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.
--10/11/59"
Pretty weak response, Walt, even for you.
That is simply not so. As was articulated in the anti-tariff speeches of the time, the southerners noted that the infant period of the country's existence had long since past and accordingly called that argument nonsense. They also must not have thought much of it based on the fact that the tariff they enacted for the confederacy was not protectionist.
What he said in his Pittsburgh remarks is that he was not familiar with the bill then pending in Congress.
He also said that of his pet 13th amendment, even though he solicited its introduction by Seward. The Morrill bill had been in the news since the Spring of 1860 and was without dispute known to Lincoln's campaign that fall. In other words, he was a chronic liar who liked to put on the small town simpleton persona when it suited him politically.
Yeah, and based upon the record, he thought quite a lot about it after that quote. Save the brief gap in the mid 1850's, the tariff was regularly on his mind.
Seward's letter to Lincoln on December 26, 1860.
And are you claiming that the war was about tariffs?
In large part, yes.
Wlat non-response. The fact remains that, by his own definition, Lincoln invaded the south and coerced its obedience.
But you tried to say it did, and you got caught in a lie.
You couldn't catch a lie if it was taped to your hand, Walt, which is, in a large part, one of the primary reasons why you can never substantiate that often made allegation of yours.
Wlat non-response. The fact remains that, by his own definition, Lincoln invaded the south and coerced its obedience.
In the speech in Indianapolis that you excerpted, President elect Lincoln made clear that if the government retained or recaptured federal properties in rebel areas, that could not be considered invasion or coercion.
You tried to make the speech say something it doesn't say. You got caught in a lie.
And amazingly, you posted this same thing some weeks ago, and were exposed as a liar then too.
But don't worry, the other neo-rebs won't call you on it.
Walt
Yeah, and based upon the record, he thought quite a lot about it after that quote.
that is simpy not supported in the record. The issue that consumed the country was slavery.
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new-North as well as South."
A. Lincoln, 1858
Walt
So do I, but the Declaration did not form a government, and Lincoln did not take an oath to uphold the Declaration, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
There is a higher law than the Constitution. Lincoln said that all his political ideas sprang from the D of I. He was not in favor of forcing anyone out of the country -- especially after they helped save the Union.
"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted."Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."
There was no way Lincoln was going to betray the blacks, as you seemed to imply.
Walt
I hope you're not referring to the political left's ignorant and baseless assertion that George W. Bush was not legitimately elected as our president. Are you? Oh, that's right, you can't be since seven justices ruled that the democrats' ever-changing set of "rules" as to what constituted a vote, differing within each county from minute-to-minute, violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That was the important ruling in Gore's attempted theft of the 2000 election.
Until they began protecting sugar a year later. Then they started taxing exports. Then they started taxing production. They taxed damn near everything but slaves. I wonder why?
If protective tariffs were such a big cause, tell us why the North West states who were also opposed to protective tariffs didn't join with the secessionists?
But invading the southern territories and coercing their obediance would be. He said so himself. And that is exactly what he did.
You tried to make the speech say something it doesn't say.
What did I allege it to say that it did not say, Walt? That Lincoln, by his own definition, invaded the south? Sorry, Walt, but it di say that and he did do that. That Lincoln, by his own definition, coerced the south? He said that and did that too. So if you can dispute either of those things, do so. Otherwise, quit making baseless accusations against others who best you in debate.
Post 267 shows otherwise. Live with it.
The issue that consumed the country was slavery.
Post 267 shows that tariffs were big too. Live with it.
Happily. The Morrill act gave them protection. And if they were so opposed to protectionism, why did practically every single one of them vote for the Morrill Act when it came before the House? Evidently they weren't as anti-protectionist as you claim.
Lincoln had then reached the full maturity of his powers. His equipment as a statesman did not embrace a comprehensive knowledge of public affairs. What he had studied he had indeed made his own, with the eager craving and that zealous tenacity characteristic of superior minds learning under difficulties. But his narrow opportunities and the unsteady life he had led during his younger years had not permitted the accumulation of large stores in his mind. It is true, in political campaigns he had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, and so on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had he ever given much serious thought and study to these subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so prolific of original conceits as his would certainly have produced some utterance upon them worth remembering. His soul had evidently never been deeply stirred by such topics. But when his moral nature was aroused, his brain developed an untiring activity until it had mastered all the knowledge within reach. As soon as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had thrust the slavery question into politics as the paramount issue, Lincoln plunged into an arduous study of all its legal, historical, and moral aspects, and then his mind became a complete arsenal of argument. His rich natural gifts, trained by long and varied practice, had made him an orator of rare persuasiveness. Abraham Lincoln: An Essay Emphasis added
Numerically most of Lincoln's public utterances after 1854 relate to the question of slavery expansion. I'd guess that the same was true of his private papers. And these words were more emotionally and intellectually alive than his routine, "perfunctory" remarks on tariffs. It's hard for a surface examination over a century later to pick up just what's the standard political "boiler plate" rhetoric of the day and what reflects real passion and emotional involvement, but Schurz and others were there at the time and their judgement should be taken into account.
I suppose the response is that talk about slavery was all window dressing for an economic agenda. If you believe that the Civil War absolutely has to have been all about tariffs, you'll dismiss everything else as mere rhetoric. The idea seems to be that there has to be a dirty truth behind "high-flown rhetoric." But 19th century America was a highly rhetorical. Political and moral abstractions were taken seriously. And why would those who weren't prejudiced in that direction find the tariff behind slavery? Why not slavery behind the tariff? It certainly seems hypocritical and unfairly selective to attack attempts to look beneath the veneer of Confederate rhetoric while reducing the Union cause to dollars and sense.
At the time, the Republicans were accused of deception and having a secret agenda, but the charge wasn't so much that they were using the issue of slavery extention to slip in a protectionist agenda. It was rather the reverse: that they used the tariff issue to win over Pennsylvanians and other key voters to an anti-slavery agenda. Southerners hated tariffs, but they were apart of normal political debate. Opposition to slavery was seen as a threat to their way of life. That's what Thomas Clingman thought.
From today's point of view the Republican refusal to attack slavery where it already existed was a compromise with evil, but for many Southerners at the time, opposition to slavery in the territories and to the Fugitive Slave Act was the beginning of the end for slavery. Today, almost all people accept that slavery was wrong and should be illegal. A century and a half ago, that was a very controversial position, far more controversial than protection vs. free trade. It's only because the slavery question has been resolved that some have forgotten how violent the conflict was.
Debate on the tariff was loudest on a few types of goods. In the 1850s it was wool and iron. There was a natural opposition between those who produced wool and pig iron (pro-tariff) on the one hand and those who spun woolen goods or forged iron products (anti-tariff). It was only because slavery was so much more important an issue to people that the natural free trade coalition between Western and Southern farmers and their Eastern allies broke down.
To Clingman and many other secessionists, protective tariffs were tariffs were theft, but so was the refusal to return runaway slaves, and the threat of abolition, however remote, was highway robbery and the destruction of their society. If I'd been alive then and in their position, I might have felt the same, but that doesn't mean that it was right or justified, and it doesn't excuse lying and denial now.
But they were wise enough to know that some person or -group- of persons -must- have the final say.
Discard that -- and you wind up with the confedercy.
Walt
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