.
"The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true." - U.S. Grant, in his Memoirs, 1885.
Must have changed his mind, huh?
Do you have a source for that quote? Oh... I forgot. Neo-confederates are allowed to just make things up. Neither accuracy nor honest is a requirement for membership in the DiLorenzo brigade.
If anyone is interested in what U.S. Grant really thought about slavery, not the words that the revisionist anti-American neo-confederates put into his mouth, they can click HERE
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 counrty 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 lost of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many huindred 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 clearly whither we are tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question---one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated powers 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
The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing....It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No---we MUST NOT "let the South go." ----Union Democrat , Manchester, NH, February 19, 1861
That either revenue from 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 rail road iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, 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 railroads would be supplied from the southern ports. ---New York Evening Post March 12, 1861, recorded in Northern Editorials on Secession, Howard C. Perkins, ed., 1965, pp. 598-599.
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. --Cicero
"In Dick Dowling At Sabine Pass, he wrote of an incident in the Civil War when a handful of Confederate artillerymen led by Dowling turned back an armada of twenty-one Union warships?a battle sometimes referred to as the Thermopylae of the Civil War." - Fred Tarpley, Professor Emeritus of English Texas A&M University
"The Thermopylae in Texas is the Sabine Pass" - John McCormack, Professor of History Villanova University
"You may ask the schoolboy in the lowest form, who commanded at the Pass of Thermopylae. He can tell you. But my friends there are few in this audience who, if I ask them, could tell me who commanded at Sabine Pass. And yet, that battle of Sabine Pass was more remarkable than the battle of Thermopylae, and when it has orators and poets to celebrate it, will be so esteemed by mankind." - Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA
Respond if you like. I will gladly dig up more quotes for you and taunt you with them.
"The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has ever seen. It is suicide, murder...You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean; legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death; It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." -- Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis.
(Maybe one of the Ape Linkum scholars can tell us if this newspaper was later closed down by the Ape.)
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