The South and the Northern Tariff

Congressional Globe | 1861 | Senator Thomas Clingman

[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.

[jlogajan]

Call Spooner what you like, Laughing Boy, but in the end all you've done is evaded his argument by labelling him then dismissing that label. In short, you have not even addressed the issue before you.

No you nincompoop, I'm a Libertarian and therefore a big fan of the anarchist Lysander Spooner. He was a famous abolitionist, as would be consistent with his individualist anarchist leanings. I think it is hilarious that neo-Confederates are using individualist anarchistic arguments to support their slavemaster ideology. It is the height of irony and hypocrisy.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Now as then, every American must decide whether to defend our nation against "all enemies, foreign and domestic."

[FireTrack]

A few passages from Richard Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction";

Chapter I. Secession

The history of the United States, as yet unwritten, will show the causes of the "Civil War' to have been in existence during the Colonial era, and to have cropped out into full view in the debates of the several Sate Assemblies on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in which instrument Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, and others insisted that they were implanted, African slavery at the time was universal, and its extinction in the North, as well as its extension in the South, was due to economic reasons alone.

The first serious difficulty of the Federal Government arose from the attempt to lay an excise on distilled spirits. The second arose from the hostility of New England traders to the policy of the Government in the war of 1812, by which their special interests were menaced; and there is now evidence to prove that, but for the unexpected peace, an attempt to disrupt the Union would then have been made.

The "Missouri Compromise" of 1820 was in reality a truce between antagonistic revenue systems, each seeking to gain the balance of power. For many years subsequently, slaves--as domestic servants--were taken to the Territories without exciting remark, and the "Nullification" movement in South Carolina was entirely directed against the tariff.

Anti-slavery was agitated from an early period, but failed to attract public attention for many years. At length, by unwearied industry, by ingeniously attaching itself to exciting questions of the day, with which it had no natural connection, it succeeded in making a lodgment in public mind, which, like a subject exhausted by long effort, is exposed to the attack of some malignant fever, that in a normal condition of vigor would have been resisted. The common belief that slavery was the cause of civil war is incorrect, and Abolitionists are not justified in claiming the glory and spoils of the conflict and in pluming themselves as "choosers of the slain."

The vast immigration that poured into the country between the years 1840 and 1860 had a very important influence in directing the events of the latter year. The numbers were too great to be absorbed and assimilated by the native population. States in the West were controlled by German and Scandinavian voters, while the Irish took possession of the seaboard towns. Although the balance of party strength was not much affected by these naturalized voters, the modes of political thought were seriously disturbed, and a tendency was manifested to transfer exciting topics from the domain of argument to that of violence.

Chapter XIV. Criticisms and Reflections

Aggrieved by the action and tendencies of the Federal Government, and apprehending worse in the future, a majority of the people of the South approved secession as the only remedy suggested by their leaders. So travelers enter railway carriages, and are dragged up grades and through tunnels with utter loss of volition, the motive power, generated by fierce heat, being far in advance and beyond their control.

We set up a monarch, too, King Cotton, and hedged him with divinity surpassing that of earthly potentates. To doubt his royalty and power was confession of ignorance or cowardice. This potent spirit, at the nod of our Prosperos, the cotton-planters, would arrest every loom and spindle in New England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary.

Extinction of slavery was expected by all and regretted by none, although loss of slaves destroyed the value of land. Existing since the earliest colonization of the Southern States, the institution was interwoven with the thoughts, habits, and daily lives of both races and both suffered by the sudden disruption of the accustomed tie. Blockaded during the war, an without journals to guide opinion and correct error, we were unceasingly slandered by our enemies, who held possession of every avenue to the world's ear.

During all these years the conduct of the Southern people has been admirable. Submitting to the inevitable, they have shown fortitude and dignity, and rarely has one been found base enough to take wages of shame from the oppressor and malinger of his brethren. Accepting the harshest conditions and faithfully observing them, they have struggled in all honorable ways, and for what? For their slaves? Regret for their loss has neither been felt nor expressed. But they have striven for that which brought our forefathers to Runnymede, the privilege of exercising some influence in their own government. Yet we fought for nothing but slavery, says the world, and the late Vice-President of the Confederacy, M. Alexander Stephens, reechoes the cry, declaring that it was the corner-stone of his Government.

[GOPcapitalist]

No you nincompoop, I'm a Libertarian and therefore a big fan of the anarchist Lysander Spooner. He was a famous abolitionist, as would be consistent with his individualist anarchist leanings.

If that is so, why do you have such a problem with his legal arguments when they are supportive of the south?

[jlogajan]

A state that is no longer in the union and no longer operating under that constitution is not bound by it.

Since you are now quoting anarchists who reject the Constitution in its totality, I guess you are just picking at nits. Welcome to the fold of anarchists.

However, for Lincoln, who was not an anarchist, he could view it two ways. Either the secessionist states were now foreign governments making war on the US, or corrupt state governments violation the terms of the Constitution -- in either case he could defend the US and whip the slave holder's arses. Which he succeeded in doing.

[GOPcapitalist]

Now as then, every American must decide whether to defend our nation against "all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Though that does not answer my question, I need only note that your point here raises the question in itself of who those enemies are. Some have, and with good reason, identified Abe Lincoln's participation in that role.

[GOPcapitalist]

Either the secessionist states were now foreign governments making war on the US

What war were they making on that government that Lincoln himself was not already a participant in by his own right?

[Aurelius]

"But the president's use of force to ensure that United States law operate in all the states -is- constitutional."

Yes indeed, in all of the states in the Union.

[jlogajan]

his legal arguments when they are supportive of the south?

You seem to have overlooked the fact that he was an abolitionist. He was not justifying slavery, he was condemning the Constitution, which he soured on because it did NOT abolish slavery.

A word of warning ... don't try to portray Spooner as a defender of southern slavery on any forum where Spooner's positions are more well known -- you will be seen as a laughable baffoon.

[jlogajan]

What war were they making on that government that Lincoln himself was not already a participant in by his own right?

The secessionist states were attacking federal fortifications before Lincoln was even swarn into office. Just a month after being sworn in the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter.

[Grand Old Partisan]

The Constitution requires that per capita taxes, not tariffs, be uniform.

[Grand Old Partisan]

I'm sure the Islamic terrorist arrested today in possession of a pipe-bomb could cite his own literary reference to justify attacking our country.

[ravinson]

...and some say the tariff wasn't an issue.

This speech doesn't even come close to suggesting that the the "tariff" (actually an import duty) played any significant role in secession or the Civil War. As the speaker admits, the South was buying most of their European goods from Northern importers, so it was Northerners who were paying the vast majority of the import duties, not Southerners, and the speaker's assumption that the Southerners could simply shift their importing to Southern ports is highly suspect, since it is apparent that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient.

Moreover, even if you assume that the speaker's numbers are correct that Southerners were buying $220 million worth of imports annually and thereby indirectly paying as much as $30 million annually in import duties, that would still be a mere pittance in comparison to the Republican threat to slaveholding (on which "peculiar institution" the secessionists placed a value of $3 billion).

[4CJ]

Pretty goofy, as the vast majority of the tariff was collected in northern ports.

And by that reasoning, those living in interior states - even today - pay no taxes/tariffs on the products imported. If that were true, foreign cars, lumber, steel and clothing, and thousands of other products would be cheaper due to the absence of tariffs. People in the coastal states would flock to the interior states to purchase their foreign goods.

Do you think that the importer simply absorbs the tariffs out of the kindness of their heart? It's passed along, regardless of where the tariff is collected and paid, the final consumer pays the tariff.

[rustbucket]

...the speaker's assumption that the Southerners could simply shift their importing to Southern ports is highly suspect, since it is apparent that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient.

Would your assertion still be true if the seceded Southern states charged a much lower tariff than the Northern states? That was the prospect facing the North.

As to your contention that the tariff played no role, consider the following newspaper editorials from early April 1861:

The New York Evening Post: "Bad as the law is in itself, the injustice of many of its provisions is hardly as gross as the stupidity of passing it at the very moment when the quarrel with the seceding states had reached its climax, and thus playing into their hands."

The New York Times: "How can we maintain any national spirit under such humiliation? We take the step of all others most calculated to alienate the border states and foreign nations."

The Daily Picayune (New Orleans): "Having driven the South to resistance, instead of adopting a policy of conciliation, it added to the existing exasperation by adopting a tariff as hostile as could be to Southern interests. The estrangement of North and South was not sufficiently marked and intense. New fuel must be added to the fires of strife, new incentives to embittered feelings."

[Ditto]

The "Wlat Brigade" is a small group of freepers associated with a liberal democrat and admitted Clinton-Gore voter named Walt who posts as "WhiskeyPapa." They show up on any thread that has even the slightest connection to the southern region of the country, where they post heavily cut n' pasted PC tirades attacking the south and deifying the likes of William Sherman for burning his way across it.

THERMO NUCLEAR HYPERBOIL ALERT!!!!

My only interest in these threads is rebutting the phony history coming out of the Neo-Confederarte racist propaganda machine that is polluting the Conservative movement.

You can have all the "Southern Culture" you want, eat all the grits you want and flay any damn flag you want, but when you continue distorting our common history, I'll call you on it every time. History is important.

[Ditto]

I would recommend you read "The Real Lincoln", by Thomas J DiLorenzo.

I have read it. You should take the time to do a little research on some of the supposed "facts" in that piece of trash and you will realize that DiLorenzo is an academic joke but very typical of what comes out of the Neo-Confederate propaganda mill.

The real history is out there. Take the time to find it instead of relying on clowns like DiLorenzo.

[Ditto]

This time, Southerners won't have to take up arms; the "Republic" is coming down on its own, and no amount of bot bowing to Bush photos is going to alter this course. Deo Vindice.
23 posted on 02/26/2003 1:48 PM PST by warchild9

GOPcap. Do you agree with your buddy here? This is where the Neo-Confederate propaganda has brought him. Do you agree that the Nation's "comming down"?

[Grand Old Partisan]

Neo-Confederates also forget that most federal government spending in the ante bellum period was in the South. Do they ever wonder why, for example, Pensacola, Norfolk, and Charleston had powerful harbor forts while Boston, New York, and Philadelphia did not?

[Ditto]

Unfair tariffs were the only reason my GG grandfathers fought.

Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting government. From official documents, we learn that a fraction over thlree-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government has uniformly been raised from the North. Pause, now, while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we now enjoy under the general government, as it has been for years past. The expense for the transportation of the mail in the Free States was, by the report of the Postmaster General for the year 186S0, a little over.$13,000,004, while the income was $19,000,000. But in the Slave States, the transportation of the mail was .$14,716,000, while the revenue from the same was.8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $6,115,73o5, to be supplied by the North for our accommodation, and without it we must have been entirely cut off from this most essential branch of government.
-- Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, January, 1861.

Your G-G- Grandfather was a leach on the Federal budget.