Posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:37 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
The South and the Northern Tariff - Speech of Senator Thomas Clingman, North Carolina, March 19, 1861 (Congressional Globe 36-2 p. 1476-77)
CLINGMAN: Mr. President, I admire the closing rhetoric of the Senator form Rhode Island (Simmons); but I want to call his attention to one or two questions which I put to him, and which he does not apprehend, but which I think are practical. The Senator attaches very little weight to the imports that go into the seven States that have seceded. He thinks it a matter of very little moment whether those States remain out or in. I endeavored to show him the error; but perhaps too hurriedly for him to apprehend my meaning; and I beg leave to recapitulate, for I think if there is a practical mind on the floor of the Senate, the Senator?s is one, and I want to see how he will get this Government out of the difficulty. I say to him, that I am as yet a representative of the Government of the United States, and shall faithfully represent what I believe to be in its interests, while I stand here. But let us see how this will affect the revenue. There were made last year about four million six hundred thousand bales of cotton. About two hundred thousand bales of it were made in North Carolina, and I suppose about as much in Tennessee, and about the same amount in Arkansas. There were very nearly four million bales of cotton made in the seven States that have seceded, worth fully $200,000,000. Very little of it was consumed in those States ? not more, perhaps, than three or four millions? worth ? and the rice crop exported exceeded that, and Louisiana made, I believe, about twenty millions? worth of sugar. I do not know what the amount of the sugar crop was last year; it has fluctuated; but it must have been at least that; it has sometimes been more. I think it fair, therefore, to assume that those seven States sent out of their limits from two hundred to two hundred and twenty million dollars? worth of produce. They get back a return in some way. It is not to be supposed it was given away. My friend from Texas suggests to me that they got it in wood-screws. No doubt they did get some of them; and they may have been gotten up in the State of Rhode Island, for aught I know. I was about to say that they must have got back $220,000,000 worth of products in some form. A portion of the money ? not very much ? went for horses and mules; and grain and other agricultural products, but much the larger amount of it went for articles that were dutiable. All of them were not actually imported, as many of them came from New England and elsewhere; but they were dutiable articles, and, but for the duties would have been furnished at a lower rate from abroad. I take it, therefore, that off the dutiable articles there must be twenty or thirty million ? certainly twenty million ? of revenue that would, in the ordinary course, be collected off those States with the tariff which we had last year.
Now, it is idle for the honorable Senator to tell me that the importations at Charleston and Savannah were small. I know that the merchants have gone from those cities to New York, and bought goods there; that goods are imported into New York are bought there, and then are sent down and deposited at Charleston, New Orleans, and other places. But, in point of fact, here is an enormously large consumption of dutiable articles, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty million. These people make their own provisions mainly, and cotton to sell, and do very little in the way of manufactures. Their manufactured goods came from the United States, or from foreign countries. I put the question to the honorable Senator, how much duty does he think this Government is going to lose by the secession of those States, supposing, of course, that they do not pay us any duties; for if New England goods are to pay the same duty with those of Old England, and Belgium, and France, we all know that the New England goods will be excluded, unless they make up their minds to sell much cheaper than they have been heretofore doing? I was curious, the year before last, in going through Europe, to ascertain, as well as I could, the value of labor and the prices of articles, and I was astonished at the rate at which goods may be purchased all over the continent, compared with similar articles here. The reasons they are not furnished as cheap here, is partly due to the circuitous trade. For example: houses in England purchase up articles in Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy, and make a handsome profit; they then send them to New York, and handsome profits are made there by the wholesale dealers and, finally, they get down south, and in this way they are very high; but the tariff has also operated very largely. That Senator knows, as well as I do, and everybody knows, that if there be direct trade with Europe by these States; if goods are not to go around through New York, and not to pay duties ? and you may be sure they will not go there under his tariff, for nobody will pay a duty of fifty or seventy-five per cent. on what he imports, when he can send the goods to another port for fifteen or nineteen per cent. ? the result will be, that these States certainly will pay this Government no duties at all.
But it does not stop there. Merchants from my own State go down to Charleston, and lay in their goods. This Government, as things now stand, is not going to get any revenue from them. If goods are imported at Charleston at ten, or fifteen, or nineteen per cent. duty, whatever is paid will go into the coffers of the confederate States, and merchants will go down from my State and buy their goods there; and thus you lose a great portion of the North Carolina trade. It will be the same with Tennessee; it will be the same with the Mississippi valley. Now, what revenue are we going to get to support our Government under th epresent condition of things? The honorable Senator is very adroit in parrying questions. I asked him, when he spoke of the free list, if the manufacturers were willing that their chemicals, their dye stuffs, and coarse wool, that has been admitted free, should be taxed; and he replied, ?They are willing to have tea and coffee taxed.?
SIMMONS: The Senator will pardon me. I said, if we wanted money I would tax them, whether they were willing or not.
CLINGMAN: Exactly; but when pressed on that point, he turns it off on the tea and coffee. But, sir, we are legislating here for the United States ? all of us who are here, except by friend from Texas, who is kind enough to stay with us and help us legislate, until he gets official notice of the ordinance of his State. I thank him for his kindness. I think he is doing us a favor to stay here and help the wheels along. It needs the help of Hercules and the wagoner both to get us out of the mud. I want to know of honorable Senators on the other side of the Chamber how this Government is going to support its revenue next year. I think, if you have no custom-house between Louisiana and the Upper Mississippi, merchants up there will come down and buy their goods at New Orleans. If they learn that at New York they can buy goods under a tariff of fifty or seventy-five per cent., and that they can biy them at New Orleans under a tariff of only one third that, they will go down to New Orleans; and the result will be that we shall get very little revenue under the existing system. We may bandy witticisms; we may show our adroitness in debate; but this is a question which we have to look at practically. One of two things must be done: either you must prevent imports into those States, which I do not think you can do ? and I do not suppose there is a Senator on this floor who believes that, under the existing laws, the President has authority to do it ? or you must call Congress together, and invest him with some authority. If you do not do that, you must establish a line of custom houses on the border.
Is it not better for us to meet this question frankly on its merits? My apprehension, as I have already expressed it, is that the Administration intend, (I hope I may be deceived) as soon as they can collect the force to have a war, to begin; and then call Congress suddenly together, and say, ?The honor of the country is concerned; the flag is insulted. You must come up and vote men and money.? That is, I suppose, to be its policy; not to call Congress together just now. There are two reasons, perhaps, for that. In the first place, it would be like a note of alarm down south; and, in the next place, if you call Congress together, and deliberately submit it to them whether they will go to war with the confederate States or not, I do not believe they would agree to do it. Of course, I do not know what is the temper of gentlemen on the other side; but, though they will have a large majority in the next Congress, I take it for granted from what little I have heard, that it will be difficult to get a bill through Congress for the war before the war begins; but it is a different thing after fighting begins at the forts.
The Senator himself says they are going to enforce the laws and carry them out everywhere. I cannot tell what he means. In one part of his speech, I understood him to say that he was willing to let the seceded States alone; but towards the close of it, he spoke of enforcing the laws, and collecting the revenue everywhere. There is a very wide difference between these lines of policy. If you intend to let the confederate States stand where they now do, and collect their own revenues, and possess the forts, we shall get nothing, or very little, under the existing system. If on the other hand, you intend to resort to coercive measures, and to oblige them to pay duties under our tariff, which they do not admit that they are liable to pay, and to take back the forts, we shall be precipitated into war; and then, I suppose, we shall have a proclamation calling Congress together, and demanding that the honor of the United States shall be maintained, and that men and money shall be voted. I would rather the country should ace into this matter.
I shall not detain the Senate with a discussion about the tariff. I take it that we understand it, and I presume that the intelligent minds of the country understand its situation, and how much we shall get under it. The Senator form Rhode Island alluded to a remark which the Senator from New Hampshire made, that Rome lasted seven hundred years, and that, therefore, this Government must last seven hundred years; and he gave us some witty remarks about the sun not going down before breakfast. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that these analogies do not always run out; they will not hold good. I have read that Methuselah lived until he was more than nine hundred years of age. If a man who was something above ninety were told by his physicians that he was in very great danger of dying, that his constitution was worn out, and disease was preying on him, if he were to refer to the case of Methuselah, and say, ?I have not lived one tenth as long as he did; and, according to his life, I am now just before the breakfast of life,? it might be a very satisfactory argument, perhaps, to the man who used it, but I doubt whether anybody else would be consoled by it; I doubt very much whether his physicians would leave him under the idea that he had certainly eight hundred years to live. I am very much afraid that my friend from Rhode Island, when he rests on this declaration of the Senator from New Hampshire is resting on an unsubstantial basis, when he assumed that this Government must, of necessity, live as long as the Roman republic, and that the comparison of the sun does not hold good. However, I see the Senator from New Hampshire near me, and as he understands these things so much better than I do, I yield the floor.
Unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1868. To quote the Chief Justice:
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into a indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The Act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the Union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.
Considered, therefore, as transactions under the Constitution, the Ordinance of Secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the Acts of her Legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union. "
Sorry.
But it's OK for us to target their leader?
And BTW, I'm glad to see that you finally agree that the csa was not an independent country.
Look, Mr. President, over the southern country, and ask yourself what would be the greatest injury that could be done to it? It would not be the establishment of a monarchy, or a military despotism, because we know that monarchies and military despotisms offen afford a high degree of security and civil liberty to those subject to them. The greatest possible injury would be to liberate the slaves, and leave them as free negroes in those communities. It is sometimes said that they are worth $4,000,000,000 in money. This I suppose, is true; but that is only a portion of the pecuniary loss, if we were deprived of them. In the North, for example, if the horses and working cattle were removed, in addition to their other property, such as vehicles and working utensils, the lands themselves would be rendered valueless to a great extent; and so, in fact, if you were to liberate the Slaves of the South, so great would be the loss that financial ruin would be inevitable. And yet, sir, this is not the greatest evil. It is that social destruction of our society by infusing into it a large free negro population that is most dreaded. [Emphasis added]
Clingman mentions tariffs later, but it's clear that they aren't what's most important to him. And his intial discussion of import duties is framed not in terms of Northern high tariff oppression of the South, as in terms of the impetus that a low Southern tariff will give to the secessionist movement. And while he certainly deplores the new tariff, he repeats his earlier assertion that anti-slavery was at the heart of the Republican party and that tariffs were only supported to secure the support of Pennsylvania.
When Clingman returns to the question, he groups and links his opposition to the tariffs with his opposition to railway subsidies, and the Homestead Act. All three are viewed as massive giveaways (as indeed was the refusal by Northern states to return fugitive slaves, according to Clingman), but neither tariffs nor railroad subsidies, nor the Homestead act were as dangerous in Clingman's mind as opposition to slavery. In this speech, they are all subsidiary matters. One can protest that the GOP didn't threaten slavery where it existed, but that was certainly Clingman's impression.
Of course if one wants to believe -- has to believe -- that tariffs were at the heart of everything one will dismiss the bulk of Clingman's speech and focus only on his references to the tariff. The intent seems to be to produced a bleached-out version of history. Clingman's racial theories and fears, his desire to use the government to determine the precise degree of White and Black blood of the mixed-race population, his hunger for annexation, his support of vigilantism in dealing with dissenters, his vaulting ambition, his appealing to the lowest prejudices in the electorate and the other unattractive characteristics that made Clingman what he was are all pushed to the side. What we're left with is a plaster bust or a puppet mouthing Econ 1 theories. But to do this sort of violence to history is to abandon all claims of accuracy or objectivity.
That can't be true. The greatest possible injury would be the tariff. GOPconservative said so. Didn't Clingman understand that he didn't know what he was saying?
I'm becoming convinced the tariff issue was used by the southern politicans to whip up popular support for secession amongst the non-slave holding whites. Much the way the liberals of today use 'tax-cuts are for the rich' to drive their agenda.
The record of this thread speaks for itself, Walt, and that record shows that both you and McPherson are liars.
"old days" Lincoln may have made may speeches about the tariff. After 1854, he did not.
"[I]f the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff . And if I have any recommendation to make, it will be that every man who is called upon to serve the people in a representative capacity, should study this whole subject thoroughly, as I intend to do myself, looking to all the varied interests of our common country, so that when the time for action arrives adequate protection can be extended to the coal and iron of Pennsylvania, the corn of Illinois, and the ``reapers of Chicago.'" - Lincoln, speech at Pittsburgh, February 15, 1861
Looks like after 1854 to me.
To this end, Lincoln made @ 175 speeches with slavery as their subject. The only way you can show otherwise is in the contemporary record -- saying Lincoln appeared here and said thus and such on tariffs, not slavery.
But you can't do that.
You're really pitiful and you're in some sort of confederate dreamworld.
Walt
Are you blind, stupid, or both, Walt? As I noted twice previously to you in the last day, and dozens of times before that, the Lincoln appeared at Pittsburgh on February 15, 1861 to make a speech. That speech was about tariffs and tariffs alone. Among its contents were the following words:
"[I]f the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff . And if I have any recommendation to make, it will be that every man who is called upon to serve the people in a representative capacity, should study this whole subject thoroughly, as I intend to do myself, looking to all the varied interests of our common country, so that when the time for action arrives adequate protection can be extended to the coal and iron of Pennsylvania, the corn of Illinois, and the ``reapers of Chicago.'"
That is what The Lincoln said. He said it in 1861. If you and McPherson do not like that he said that, tough. Welcome to the real world.
The only people who believed the confederates were independent were the confederates themselves.
I have to disagree with you on that. The tariff held no interest to the average non-slave holding white man because he didn't pay any tariff. But he had a vested interest in keeping slavery as it was. The color of his skin cemented his place in southern society. Remove slavery and blurr that line and you raised black people closer to his level. That is something that he was not prepared to accept.
Half the country? Hardly that. The free population of the confederacy numbered about 5.5 million out of a total pre-war U.S. population of 31.2 million. That's less than 1/5th the country.
Are you blind, stupid, or both, Walt? As I noted twice previously to you in the last day, and dozens of times before that, the Lincoln appeared at Pittsburgh on February 15, 1861 to make a speech.
That's one. Now you just need 174 more. I mean, after all, Lincoln made 175 speeches on slavery in this period. The fact that you found one reference to tariffs doesn't prove your point.
Walt
...and as usual, Walt's criteria suddenly change upon having been met in their previous version. I do not have a count to offer you, yet there are dozens in all the speeches, letters, and documents he issued about going to war to collect his taxes. Pending more time, I'll happily dig some of them up for you. I will note for the record now that I do not expect them to have any effect with you, as you will simply change your criteria again rather than admit the truth that Abe Lincoln loved taxes.
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