Posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:37 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
Careful. It is Wlat you are talking to...the same Wlat who declared yesterday that "a tariff is not a tax,"
...which in Walt-speak means that a tariff is defined as something that is necessary to sustain the precious from losing its power and fading into obscurity.
It's ultimately a matter of Walt's own action before and if that happens. We can encourage him along and show him where the truth is, but in the end nothing we do will make him acknowledge or realize that truth. And for the time being, it appears that his interest is in irrationally attempting to pull the minds of everyone around him away from that same truth. He does not seem to understand though that he cannot move the truth though - only decide whether or not he will recognize it and embrace it, or shun it in favor of a self-created fantasy. In the words of Louis Wigfall, "Mohammed may come to the mountain, but the mountain will never come to Mohammed."
I did, and only part of the speech is there. The dialogue between Senator Clingman and Senator Simmons actually begins on page 1474 and Senator Clingman is not complaining about the tariff, he is disputing Senator Simmons' claim that the new tariff will yield over $100 million in annual revenue. Senator Simmons maintains that since so little of the tariff is collected in southern ports that his estimates are correct. Senator Clingman says that the senator from Rhode Island is overlooking imports landed in Northern ports and destined to be shipped south, which he puts at $150 million per year. Since Senator Clingman provides no support for his claim it's impossible to take them seriously, any more than you can accept Senator Simmons' estimates. Regardless Senator Clingman is not threatening secession over the tariff, he is not saying that secession was the reason why seven states seceded, he is merely questioning the revenue estimates of Senator Simmons. Like I said, the whole thing taken totally out of context.
Yes, I can see where back-shooting drunks would appeal to you. In the best traditions of the sothron sense of honor and all that.
From a distance of about a foot. Some marksman. Even if he had the shakes he should have been able to make that one.
That was not the contemporary opinion.
"South Carolina...cannot get out of this Union until she conquers this government. The revenues must and will be collected at her ports, and any resistance on her part will lead to war. At the close of that war we can tell with certainty whether she is in or out of the Union. While this government endures there can be no disunion...If the overt act on the part of South Carolina takes place on or after the 4th of March, 1861, then the duty of executing the laws will devolve upon Mr. Lincoln. The laws of the United States must be executed-- the President has no discretionary power on the subject -- his duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Mr. Lincoln will perform that duty. Disunion by armed force is treason, and treason must and will be put down at all hazards. The Union is not, and cannot be dissolved until this government is overthrown by the traitors who have raised the disunion flag. Can they overthrow it? We think not."
Illinois State Journal, November 14, 1860
The Illinois State Journal was pretty much speaking for the president-elect.
The Militia Act of 1792 as amended in 1795 gives the president the clear power to put down insurrection against the United States. The Supreme Court approved the propriety of the president's actions in the Prize Case ruling. Just because you never heard of it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Walt
A tariff is not a tax.
A LAW DICTIONARY
by John Bouvier, Revised Sixth Edition, 1856:
TARIFF. Customs, duties, toll. or tribute payable upon merchandise to the general government is called tariff; the rate of customs, &c. also bears this name and the list of articles liable to duties is also called the tariff. 2. For the tariff of duties imposed on the importation of foreign merchandise into the United States.
Walt
That was a bunch of stupid merchants, or the good senator is blowing smoke.
There is no way goods shipped intermodally (off-loaded from ships to wagons or trains or both) from New York could compete with goods shipped straight to Charleston or other ports. The cost of this intermodal shipping would make those goods higher than ones off-loaded directly at the market.
Peddle your manure somewhere else.
Walt
The south designed itself to hurt itself, because the slave power eschewed free labor for slave.
"Philadelphia newspapers quoted a speech by Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in their city. "We believe that capital should own labor; is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere? In all countries and under every form of social organization there must be a laboring class -- a class of men who get their living from the sweat of their brow; and then there must be another class that controls and directs the capital of the country. He pleaded: "Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property."
--"Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg pp.217-22
Walt
That's not a true picture.
"Scholars still debate whether Lincoln had the authority to invoke the Constitutional provision suspending Habeas Corpus during the early days of the war. I will not wade into the muddy waters of that debate. I am more interested in talking about what Lincoln did after March of 1863--for that is when Congress gave Lincoln legislative authority to suspend the writ. From that point forward, Lincoln faced no constitutional obstacles. He could arrest whomever he chose, without courts interfering with Writs of Habeas Corpus. What did Lincoln do at this point? Did he attempt to stifle political debate, by imprisoning his opponents? In short, did he trample on the civil liberties the Writ of Habeas Corpus was meant to protect?
A recent historical study, entitled The Fate of Liberty, says "no." The author, Mark Neely, combed through the musty boxes of arrest records from the Civil War "to find out who was arrested when the Writ of Habeas Corpus was suspended and why." Neely concludes that, throughout the war, Lincoln was guided by a "steady desire to avoid political abuse under the Habeas-Corpus policy. According to the best estimates, about 38,000 civilians were arrested by the military during the Civil War. Who were they? Almost all fell within a few categories: "draft dodgers, suspected deserters, defrauders of the government, swindlers of recruits, ex-Confederate soldiers, and smugglers."
And strikingly, most of these were Confederate citizens, caught behind Northern lines. The numbers show that very few civilians were taken from their homes and arrested. And of those few arrests, only a handful were colored by political considerations."
-- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, 11/19/96
Walt
Not everybody thought that.
"Had the south used her power prudently and acted wisely, she would have controlled the destinies of this Government for generations yet to come...But, flushed with victories so constant and thorough and maddened by every expression of opposition to their peculiar institution, they commenced a work of proscription and aggression upon the rights of the people of the North, which has finally forced them to rise in their might and drive them from power.
They commenced their aggressions upon the North in some of the southern states by the enactment of unconstitutional laws, imprisoning colored seamen, and refusing to allow those laws to be tested before the proper tribunals. They trampled upon the sacred right of petition; they rifled and burnt our mails, if they suspected they contained anything of condemnation of slavery. They proscribed every northern man from office who would not smother and deny his honest convictions upon slavery and barter his manhood for place. They annexed foreign territory avowedly to extend and strengthen their particular institution, and made war in defense and support of that policy. They refused admission into the Union of States with free constitutions, unless they could have, as an equivalent, new guarantees for slavery. They passed a fugitive slave bill, some of the provisions of which were so merciless, and unneccessary as they were inhuman, that they would have disgraced the worst despotisms of Europe. They repealed their 'Missouri compromise act,' which they had themselves forced upon the North, against their wishes and their votes; and after having attained all their share of the benefit, they struck it down, against the indignant and almost unanimous protest of the whole North, for the purpose of forcing slavery upon an unwilling people. They undertook to prevent, by violent means, the settlement of Kansas by free-state men. They invaded that territory and plundered and murdered its citizens by armed force...
Every new triumph of the South and every concession by the North has only whetted their appetite for still more, and encouraged them in making greater claims and more unreasaonable demands, until today they are threatening the overthrow of the Government if we do not give them additional guarantees for protection to their slave property in territory in which we do not now own."
--Speech of Representative John B. Alley of Massachusetts, January 26, 1861 (quoted from "The Causes of the Civil War", Kennneth Stampp, ed.)
Walt
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